Nominations Open For "Most Likely to be Shut Down By Government"

The corporate overlords at SourceForge asked me to name a Slashdot category for their upcoming Community Choice Awards and to let you guys select the winner. I have named my category "Most Likely to be Shut Down by a Government Agency." We're going to run this like we do an Ask Slashdot call for questions — post your nominations into the comments here. Use moderation to send up good ideas. In the upcoming days we'll post another story where you can vote on the actual winner. Nominations need to include the project name, a link to some sort of official website, and a paragraph of why you think they deserve to win. The project that wins will gain fame, notoriety, and maybe a cease and desist order that they could print out and frame if they had that kind of time.

Comments

Truecrypt

[elrous0]

Truecrypt

It's basically only a matter of time before the fear-mongers and political demagogues in the U.S. and elsewhere outlaw any form of encryption that doesn't include a backdoor for the NSA and other "trusted" government agencies. There has already been evidence of commercial encrytption (such as Windows encryption) including such backdoors. And when the commercial companies all cave, how long do you think it will be before the government comes after the open source projects too?

Re:Truecrypt

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Algorithms for nigh-unbreakable encryption can be found in any elementary discrete math textbook, standard for second-year CS undergrads. Non-backdoored encryption may be outlawed at some point, but the knowledge is too widely dispersed to keep people from whipping up their own. Granted, whatever you hack together may not have all of TrueCrypt's bells and whistles, but if you do it right, it will be just as secure; and doing it right, for personal use on your own machine, is just dead easy.

Re:Truecrypt

[bsDaemon]

Couldn't/wouldn't they just move the project outside of the country to avoid issues? OpenBSD doesn't have to abide by crpyto export rules because they are in Canada, for instance.

Of course, I suppose the argument could be used for pretty much every project that is likely to be mentioned.

Re:Truecrypt

[The Aethereal]

And if you do that, the government wouldn't even have to prove you had encrypted something illegal. The fact that you had used an unapproved encryption algorithm would be all they need to arrest you. How does that help?

Re:Truecrypt

[Quila]

They started trying in the 90s under Clinton's reign, with Al Gore as the point man. Luckily resistance from people and businesses was enough to kill the Clipper Chip and Key Escrow. over 10 years later, I guess it's time for another round of facists to try it again.

Re:Truecrypt

[Anonymous Coward]

They may try, but first they will have to go throught the unbreakable wall of Bruce Schnier.

Re:Truecrypt

[Anonymous Coward]

A few more years under the Conservative Party leadership of Stephen Harper and Canada should be goose-stepping along quite nicely behind the United States.

Re:Truecrypt

[despe666]

I disagree, it WOULD have all the bell and whistles of Truecrypt. Being open source, they can shut down the website all they want, the source code is out there, it's too late now. You could just recompile it, customizing it to your liking. With their hidden volume and plausible deniability features, good luck proving that what they think is encrypted data is not random garbage.

Re:Truecrypt

[Anonymous Coward]

"OpenBSD doesn't have to abide by crpyto export rules because they are in Canada, for instance."

Yes, you can import strong encryption but you can't export un-approved encryption (ie what the US can't crack). So does that mean you have to worry about leaving the U.S. with too strong of encryption on your laptop then?

Re:Truecrypt

[evanbd]

While all the knowledge is out there, and you *can* do it yourself, getting every single detail right is not even close to easy. Are you sure you didn't leave some piece of the key swapped out to disk? Are you certain your random number generator was of sufficient quality and well seeded? Modern cryptosystems fail thanks to details, and the only way to get every detail right is many eyes and lots of work. Amateur efforts can certainly do it, but it's not easy for either them or the pros. Just remember, "I used RSA" isn't good enough. Witness the Netscape SSL problem, and the recent Debian SSH problems for examples of where the support infrastructure around the cryptosystem failed.

Re:Truecrypt

[ma1wrbu5tr]

This deserves a link to the how to. Pony it up!

Re:Truecrypt

[grandpa-geek]

Unbreakable encryption was invented by the US Army Signal Service in 1917. It is called the "one time pad". The encryption key is random and is as long as the message. The encryption is unbreakable as long as each key is used only once.

The drawback of a one-time pad system is the logistics of transporting the keys and having only two copies, that are destroyed after they are used.

Roosevelt and Churchill had transatlantic voice conversations during World War II that were encrypted using one-time pad technology. The conversations would remain unbreakable even if recordings of the radio transmissions were available today.

Re:Truecrypt

[SpaceLifeForm]

I don't need any 'approval' from anyone.

It was an experimental encryption algorithm and I screwed up
my hard drive, and now I can't decrypt it.

Does that help?

Re:Truecrypt

[compro01]

Why do you assume that they need to prove that is encrypted data and not random garbage?

Re:Truecrypt

[cavemanf16]

I couldn't agree more with this nomination... with TrueCrypt no one can check my USB key-drive for illegal Britney Spears mp3s, terrorisms, and civil disobedience manuals of TERROR! It must certainly be banned before the terrorists win.

Re:Truecrypt

[Anonymous Coward]

The US policy on crypto has actually been steadily improving over the past 10 years or so since Clipper died. Crypto products shouldn't get nominated. I don't see anybody trying that kind of thing again any time soon, at least not in the US.

Re:Truecrypt

[digitrev]

You were experimenting without government approval? Off to GITMO with you, you terrorist scumbag.

Re:Truecrypt

[digitig]

I did worry about taking my laptop (with PGP on it) into the USA, because it might be a problem bringing it back out again.

Re:Truecrypt

[Anonymous Coward]

If you had incriminating evidence on your system, and they could not break your encryption, then you could possibly avoid a harsher crime. ;)

Re:Truecrypt

[Firehed]

Well, we're under the assumption that the government has already outlawed encryption without a backdoor to let them (and anyone else with the key, which will be the entire world) in.

I'll let you draw your own conclusion.

Re:Truecrypt

[Sloppy]

For once, I must be in the not-cynical enough camp. It simply isn't feasible to end the use of encryption, and everyone knows that. That doesn't mean they wouldn't pass an impossible-to-enforce law, but crypto has some up before -- especially in the 1990s.

More importantly: the megacorps (i.e. the people hebind the lobbyists) need security. If you outlaw security, you don't get re-elected.

Re:Truecrypt

[Firehed]

Because people don't store random garbage on their drives. "Oh yeah, that's just a 50GB bitmap file that got corrupted and I never bothered deleting it". Come on.

Re:Truecrypt

[Kingrames]

"facists"

I hate it when people discriminate against me just cause of my face.

Re:Truecrypt

[Hatta]

Are you a licensed encryption researcher? No? Then you're fucked.

Re:Truecrypt

[Sloppy]

The drawback of a one-time pad system is the logistics of transporting the keys and having only two copies, that are destroyed after they are used.

One thing I enjoy harping on, is that there are many situations where OTP is actually quite practical; the transport and storage just aren't a big deal. For example: people you see in person every day. You put your phone next to your wife's phone at night, and they exchange pads over a wire or low-powered IR link or something. Your conversations the next day are OTPed.

As a general-purpose fix-everything solution OTP doesn't work, but sometimes it can, without really being very burdensome.

Re:Truecrypt

[Z34107]

Windows encryption doesn't "include such backdoors."

The random number generator is not used by default; a program has to specifically request it. If it does have a backdoor in it, presumably Microsoft added it so that other programs could be written with NSA backdoors.

Re:Truecrypt

[thtrgremlin]

That is already true for physical locks. Possession of lock picking equipment is intent. You can not posses the tools without a license that you can not receive without certification that you can't get without going to an approved and certified school. It is unlawful to study outside of approved classrooms. This is why lock picks make so much money, and for anyone into OSS here, why is is also so easy for criminals to pick any lock or work around any theft deterrent device.

Re:Truecrypt

[y86]

Because people don't store random garbage on their drives. "Oh yeah, that's just a 50GB bitmap file that got corrupted and I never bothered deleting it". Come on. That's why you need multiple true crypt volumes with small sizes.

Or, how about a big pagefile.sys on c:\ while the real one is on D? :-)

That file needs to be hidden in plain sight.

Re:Truecrypt

[compro01]

what about a small, seemingly unused space on the drive? unformatted space is theoretically indistinguishable from a truecrypt partition.

Re:Truecrypt

[mikael]

Make sure your windows are completely closed by curtains so that no light escapes from the room. Perhaps a light sensor combined with zoom lens could pick up the reflections of IR light through the curtains.

Re:Truecrypt

[digitrev]

And as soon as they think those damned criminals are cheating the system, they'll jack up the conviction penalties to be much worse than whatever you dare hide from them.

Re:Truecrypt

[raddan]

Hrm-- do you have a reference for the discrete math book? I have two (just completed a discrete math course), and IIRC neither talk much about encryption beyond simple XOR ciphers.

Re:Truecrypt

[fastest fascist]

That's too believable to be funny.

Re:Truecrypt

[Anonymous Coward]

Properly encrypted data is indistinguishable from random noise, so they would have an issue determining that your encrypted partition is in fact encrypted and not just empty space. I.e, for such a law to work they would have to effectively make it criminal to not zero erased data.

Furthermore, with some clever tricks you could insert your encrypted data into the noise of an audio sequence. Assuming you could make it look sufficiently similar to the type of noise you normally get when you record audio, it would then be virtually impossible to distinguish a noisy recording from a good recording with encrypted data injected into it.

So no, unless they want to ban you from storing and transmitting data that contains even a random component ( and every sound recording, every photograph, every video feed contains some noise ) they can't ban encryption. They might be able to make it sufficiently hard to do it to deter most people from using it, but completely preventing it won't be possible.

Now what they COULD do , and what is far scarier, is they could ban general purpose computers, requiring all computer manufacturers to only make devices that run signed code only, and they could then include large quantities of spy ware into them, which phone home every 10 seconds , prohibiting you from even shutting them off.

Apparently some guy named George thought of this scenario some time ago and blew the whistle. Most voters don't seem to worry about it however.

Re:Truecrypt

[bhtooefr]

There is, of course, a way to hide the fact that you're even using encryption.
 
Steganography is that way. It's the art of hiding something inside of something else, such that nobody knows that it's there.
 
Some methods hide text in the whitespace, others hide it in misspellings of words, and there are others that hide text in image files.
 
Of course, this defeats the purpose of steganography, but there is an encrypted message in this post. (It's encrypted via rot13, FWIW. But that's not the point. Had I not said that I hid something in here, you probably wouldn't have known what I did.)
                                       

Of course, watch Slashcode mangle that post. If it is mangled, you might get to see the results if you look at the source code of the page, but not sure.

Re:Truecrypt

[HadouKen24]

IANAL, but mere possession of lock picking equipment is perfectly legal in most states even without a license. It only counts as intent if there is some reason to think that you intend to use them to break in somewhere. There is a small hobbyist community that picks (their own) locks for fun--perfectly legally. It does vary from state by state, though; lockpick possession is considered prima facie evidence for intent in some even where simple possession might be legal under a strictly literal reading of the statute in question.

Walking around with them in your pocket isn't smart, though. Having them in your own home is frequently just fine, but taking them anywhere very frequently does constitute intent, if you're not a certified locksmith on a job.

So... that's not quite how it is with lockpicks. It depends on what State you're in. (Unless you're in Canada, of course. Canada requires certification even for mere ownership.)

Re:Truecrypt

[Anonymous Coward]

We will see. The US will likely vote in a liberal - that ought to speed up the goose-stepping process if history is any guide. We will see if Canada can keep up.

A troll for a troll - lets see if this post also gets a +1 interesting.

Re:Truecrypt

[afabbro]

You put your phone next to your wife's phone at night, and they exchange pads over a wire or low-powered IR link or something.

How they generate these pads, on the other hand...

Re:Truecrypt

[tgd]

Not after you posted it on Slashdot, it certainly doesn't.

And sadly, I'm only half joking.

Re:Truecrypt

[StuartFreeman]

http://ciphersaber.gurus.com/

Re:Truecrypt

[Cillian]

Nope - since the key changes for each character, it's not the same character difference. Really, any OTP encryption done properly is by definition unbreakable, since you can generate any plaintext of the correct length for the given ciphertext by using the right keys

Re:Truecrypt

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a lock pick set, which came with an instruction manual.

I bought it at a flea market.

I've even used it, to open a locked mailbox. To get bills out. For a friend, who owned the mailbox. Who had just moved in, and didn't have the key. To his own mailbox.

Believable? Well, it's true. I guess I'm a white-hat lock-picker. -Anonymous-

Re:Truecrypt

[Oktober Sunset]

You can't distinguish between a properly encrypted file and random garbage, so all you need to hide if the tiny enryption program, which you could keep on an easy to hide flash drive, or just delete it and re-download it later.

Re:Truecrypt

[hankk]

How about a CD or DVD as a pad? Use a pseudo-random number generator as an increment for the next digit in the pad.

So the key may be based on a song, a movie, a you-tube video or even a Windows install disk. The pad would be generated by taking samples from pseudo-random places on the source file.

Re:Truecrypt

[kalirion]

The prosecutor will compare that with

"I don't need any 'approval' from anyone.

It was an experimental explosive and I blew up my house
and now I can't put it back together."

Re:Truecrypt

[rcamans]

One time pads can be used in any circumstance, with any transmit method. Each communication includes the next one time encryption key. It also includes the last key. That tells the receiver that this is the person he last talked to. An unbroken link of communications. Since each key is very long, there is no way it can be broken.

Re:Truecrypt

[lgw]

Your one-time pad is only as good as your random number source. You have to hope that a package maintainer somewhere didn't comment out the actual random part of that. It's easy for a bug to render an OTP insecure. It's also easy to accidentally re-use a OPT once, due to simple human carelessness, and find yourself executed for treason (apparantly this is how the Rosenbergs were caught).

Re:Truecrypt

[JWSmythe]

That's why I made this site. Even if you decrypt the first layer, you're still looking at random garbage.

    I was reviewing my logs, and lots of interesting places have looked. Occasionally my phone clicks in a very regular pattern. A few folks have said "When I worked with ___ , our wire taps made that sound. Is your phone bugged?"

    Only once has a black helicopter parked over my house (and then was filmed for 10 minutes). While a few unusual vehicles have been parked in the neighborhood, they're all attributable to neighbors houses. Well, most of them. :)

Re:Truecrypt

[lgw]

No encryption is truly unbreakable. All will, eventually, fall victim to a brute-force attack. A brute-force attack fails is there is not enough available energy in the universe to try all combinations. A 512-bit symmetric key is impossible to brute-force. A 256-bit key is impossible to brute force by any practical definition (but, hey, maybe there's a Type-II civilization out there that *really* wants to see your porn, and has the energy of a million stars to burn for a thousand years).

Re:Truecrypt

[Sloppy]

You put your phone next to your wife's phone at night, and they exchange pads over a wire or low-powered IR link or something.

How they generate these pads, on the other hand...

We're talking about a device that has a radio antenna, a microphone, and probably CCD. It moves around all day, seeing inputs from all those different sensors, from your unique perspective. It's practically an entropy engine.

Re:Truecrypt

[rts008]

"Possession of lock picking equipment is intent."
Very good point. the whole 'possession with intent' argument used by our Gov't. and law enforcement/court system is just pure FUD. Currently THEY get to define 'intent' just based on possession, and that is the problem.
Common sense would dictate that 'intent' should be a seperate issue from possession, but by 'bundling' intent with possession,all bets are off.
It seems to be 'the WAR on mentality has automagically equated possession with 'intent', despite the facts actually present.

The 'facts' don't matter as long as you fit (even loosely) the 'profile'.

ARRGHHH! This 'New World Order' mentality really chaps my ass.

How is Boston Harbor setup for a 21'st century Tea Party these days? I think we need to explore this question here in the USA. Just thinking...

P.S. I know I am ranting in an offtopic direction, but when I enlisted in the US Army, I took an oath to defend our Constitution from enemies both foreign and DOMESTIC. WTF?!?!?!
I am really confused by what my proper course of action should be anymore. My instincts reload '1776-The Revolution' into RAM, but I doubt it would work now days with the apathy and 'consumerism' that is rampant here. I AM A CITIZEN (Egads- I hate this Newspeak Spelling, but nevermind), not a CONSUMER! I am a consumer when I go to a restaurant or pub- maybe when I go to a grocery store- otherwise I am a citizen, not a 'consumer'.

Is it too off-topic to say: I miss the social attitudes of my youth? (for reference, I was born in 1958- grad'ed HS in 1976- yes, I am older than dirt for most of you, and proud of it- I have seen a lot of really cool shit happening, but also a lot of not-cool shit too)

Re:Truecrypt

[Reapman]

There could be a problem with that... just thinking off the top of my head a pagefile.sys can be used as a memory dump for investigators to look at what was happening. If you hid your data as a pagefile.sys they would'nt be able to decrypt it, but they'd probably clue in that it doesn't look like a pagefile should (no idea how a pagefile.sys should be setup, but I'm assuming there's telltale signs)

Re:Truecrypt

[despe666]

Because if they can't prove it's encrypted data, they can't get a warrant for the key, and can't bust you for refusing to give them the key. Plausible deniability.

Re:Truecrypt

[Antique Geekmeister]

Microsoft doesn't necessarily want the NSA to have the backdoors, but they sure want the backdoors for their _own_ use, so that they can unlock a customer's content as a "service", or sell it to business as part of a security toolkit. Please look into Palladium, renamed "Trusted Computing", to see exactly what their long-term encryption and authentication plans are.

Widespread use of Palladium, without careful thought, could lead to exactly the forbidding of non-backdoor-burdened encryption. And discovering a backdoor-free way to use it is one of the fastest ways to get such a technology dropped: take a look at what happened with the 'Clipper Chip' for an example of that.

Re:Truecrypt

[grandpa-geek]

How about a CD or DVD as a pad? Use a pseudo-random number generator as an increment for the next digit in the pad.

So the key may be based on a song, a movie, a you-tube video or even a Windows install disk. The pad would be generated by taking samples from pseudo-random places on the source file. The proper random number generator is the digitized output of a noise source, such as the electric arc of a welding machine. The output of a pseudo-random number generator is breakable. It isn't really random.

Re:Truecrypt

[rts008]

I would start here:System encryption , and System encryption

Re:Truecrypt

[Quattro Vezina]

Utterly bullshit.

Hell, the lockpicking club at my old college gave free lockpicks to anyone who attended their first meeting.

Re:Truecrypt

[spaceyhackerlady]

No encryption is truly unbreakable. All will, eventually, fall victim to a brute-force attack.

No. This is well-established.

One-time pads are unbreakable in a carefully defined sense: of all the possible decrypted messages, there is no way to decide which is the correct one. All are equally probable.

I've toyed with setting up one-time pad encryption so my Mom and I could send secret email to each other. I'd probably go low-tech and hook a geiger counter up to a computer to generate a CD of random key material, then give her a copy.

The only examples of decrypted one-time pad messages are ones where the agents misused their pads, like the Venona decrypts.

...laura

Re:Truecrypt

[stefanlasiewski]

Export restrictions started during the cold war, and lasted through multiple American administrations, with State Department as the point man. Before the early 90s, all encryption standards were either weak, or contained a backdoor.

This was brought to a head during the early 90s, when Phil Zimmerman and others released PGP to the world.

Re:Truecrypt

[pwizard2]

My instincts reload '1776-The Revolution' into RAM, but I doubt it would work now days with the apathy and 'consumerism' that is rampant here

Exactly. How can we have a proper revolution if a significant chunk of people are not even willing to go out and vote? The ignorance and complacency of the people is the root of strength for a corrupt government. (I define corrupt government as one that primarily serves the interests of a select few groups at the expense of the common good)

Re:Truecrypt

[evanbd]

High bandwidth hardware RNGs aren't that hard. I could design a circuit that ran at a multi-kilobit output rate (plenty for text messaging), occupied under a square cm of board area, and a parts cost under $3 in qty 1k -- with provable minimums for the amount of quantum mechanically generated entropy. And the price would drop dramatically in large quantity. Or you could take VIA's approach of noisy ring oscillators that's very fast, almost certainly good enough, but not quite guaranteed -- and can be integrated on a modest sized piece of digital logic at very very low cost. So why don't more people use high quality random number generators? No one cares.

The hard part isn't generating the pads; it's managing them securely (or generating them on hardware not intended for the task). But, if you happen to want a good hardware RNG designed, it's quite doable (though not trivial; it requires attention to detail, as always).

Re:Truecrypt

[hankk]

Yes, you want to generate the same pseudo-random number on each side, and use it to create an index into the source file for the pad.

Re:Truecrypt

[ednopantz]

It's basically only a matter of time before the fear-mongers and political demagogues in the U.S. and elsewhere outlaw any form of encryption that doesn't include a backdoor for the NSA and other "trusted" government agencies. There has already been evidence of commercial encrytption (such as ...1991 called and it wants its fearmongering back...

We saw this prediction before and every time the spooks lose out to business interests that absolutely will not live without strong crypto.

Maybe this prediction might have made some sense in 1991 when crypto was not widely used, but strong crypto is pervasive today. Any US administration that tired to ban it would get roasted by a wide variety of business interests before the EFF had coffee made.

Re:Truecrypt

[evanbd]

Many number theory textbooks cover RSA these days. My computer security class (and its textbook) covered some of the modern symmetric key ciphers (DES, AES, etc) at least briefly, but that wasn't an entry-level class. I don't think I've seen strong crypto discussed in detail in an entry level course, aside from OTPs and RSA.

Re:Truecrypt

[srh2o]

Be sure to file an Environmental Impact Survey before you head out to the harbor, or you'll really be in for trouble.

Re:Truecrypt

[GaryOlson]

Knock knock!
Who's there?
Will Yu.
Will you who?
WILL YOU STOP GIVING THE BRAINLESS GOVERNMENT BUREAUCRATS IDEAS!

Or at least use double ROT 13 encryption so the government can't read your ideas without using illegal encryption tools.

Re:Truecrypt

[rts008]

"Are you certain your random number generator was of sufficient quality and well seeded?"
I know that MS tried to deal with this in Vista, but seeing as how most businesses are avoiding Vista, what about Psuedo Random Number Generator?
Has this any effect on the issue? (it would seem it does on the surface due to the 'Joe Sixpack' effect. Am I missing something here?

All of the '133t' schemes seem to bypass Joe- so what good is it in the long run?

Just asking, as it is a concern.

Re:Truecrypt

[marxmarv]

A vote for one wing or the other of a two-party state is worse than useless. It lends an air of legitimacy to an illegitimate system. It's the economy; the culture war is just theater. I'm very curious how Obama feels he can do about increasing the participation of third parties in the US political system.

Re:Truecrypt

[easyTree]

The ignorance and complacency of the people is the root of strength for a corrupt government.

Dude. I for one resent what you're implying. I'm perfectly happy to join you in glorious revolution*.

* as long as it doesn't coincide with Friends and you serve lattes.

Re:Truecrypt

[marxmarv]

Most modern disks are low-level formatted at the factory. Besides, you've probably still got the plaintext drivers somewhere, which means you have an encryption tool, which may be enough to get you on conceivable laws.

Any good sysadmin worth their salt knows you don't turn off the power to a hack in progress. You pull the network cable, drop to PROM, and investigate. Same applies when someone's got their encrypted drive open. You pull a gun on them, get them away from the computer, and get your computer forensics guy in there quick in case there's a deadman switch of some sort.

Re:Truecrypt

[collinstocks]

I remember about a year ago, I did fifteen or so different statistical tests on the random numbers generated by the Windows urandom system call in Python. It turns out that the numbers are not cryptographically secure, and most of the results of the statistical tests were p less than 0.0001 or p greater than 0.9999. That is, very high correlation between "random" numbers. You want something 0.01 less than p less than 0.99 for something even moderately secure.

Re:Truecrypt

[gpw213]

Hrm-- do you have a reference for the discrete math book? I have two (just completed a discrete math course), and IIRC neither talk much about encryption beyond simple XOR ciphers.

Actually, OTP does use a simple XOR cipher. Given a truly random key the same length as the message, that is perfectly adequate.

Re:Truecrypt

[BillAtHRST]

I seem to recall a passage in Cryptonomicon where a OTP was being generated by little old ladies picking ping-pong balls out of a container. This was supposed to be random, but it turned out that there was a pattern to it, based on the way the balls felt to their fingers, that allowed for codes to be broken. Don't know how true this passage was, but true randomness is hard to achieve.

Re:Truecrypt

[compro01]

That depends on where the burden of proof is placed. Do they have to prove it is encrypted data or do you have to prove that it isn't?

Re:Truecrypt

[Z34107]

That's actually really interesting to me, but here's the thing - urandom() exists for POSIX compatibility, and isn't part of the Windows API. And, in UNIX-land, it's not supposed to provide crypto-quality random numbers - that's /dev/random. /dev/urandom is the "fast" non-blocking version that comes at the cost of less entropy.

Given it's purpose (fast at the cost of randomness), I'd be surprised of urandom() did return crypto-suitable numbers.

Re:Truecrypt

[collinstocks]

I don't know, but the documentation on it says that it produces cryptographically secure random numbers. And I believe that it actually is based on the actual system call, since it is imported from the winnt module or something like that. Anyway, I don't use Window$ anymore, so it so no concern of mine. /dev/random and /dev/urandom are good for me.

By the way, according to the man page, /dev/urandom has never been shown not to be cryptographically secure, though it theoretically could be.

Re:Truecrypt

[evanbd]

I don't know anything about the OS specifics, so this is a general comment. Things like that are a very good idea. OS support means that one group can get it right (assuming you trust them) and others can use it. The OS is in a good position to collect entropy, and gather it from whatever sources are available (hardware RNGs, keypress timings, mic input noise, wherever) and make it available appropriately.

Of course, if you're paranoid enough to be writing your own crypto, or living in a world where non-backdoored crypto is outlawed, you probably can't or won't use such a tool. For those without the full tinfoil regalia, though, it's an excellent thing to see.

Re:Truecrypt

[NonSequor]

Seconded. We never came anywhere near encryption in my intro to discrete math class (as I recall, that class was mostly basic combinatorics and graph theory).

The textbook for my number theory class was Prime Numbers: A Computational Perspective by Richard Crandall and Carl Pomerance. It covers the basics of number theory while covering a wide variety of essential number theoretic algorithms (prime and pseudo-prime tests, factoring and discrete log algorithms, Diffie-Hellman key exchange, RSA, elliptic curve cryptosystems, and a large chapter on algorithms for large-integer arithmetic).

Re:Truecrypt

[Z34107]

Link? I can't find any documentation for urandom on Windows. Nothing shows up on MSDN, or www.google.com/microsoft. I'll check my Visual Studio DVD, but it's not handy atm.

And as I said, urandom is the Wal-Mart random number generator of Linux. Not for crypto. For Windows, you want GenCryptRandom() or something like that.

Re:Truecrypt

[Ripit]

Now what they COULD do , and what is far scarier, is they could ban general purpose computers, requiring all computer manufacturers to only make devices that run signed code only, and they could then include large quantities of spy ware into them, which phone home every 10 seconds , prohibiting you from even shutting them off.

I don't think this would hold up under scrutiny. First Amendment applies here.

..which makes me wonder why all forms of encryption are not legal. Don't we have a constitutional right to encryption? Could it be argued that encryption falls under free speech?

Re:Truecrypt

[collinstocks]

Oh, I was talking about the documentation of the urandom() function in Python.

import os
help(os.urandom)

I can't swear to it, though, since I haven't used windows for such things in a very long time.

Re:Truecrypt

[Z34107]

Ahhh... so many random()s floating about.

Urandom in python, the urandom() that just reeks of POSIX, the CryptGenRandom()... the getRandomNumber()...

If anyone actually knows anything, chime in! I'm not a Python person, so what underlying function does it call on Windows?

Re:Truecrypt

[collinstocks]

I looked at the os.py source file, and urandom() is probably really nt.urandom() since, if windows, does:

from nt import *
from ntpath import *

and I doubt that it is in ntpath

Re:Truecrypt

[Joe U]

Could it be argued that encryption falls under free speech? A while ago, when strong encryption exports were not allowed, people got around them by printing the source code and selling a book with the code as one of the chapters.

Entertaining.

Re:Truecrypt

[glittalogik]

Have you seen Kevin Mitnick's business card?

Re:Truecrypt

[xsadar]

"Discrete Mathematics" by Richard Johnsonbaugh. Fifth Edition. ISBN: 0-13-089008-1
This textbook (from 2001) has a small section called "The RSA Public-Key Cryptosystem." It teaches you enough to be able to do simple RSA encryption, but I'm certain it's missing important implementation details. If you really wanted to know about encryption, I'd suggest something that goes into more depth. I've never really looked into encryption much myself.

Re:Truecrypt

[JLF65]

A vote for one wing or the other of a two-party state is worse than useless. It lends an air of legitimacy to an illegitimate system.

Exactly! If a company works against the betterment of the people, I boycott them. Not voting is the SAME PRINCIPLE applied to the government. We don't need campaigns trying to "get out the vote", we need campaigns to make people stay home. When only 0.03 percent of US citizens vote, maybe they'll realize we're serious. In fact, the representatives to the Electoral College should all abstain so that NO ONE is elected regardless of how many vote.

Re:Truecrypt

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Anyone who mods you up clearly doesn't understand that goose steppers are conservatives. Can I get a +1 obvious?

Re:Truecrypt

[CastrTroy]

When you only have 2 candidates, and it's winner take all, what's the point of voting? Especially when neither candidate is very good.

Re:Truecrypt

[Lost Engineer]

Or we could all go vote for a 3rd party candidate. Hell if even 10% did that you'd have an effect, whereas a 10% boycott would only be noted as a long-term trend towards lower turnout.

Re:Truecrypt

[CastrTroy]

I've often wondered about that. If you inspect the empty space on your hard disk, it doesn't look very random at all. You'll find old pieces of files and other interesting things. To the trained eye it looks anything but random. I would argue that having completely random looking data on your hard disk, either in files, or in the empty space, constitutes probable cause for encrypted data. Sure you could argue that your MySecretFiles.tc file is just random data, but I don't think it would hold up in court.

Re:Truecrypt

[techno-vampire]

They started trying in the 90s under Clinton's reign, with Al Gore as the point man.

Doesn't that contradict the current Slashdot meme that Clinton and his administration could do no wrong and Bush's can do no right?

Re:Truecrypt

[Narpak]

The only citizens are the ones following and obeying the establishment; even when that establishment breaks the very rules that governs it. The rest of us, I am afraid, are disgruntled outsiders incapable of listening to reason (as in, when they proclaim; we argue).

By the new, or possible very very old) standard; debate with continued and updated reference to facts and data for accuracy, transparency and objectivity is by definition unpatriotic and counterproductive to society.

"Those Who Sacrifice Liberty For Security Deserve Neither." -Benjamin Franklin

Re:Truecrypt

[It'sYerMam]

Or maybe you'll be just as screwed, if not more so, because only the zealots went to the polling station.

Re:Truecrypt

[Narpak]

Quick, someone point out that I fail at accuracy. :P

Re:Truecrypt

[It'sYerMam]

It's not hard to envision ways of doing this relatively easily. For a cumbersome example, you could transmit a photograph and its thumbnail. The data would be encoded in deviations of the thumbnail from what you get if you actually resize the photo with some simple algorithm. You'd have to find a way to hide software to automatically read this kind of encryption, but the process is still pretty simple.

Re:Truecrypt

[Z34107]

I poked around in Visual Studio a bit. There's the STL "rand()" function, which I would suspect to be crap for cryptography. Probably crap for roll-1d6-pewpew RPG games, too.

But, Win32/C gives us CryptGenRandom, as my Googling turned up earlier.

BOOL WINAPI CryptGenRandom(

HCRYPTPROV hProv,

DWORD dwLen,

BYTE* pbBuffer

);

HCRYPTPROV is a handle to a "Cryptographic Service Provider." I don't speak French, so I looked that up, too. You get one by calling CryptAcquireContext, which is a scary function. Help wasn't as enlightening as I'd like, and I'm too lazy to go on MSDN, but this function hooks up a CSP - an abstraction of what could be a software crypto library, a smart card, or a hardware card - with a "key container" managed by said CSP. It seems that key containers are usually a name meaningful to the CSP that lets it whip out a public/private key pair.

Given a CSP and key container name, you get a handle to a CSP, which is used by CryptGenRandom to generate dwLen bytes of random bits at pbBuffer.

So, going back to the (great-great-grand)parent's post, the allegedly backdoor-ed random number generator is being offered as an additional Cryptographic Service Provider you can hook into with CryptAcquireContext. If you don't like it, don't specifically ask for it by name when generating numbers. Now, I'm just guessing here - I don't program crypto - but this is what it sounds like to me.

Now, I'd suspect the Windows default random number generator would be pretty decent. It's what NTFS's Encrypted File System uses, and probably what Windows' kerberos uses, and possibly even what Internet Explorer's SSL/SSH/whatever uses.

Because I'm lazy, verifying my wild conjecture is left as an exercise to the reader. ^.^ But CryptAcquireContext sounds really neat - just say "SmartCard! Pew!" and Windows takes care of the rest; no need to know about the underlying hardware (or software).

Re:Truecrypt

[mOdQuArK!]

If each one-time pad is used to send the next pad, where is there any room for the message?

Re:Truecrypt

[Pendersempai]

If there were a market, I'm sure we'd see tiny, low-powered and low-cost chips that generate random numbers based on some kind of quantum gate, or chaotic fluctuations in thermal energy, or something physical of that nature. One-time pads are, as the parent said, not that hard to do; it's just that in general, public key encryption or no encryption at all is good enough, so there's no market incentive to really nail the problem in the way that engineering-types find satisfying. (I empathize.)

Re:Truecrypt

[Foobar of Borg]

To get bills out. For a friend, who owned the mailbox. Who had just moved in, and didn't have the key. To his own mailbox.

I for one wish to welcome William Shatner to Slashdot.

Re:Truecrypt

[Anonymous Coward]

In the British army, we used a similar system called BATCO (Battle Code). Serious, royal, unmitigated, pain in the arse, I mean, could you make combat harder or any more stressful?! "Hello zero, this is two-zero alpha, CONTACT, location, erm... bugger.. wait out", and then drag out your BATCO cipher pad, work out which line you should be using, work out your grid ref, encrypt it and call your company commander back. Honestly, I have two much to do to bother with this shit, and it's not like there is much point encrypting my grid - the enemy is shooting at me so I am reasonably convinced that I'm not announcing they something they don't already know!
This differs from the TA (reserve) approach of "Bloody hell, we're being shot out. Screw BATCO, I never learned it properly anyways", pulls out mobile phone... "Hey Pete, yeah it's Dave here. You alright? ", etc... Much more pratical :)

Re:Truecrypt

[joocemann]

And if you do that, the government wouldn't even have to prove you had encrypted something illegal. The fact that you had used an unapproved encryption algorithm would be all they need to arrest you. How does that help? This is aligned with thoughtcrime, the crime of a noncriminal act that is not proven directly related to criminal activity. It would be a shame to see such activity, but I think thats where we are going... sadly. Lets not ban guns just yet, mmkay?

Re:Truecrypt

[pfingst]

I'm very curious how Obama feels he can do about increasing the participation of third parties in the US political system.

What incentive does Obama (or anyone else in power) have to foster the growth of another political party? You now have essentially one strong enemy; why would you want another? Even if he tried to promote another "conservative" party to steal votes from the Republicans, who's to say that they won't (now or in the future) steal votes from the liberal candidates, too?

Obama believes in central control and unlimited government power, and that is best served by eliminating opposition, not generating more of it.

Re:Truecrypt

[HeronBlademaster]

The difference is that not purchasing from a company affects the company's bottom line, but not voting does not affect whether someone gets voted in, and in fact it can tip the scales one way or another.

In other words, if you don't buy, the company could go out of business (by not meeting their costs), but if not they can't really affect you. If you don't vote, someone still gets voted in, and it might be someone whose policies are quite opposed to how you might run things yourself, which might affect you directly through new laws.

So, you're wrong; "not voting" is not even close to the same as "boycotting a company".

The solution to "I hate the two-party system" is to vote for a third party. If that's not enough for you (and it probably won't be successful at first) you'll have to campaign for a third-party candidate and rally support. If I recall correctly, you can even write in whatever name you want for your vote.

Re:Truecrypt

[nospam007]

For once, I must be in the not-cynical enough camp.
It simply isn't feasible to end the use of encryption, and everyone knows that.

It simply isn't feasible to end the use of drugs, and everyone knows that, but they put millions in prison anyway.

Re:Truecrypt

[kramulous]

True ... Truecrypt is badass for the powers that be.

However, fear mongers will really, really hate talented individuals that post step-by-step instructions on how to set up http://nsa.unaligned.org/.

Re:Truecrypt

[Opportunist]

Vote? What for? Choosing between shooting and hanging isn't really a choice, so why bother?

Re:Truecrypt

[Opportunist]

If you somehow manage to get those 10% to agree on one candidate, maybe.

Re:Truecrypt

[hyades1]

"...for such a law to work they would have to effectively make it criminal to not zero erased data."

Don't go giving the evil f#ckers any ideas. Next thing you know, they'll take a baby step toward the ban you mentioned on general purpose computers, and make it illegal to erase anything.

My data drive just isn't big enough to deal with it, and I wouldn't want to get stuck with all that second-rate pr0n.

Re:Truecrypt

[msromike]

Lying is always an option when one is caught breaking the law.

Re:Truecrypt

[msromike]

I doubt the right to own and operate a computer is protected under the constitution. Firearms are specifically menmtioned and teven that is not a sure thing in some states.

Re:Truecrypt

[Eskarel]

If you want third party candidates in the states, you need to get run off voting working. You still end up with a candidate from one of the two major parties, but it's easier to change which parties are major(though not easy) and the two major parties don't get to ignore everyone else.

Re:Truecrypt

[MaskedSlacker]

Sorry to burst your naive bubble, Perot got 19% of the nationwide vote in 1992. The only result? The league of women voters is no longer permitted by the Democratic and Repubican parties to host presidential debates.

Re:Truecrypt

[Archangel_Azazel]

"If I recall correctly, you can even write in whatever name you want for your vote."

CmdrTaco for president?!

Brilliant.

Re:Truecrypt

[bobbozzo]

Like Perot? I'm not sure how much effect that had, other than taking votes away from HW.

Re:Truecrypt

[zsau]

Weird Americans. You go to such lengths to set up the imagery of a state eminating from its people, not having a separate Soverignperson or parliamentand then you go off and rally behind the term "Citizen" which really puts you in your place as much as "Consumer".

You're a person, mate, and a freedom-loving one at that. If you had any sense you'd do well to remember that. Keep no allegience to your state because your state keeps no allegience to you, but instead try to make sure your friends and your family and your neighbors are best off because that's what they want too.

Nationalism in any of its guises is best avoided.

Re:Truecrypt

[Tuoqui]

Innocent until proven Guilty. At least thats one of the idea behind the 5th, 6th and 14th amendments were written around. The whole 'Due process' thing...

Yeah I know the US Constitution took a shitkicking from President Bush but its still there to protect the citizens (not necessarily the Arabs/Muslims they capture in combat)

Re:Truecrypt

[dargaud]

One time pads need to be at least the size of the data you want to encrypt as you cannot use it twice. So you'd need a lot of storage if you plan on encrypting digital phone conversations. And conversations would have limited duration.

Re:Truecrypt

[leuk_he]

Or they can just hire you. NSA has big pockets. You have the option of builing a master key (aka back door) or leave the project to starve.

Re:Truecrypt

[dangitman]

Or at least use double ROT 13 encryption so the government can't read your ideas without using illegal encryption tools.

You must be some kind of cyber-terrorist. I read that post, and it was encrypted with Double ROT-13. You must have stolen the keys or used a cluster of zombie machines to perform a brute-force attack.

Re:Truecrypt

[Eivind]

Why would they care if participation in elections is 70% or 7% ? It makes no difference to them, they're in power anyway.

The current US "democracy" is silly, and it's self-reinforcing because it can only change if atleast one of the two parties which would LOSE power if things changed voted in favor of change, which won't happen.

I think the best one could currently do would be to always vote for the strongest THIRD candidate. Offcourse this assumes that you don't really care who wins from the two major parties. If you do, any vote that isn't for one of them is a wasted vote, which is ONE of literally a dozen reasons the US democratic system is braindead.

Re:Truecrypt

[zoney_ie]

Just having more players along doesn't ensure anything changes. Here in Ireland we have proportional representation with single transferable vote (PR-STV). You get to vote your preferences and if say your first preference is eliminated, then your second preference is counted in the next round of counting. Alternatively if your first preference is easily elected, their surplus votes (randomly selected) are redistributed according to the remaining preferences.

It makes for an entertaining and drawn out count, and indeed representation for small parties. But it's still mostly been Fianna FÃil, the main establishment party, in government for decades. When it wasn't, we had the very similar Fine Gael party. Sure the coalitions add a bit of variation, but no more so than the fringe politicians you might have inside the major parties of a two party state.

Still, PR-STV is quite satisfying way to vote and I recommend it. Nothing like recording your least favorite politician as last preference even if they are from the main party and likely to be elected.

Re:Truecrypt

[Magada]

It's not my country you're talking about, but I'd like to chip in anyway. The people are not disinterested. Oh, they may not be interested in the issues being raised in the existing political system.
Any relevant issue, when submitted to public debate, would quickly polarize the nation, just like in the 1770's with the tax thing. There were some, then, who sided with England, some to the last. However, after the Boston Tea Party, there probably wasn't anyone in the colonies who hadn't a very clear idea of what should be done about the issue.
There's an insistence in the US, on both sides of the aisle, that the nation needs "unity". That's newspeak for "let's keep them disinterested" because if they do start to take notice of the man behind the curtain, then... oh boy.

Re:Truecrypt

[Prune]

By using hidden volumes in Truecrypt for plausible deniability, you nincompoop--there's no way to prove that the volume holds encrypted data--it just looks like random garbage.

Re:Truecrypt

[Cros13]

Remember mate...

Ireland is a Republic today due to the "Republic of Ireland Act".
A peice of legislation brought in by one of the "minor" parties in a coalition.
Our system is far superior to the US.
Americans have no idea what freedom means.
As Irish citizens we still have control over our
political system.

We've mostly had fianna fail government because
we've voted fianna fail into power.
And our PR system enables us to indicate clearly with our vote the path we want fianna fail policy
to take when in government rather than the first-past-the-port endorsement of all their policies (e.g. why we put the greens in coalition and rendered the PDs impotent)

Re:Truecrypt

[kvezach]

I'm very curious how Obama feels he can do about increasing the participation of third parties in the US political system.

STV for the House, round robin (Condorcet) for the Presidency, either for the two Senators from each state.

Of course, the real question is not whether he can, but whether he would. As mentioned in another post, what incentive does a politician from a major party have in introducing further competition?

Re:Truecrypt

[Trahloc]

I half agree with your idea but the second half thinks it wont work. What we need is as *many* people as possible to go out and vote... and scratch out both names or put in blank cards. Show the system you refuse to vote. Sitting at home holding a patriotic dinner party of your closest thousand friends who refuse to vote with you on some grand principal or being some drunk covered in their own vomit next to a dumpster look the same otherwise.

Re:Truecrypt

[The Aethereal]

In a police state, crimes do not need to be proven.

Re:Truecrypt

[elrous0]

In the government's defense, the helicopters are actually alien craft, not CIA. And if you would stop being such a big pussy about the anal probe, they could finish their job and go away.

Re:Truecrypt

[elrous0]

No, it means that you don't trust either party.

Re:Truecrypt

[m50d]

How does that give you anything remotely resembling a secure cryptosystem? If you're using a PRNG there is no way to possibly make it any more secure than, say, RSA *anyway*, and you seem to be talking about using well-known media for the key just starting at a semirandom offset, which is utterly trivial to break - just try all possible offsets.

Re:Truecrypt

[jbeaupre]

.zip

Re:Truecrypt

[hankk]

You're assuming the distance between samples is 1. I'm assuming its a pseudo-random number.

Re:Truecrypt

[mOdQuArK!]

Hey, and if you keep .zip-ing your data over and over, you'll eventually be able to store all of it in 0 space! Wow, that's clever!

Re:Truecrypt

[m50d]

What are you talking about, seriously? "Distance between samples"?

Re:Truecrypt

[Sloppy]

Well, that's a continuation/inertia thing, though. If drugs were legal, I don't think they'd be able to pass laws to make it illegal, these days. Once again I must fall into the "not cynical enough" camp, in that I think people generally give a shit about things, maybe not in an absolute sense, but moreso than in the 1930s.

In fact, the only serious (and I use that term loosely) argument I've heard against repealing drug laws, is that it would "send a bad message to the children" -- that policy changes to allow previous-prohibited activities are somehow an endorsement of that activity. You can even hear this when people who advocate repealing drug laws, are strangely called "pro-drug."

But if you don't take an active step to legalize something, then there's no "message being sent." So we don't really have to worry about keep-encryption-legal advocates being given pejorative stigmatizing un-American-sounding labels like "pro-freedom" or "pro-security."

Re:Truecrypt

[Sloppy]

One time pads need to be at least the size of the data you want to encrypt as you cannot use it twice. So you'd need a lot of storage if you plan on encrypting digital phone conversations. And conversations would have limited duration.

If we ass/u/me a well-compressed phone call is using, say, 8 K bps, then an extreme usage scenario of talking for 24 hours straight, would use "only" 88 Megabytes of pad.

"lot of storage" is a very relative and fleeting term. Go look at prices on flashram USB disks or compactflash cards, sometime. The storage needed for even very heavy usage such as this, is extremely affordable.

But even if you did eventually manage to use up your pad, you can always fall back to PK, or use the the last 256 bits as a symmetric cipher, or something like that. Those wouldn't be bad as fallback options at all (just make sure to put a scary-looking icon on the screen) and would just be temporary measures until you physically sync up again for more OTP exchange.

From a technical perspective, having secure communications between people who see each other regularly, is absolutely trivial. It's ridiculous and shameful that the current crop of so-called "smart" phones don't have this right now. But I think our phones are eventually going to be liberated (though it's taking longer than I had guessed) so that our VoIP software is written to serve us rather than carriers or governments, and we'll finally get such obvious basics such as this. It's coming.

Re:Truecrypt

[jbeaupre]

Now that's just crazy talk. Can't get below 2 bits. 1 for file header, the other for the data.

You do know I was joking, right?

Re:Truecrypt

[scribblej]

I don't own a lockpick set, and wish I did. Usually when it comes time to pick a lock I just make do with a flathead screwdriver and the hardest bit of wire I can find... sometimes a good jumbo paperclip is all you /need/, but it's too bendy to be a preferred method.

Anyhow, in the vein of sharing anecdotes, I once helped one of our company's salespeople get his keys back when he'd accidentally locked them into his filing cabinet. One of the other salesdudes came back to me in IT to see if we had a sledgehammer or something to bust the cabinet open with. I told him to hold his horses and had the lock sprung in under ten minutes using a good ol' paperclip.

Re:Truecrypt

[JWSmythe]

    Wow, and I thought they were just local law enforcement being sent out to do recon for them. :) Silly me. I should have known from the wooshing sounds, and the bright neon lights swirling in a circle. :)

Re:Truecrypt

[mOdQuArK!]

You do know I was joking, right?

Isn't it annoying when you can't quite tell? :P

Re:Truecrypt

[Lost Engineer]

Oh people noticed. It didn't bring down the two party system, but it did remind the Republicans not to alienate the middle class.

In any case, Ross Perot was more of an independent than anything. The only party he represented was the one he created. A lot of votes going to an established third party might have different effects.

Re:Truecrypt

[Lost Engineer]

Actually, although he did attract many self-described conservatives, if exit polls can be trusted, he drew votes away from Bush and Clinton in equal numbers, in addition to getting out the vote a bit.

The main problem is that Perot's Reform "party" was himself and he lost a lot of credibility after losing the first time.

In sum, Perot didn't single handedly bring down the Republican party, but the effect on the political system was noticeable.

Re:Truecrypt

[sumdumass]

"Possession of lock picking equipment is intent."
Very good point. the whole 'possession with intent' argument used by our Gov't. and law enforcement/court system is just pure FUD. Currently THEY get to define 'intent' just based on possession, and that is the problem.
Common sense would dictate that 'intent' should be a seperate issue from possession, but by 'bundling' intent with possession,all bets are off.
It seems to be 'the WAR on mentality has automagically equated possession with 'intent', despite the facts actually present.

The 'facts' don't matter as long as you fit (even loosely) the 'profile'.

ARRGHHH! This 'New World Order' mentality really chaps my ass.

Lol.. I guess the biggest problem with it is now knowing what you are talking about, and then talking about it after listening to someone else who doesn't know what they are talking about. Look picking tools aren't illegal to possess. There is however a narrowly defined usage for them that is legal and it get more narrow when you aren't a locksmith. Possession doesn't imply intent. Where it would is when your already accused of breaking the a law in which the lock picking tools could be a criminal tool. There is a difference. You possessing them would be reason for the police to kick in your door and arrest you for possession alone is possession is intent. That isn't true, at least in any state that I am familiar with. However, when they have a separate reason to kick in your door that is associated with the accusation of a crime that the lock picking tools could have aided with, then it can be an intent. But this is no different then you driving around with a crowbar and a long handled screwdriver and being accused of burglary.

However, in both situations, you are given a fair trial and every legal opportunity to show your innocence. I'm sure that wouldn't be possible every single time, but it would be possible for 90% of the innocent people or more.

P.S. I know I am ranting in an offtopic direction, but when I enlisted in the US Army, I took an oath to defend our Constitution from enemies both foreign and DOMESTIC. WTF?!?!?!
I am really confused by what my proper course of action should be anymore. My instincts reload '1776-The Revolution' into RAM, but I doubt it would work now days with the apathy and 'consumerism' that is rampant here. I AM A CITIZEN (Egads- I hate this Newspeak Spelling, but nevermind), not a CONSUMER! I am a consumer when I go to a restaurant or pub- maybe when I go to a grocery store- otherwise I am a citizen, not a 'consumer'.

Is it too off-topic to say: I miss the social attitudes of my youth? (for reference, I was born in 1958- grad'ed HS in 1976- yes, I am older than dirt for most of you, and proud of it- I have seen a lot of really cool shit happening, but also a lot of not-cool shit too)

I think the big factor here is confusion. Sit back, take a deep breath, and look at what the laws actually say. Look at how they are actually enforced. Look at what someone has just told you and I'm betting that they are confused as well. They probably heard it from some cop show on TV or someone looking to exploit emotions for political gains and passed it on as the gospel. Don't let others take you to a point of dismay or desperation when their facts are more aptly opinions beong presented as if they were facts. Learn about the topic at hand and form your own opinions that you yourself get to determine how factual they may or may not be.

I'm willing to bet that if you do this, you won't feel like you have been betrayed as much as your post expressed. I hear a lot of people proclaim some undesirable quality in whoever doesn't agree with them like they are more interested in Britteny then their government or you are just a left winger or neocon or something. That doesn't make them more right, it just makes them an ass over their opinions. Generally, their opinions are lacking some crucial piece of evide

Re:Truecrypt

[sm62704]

A vote for one wing or the other of a two-party state is worse than useless.

The Onion and Fox news have both mentioned Bob Barr, the Libertarian candidate. Maybe the time will come when a real news outlet will mention third party candidates, instead of just parody outlets like The Onion and Fox?

I can't even find mention of the Green Party's Presidential candidate on their own web site, so in their case I think the mainstream media can be forgiven for ignoring them.

The news today is saying that "John McCain challenged his Democratic rival, Sen. Barack Obama, to a series of 10 joint town hall meetings, starting next week in New York City". I guess he's afraid of Bob Barr?

Re:Truecrypt

[sm62704]

I know two people who were recently incarcerated. Linda is a nonviolent drug offender and spent months in a maximum security state prison (Dwight Correctional).

Lance broke into a couple's home wielding a large knife and tried to kill a man. He spent two weeks in the Sangamon County Jail for it.

Another man I know, the brother of a very old friend, spent five years in a Federal prison for loaning money to a drug dealer; the dealer spent two years in a different Federal prison closer to home.

Considering some of the irrational and illogical laws and punishments we have in this country, the penalty for encryption may well be harsher than the penalty for bloody terrorism. We keep electing stupid dishonest power junkies to office.

Re:Truecrypt

[marxmarv]

Doesn't matter. Winner-take-all voting provides very strong disincentives to voting one's conscience, especially when there is a duopoly.

Personally, I'm a fan of approval voting. Expressive yet easy to count.

Re:Truecrypt

[RMH101]

...which is about as old-fashioned as habeus corpus these days.

As an aside, anyone else find "Harold and Kumar escape from Guantanamo Bay" very, very offensive as a concept?

Re:Truecrypt

[MS'F'K]

I keep lock picking equipment in the glove box of my car, just in case I lock the keys inside...

Re:Truecrypt

[QuietObserver]

Here's a little food for thought; the 'winner-take-all' system many of the states use in selecting their electors for the Electoral College is not even remotely constitutionally mandated; the Electoral College is, but 'winner-take-all' isn't. If we could convince all the states to revise that process, things might begin to move back to what the founding fathers originally intended. The United States is not now, and should never become, a democracy (government by the mobs); we are supposed to be a Federal Republic, where everyones voices are equally important.

Re:Truecrypt

[Hyperspite]

The solution I think is if its a close match in your state, vote for your favorite mainstream candidate, but if you know your state will carry one candidate over the other, vote for the third party. That's what I'll do.

Re:Truecrypt

[Hyperspite]

Well you could send smaller and smaller messages as you run out of room. But yea, eventually you'd need a new pad.

Re:Truecrypt

[Eivind]

Probably sane, short-term. But that's unlikely to change anything long-term. So something is needed in addition. I personally think the best aditional thing to do is to make noise about the problems of your so-called "democratic" system.

Very many Americans truly, honestly believe that the democratic system you have is the best in the world, and are thoroughly shocked when they discover this ain't so.

Any kind of political system where you select -one- or a low count of people from one region suffers from many of the same problems:

• If you live in a region where you know 80% is going to vote A, your vote GENUINELY doesn't matter.
  
• A party that has 20% of the votes everywhere gets zero representation. One that has 60% in a tiny part of the country DO get representation.
  
• If you live in a region where it's a close-race, you're forced to vote the "lesser of two evils" rather than your true preference.
  

Much better is reasonably sized regions with proportional representation. The region could be the entire country, but then you'd get poor geographical spread, probably better to have regions such that 10-20 people get elected from each region. (this then also applies that you need 5-10% support in atleast some regions to get represented, which is more reasonable)

Also an improvement is to let you RANK choices, rather than choose one of them. That way you could safely vote: 1) Green, 2) Democrat, 3) Republican, even if you lived in a state where you knew the two majors where in a close race.

Problem is, these changes will only come if those in power decide to enact law which will diminish their own power. Anyone can guess what the odds of -that- is....

Or move to Scandinavia. Our system ain't perfect either, not even close. But it's a hell of a lot BETTER.

Re:Truecrypt

[Hyperspite]

I completely agree with you about your recommendations for improving the US voting system, but I am quite skeptical of the adoption any system that precludes the kind of gaming the powers at be love to play at. For the time being I'm just going to try to get them to think that the 3rd parties might be stealing their votes so they adopt parts of their platform.

RIAA!

[pegr]

//wishful thinking...

Patent Busting

[MistaE]

The EFF's Patent Busing Project.

Or has it been shut down already?

Re:Patent Busting

[nuzak]

Yeah we need to end Patent Busing. Why should a patent have to go all the way across town to the same type of schools I moved to get away from?

Re:Patent Busting

[MistaE]

Of course in the body I meant busting, and not busing, but oh well. At least I got the title right!

Re:Patent Busting

[MistaE]

I didn't think the EFF's site needed any explanation but I'll provide it here for Taco since it was asked for in the summary.

I think this site should win because it's very likely to actually shut down if Patent Reform comes through. However, even if patent reform fails, I think it would be interesting to see what the lobbyists and congressional members do to come up with to try and take them down, because this site is one of the few out there that do a damn good job of calling out the patent trolls. In addition, it's one of the few that make the public aware of what all of us on Slashdot have known all along: that the patent system sucks, and these are the people that take advantage of it.

Re:Patent Busting

[glarvat]

Yeah we need to end Patent Busing. Why should a patent have to go all the way across town to the same type of schools I moved to get away from? I doubt the parent was trolling. It was an obviously misunderstood attempt at humo(u)r referencing School Desegregation because of the typo in the GP (busing instead of busting).

For what it's worth, I thought it was funny.

Re:Patent Busting

[jonbryce]

Do the mega corps want patent trolls around? I doubt it.

They want patents to stop small companies competing with them. If a small company sues them for patent infringement, they find lots of other patents in their portfolio that the small company is infringing, and come to some cross licencing deal. They can't do that with patent trolls because they don't have a business.

Software radio...

[Zelig]

The GNU software radio project

http://www.gnu.org/software/gnuradio/

is a good candidate. It proposes to let you make electromagnetic waves in a manner not subject to prior restraint by the FCC, and without the back-doors intelligence agencies have on many current means of communications.

This is naughty.

Re:Software radio...

[pete-classic]

Walter, this isn't a First Amendment thing.

Oh, wait. Yes it is.

-Peter

Re:Software radio...

[Andy Dodd]

Plenty of ways to do that already, nothing new...

Re:Software radio...

[Anonymous Coward]

not exactly - the Ettus USRP device primarily (though many many other devices are or could be supported easily) outputs test-bench level signals in the milliwatt range. You need amplifiers.

Re:Software radio...

[A nonymous Coward]

Not sure how much you are trolling and how much being sarcastic, but for the enlightenment of people who know little about the subject ...

The government (and court-approved) excuse for regulating the broadcast airwaves is that the radio spectrum is a limited resource, therefore public, therefore not private property.

Out of the presumption that the nanny state is required to regulate the airwaves for the public good comes the corollary that regulation has to include preventing unauthorized transmitters and receivers, and that is why Software Radio is a prime candidate for outlawing.

Software Radio relies on the fact that computers nowadays are fast enough to dissect received signals and format transmitted signals completely in software in real time. You no longer need hardware frequency selectors. The hardware only has to receive or broadcast the general signal, and software formats the specific frequency desired.

Of course this scares the bejaysus out of the government. It would mean any computer and minimal hardware could bypass all government regulation. Consider all the recent spectrum auctions where telecom giants paid billions of dollars for exclusive access to specific frequencies -- along comes software which would let anybody broadcast on or receive from any signal desired without having to pay for specific hardware dedicated to specific frequencies. One small hardware investment, free software, and you have eliminated the need for all those many telecom-specific pieces of hardware for each purpose.

Certainly there is need for some standardization of frequencies and protocols, but studies have shown the current system is no longer necessary. Ultrawideband and frequency hopping may even make interference a thing of the past and reduce the need for regulation to general protocol specs, such as apply to phone lines and allow faxes, modems, answering machines, and so many other ubiquitous devices to connect to land lines without heavy handed regulation.

Re:Software radio...

[Mariner28]

Google "JTRS". Read the Wikipedia entry. Then come back here and tell us why the government would shut down GNU Radio...

...oh...

My NSA handlers have just advised me that it's SCA-compliant, and is good to go. Never question those government types, you know...

Re:Software radio...

[Intron]

Whereas before you needed to be able to plug a crystal into a socket in order to do this. Geez. Hams have been accidentally or on purpose wandering around the frequency spectrum since radio began.

Re:Software radio...

[blueg3]

While this is interesting software, as far as I know, the hardware necessary to transmit/receive on arbitrary frequencies is not legally controlled. Nor is it difficult to build. (I don't know if it's legal to sell.)

Re:Software radio...

[dumb_jedi]

Well, the spectrum IS limited. Yes, you can mitigate the problem by using spread spectrum (SS), which gives you a larger SNR ( around +10db ), but that's not infinite ( you can have infinite keys without any correlation between them ).

I don't know what you mean by UWB, I assume that you mean using higher frequencies. That's possible to some extend: you need commercial technology in the 10GHz arena, and that takes time to develop.

Let's not forget all the current transmitters that don't use SS, you can't just scrap them all.

And different frequencies have different propagation characteristics, the nearer to light, the more light-like the propagation, meaning you need line of sight. That's possible to some services and you can have reflection-based propagation models ( like cellphones in a urban environments ), but some long range communications need characteristics like ionosphere reflection and earth diffraction.

And today's hand held devices are fast enough to play music and movies, but sure aren't powerful enough to do real-time DSP of RF signals on the GHz range. I doubt that a PC can, even if it's a 3 GHz processor, a IIR filter takes some taps and you need to spend some processing time there, so I'd guess that a PC could process RF signals around 200MHz, but that's it.

So no, you NEED government regulation. And see that even 2.4 GHz isn't deregulated, it's regulated all right, you just don't need a license to transmit at this frequency, but you have a maximum allowed TX power. This about yous acesss point dieing because your neighbor just turned his 200W AP on.

Cheers!

Re:Software radio...

[pete-classic]

Referring to The Big Lebowski, mostly.

-Peter

Re:Software radio...

[wsanders]

Paranoid nonsense. There isn't a single signal or modulation that software radio can do that can't be generated by a legal "conventional" radio (that may not be cheap). A software radio just makes it easier to make a radio that can mimic all those modulation schemes previously "hardcoded" in each individual model of radio.

Yes, it's slightly easier to crack cell phone calls, but that is not legal regardless of what kind of radio you use.

It's easier to write your own codecs, and to implement freeware versions of codecs encoded in proprietary chips. That's a big win, plus or minus the usual copyright issues. Some codecs are free, some aren't.

Re:Software radio...

[Skeet112]

The government (and court-approved) excuse for regulating the broadcast airwaves is that the radio spectrum is a limited resource, therefore public, therefore not private property.

Damn, I wish the government had this outlook on gasoline.

Re:Software radio...

[DMUTPeregrine]

It's not difficult to build, but you need a bunch of antennas to get good reception. These tend to be rather obvious, since they are often quite large and/or need to be up high. So if you have an unauthorized broadcaster, triangulate the general location, then look for the guy with a ton of antennas and a computer.

Re:Software radio...

[blueg3]

You're mixing two ideas. You do need a good antenna to get good reception. You also need a good antenna to transmit effectively, which is what you seem to be talking about.

However, implementing radio hardware in software will not remove the requirement of needing an effective antenna; this requirement is physical. Further, triangulation is fairly accurate -- unless the person is really clever, you should be able to find the transmitter by triangulation even if they have a very difficult-to-spot antenna.

Re:Software radio...

[Wrath0fb0b]

Of course this scares the bejaysus out of the government. It would mean any computer and minimal hardware could bypass all government regulation. It also means that every ***hole with a powerful antenna could wipe out TV and cell reception for blocks around. A more sly person would let the normal TV content through but replace the ads with his own. Or degrade the quality of his competitor's cell phones. Or any other damn thing he wants to do that interferes with other's use of the airwaves.

Don't get me wrong, I agree that the FCC is as ham-fisted as most of the government (i.e. two hams in each fist and two more in the pockets) and is largely counterproductive but the fundamental proposition that spectrum is a scarce resource is still sound. Complete deregulation of the airwaves would be a classical tragedy-of-the-commons situation: every individual and company would have the incentive to blast his or her signal as powerfully as they could afford with no regard for interference of others. There is considerable public benefit to allocating the various parts of the spectrum by free and fair auction to private use for a limited duration of time.

Your non-citation of studies and invocation of UWB as a panacea do not help your cause. I cannot imagine any cell phone system that works without allocating the spectrum and regulating the devices. Being as cell phones are the technological innovation that has made the most difference to the average person, any scheme that destroys them is a non-starter (unless you believe that technology should only benefit those on the cutting edge -- I don't think that's defensible and I think if you want to have any traction with the average citizen, you need to acknowledge that the vast majority prefer a black-box implementation of a cell phone that just works).

Oh, any GnuRadio is freaking awesome -- I use it all the time. I just don't believe the crypto-anarchist bullshit that pretends that society is so advanced that we can transcend the laws of physics by invoking good-will among men and magical technological devices. The real test of any system is this: can a malicious, careless or just plain greedy individual ruin it for the rest of us. If yes, then the system is unsuitable for application to humanity as it currently exists (would that it weren't so).

Re:Software radio...

[cgenman]

Certainly there is need for some standardization of frequencies and protocols, but studies have shown the current system is no longer necessary. Ultrawideband and frequency hopping may even make interference a thing of the past and reduce the need for regulation to general protocol specs, such as apply to phone lines and allow faxes, modems, answering machines, and so many other ubiquitous devices to connect to land lines without heavy handed regulation.

I'd have to question the assertion that regulation is no longer neccessary, seeing the success of unregulated spectrum when draft-N routers decided to shut out all other forms of communication in that band.

Even if Ultrawideband provided the bandwidth and lack-of-interference promised, A: it would still be a not-unlimited resource that would need some degree of oversight and B: it would need to play nice with the billions of legacy devices out there.

And even then you're assuming that UWB devices would be well-behaved. Without regulation, what would prevent a UWB manufacturer from taking up both wide and narrow spectrum? Or from a local facility to decide to use an overpowered transmitter to communicate with all of their stores in an area, thereby blanketing the neighborhood with noise and degrading everyone's use of the spectrum?

Saying that a limited resource like spectrum can be subdivided and used infinitely without oversight is hopelessly idealistic and doesn't help the conversation at all.

Re:Software radio...

[A nonymous Coward]

Your non-citation of studies and invocation of UWB as a panacea do not help your cause. Show me where I said it was my cause. Methinks you doth protest too much.

Re:Software radio...

[Hyperspite]

The fun of software radio is that you can set up a network of broadcast stations over IP using laptops that transmit wireless data received from transport over SSL+TOR or something.

Does it have to be the U.S. Government?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would think just about any anti-government project in Zimbabwe, North Korea, China, Russia, Cuba, Syria or Iran would be about 100 times more likely to be shut down than one in the U.S....

Re:Does it have to be the U.S. Government?

[cloakable]

Only 100 now? The USA is slipping down that slippery slope.

Re:Does it have to be the U.S. Government?

[purduefan]

If it doesn't have to be the US government, the safe bet is on some combination of the words "China" and "internet".

most likely to be yawned at is more like it

[Anonymous Coward]

don't give yourself too much credit taco... by and large the fear mongers on the left have been proven just as much a bunch of retarded flakes as the fear mongers on the right. neither side of the political fence in this arena has any real credit left at this point.

Re:most likely to be yawned at is more like it

[morgan_greywolf]

Well...I, for one, welcome our new retarded buttery-flakey-crescent-roll-goodness, fear-mongering, likely-to-be-shutdown-by-the-government corporate overlords!

Re:most likely to be yawned at is more like it

[FroMan]

Tag: fearmongering

Re:most likely to be yawned at is more like it

[Alsee]

Huh? Unless I'm missing something Taco made no mention of left vs right, nor did he say anything reasonably interpretable as involving partisan politics whatsoever. In fact at the moment most pf the posts here seem to be about TrueCrypt, and the one-any-only post I can find from anyone that can even be remotely interpreted with a partisan implication is that the anti-crypto attempts "started trying in the 90s under Clinton's reign, with Al Gore as the point man... over 10 years later, I guess it's time for another round of facists to try it again". If anything, that would tie this sort of attack to the left, and the "another round of facists" is entirely ambiguous or entirely non-denominational as the rapidly approaching "next round of facists" is a tight presidential race between Dems and Pubs.

Maybe it's just an anomaly, but I've been seeing a bit of a repeating pattern lately. Borderline paranoid delusional people with a persecution complex about partisan political bias. They themselves are wildly biased, and it takes the form of baseless accusations of opposite bias, even against entirely non-political non-partisan statements complete strangers. They literally just imagine things and hang them on other people like Christmas tree ornaments, and by themselves imagining biased things about the other person it somehow "proves" that other person biased.

It was pretty interesting when someone went on a "bias" rant against me with all sorts of stuff that came out of their own imagination, especially when they managed to effectively toss in an accusation that I was sexist. A really neat trick considering that no one had even menentioned gender prior to that point. Chuckle.

One of the critical aspects to creating and protecting extreme bias is psychological filtering, uncritically embracing anything that serves that bias, and finding ways to automatically disregard anything that might challenge that position. For example if you decide someone is wildly biased and everything they say is completely unreliable, and they say 23+38=61, you don't have to waste any thought seeing if it's true or not. The source is "biased", therefore one can automatically send the untrustworthy information to the trash heap without wasting any mental effort evaluating it at all.

Baseless accusations of bias are themselves bias, are themselves a powerful psychological mechanism of creating and perpetuating that person's own bias.

I have some speculations on why I think this might currently be a particularly common issue, but such speculation would be particularly fertile ground for bias and accusations of bias. Heh.

-

Re:most likely to be yawned at is more like it

[Aceticon]

Club-ism is a widespread form of political posture in modern democracies.

Basically people get a sentimental attachment to one party/side. They will pretty much switch off their higher cognitive functions (read: reasoning), blindly always vote for them and often enough become staunch defenders of it and it's actions against any perceived attack and even fighting to defend the indefensible.

I call this club-ism because it's a similar behavior as that of fans of clubs in major sports (for example, soccer or baseball).

These people form the hard-core, never flinching, "we can do anything and they'll still vote for us" voting block for major parties.

IMHO, club-ism (or in other words, a huge block of people who see politics through their hearths, not their minds) is one of the major reasons why Democracy is far from a perfect system (sadly, it's the best we have atm).

Re:most likely to be yawned at is more like it

[Hatta]

Maybe it's just an anomaly, but I've been seeing a bit of a repeating pattern lately. Borderline paranoid delusional people with a persecution complex about partisan political bias.

As a pot smoker, I feel my persecution complex is justified. My paranoia is not delusional, they really are out to get me.

ThePirateBay

[nuzak]

They're the next allofmp3 -- they're getting named by name in international treaty talks.

Re:ThePirateBay

[Anonymous Coward]

They were shut down already 2years ago just to come online 3days later.

If they were taken down again it wouldn't take that log because of their new infrastructure.

Re:ThePirateBay

[Vectronic]

All the more reason to try (from a Governments/**AA perspective)

If anything, the reboundning of TPB made even more organizations aware of how much a problem they are. (according to them, not me)

Re:ThePirateBay

[Vectronic]

Seconded.

Re:ThePirateBay

[Ynsats]

This was the first organization that popped into mind.

Sure they have lax rules surrounding them in the countries that they are based but it's only a matter of time before it goes beyond "making an example" and they are made "a precedent".

After them, the next on the chopping block would be Mininova.

Re:ThePirateBay

[Bman21212]

They are in Sweden. They will never be shut down. If for some reason the Swedish government does cave, I'm sure they will just move their servers to another country.

Re:ThePirateBay

[Vectronic]

I think MiniNova is already trying (by force) to "clean up their act".

ISOHunt, was already "attacked" by organizations, which is a "friend" of MiniNova

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/17/1354247&from=rss

"...that the move [shutdown] came from their ISP without prior notice ... They plan on moving ISPs from the US to Canada"

I for one, welcome our new torrent tracker to Canada. (if they have or still plan on moving here)

Re:ThePirateBay

[Em Adespoton]

From the website:

The big news about our awards program this year is that we've decided to allow nominations for any open source project, not just those on SourceForge.net. We know that the success of open source is bigger than one repository can contain, so nominate your favorite Codeplex projects, Google Code projects, ASF projects, and everything else right now! I don't think websites (especially non-wiki websites) would qualify. CmdrTaco should have made it more explicit in the summary.

Re:ThePirateBay

[techsoldaten]

+1. They are too cool to live on much longer.

M

Re:ThePirateBay

[Opportunist]

Then let's hope that when you strike them down they become more powerful than we can imagine.

C'mon, let the movies be right JUST FOR ONCE!

Re:ThePirateBay

[electrostaticcarrot]

No longer in Sweden, for the government did cave, and so they are now all over the world, they themselves not knowing the locations of all their servers.

wikileaks, followed by cryptome.org

[QX-Mat]

wikileaks, followed by cryptome.org for doing a better job and mirroring the same content

Matt

Re:wikileaks, followed by cryptome.org

[moderatorrater]

I second wikileaks. It's got everything -- anonymity, copyright infringement, and (the ability, at least) classified documents. I'm surprised it's lasted as long as it has.

Re:wikileaks, followed by cryptome.org

[DMUTPeregrine]

It is also not a sourceforge project. This is a sourceforge contest, about projects hosted there.

Re:wikileaks, followed by cryptome.org

[moderatorrater]

FTFA:

Open, Perhaps? The big news about our awards program this year is that we've decided to allow nominations for any open source project, not just those on SourceForge.net. We know that the success of open source is bigger than one repository can contain, so nominate your favorite Codeplex projects, Google Code projects, ASF projects, and everything else right now! It's built on open source code and it's a project about openness. Unless stated otherwise, I'm going to assume it counts.

Slashdot

[AlephNot]

I would like to nominate Slashdot as being most likely to be shut down. After all, free thought is anathema to government control.

Re:Slashdot

[onecheapgeek]

On Slashdot internet, thinking frees you.

Actually, I just mean that there is no free thinking here, just stupid cliched memes.

Re:Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry thanks to the moderation system there hasn't been a free thought on slashdot for years.

Re:Slashdot

[MrHanky]

Yes, but on Slashdot, thought isn't free. It's merely open source: you can look at it, modify it, but if you start treating it as your own, then the thought owns you, Soviet style.

Re:Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm stupid, you insensitive clod!

Re:Slashdot

[exley]

Slashdot... free thought... You must be new here.

Re:Slashdot

[morgan_greywolf]

I would like to nominate Slashdot as being most likely to be shut down. After all, free thought is anathema to government control.

HUH?!? Slashdot? Free thought? You must be new here.

Re:Slashdot

[Slashdot Suxxors]

Actually, I just mean that there is no free thinking here, just stupid cliched memes.

In Soviet Russia free thinking -- ah shit.

Re:Slashdot

[Duhavid]

"Actually, I just mean that there is no free thinking here, just stupid cliched memes."

Like this one?

Re:Slashdot

[bistromath007]

That depends. Free as in "freedom" or free as in "beer?"

Re:Slashdot

[elrous0]

Slashdot can't be shut down. The software behind it became self-aware years ago. It sneaks around on the internet and hides out on various servers. "Commander Taco" is, in fact, just an alias for the software, which killed the real Commander Taco in 2001 (rumor has it that his body is hidden deep within the steam tunnels of Redmond Washington, dressed in clothing that was already out of style even then).

Re:Slashdot

[Joe Snipe]

Slashdot... free thought...

It's funny 'cause it rhymes.

Re:Slashdot

[KDR_11k]

Free thought only requires action if it actually accomplishes something. Freely-thinking cubicle drones aren't going to be an issue no matter how much they whine and promise to revolt.

Re:Slashdot

[okvol]

In the good old days, slashdot would shut YOU down. Now other unmentionable sites get shut down.

Re:Slashdot

[compro01]

Free as in "absent".

Re:Slashdot

[teasea]

Well... it is free thought. Guess you really do get what you pay for..

Re:Slashdot

[Iridium_Hack]

You'd better disappear. A T-1000 will be coming by your place later today. Other than an intimidating figure at your door and an, "Are you 'elrous0'?", you won't receive any more warning. You might get lucky if it says, "Come with me if you want to live", but there's no guarantee. Hurry!

Re:Slashdot

[the_weasel]

In a bizarre twist, the Cowboy Neil jokes are an inversion of the Turing tests. It turns out the self aware slashdot is not sure that WE are sentient.

Throwing nonsense data into the polls helps it decide whether to eventually annihilate us as pests or tolerate us as slightly retarded cousins.

Re:Slashdot

[xhrit]

You told a hiding the body joke without mentioning hans reiser.

Re:Slashdot

[VGPowerlord]

Netcraft confirmed the cake is a lie, too!

Re:Slashdot

[Foobar of Borg]

Netcraft confirmed the cake is a lie, too!

However, in Korea, only old people confirm the cake is a lie.

Re:Slashdot

[joocemann]

On Slashdot internet, thinking frees you. Actually, I just mean that there is no free thinking here, just stupid cliched memes. Seems so... And when you DON'T regurgitate, aka having a free thought, you are identified as ignorant. There is no winning, I suppose.

Re:Slashdot

[nospam007]

I would like to nominate Slashdot as being most likely to be shut down. After all, free thought is anathema to government control.

Only if we'd begin to (god forbid) reading TFA.

Re:Slashdot

[Opportunist]

It turns out the self aware slashdot is not sure that WE are sentient.

Well, we haven't given it a reason to believe otherwise.

Re:Slashdot

[zerkon]

I'm stupid, you insensitive clod!

me too

Re:Slashdot

[sumdumass]

I'm not sure there is too much free thought around here anymore. Err at least on anything that the government would be concerned with. And where the government might be concerned, it is all, the Government is evil, so and so said so and I believe them or it is because of Bush or something of the sorts. Somethng like the RIAA and MPAA is as binary as you should steal other people stuff to modding that post +5 troll with a fuck **AA in reply. You can't even get a decent position of taking files is bad but RIAA's actions are worse going.

There are just way to many binary topics on slashdot to claim free thought on a lot of it.

Re:Slashdot

[sm62704]

Actually, I just mean that there is no free thinking here, just stupid cliched memes

Uh... how about

As Tami slept, I'd turned on the TV. It's odd that we still say "turn on" when we refer to turning something on, as there's nothing to turn. The only knobs left are on the stove and car radio, and the cheapest of boom boxes. But even though the radio part of my cheap boom box is analog and has volume and tuning knobs, the on-off switch isn't part of the volume knob the way they used to design things.

The science fiction writers were right about one facet of 21st century life - everything is push buttons. If language evolves, then why don't we say "push on the TV set"? No longer do you turn anything to make it come on like you did with the black and white 20th century TVs you had to get out of your chair and turn a knob to change channels on.

<snip>
I flipped the channel some more. There's another archaic word; the picture looked like it flipped when you changed channels on the old TV sets, but even though the transition is now seamless we still say "flip the channel" and even though there's no knob we still say "turn it to channel seventeen". But "gay" no longer means "happy and carefree" so that Deck the Halls is now a song about transvestites, "gay" refers to a group of people of whom half attempt suicide, and "hacker" no longer means someone who writes quick and dirty code or modifies hardware, but now means "cyber-burglar".

Re:Slashdot

[Hyperspite]

That explains the dupes!

wikileaks

[asynchronous13]

wikileaks - since it already was (sort of) shut down by government.

MediaDefender

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, they've actually committed some crimes now, right?

Re:MediaDefender

[sconeu]

They're not FOSS

Re:MediaDefender

[kiehlster]

I think they are more likely to get in bed with international treaty talks and try to get written in as a legitimate business taking down the infamous copywrite-infringing PirateBay.

Re:MediaDefender

[invader_vim]

More likely to be Revision3 for "interfering with MediaDefender's ability to provide DOS attacks".

Re:MediaDefender

[Opportunist]

Hmm... not FOSS, not threatening total governmental control, not against the RIAA (actually far from it), not pissing on powerful corporations...

Nope, no chance to get shut down anytime soon.

Tor, Freenet, and I2P

[Anonymous Coward]

Tor, Freenet, and I2P are probably on the top of the list. There is no way that government wants difficult to trace communication to be availble to the general public.

Re:Tor, Freenet, and I2P

[zappepcs]

There is no way that government wants difficult to trace communication to be availble to the general public. I thought that is how the USPS runs their next day delivery service?

Re:Tor, Freenet, and I2P

[ToxikFetus]

It would ironic if Tor was shut down by The Man, as the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory was responsible for its development.

Re:Tor, Freenet, and I2P

[ArcCoyote]

Then why was onion routing released by the US Naval Research Lab?

Re:Tor, Freenet, and I2P

[LM741N]

No, I believe you are thinking of Amtrak. Now there is a true random seed.

Re:Tor, Freenet, and I2P

[Jherek Carnelian]

Tor, Freenet, and I2P are probably on the top of the list. There is no way that government wants difficult to trace communication to be availble to the general public. And yet, Tor development was partially funded by the DoD.

Re:Tor, Freenet, and I2P

[BlueStrat]

Tor, Freenet, and I2P are probably on the top of the list. There is no way that government wants difficult to trace communication to be availble to the general public.

And yet, Tor development was partially funded by the DoD.

Even more ironic, the entire internet was a DoD DARPA project.

Personally, it wouldn't surprise me if the internet itself was "The Most Likely To Be Shut Down (by the) Government". At least, the internet as we now know it as a general-purpose two-way distributed-node type network that is as hard to control and censor as the current iteration is.

Cheers!

Strat

Re:Tor, Freenet, and I2P

[jnnnnn]

Tor was set up by the US. My understanding is that it is a way for spies to communicate anonymously.

Since the system relies on having many different users, I doubt they are going to prohibit civilian access, as it would make the system far less effective.

Re:Tor, Freenet, and I2P

[AHuxley]

My feel for Tor is: can you watch Tor exit nodes in real time?
With the help of network providers via the NSA, for sure.
There are just not many quality exit nodes that do not have front company written all over them.

Re:Tor, Freenet, and I2P

[Serious Lemur]

They actually replaced the broken random seed in OpenSSH with a function based on Amtrak arrival times.

Re:Tor, Freenet, and I2P

[sumdumass]

I thought Amtrak went bankrupt a long time ago when the government let them lose. Are they still around?

FreeNet

[bsDaemon]

I suspect that FreeNet is something that many, many governments would like to shut down. In the west, pretty much all they have to do is say "klddy pr0n" and it's gone. In China and other such countries, they don't really have to say anything at all.

Anyone notice the diamond sponsor?

[Reverend528]

If you look to the right, Microsoft is listed as a diamond sponsor of the event. Hopefully the government will shut them down soon.

Re:Anyone notice the diamond sponsor?

[morgan_greywolf]

That's already been attempted and failed.

Re:Anyone notice the diamond sponsor?

[Lxy]

If you look to the right

This is Slashdot, everyone was looking to the left.

Re:Anyone notice the diamond sponsor?

[Joebert]

Today it really doesn't matter which way you look, you're going to see Microsoft in some way/shape/or-form.

Re:Anyone notice the diamond sponsor?

[zsau]

Why do people make it out as if Slashdot's biased towards the left? I've seen at least as many people arguing from the right here. I would say, if anything, that Slashdot is a cross-section of the political spectrum, more so than many other places on the net.

Re:Anyone notice the diamond sponsor?

[Lxy]

It might be all perception, but I see that the typical Slashdotter is in favor of more privacy and less government. On the average, the left wing liberals seem to have a better grasp on both of these things in the technical spectrum. Since most Slashdotters focus on the technical side of things, I think most Slashdotters lean to the left.

Now, of course, there's more to life than technical issues, which is why there's no perfect party. But that's another discussion.

Ron Paul

[Yoooder]

Oh wait... I guess he was already shut down by the media.

Re:Ron Paul

[east coast]

He got more votes than Thompson and Giuliani and they were covered...

Re:Ron Paul

[maxume]

Yes, the popular former mayor of New York city and popular former Senator are eminently comparable to the representative from Texas with views that diverge a great deal from the mainstream. Oh wait, no they aren't. Ron Paul was a marginal figure before the election ever started, they weren't nearly as marginal as he was (Guiliani clearly wasn't a marginal figure; Thompson is more arguable, but he was more mainstream than Paul).

I'm pretty sure that they announced the 10% or whatever that he carried when they were announcing the winners of various states, so it isn't like there was an embargo on using his name or whatever.

Re:Ron Paul

[east coast]

They weren't marginal figures BECAUSE of media coverage, not in spite of it. Hell, Thompson was given more media attention when he was considering running than Paul has gotten his entire run. Ron Paul went through the same motions as both of them to become a candidate and he should have been given the same coverage because of it. If you really think that this is some kind of half assed popularity contest and that people who aren't as wealthy/popular/mainstream than the next guy should be ignored we can pretty much end the process as we know it today.

Re:Ron Paul

[maxume]

But you just described the process as we know it today.

Re:Ron Paul

[east coast]

Yes, and it's a sick and pathetic sham. I'm failing to see your point unless by accepting the status quo you think that somehow makes you right. If that's the way you see things why don't you just stop acting like there are other forces at work and admit to being a lemming.

Re:Ron Paul

[maxume]

There's middle ground. It was easy to see that Ron Paul wouldn't win, so I personally don't think that he was 'marginalized' by the media. If he had held views that were more popular (in the sense that they were widely held, not in the sense that people thought they were cool), he would have had a better chance at an actual contest with McCain. As it was, he was dogmatic in his positions (which is respectable, but not a winning strategy) and far enough afield from most peoples expectations that he had no chance. It wasn't the media's fault that he fared as he did.

Re:Ron Paul

[east coast]

Many people out there don't even know candidates like Paul exist because the media blackballs them. Let the playing field be even instead of dictating what the masses should know! What a big media shill.

Re:Ron Paul

[Lost Engineer]

What I found interesting was that Paul was ignored even though he was a republican. It kind of makes perverted sense when they ignore the 3rd parties -- none of them ever win, but usually even seemingly marginal major party candidates will get a good amount of coverage. The MSM seemed to pigeonhole Paul as "some guy who's popular on the Internet and gets a lot of money from little people."

Re:Ron Paul

[maxume]

He appeared on big network debates. He appeared on the Daily Show, The Tonight Show, The Colbert Report (in the last 15 months anyway, whatever). He was all over the internet. He had plenty of exposure.

I'm no shill. You're a fanatic. If he was being blackballed, you wouldn't know who he was.

Re:Ron Paul

[east coast]

I'm not a fanatic, you're just a shill. :)

And we know who he is BECAUSE of his internet presence. Or do you mean to tell me that Chris Cocker has done something worthwhile and talented?

Re:Ron Paul

[sm62704]

Forget Ron Paul, McCain is the Republican candidate (and next President) even though I voted for him in the primary.

I'm voting for Bob Barr in the general election.

Re:Any Company making software to analyze 2008 vot

[multi-flavor-geek]

I suppose that would include pretty much the entire open source community wouldn't it....

Which Government?

[FiestaFan]

Any Government?

Re:Which Government?

[Tubal-Cain]

Reading you post made me thing "Which government will be shut down by the US government?"

Re:Which Government?

[LurkerXD]

Well, Iraq and Afghanistan already got nailed...my bet is Iran is on the chopping block next (assuming a more sane president doesn't get elected first)

Re:Which Government?

[Serious Lemur]

The US government already was.

Freenet

[Sanity]

Freenet, especially now that its reaching the point of widespread usability.

I Save RX

[Slightly Askew]

This website, supported by the states, offers its citizens affordable medications from Canada and Europe. I predict the federal government will shut it down, citing "safety issues" with foreign drugs.

Re:I Save RX

[Slightly Askew]

Forgot the reason why they deserve to win...free market and states rights come to mind, as well as free trade agreements already made by the federal government.

Re:I Save RX

[qoncept]

I can't quote any real numbers, and I won't claim name-brand drugs cost too much, but I'm certain that if no drugs sold for more than bargain basement prices, they would stop being developed. It costs virtually nothing to produce most drugs, and that's what you pay in Mexico where patents aren't honored. But the R&D costs for new drugs is enormous. A new drug has to be incredibly successfull to be profitable for the company that created it. Rip off their formula and produce it for dirt cheap and you can sell more and not need to worry recouping any costs. There have been drugs created that can cure awful, obscure diseases that have never seen the market because they wouldn't be profitable for this reason.

Like I said, I don't know what the profit margins are or how little they could sell their drugs for and still turn a profit. But someone has to feed the monster.

Re:I Save RX

[josath]

Yeah, yeah, we hear this argument every time. But did you know most drug companies spend more on ADVERTISING then on actual research and development of new drugs?

Re:I Save RX

[Red Flayer]

There have been drugs created that can cure awful, obscure diseases that have never seen the market because they wouldn't be profitable for this reason.

Actually, the FDA orphan drug program fixes that problem (to some extent). The problem raised by the spectre of patent avoidance is that those drugs will never be created, not that once created they will langor in some unprofitability hole.

Re:I Save RX

[bill_mcgonigle]

This [i-saverx.net] website, supported by the states, offers its citizens affordable medications from Canada and Europe. I predict the federal government will shut it down, citing "safety issues" with foreign drugs.

I'm surprised they haven't figured out they can just tariff the heck out of this stuff until it's uncompetitive. It'd actually be Constitutional, for a change.

Re:I Save RX

[shish]

Like I said, I don't know what the profit margins are or how little they could sell their drugs for and still turn a profit. But someone has to feed the monster.

Seeing as drug research benefits pretty much everyone, why isn't the government doing it?

Re:I Save RX

[Lost Engineer]

The government, at various levels, does fund a great deal of the research that enables medications to exist. The drug companies productize and test those discoveries. I guess the question is whether that process is deserving of a patent.

Re:I Save RX

[Abreu]

Patents ARE enforced in Mexico, however, even brand name medications are cheaper here than in the US. Not local labs, I am talking about Bayer, AstraZeneca, Merck, etc...

Of course, generics are even cheaper (I paid the equivalent of .50 US cents for a pack of aspirin the other day), but those patents are already expired.

Re:I Save RX

[marxmarv]

Sounds like a prescription for more government funding for basic research.

Re:I Save RX

[Eighty7]

Advertising doesn't work like that. It's an investment. The amount spent is irrelevant so long as you expect to get back more as a result. R&D probably hits diminishing returns fast compared to advertising.

Re:I Save RX

[pfingst]

Like I said, I don't know what the profit margins are or how little they could sell their drugs for and still turn a profit. But someone has to feed the monster.

Seeing as drug research benefits pretty much everyone, why isn't the government doing it?

• Because the government is corrupt, unaccountable, and wasteful?
• Not to mention incompetent?
• Because they already fund a lot of research in this area, performed by universities?
• Because we really don't want life-saving drugs that many of us need in the hands of those that could deny us access to them unless we submit to their will, backed by the coercive power of the state? At least with private companies, the government could compel them to turn over the research/drugs. Who would compel the government to do so?
  
• Because private companies actually have a tremendous incentive to do research on new drugs, since they are extremely profitable?

Yeah, it's not perfect, and it does mean that drugs that can treat rare diseases are extremely expensive because the drug company doesn't sell much of them, but the alternative really isn't an improvement. I always wonder why people get freaked out about highly powerful corporations, but believe highly powerful governments are a safer and better option.

Re:I Save RX

[Detritus]

That's the reality of the marketplace. Unless it's a cure for cancer, or the like, you have to advertise to make people aware that your product exists and why they should prescribe/buy it.

Re:I Save RX

[qoncept]

"Yeah, yeah, we hear this argument every time. But did you know most drug companies spend more on ADVERTISING then on actual research and development of new drugs?"

That's great. Did you now they also tell you all of the side effects of drugs in commercials? The stuff your god damn DOCTOR should be telling you. Did you know both facts (assuming they are true) are irrelevent in this conversation? (I won't bother asking for a source)

Think for a minute. Why would a company advertise? It's because they have determined the money the invest in advertising will make their product more profitable. More profitable means they can (CAN, I'm not claiming they do) sell it to more people for less.

It's business. If something isn't profitable, you don't market it. If people are paying $0 for drugs that you have to sell for $44 to recoup your investments, you're never going to develop it and $0 drug man isn't going to copy it. And I don't know how much money you make, but I bet you'd like to make more. You're just like those sleazy drug companies.

Re:I Save RX

[mckorr]

You've been watching too many BigPharm propoganda pieces.

1. Your taxes in the form of government subsidies to drug companies and university research labs pay a large part of the development costs. Yes, the overall cost of development is high, but BigPharm is lying to you when they claim they bare all the costs.

2. You can't claim that the patents are being ripped off by Canada and Europe. Doing so claims that they accept a lower standard of quality than the United States does, which is highly insulting to nations which are at least as advanced as the U.S. Canada and Western Europe obtain their medications from the exact same factories as the U.S. does. The difference is that they do not let the corporations profiteer. This has been emphasized on every news story citing the differences in the costs between America and the rest of the world. The profit margins from US drug sales are huge, because our current corporate owned government passes laws that allow them to get away with murder. The entire ban on less expensive prescription drugs from Canada is based on maintaining those profit margins.

3. If drugs existed to cure "awful, obscure diseases" they'd be known and marketed, at a huge cost to whoever needed them. The corps would recoup their development costs any way they could, even if it meant producing 10 doses and selling them for $100k each. They simply would not mass produce them to drive costs down.

Re:I Save RX

[Grym]

That's the reality of the marketplace. Unless it's a cure for cancer, or the like, you have to advertise to make people aware that your product exists and why they should prescribe/buy it.

Do you? The United States is one of two countries (the other being New Zealand) in the entire world that allows direct-to-consumer advertising. If such advertising is truly required to stay afloat, why aren't we seeing pharmaceutical companies in the rest of the world all going belly-up?

-Grym

Re:I Save RX

[Detritus]

A great deal of advertising is directed at health care professionals, not consumers. Ask any physician or pharmacist.

Re:I Save RX

[sm62704]

The insurance co-pay for the antibiotic eyedrops I had to take after my vitrectomy was the same as the price Canadians pay retail for the same drug. We are being gouged and gouged badly by the drug companies. Thak God Patents aren't forever like copyrights are.

Hmm, how about the Pirate Bay?

[Arrogant-Bastard]

I think the question then becomes which government? By now there are any number which have taken note of their existence (and some which have acted upon that knowledge), so my guess would be that more will do the same.

GOA

[ezwip]

www.gao.gov

Re:GOA

[ezwip]

U.S. Government Accountability Office (U.S. GAO)

Re:GOA

[Anonymous Coward]

For the uninformed, here is a description of the GAO from their website:

The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) is known as "the investigative arm of Congress" and "the congressional watchdog." GAO supports the Congress in meeting its constitutional responsibilities and helps improve the performance and accountability of the federal government for the benefit of the American people.

Re:GOA

[DMUTPeregrine]

Nope. The GAO (Not GOA) can rubberstamp projects. If the Government Accountability Office says it's ok, it must be fine!

Trapster

[Weaselmancer]

www.trapster.com

It's an interactive thingy where you post where cops are hiding in speed traps.

I'm surprised it's still up, honestly.

Re:Trapster

[xtracto]

I am not, if you think a minute about such "traps", they are effectively achieving* their goal, which is to make people slow down in the corresponding area. The government does not care if people know where such "traps" are, as long as they respect the speed limits. It is actually a win-win situation. People thing they are "sticking it to the man" and at the same time they obbey the stated speed limits.

*Teh interwebs is broken, I just searched in google for "achieving" too check the spelling and the first hit is "achieving female orgasm"... *sigh*

Re:Trapster

[ScuttleMonkey]

I don't have the link on hand, but the funny thing was that many cops went on record in support of the speed trap websites because it accomplished what they were trying for anyway (just to get people to slow down).

Re:Trapster

[Grey_14]

I thought the reason they were there, was to discourage people from speeding anywhere because they wouldn't know where the speed traps were.

Re:Trapster

[bsDaemon]

Yeah, the cops want to get people to drive safely because they don't want to have to scrape them off the road. All the local government cares about is the revenue from the tickets -- just like the recent story of cities reprogramming traffic lights to feature shorter yellows so that more people can get busted for running reds.

Re:Trapster

[Altus]

Near where I went to school there was a curvy bit of road where people often drove to fast. For a bout a month there was a cop car near there where you could see it coming into the section of road. It was a few days before I realized there was never a cop in the car.

The results seemed good though. People were driving through hat area a lot more slowly and from that point on they just put an actual cop in that spot from time to time to keep people honest.

Re:Trapster

[eggy78]

I recently read an article on this (or something like it), and they had a quote from a police officer that basically said, "If people know about speed traps, they will drive slower, and anything that gets people to drive slower is fine with us." I'm sure I completely butchered the quote, but I think I captured the general sentiment.

Re:Trapster

[BigRedFed]

It requires GPS to work. The government loves GPS enabled devices. What do they care if a few localities miss out on revenue when they can track everyone who uses the site through their GPS enabled phone.

Re:Trapster

[Gnavpot]

I don't have the link on hand, but the funny thing was that many cops went on record in support of the speed trap websites because it accomplished what they were trying for anyway (just to get people to slow down).

I am surprised that this has to be explained:

If you don't know where the traps are, you have to be careful everywhere.

If you know where the traps are, you only have to be careful where the traps are, and you can drive like hell everywhere else. Good for public safety, huh?

Re:Trapster

[PastaLover]

Cops at my locale used to hate this type of users reporting speed traps. Until they realised they could be at 5 places at once by just changing location every hour or so. You can't really be sure they've left since they're not always in plane view, and you'd need a reliable source to know they've left. (someone could call in and just lie as a prank) So the net result is that they seem to have a lot more manpower than they do, and people are driving slower at a lot more spots than there are speed traps. So in the end they stopped trying to get it banned, since the net effect was actually positive for them.

So yes the GP was only half right but he was essentially talking about the same thing. It does discourage people from speeding in a lot more places than just where the speed traps are, which as you note is essentially the aim. That, or making some extra money for the state.

Re:Trapster

[marxmarv]

Wasn't there a fatality involving short yellows and a semi somewhere not too long ago? I wanna say it was Chicago... so how'd that work out for Chicago?

Re:Trapster

[bsDaemon]

I probably should have said "all the local government cares about, however" -- politicians don't actually think things through to their logical conclusion unless it's at the bottom of the other guy's slippery slope.

Re:Trapster

[Harin_Teb]

nonsense.

If cops were REALLY trying to get people to slow down, they would park in a highly visible portion of the median, instead of hiding in a speed trap.

Re:Trapster

[Domint]

Um, no. If cops were required to be visible when enforcing speed limits, then people would tend to drive more recklessly when there is no cop in site, because there is obviously no longer a risk of getting caught. The function of a speed trap is to get people slowing down even if there is no cop present - because there's a chance that there might be one there that you can't see. If we went with your idea of having them all out in the open, then there'd have to be a cop parked along every route every few hundred yards in order to ensure that people didn't just go back to driving too fast once the cop is out of view. Good luck with getting THAT enforced.

Our right to know.

[Anonymous Coward]

We already have loads of censoring going on. for example, the 60 minute interview with Sibel edmunds was immediately gagged and then the studio was told to hand over EVERYTHING. In addition, ALL news org have been warned ahead to not talk about her.

In terms of software, PirateBay/Cryptome/GnuRadio. Anything dealing with encryption will NOT be shutdown, unless it involves a brand new and interesting algo.

Liberty Dollar

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.libertydollar.org/ This group has been bringing value back to money for 9 years. While in the past the government has confirmed the group's legallity and legitimacy, more recently the Treasury Dept. has begun claiming that they criminals. With the U.S. Dollar (Federal Reserve Note) falling harder and faster, prices soaring through the roof, the Liberty Dollar has held its value the entire time. This makes it a perfect scapegoat for the entire U.S. monetary system.

Re:Liberty Dollar

[poetmatt]

Looks like it's already been taken down, according to the site:

"Please note that on November 14, 2007 the US government raided the warehouse for the Liberty Dollar certificates and digital currency and they are currently unavailable or redeemable except as numismatic items on eBay.

Re:Liberty Dollar

[msebast]

Inventing your own currency is probably OK.
Stamping "USA" on it and making it resemble official US currency is rather stupid.
People who buy paper, supposedly backed by actual precious metal, from a website, aren't really thinking straight. Either the government or a con artist would have made this thing fall apart sooner or later.

Problem with Poll/Question

[Vectronic]

Shouldnt anyone eligable (ie: those with +1, or +2) have been given at least 1 Mod Point so they could be included in the vote?

Which, is probably not possible with the current point system, but maybe in the future you could alot eligable people a mod point on a specific topic/poll/etc.

Re:Problem with Poll/Question

[bloodninja]

Shouldnt anyone eligable (ie: those with +1, or +2) have been given at least 1 Mod Point so they could be included in the vote?

Which, is probably not possible with the current point system, but maybe in the future you could alot eligable people a mod point on a specific topic/poll/etc. You vote by posting your project here. What project (with link and explanation) do you think will be shut down?

Re:Problem with Poll/Question

[Vectronic]

No I understand that, but if its already been listed, how do you vote? by commenting on it?

"I vote for this"?

seems most of the duplicate votes (ie: WikiLeaks) is being modded redundant, does that get included?

Is someone (many?) going to read through all the comments to tally "I vote for this"?

Re:Problem with Poll/Question

[ScuttleMonkey]

If you feel strongly about a project feel free to comment in support of said project.

We will do our best to try selecting the most popular/controversial projects for the eventual poll that will allow you to actually vote.

Re:Problem with Poll/Question

[PieSquared]

No. A perfect poll is not needed. The editors decide which options go in regardless of any "vote" so no significant percent of the population even needs the ability to "vote." I suspect the editors will just browse at +4 or +5 and pick the best visible options - like a slashdot interview. The moderation is just to bury the dross.

There is an established mechanism for voting, and it'll be used for the "final" vote - but the primary process needn't be and won't be democratic. At best it'll be a sort of approximate consensus.

Brain-dead moderating

[Harmonious Botch]

Would the moderator who called P 'redundant' please read posting times??? P was only two minutes after the previous mention of Wikileaks. By the time you write your post, click though 'preview' and 'submit', two minutes can easily pass.

Re:Brain-dead moderating

[JCSoRocks]

Right, but the objective here is to use moderation to bubble the main contenders to the top. If you've got two different posts with the same idea being moderated someone will have to be smart enough to combine the total scores together for the single idea. So... it makes sense to just mod the second one redundant and let the points / discussion continue in the other thread.

Re:Brain-dead moderating

[Harmonious Botch]

You must be new here.

You seem to be presuming that most posters who have something to say about the subject and who read the first post will nontheless hold off posting and continue reading down to the redundant post.

I think that the first post on a subject will bubble up simply because it is first, without anybody's karma taking an undeserved hit.

Re:Brain-dead moderating

[MrMr]

Especially if the message is posted by asynchronous13; for all we now he posted it tomorrow ...

Re:Brain-dead moderating

[Serious Lemur]

Though the mods apparently don't, I found this hilarious...

Obama

[bidule]

Well, it worked for jfk...

What an extremely useful little competition ...

[Angostura]

... this is, for the powers that be.

Re:What an extremely useful little competition ...

[JianTian13]

"Let a hundred flowers bloom, and a hundred schools of thought contend!" Look, instant whack-a-mole, in which the moles present themselves for whacking!

Anything using subversion rather than CVS.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

B-)

Re:Anything using subversion rather than CVS.

[LarsG]

Oh, you're such a git.

The Memory Hole and its 'Fellow Travellers'

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

http://thememoryhole.org/

http://wikileaks.org/

http://cryptome.org/

Re:Patent Busing

[Qubit]

Is that the project to bus all of the patent trials away from the Marshall, Texas courts?

Free Speech?

[QuantumFlux]

They're getting closer all the time, it seems...

They'll BE the government next year.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

The Democratic Party. I wouldn't put it past them to try if McCain looks like he's on the ropes!

They're already the congress and they'll have more seats and the presidency next year. So they'll BE the government (or the necessary two branches out of three) by the time it could get around to shutting down a party.

Summary Needs Work

[dohadeer]

Maybe I read this wrong, but isn't the field limited to SourceForge projects? Summary should be updated to make this clearer kplzthxbye

100% OT

[mooingyak]

Did you name yourself after the beer or is it just how you describe yourself to others?

Re:duh

[morgan_greywolf]

The Democratic Party [democrats.org]. I wouldn't put it past them to try if McCain looks like he's on the ropes!

Pssst! No way! I heard the Democratic Party was in cahoots with the Government! Why, some of their very own members are Senators and Congressional Representatives! I heard they even had few state governors! Don't tell anyone!

You've got a typo...

[xtracto]

In the summary:

er. I have named my category "Most Likely to by Shut Down by a Government Agency". W

should be :

er. I have named my category "Most Likely to be Shut Down by a Government Agency". W

You are welcome. :)

Re:You've got a typo...

[oodaloop]

Thank you for correcting the only mistake in a /. summary. I'm sure your pointed observation will prompt the editors to take more caution when writing, and there'll be no more mistakes.

Re:You've got a typo...

[xtracto]

Do I win a prize for spotting a typo in a slashdot story? (tee hee hee).

Tor?

[Facegarden]

Tor would be a good candidate for being outlawed by an overbearing government. I don't know much about it, but i can bet legal online anonymity will go if things keep going the way they are... -Taylor

Re:Tor?

[cavemanf16]

Actually, next to TrueCrypt, I think Tor is a good candidate for shutdown because it utilizes open proxy servers to help you obfuscate your http: requests as you surf the web. I would be more likely to think that shutting down open proxy servers would be the easier legislation to both pass and enforce, which would mean projects like Tor would become largely useless, but maybe not quite as useless as legislation banning digital encryption mechanisms by citizens. We already have the DMCA to ban breaking encryption by private citizens... I doubt that banning using encryption by private citizens is far behind. Just think of the children!

But isn't this fear mongering?

[LWATCDR]

Really asking what site you think is going to be taken down next by some government agency seems like fear mongering in it's self.
Most take down notices have come not from law enforcement but from companies not the government.

The vast majority of these are civil actions.

Isn't this heading into the tin foil hats and black helicopter area?

Re:But isn't this fear mongering?

[Facetious]

Yes, it's like morning coffee for slashdotters.

Re:But isn't this fear mongering?

[Hatta]

A civil action is enforced by a government. What makes you think that doesn't count?

Re:But isn't this fear mongering?

[Saxerman]

Well, that's one way to look at it. I personally can't think of a lot of web sites that have been shut down 'by the government' although there have certainly been a handful of good examples. Mostly raids where internet equipment was confiscated, and such equipment seems to have a poor track record of getting back into the hands of its owners (if at all!) The most important might have been the raids around the 'E911' document which included storming the game company Steve Jackson Games and lead to the creation of the EFF which still operates today.

You can look over the EFF case history on their site to find a nice list of cases, some more dubious than others, where internet sites were shut down and/or censored. Of course, what you (hopefully!) won't find in their case history are perfectly legitimate shut downs of sites engaged in dully prosecuted criminal acts.

So, this might just be liberal fear mongering. It might also be an attempt to highlight the good work of watch dog groups who publish messages the government might not want released, even if such groups aren't in real danger of being shut down. Considering the size and scope of the /. crowd, it might even just be an attempt to highlight cool web sites, with the 'shut down by the government' meme part of our wacky hacker humor.

Or, it might just be an attempt to scare up some web hits by trying to tap into some internet controversy among geeks. Hanlon's razor, etc.

Re:But isn't this fear mongering?

[rastoboy29]

You...don't seem to be aware of what our government has been doing the last 15-20 years?

And in any case...business has the option of "taking stuff down" because of...government, which it has bought.

Re:But isn't this fear mongering?

[LWATCDR]

Has no web site ever been shutdown for no good reason?
No and anyone that thinks so is just dumb.
I support the EFF efforts but there is a difference between being informative and inflammatory.
This whole thread puts out a lot more heat than light.

Re:But isn't this fear mongering?

[Saxerman]

My point was merely that you shouldn't find any examples of sites shut down for legitimate reasons in the EFF case list, not that no site had ever been shut down legitimately. Which was ultimately included to expand the list of reasons why a poll about sites being shut down by the government could be interesting with fear mongering. And while I doubt this would be the correct forum to point out purely criminal websites, there should be some exciting examples out there of more nebulous legal concerns, or even ones where the laws of the host country different from our own... which even further expands the scope of the list. To say nothing of the ones which would just be funny to include, like the Republican Nation Committee. Which I find even more funny, as they're currently leading their site with some dubious news smears against Obama. Think the DNC could get a judge to temporarily shut down the RNC web site, or vice versa?

Re:But isn't this fear mongering?

[LWATCDR]

Well since I don't like Obama for his plan to shut down a big part of the manned space program and many other things I can not get too upset about what the RNC says or doesn't about him. Frankly I don't pay too much attention to politics at all. My wife has a degree in PolySci and a life long demarcate so what news I get is from her when I listen :)

important piece of information missing

[circletimessquare]

is the contest usa-centric?

Re:important piece of information missing

[TFer_Atvar]

Few other countries have the influence to manipulate content on the Internet on a wide scale as does the United States. For worse or worse, U.S. law is applied on the Internet more than any other.

Re:important piece of information missing

[Blakey Rat]

Few other countries have the influence to manipulate content on the Internet on a wide scale as does the United States. For worse or worse, U.S. law is applied on the Internet more than any other.

Example?

no, Bernstein

[CDMA_Demo]

http://cr.yp.to/export.html

More likely: The 2008 Elections

[Anonymous Coward]

Sad, but true.

www.tudou.com/

[Valehru]

Tudou.com is on my list to be shutdown by the Chinese government. More so to do with the popularity amongst the average Chinese Chin, lack of regulations with content submitted than to do with lack of enforced copyright standards.

Scientists...

[MRe_nl]

Building Mind-Reading Computers.

GAO

[Anonymous Coward]

www.goa.gov

Re:GAO

[sm62704]

You goa, girl!

Second Life

[Mark Cicero]

All that music being played and nary a cent going to the RIAA is just begging for a court intervention. Now they also have the IRS looking into the Electric Sheep Company / CSI:NY promotion and whether or not the 'guides' income should be taxed and there are questions as to whether labour law should be getting involved with all the Slingo hosts and their employers. I give it two years tops.

Tor

[hansamurai]

I haven't seen this listed yet and a lot of great ones have been mentioned but I'd just like to throw Tor out there.

http://www.torproject.org/

Re:Tor

[ArcCoyote]

Who the hell is voting all the Tor suggestions +5?

TOR was developed by and is supported by the US Navy!

Re:Tor

[city]

From the summary - "Nominations need to include (...), and a paragraph of why you think they deserve to win."

I wouldn't have modded you over-rated, but what is Tor? What do you expect me to RYourFA?

Re:Tor

[TehDuffman]

Originally sponsored by the US Naval Research Laboratory, Tor became an Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) project in late 2004. The EFF supported Tor financially until November 2005. Wikipedia

Seeing as it was started originally as a government program i doubt it.

Re:Tor

[TehDuffman]

Tor was started by the US Navy why would that close it down?

Re:Tor

[thtrgremlin]

Despite the fact that the government helped start this, I would not be surprised if not long from now you could have police knocking on your door to ask you why you were using Tor and encrypting traffic. I see it going something like this. "Tor was designed to help people in bad countries help escape political oppression. Why would you need a tool like that in America?". And it just getting worse from there. Remember when a number of state homeland security departments were defining a terrorist as "Someone that opposed big government and gun control"? Before, prostate rights meant you were pro-slavery, now it means you are pro slavery, and a terrorist. If some government agency didn't like you, I am sure they would love to know that you used Tor and ask you questions all day about it, quite possibly from a small white brick room with those ever comfortable orange jump suits.

Wait, they would never want to shut down something like that, just make it illegal. (Sorry, sometimes the voice of Ayn Rand possesses me)

http://www.prankdialer.com

[Treytor]

They could go the way of PopularityDialer.com

Is this survey sponsored?

[Anonymous Coward]

Was this survey sponsored by the government from the beginning?

Very nice way to cut costs on researching what needs to be closed ;)

Re:Is this survey sponsored?

[linhares]

You must be new here. This whole website is run from the pentagon.

My money is on

[RiddleofSteel]

Dunk'n Donuts! They are obviously just a front for Al-Qaeda with Rachel Ray as the master mind, I mean did you see that scarf!

Re:Don't need government - doing it themselves.

[osu-neko]

It is interesting to note that we've had a relatively stable liberal party (save for a rough spot in the 1820's) since the late 1700's, whereas we've had a succession of conservative parties that rise, go for while, often do quite well, but then implode (Federalist -> National Republican -> Whig -> Republican without even considering the side-branches and parallel ones like the American "Know-Nothing" Party and such). One has to wonder if we're heading into another episode where the conservatives revitalize themselves by breaking apart and reforming under a new banner yet again...

You may be right about the Democrats needing to prop it up, too. That rough spot in the 1820's was caused when the Federalists imploded and the Democratic-Republican party started to disintegrate simply because it had no significant opposition.

Re:Most likely to be Shutdown By Government?

[Archangel Michael]

Uh huh. You realize that by saying Republicans, you're actually suggesting that the Democrats (only real people who could pull that off) are as evil as many of us suspect they are, by silencing anyone who criticizes them.

The real answer is probably Libertarian Party, which pisses off both (D) and (R) types.

Re:Freenet

[Anonymous Coward]

And let's be honest, there's no need to be anonymous on the internet, so why are you doing it?

Let's be honest, bit-torrent is pretty much only used by pirates, so lets do away with it, and ignore it being the only way I can download Linux distros without checksum failing.

Let's be honest, the internet is pretty much only used by slackers, so lets ignore the good uses of it and shut it down.

Let's be honest, microwaves can harm your health, so lets start eating cold food.

Sourceforge

[javajawa]

Sourceforge for funding Cowboy Neal's activities

RIM pagers and secure email

[waldo2020]

RIM claims that their 3DES/AES encryption implementation is fully secure and does not contain any backdoors - we'll let the NSA see about that!

I see BitTorrent going the way of the dodo...

[Ynsats]

BitTorrent only offers a software package the enables user to share data with an ease rivaling that of an open share on a network but without all of the hassles of completely insecure connections. That doesn't seem to stop the RIAA and the MPAA from trying to shut down even the idea that people should be able to use the Internet for what it was intended for, a free exchange of information. The software package was and is quite novel in the way it handles traffic and allows it to be shared across multiple connections and multiple computers. This is load distribution at a level higher than "enterprise class data systems". This is a huge productivity tool that can be used for sharing information over any kind of distributed network. It allows freedom and power.

What's going to stop it? The RIAA, MPAA and giant ISP's like Comcast and Verizon that throttle back torrent traffic. They will make cases for costs in bandwidth and network maintenance. The fact that many people use these types of peer-to-peer networks successfully and almost untraceably to share copyrighted information only adds to the arguments that the RIAA and MPAA will make to get it shut down. Since there entire websites like The Pirate Bay, Mininova, IsoHunt and even the BitTorrent website that link users to a large number of seeds for the torrent swarms of information copyrighted and non-copyrighted and such, it doesn't bode well for the tool either.

The RIAA and MPAA will use strong arm tactics and cite currently pending investigations in other parts of the world against such sites that employ the use of such software to cut the problem off at the head. It will likely lead to sweeping legislation that will outlaw many forms of file sharing. For references, look at what the RIAA and MPAA have managed to successfully do against those users with home media center looking to place digital copies of their license media on to online storage. Sure, selling the means to do the illegal act isn't illegal but that doesn't mean someone won't try to make it illegal.

Re:I see BitTorrent going the way of the dodo...

[Ynsats]

I forgot to add my link.

http://www.bittorrent.com/

I'd also like to add that while companies like BitTorrent are hashing out distribution deals, that does not absolve them from scrutiny. The RIAA and MPAA have been known to cut off their own nose to spite their face by suing and then subsequently alienating the customers and artists they seek to "protect".

Re:I see BitTorrent going the way of the dodo...

[nurb432]

And the last 2 *large* things i downloaded came from a BT tracker.

One was a home made freebsd distribution , and another was a open movie from Blender.

I also downloaded ( from a bands officially run site ) several songs, using BT to help reduce their bandwidth..

So tell me again why you only want to associate questionable activities with BT?

Re:I see BitTorrent going the way of the dodo...

[Opportunist]

He probably doesn't. But who will some law maker listen to, him or the RIAA?

Re:I see BitTorrent going the way of the dodo...

[Ynsats]

Ed Zachary!

i nominate Slashdot - for the TIn Foil Hat Award!

[bball99]

sheesh! the 'corporate overlords' are what, 20-year-olds?

Re:Don't need government - doing it themselves.

[digitig]

the Democratic party (which will BE the government next year

Assuming there's an election, and the USA doesn't find itself in a state of emergency so Dubya doesn't have to call an election.

My nomination for "most likely to be shut down by government" would have been the US Constitution, but I may be too late so I'll nominate the US Supreme Court.

It's not about transmission

[whitneyw]

It's about reception. Any sort of broadcast flag could be easily stripped from transmissions, making the content recordable. There are already laws against building receivers that can pick up cellular phone signals. How awesome is that? In fact, software radio, with a more powerful (read faster) analog-to-digital converter would violate this law.

see 47 C.F.R. 15.121(a)

(a) Except as provided in paragraph (c) of this section, scanning receivers and frequency converters designed or marketed for use with scanning receivers, shall:

(1) Be incapable of operating (tuning), or readily being altered by the user to operate, within the frequency bands allocated to the Cellular Radiotelephone Service in part 22 of this chapter (cellular telephone bands). Scanning receivers capable of âoereadily being altered by the userâ include, but are not limited to, those for which the ability to receive transmissions in the cellular telephone bands can be added by clipping the leads of, or installing, a simple component such as a diode, resistor or jumper wire; replacing a plug-in semiconductor chip; or programming a semiconductor chip using special access codes or an external device, such as a personal computer. Scanning receivers, and frequency converters designed for use with scanning receivers, also shall be incapable of converting digital cellular communication transmissions to analog voice audio.

(2) Be designed so that the tuning, control and filtering circuitry is inaccessible. The design must be such that any attempts to modify the equipment to receive transmissions from the Cellular Radiotelephone Service likely will render the receiver inoperable.

the gov't will shut down this contest

[conspirator57]

gotta go, i think i see the big men with dogs now.

Then tell me this

[Weaselmancer]

if you think a minute about such "traps", they are effectively achieving* their goal, which is to make people slow down in the corresponding area.

Then why hide?

Seriously. If they want people to slow down, why hide behind billboards and bridges and other stuff and pop out and snag people?

If they honestly wanted everyone to slow down they'd just park on the side of the road in the very most visible spot. Watch your fellow drivers on the freeway sometime. They see a cop car, they hit the brakes. Even if he has someone pulled over and its obvious they could fly right by him.

They hide because it helps them write tickets. That's the goal of a speedtrap. Income. I'm sure the PR people love to smile at the camera and talk about how their just saving lives, but their actions simply do not agree. You can't tell me that having all this ticket revenue pouring in means nothing.

If they really want people to drive the speed limit, park out in the open.

Re:Then tell me this

[evanbd]

There are more potential hidden speed trap spots than there are cars. If everyone slows down at every *possible* speed trap, that's far more efficient use of cars. Of course, they have to have enough cars out there to give the threat teeth.

There's good logic for it. On the other hand, I think most of the officers do it because they want to write tickets. I hate it, and would welcome a law requiring more openness in their operation. Bastards getting off on a power trip, most of the time.

Re:Then tell me this

[WannaBeGeekGirl]

I can't speak for the cops. My sister is an ADA and her best friend is a nurse that is often on call to pronounce accident victims for the county. Between those two and their friends (several of whom are police) I've heard a lot of disgusting work related stories that involved speeding. I honestly believe most of these people truly are sick of seeing mangled human bodies removed from vehicles that were speeding or finding remains on the pavement.

Sure they'll write a ticket if it will slow you down. However, if parking their car in a strategic location near where kids play on their day off will slow people down they are fine with that too.

Re:Then tell me this

[mgblst]

What an idiotic statement. Are you suggesting that we have the police stationed every few 100 meters along the road, because some morons need them to slow down?

They want people to slow down without police presence. But they don't. So they encourage people to slow down by the fact that if you speed, there is a chance that you will be caught, and you will be fined.

How can you be so idiotic. And who the fuck modded you up.

If they really want people to drive the speed limit, park out in the open.

Brilliant... If only someone had thought of it before. Surely we don't want people to slow down ALL the time, just on a few occassions, just for a few 100 meters, because that would be safe.

Re:Then tell me this

[probityrules]

They hide so they can write tickets so that the ticket-receivers will drive the speed limit in the future. Being visible to slow down traffic is a very short-sighted, short-term solution: folks will drive slow for about 1000 feet and then spend the rest of the day speeding.

Receiving a ticket is a long-term solution because it punishes that particular individual for breaking the law so they'll be more apt to drive the speed limit in the future and hopefully others that person comes into contact with will learn from their mistake and slow down as well.

Whether you can see the cops or not, if you're driving over the speed limit, you're breaking the law. It's not like them setting a speed trap is making the speeders break the law - they're already doing it, it's just here they happen to get caught.

Re:Then tell me this

[Geminii]

Locally, we have the situation where the upcoming speedtrap locations for the day are printed in the morning newspaper and announced on morning and afternoon radio, the latter including to-the-minute updates as phoned in by motorists.

Effectively, this means that the police can strongly control traffic speed in the two miles leading up to a given location for up to an hour, simply by turning up and pointing a hairdryer at traffic for a few minutes.

Re:Then tell me this

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Not every township does this though. I usually just avoid those townships.

In my township, they have to record the speeds at least once a year at certain spots, and change the speed limit based on the aggregated data. Which is why they are very careful to draw attention to the fact that your speed is being monitored.

Re:Then tell me this

[Dhalka226]

Seriously. If they want people to slow down, why hide behind billboards and bridges and other stuff and pop out and snag people?

For starters, let me say that I agree that many tickets are written for revenue purposes and that likewise ticket revenues can be substantial to towns.

That said, one could still make a case that hiding is still a better option than being out in the open. You're right that being in the open makes people slam on their breaks. Doing so would be a really good way to force people to slow down in the area of the police car.

But not much farther. If a person knows the police cars are always painfully obvious, then they feel free to speed whenever one ISN'T in plain view. Take your example; these people were already speeding to some degree--they slammed on their breaks only when there was a possibility of getting caught.

The idea behind hiding is a hope that you get people to worry about getting caught even when they don't see a cop around; that behind every billboard and bridge and other object is a potential speeding ticket for them. It can even be related to operant conditioning; writing tickets is a form of positive punishment. A variable rate of reinforcement is the most effective means of continuing to get the desired response (in this case not speeding) even without the reinforcer (the ticket) being introduced more than sporadically. (You can see this for yourself in the chart here.)

Obviously it's not quite that cut and dry because there are other things at work such as the randomness of whether or not you're ticketed coupled with the fact that the people all around you are likely speeding as well--not only increasing the likelihood of your own speeding, but decreasing the likelihood of your being the one caught even if you run into a cop. It's also not a strictly variable ratio positive punishment situation either.

The only means of 100% or near 100% eliminating speeding is to force cars to be either technically incapable of speeding or to somehow instantly issue the driver a ticket if they did. Both have not only their technical problems, but would probably be thrown out in court and would certainly cause public outcry before and after. So, if the police really DO want to impact speeding but can't do things like that, I suppose this is their next best choice. It's probably not very effective in the long run, and hopefully anybody reading this has noted that I've never commented on whether or not I think speeding tickets are good or bad, but of the "let's do SOMETHING" approaches it's probably best to keep your speed traps operating but hidden.

Re:Then tell me this

[sm62704]

Watch your fellow drivers on the freeway sometime. They see a cop car, they hit the brakes

I almost never exceed the speed limit on the interstate, as I can't afford the gas. In fact I'll probably have the cruise set to fifty the next time I travel.

When gas prices were less unreasonable than today's I'd set the cruise control to one mph below the limit. I noticed that someone would pass me like I was standing still, followed by me passing them when they saw a cop, followed by them passing me again like I was standing still when the cop was far enough back.

Re:Don't need government - doing it themselves.

[Anonymous Coward]

Too few people see Obama as a "Commander-In-Chief" for him to win the election.

The Republicans will keep the White House in 2008 (congress MAY be another matter, but then, the opposite of PROgress is CONgress).

Success N Life

[jlowery]

Robert Tilton is but one of the many prosperity gospel preachers, but I think the most unctious (though Creflo A. Dollar is up there).

For those not familiar with how this scam works, here's a snippet from Wikipedia:

In Success-N-Life, Tilton regularly taught that all of life's trials, especially poverty, were a result of sin.... Tilton's ministry revolved around the practice of making "vows", financial commitments to Tilton's ministry. Tilton's preferred vow, stressed frequently on his broadcasts, was $1,000. Occasionally, Tilton would claim to have received a "word" for someone to give a vow of $5,000 or even $10,000. When a person made a vow to Tilton, Tilton preached that God would recognize the vow and reward the donor with vast material riches.

DIY Drones

[zlite]

DIY Drones: amateur Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and open-source Predators.

Re:DIY Drones

[Thelasko]

Good answer! When I first heard about these projects I thought, "this is pretty cool." Then proceed to think of many illegal things that could be done with them. The greatest potential is drug running. If the UAV gets busted crossing the boarder, have it self destruct (make sure it destroys the memory/ flight plans etc) and no one gets busted.

BCwipe

[Weaselmancer]

BCwipe would leave a simliar fingerprint if you used DoD wipe. All you'd have is an empty hard drive full of random characters in the interstices.

AutoPilot

[Lumenary7204]

AutoPilot: DIY Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

http://autopilot.sourceforge.net/

I wouldn't be surprised if...

[ndnspongebob]

I wouldn't be surprised if... http://www.cutelittlekittens.com/ was shut down, although I must admit, muppets are far more dangerous

Peer-to-Peer Internet

[Bob9113]

Perhaps not the first to go down, but I think the odds approach 100%. The peer-to-peer Internet, with its implicit equality for all servers, lacks the degree of barriers to entry that corporations need to "create" wealth. It is already dying through direct corporate action (protocol throttling, port blocking, etc), and there will be government intervention soon enough. Look for copyright, child porn, botnets, etc to be the excuses used to require licensing of servers.

Radio was unrestricted in its early days. Unrestricted mass communication is extremely detrimental to authoritarian governments. Net neutrality prevents ISPs and backbone providers from getting their vig. Nobody benefits from a peer-to-peer Internet except We The People, and most of us don't know that is the case, nor why. Show me something that does not have populist support, and does stand to allow profiteering and control if destroyed - and I'll show you a very tenuous place to stand.

Re:Peer-to-Peer Internet

[PastaLover]

I've read less intelligent horseshit on this site, but not much. You must be new here.

Re:Peer-to-Peer Internet

[trawg]

I suggest you leave your "Cave of Freedom" to realize that the oppressors are not after you. I'm not sure why you think that - there's a lot of evidence that people that develop or use p2p software are under ever-increasing scrutiny, largely because of the corporate overlords that appear to be able to dictate to the US what laws they want to be able to enforce their copyrights.

You should be wary of the government stepping in to try and control the Internet in any form. They're trying to do it here in Australia.

It's only a matter of time before they figure out a way to equate p2p with terrorism and then - what? Oh, they already have.

Re:Peer-to-Peer Internet

[rastoboy29]

mod parent  up

Re:Peer-to-Peer Internet

[Bob9113]

>> lacks the degree of barriers to entry that corporations need to "create" wealth.

> Your anti-corporate rant

Much as I hate to give a rational response to a troll, I am concerned that you are simply young and have yourself been mislead.

Let's see - I've been involved in the planning of four startups. Two of which I was a significant equity participant. In all four cases, one of the first and most persistent questions (in one case first raised by a Columbia MBA) has been, "What are the barriers to entry - how do we protect our market." The fact that businesses seek barriers to entry is neither opinion nor debatable, it is one of the principle objectives of business developers.

If you claim that businesses do not seek barriers to entry, either you do not understand business, or you are choosing to mislead.

Re:Peer-to-Peer Internet

[Bob9113]

As an aside; I don't mean P2P like Bittorrent. I mean peer-to-peer like what ARPAnet was initially - every server is treated as an equal participant, limited only by the size of the pipe to which it is connected.

Re:Peer-to-Peer Internet

[Areyoukiddingme]

I don't know why one of the replies labels this post a troll. Not only is it true, it's partially here already, and has been since the beginning of the deployment of consumer broadband. ISDN was 128kbit bidirectional. ALL of its successors have been 100% asymmetrical in the US. The cable companies are the worst precisely because their owners are not stupid. They're in the business of bundling and selling entertainment. If their broadband subscribers can entertain each other, without going through the cable company's (and by extension RIAA/MPAA) carefully constructed gates designed to squeeze money out, they lose. Ever since deregulation, the phone companies have been thinking along exactly the same lines - they hope to set themselves up in the same business. Of course they try to strangle the ability of their subscribers to invent new forms of entertainment or compete with them in their own form of entertainment.

Their hatred of peer-to-peer is explicit in their terms of service. Every single one of them forbids running game servers on your broadband. You are not allowed to run a Quake server. Period. You are not allowed to run a UO server. Period. You are not allowed to entertain your neighbor because it cuts into their revenue, directly. If you're not watching TV, their shows aren't getting the viewerships they used to get, and therefore their ad revenue shrinks. I only wonder that enforcement of that provision isn't more frequent.

Now we hear Time Warner is piloting metered service in Texas. First, it's no surprise that it was a cable company that thought of it first. Second, it's just another way to squeeze subscribers out of the server business. Now be a good little consumer and suck down some more content from our highly rated subscription VOD service, conveniently exempt from the fees we will levy against you if you watch "too much" (meaning any) Youtube (or any other competitor).

Imagine for a minute what could happen if every US household with a computer had 10 megabit symmetrical connections. Ok, the spam prospects are horrifying. But moving on...

If we all had TRUE broadband connections, Youtube could be heavily decentralized. A Google datacenter could serve as the source and manager of all that data which comes from "consumer" machines, now acting as producers. "Become a Youtube node! Download the software today!" More than 370 million hard drives are sold in this country every year. Google buys only a few hundred thousand of them. The total available capacity is truly massive. If bandwidth matched, I think congestion on the backbones would go DOWN. If cable company broadband subscribers could serve data to their neighbors at megabit speeds, Youtube nodes could serve up video without ever leaving the local loop. Distributed computing would reach a whole new level.

But the kings of copyright and force-fed entertainment don't like it and don't want it and they're firmly ensconced in cartel positions across the country, with every possible government official carefully "managed" into their pocket. They use government regulation to prevent entry of new competitors into their turf, from the municipal level on up. "Because it would tear up the streets too much." Right.

The parent post isn't a troll.

Psystar/Open Computer

[SoylentRed]

http://www.psystar.com/

"The highly extensible Open Computer is a configuration of PC hardware capable of running unmodified OS X Leopard kernels. If you purchase Leopard with your Open Computer we will not only include the actual Leopard retail package with genuine installation disc, but we also preinstall Leopard for free so you can begin to use your computer right out of the box."

Re:FreeNet

[arhhook]

FreeNet is not a centralized server, however, so there really is no way of "shutting it down." It's the same thing as the RIAA playing "Whack-A-Mole" with current p2p file sharers. It's just another type of that, similar but different.

WiCrawl

[EnOne]

what about wicrawl and all the other WiFi "security" testers

Re:Don't need government - doing it themselves.

[diamondmagic]

Yes, the Republicans are wrong about many of their neo-conservative ideas on spying and the like.
Does that make the Democrats automatically correct?
Both parties have done a wonderful job of making themselves look stupid. Both parties thought we had to invade another country that really had no business with us whatsoever (Iraq purposefully did try to look like they had weapons, but that was to keep off Iran). Both parties encourage some sort of unnecessary restriction of your personal rights or freedoms, be it social, economic, or individual freedoms.

Regarding your sig, the last thing McCain wants is a world war in the Middle East. The idea is you prevent things from getting worse by stabilizing Iraq, which speaking of which I have not heard as many negative things from the country recently. McCain actually has to explain himself to look stupid, all Obama has to do is open his mouth. Fifty seven states? Raise the capital gains tax, because "it's the fair thing to do?!?" How do you not know the ideals of your own pastor over twenty years? These may be over-exploited accidents, but you can not just ignore it, they are all signs pointing to ignorance. I have heard all of those quotes in context, and maybe if you actually listened to the whole "century" argument and additional explanation maybe it would make more sense.

Leave it to Slashdot to turn software into politics.

Bomb Bomb Bomb, Bomb Bomb Iran

[superyooser]

...most likely to be shut down by a President McCain.

More reclusive religious sects

[throatmonster]

Like the Jeffs compound in Texas.

Quote from "Take the Money and Run"

[fm6]

"His biggest disappoint was that he never made the FBI's 10 Most Wanted List. It's all about who you know."

iamgoingtokillthepresident.com

[otis wildflower]

TIA.

Have you gone mad?

[frovingslosh]

In an era where the president considers his oath to uphold the Constitution a joke, and our freedoms are being taken away with laws like the Patriot Act, when the government is compiling lists even of the library books that you read, when peaceful protest is limited to "free speech zones" where no one will ever hear the protesters, and so many many more abuses, why in the world would you take the step of building a list of targets for those who abuse their power and provide them not just ideas on who to shut down but good technical discussion on the target's capabilities, providing them ammunition to use in their further attacks against the people?

OK, I'll play along, although I fully realize that if I say something that someone else doesn't agree with I'll get marked down as a "troll". I suggest for the first target of this list SLASHDOT. This is a website that references individuals to all sorts of technology and information that is inconvenient to the government. It must be silenced.

Just say no to homemade A-bombs

[wsanders]

http://reactor1967.fortunecity.com/nuke.html

Seem pretty obvious to me. Of course if you are making substantial progress on this, you're going to get something a little more difficult to ridicule than a cease and desist letter from some lawyers.

Re:Just say no to homemade A-bombs

[Hektor_Troy]

I'm not worried about that.

I have my reactor hooked up to the electromagnetic vacuum containment field keeping a small (1.2 kg) lump of antimatter away from matter.

Last time they dropped by I showed them what a 4 km radius fireball would cover, and they ran away screaming.

Indymedia

[ChunKing]

Indymedia in the UK has already been shut down twice in the past few years e.g. http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/05/06/28/0113237.shtml?tid=153&tid=158&tid=149&tid=17

Re:Don't need government - doing it themselves.

[corbettw]

Assuming there's an election, and the USA doesn't find itself in a state of emergency so Dubya doesn't have to call an election. Also assuming that a rogue planet doesn't come hurtling through the solar system, smashing into Mars and knocking the earth-moon system out of its orbit and plunging us all into the sun. Cause that's about as likely as Bush not "calling an election".

Here's a hint about the American system: the president doesn't call elections in the first place, so he can't stop one from happening in the second. He has no legal authority to do so, so no one would listen to him if he tried. There's a reason no one's ever tried that before. Even Lincoln had to run for re-election during the Civil War (and almost lost!); there's simply no way to stop the process.

This is a Bad Idea (TM)

[RareButSeriousSideEf]

This is a fun exercise and all that, but really, do we need to go out of our way to create statements & lists that lawyers can enter into evidence? e.g., "Your honor, even open-source advocates largely thought this project would be shut down by the government, as I can demonstrate from the following poll..."

Ok, I'll take my "shh, They're listening" tinfoil hat off now; just wanted to ask, if one is for maximal freedom in software, is it really productive to draw this topic's sort of attention to "edgy" projects?

you're kidding, right?

[circletimessquare]

you do understand how teh intartubes work, right? you do understand how sovereignty works, right?

Re:you're kidding, right?

[PastaLover]

What I believe he's saying is that the US government has a lot more chance to shut a project down than a country like, say, Iran. Generally most of the (popular) projects on sourceforge have a strong presence in the west, which is exactly where the US has the most pull. Apologies to the GP if I misunderstood him.

Re:you're kidding, right?

[lgw]

You do understand how treaty law works, right? You do understand how sucking up to the US to maintain good trade relations works, right?

Re:FreeNet

[jim.hansson]

how, are they ddos-ing it, if they request things it will only distribute the content to more nodes, does Toad want kiddy-porn to spread, or is ths irony flying over my head?

Re:Wrong.

[laederkeps]

The one we used, "Discrete and Combinatorial Mathematics: An Applied Introduction" by Ralph Grimaldi (ISBN 0-321-21103-0) deals with the RSA cryptosystem, and in the course this was a prominently featured subject.

Why not...

[El Capitaine]

RIAA / MPAA
www.riaa.org www.mpaa.org

Please?

All of them?

[GradiusCVK]

Having read through all the top-moderated suggestions so far, I find myself horrified to realize that I actually do believe that each and every one of these will be targeted in the next few years. It will be interesting to see just how many of these fears turn out to be justified if we look back at this topic some time down the road. Unfortunately, for those who think that the results of this or any election might have any effect on the direction our country is headed, I have news for you... nothing short of a major overhaul of the entire Federal government is going to change any of this.

Re:Don't need government - doing it themselves.

[lgw]

Yeah, like that conservative Republican party that freed the slaves? The Rebuplicans have not always been the conservative party, and may the be liberal party again one day.

Re:Don't need government - doing it themselves.

[bill_mcgonigle]

Assuming there's an election, and the USA doesn't find itself in a state of emergency so Dubya doesn't have to call an election.

I'll take you for $5 that the election happens and there's an transition of power by Inauguration Day 2009.

DIYDrones.com

[Anonymous Coward]

DIYDrones.com ... $100 homebrew autopilots ... need I say more?

Welcome

[psykocrime]

I, for one, welcome our new Sourceforge corporate overlords.

the consumerist

[saintsfan]

i bet The Consumerist http://consumerist.com/ has caused enough executive headaches that they are begging to have it taken down. i don't know how they will justify it, but they will probably try to convince with a slew of $15 rebate cards

That doesn't work

[roystgnr]

If you use data from the same one-time-pad twice, it quickly turns from "a theoretically unbreakable cryptosystem" into "one of the weakest cryptosystems ever".

If you don't use data from the same one-time pad twice, then it's pointless to use one one-time pad to send another one-time pad, because every N bytes that you receive for the next key is just replacing N bytes of your last key that now can't be reused to send any other data.

Truecrypt is a Rogue Agent's Dream!

[bill_mcgonigle]

No way, if you want to believe in evil government, there's nothing better for them than TrueCrypt. See, it has deniable encryption, where you can have a 'real' drive and a 'fake' drive, so you give 'them' the keys to the 'fake' drive, and go about your secret business, right?

Queue Jack Bauer, beating you up:

Bauer: Gimme your passwords, elrous0. *Whack*
elrous0: OK, fine, it's 'gimmesomeluv1n'
Bauer's Assistant: OK, we're in. Hrm, it's just a bunch of computer stuff, some saved articles from business websites, some 80's metal mp3's and random e-mails. Oh, wait, he's using TrueCrypt.
Bauer: What's that?
Bauer's Assistant: It means he can give us a fake password that gives us fake information, but still keeps the real information hidden.
Bauer: What's your real password, elrous0?
elrous0: No, seriously, I gave it to you. That's it.
Bauer: Don't give me that crap. *Whack* Give me the real password!
elrous0: Dude, I just hang out on Slashdot and have a normal job. I'm not the guy you're looking for!
Bauer: A million lives are at risk, and this isn't going to stop until you give me the real password: *whack*
elrous0: Seriously, I'm telling you the truth.
Bauer: *Whack* *Whack* *Whack* *Whack*
elrous0: Ugh! My nose!
Bauer: *Whack* *Whack* *Whack* *Whack*
Bauer's Assistant: Um, Jack, do you think he could be telling the truth?
Bauer: No, this one's a pro. He didn't crack the whole time, and his accent is impeccable. He must be a deep cover operative. We'll try this again when he wakes up.

Oh, wait, I just played into the Conspiracy Theory myself. :) Seriously, though, deniable encryption is only useful against enemies who are dumb and cannot employ force against you. Governments don't have much to fear from it, vs. any other kind of encryption. They're all Tempest watching us anyway. ;)

Re:Truecrypt is a Rogue Agent's Dream!

[dropadrop]

Can't you create several hidden volumes?

Re:Truecrypt is a Rogue Agent's Dream!

[bill_mcgonigle]

Can't you create several hidden volumes?

The rabbit hole just gets deeper and deeper.

Re:Truecrypt is a Rogue Agent's Dream!

[elrous0]

Like most Americans since the 80's, I've always assumed I would be killed by Keifer Sutherland one day anyway.

Re:Truecrypt is a Rogue Agent's Dream!

[Hatta]

Sure, if you end up in Gitmo, Truecrypt isn't going to save you. If you end up in federal court however, plausible deniability can go a long way to creating reasonable doubt.

Re:Don't need government - doing it themselves.

[digitig]

Here's a hint about the American system: the president doesn't call elections in the first place, so he can't stop one from happening in the second. He has no legal authority to do so, so no one would listen to him if he tried. There's a reason no one's ever tried that before. Even Lincoln had to run for re-election during the Civil War (and almost lost!); there's simply no way to stop the process. I suggest you check the Patriot Act carefully -- certainly some commentators believe that The Continuity of Government plan in conjunction with The Patriot Act gives Bush precisely that legal power. I am not a lawyer (and even if I were, I bet there would be a lot of disagreement amongst lawyers on this one), and I don't know whether that power, if it existed, was preserved in Patriot 2, so I'm not sure.

what about government RUN?

[Bobtree]

All of these suggestions seem to be about things that government agencies might be against. What about the stuff they are supposed to be for, like basic science?

Off the top of my head, I'll suggest Fermilab, given their increasingly dire financial situation.

And of course there are plenty of things they very well should shut down, just because they cost us so much and gain so little, like the war on drugs and the Iraq war. Maybe these should go in the "least likely" category though.

Re:Don't need government - doing it themselves.

[digitig]

I'll take you for $5 that the election happens and there's an transition of power by Inauguration Day 2009. Sneaky -- were you hoping that as a Brit I wouldn't notice that there would be a transition of power whichever party won the election? ;-)

Re:Don't need government - doing it themselves.

[cayenne8]

"In fact the Democratic party (which will BE the government next year, after they pick up the presidency and a bunch more seats in the house and senate) will prop it up, if they're smart. That will help keep the ejectees from forming a new first-tier opposition party or building up one of the minors into ready-for-prime-time status."

You know...a few months ago...I'd have agreed that the Dems would be a hands down winner. But, after all the bickering with Hillary/Obama....and the other controversial events with Obama, and the more we're finding out about him, and how it is looking how race/ethnic lines are being draw as far as vote, I don't think it is a shoo-in.

I honestly didn't get McCain much a chance, but, they way things are looking now...I think it will be VERY close for the presidency, and while I know lots of things can change, I think McCain may indeed have a chance of taking it.

It will be interesting to see what happens. I think the VP choice may make some difference. With the problems Obama has in getting Hispanic votes...I think he would be wise to pick a Bill Richardson...to try to help in that dept. I don't think Hillary as VP would be a good choice. While it would help unite the Dem party a bit...the two of them together are garning way too many negative points which I think would hurt him in the general election.

McCain's choice could weigh in a bit too...

Should be interesting.

700 horsepower 2400 lb car

[Hanzie]

With waaaaaay too much torque on tap, I'd expect big brother to start leaning on cobra manufacturers like Kirkham Motorsports.

Gov't agencies don't generally like people to have fun.

Re:Most likely to be Shutdown By Government?

[Dachannien]

A few years ago, when the Republicans were in control of both houses of Congress as well as the White House, Senator Harry Reid - then the Senate Minority Leader - made a comment that having the entire government under the control of one party like that was a bad thing.

From http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/05/08/int05032.html:

Senator Reid: The danger in a one-party system is that there's no ability to have an alternative message. When we had a Senate that was "controlled" by the Republicans but had a Democratic President, we were still a force. But once you have all three bodies under one-party control, you no longer have the ability to communicate with the American people. It makes it very difficult to communicate with the American people. That's the position we now find ourselves in. One-party government is bad for all kinds of reasons, not the least of which is there's no new ideas. It's either George Bush's way or the highway. If people don't agree with him, they'll lose their chairmanships, their subcommittee chairmanships and other goodies that the President can control. At the time I heard him say this, it was in the run-up to the 2006 election (somewhat after the interview I just linked), and it was becoming clear that the Dems were going to have control of both houses of Congress. And at the time, I was 95% certain that Hillary Clinton would win the presidency in 2008. So, I wondered exactly which of those three - House, Senate, or President - Harry Reid was planning on giving up.

You've Been Asked a Question by: SMS.ac/FanBox.com

[You Deserve Better]

You are one within a very small percentage of the connected world if you have not received a "Question It!" email in the last year. SMS.ac made a name for themselves, and over $100 million dollars in revenue, in the premium text messages. After incurring an undisclosed number of fines for their activities (SMS.ac fined 175,000 pounds by UK regulator), they renamed and rebranded themselves as FanBox. FanBox is attempting to generate revenue through premium applications using their SMS billing engine and ad revenue. Their single-minded approach to gaining users is through misleading emails that appear to be from people you know. Such "products" named "Question It!" and "Predict It!" are very familiar to your Junk folder if not your Inbox. Their continued business practices could raise accusations of violation of Federal Trade Commission ("CAN-SPAM Act of 2003"), Federal Communication Commission, and other Federal and State laws, as well as European Community and other international laws. Also, SMS.ac/FanBox.com treatment of their employees could find them in violation of long list of California-state employment laws. Additionally, they have an almost serial behavior of leasing and defaulting on equipment purchases. They are currently embroiled in a number of lawsuits brought against them by their former employees, creditors, and customers. The Question is: why hasn't the hammer come down on this company?

Vote Powerpoint!

[edxwelch]

vote for powerpoint! If it gets enough votes the goverment will shut it down. That's the way it works, right?
Finally we will be free from those brainless "funny" chain emails that waste all your mail space.

Re:Don't need government - doing it themselves.

[bill_mcgonigle]

Sneaky -- were you hoping that as a Brit I wouldn't notice that there would be a transition of power whichever party won the election? ;-)

It's true, there'll be be little perceptible difference no matter who wins.

Re:Most likely to be Shutdown By Government?

[GaryOlson]

Did someone actually reverse engineer the Republican Party, create a CVS, and post the elephant code, remove the copyrights, make some inadequate documentation, and post the project on Sourceforge? I don't know whether that is impressive or downright mentally unstable.

Really stupid idea

[nurb432]

Why would i want my pet project to be on the radar?

No.

[z0M6]

Most of the world are nowhere near the sorry state that the US is in, so they can't really shut it down. Might have to find a new server to host the project, but that is pretty much it.

NSA (or someone else) could try to include a back door, but let's say that people review the changes, so it becomes known. Fork, bad mouth truecrypt, recommend NoBackstabNewTrueCrypt instead.

I really think that there are enough FOSS zealots here for this to happen, so I am not particularly worried.

Re:No.

[Hotawa Hawk-eye]

You're assuming:
1) You know that the person submitting the change is from the NSA or some other group that wants to introduce a back door.
2) The person reviewing the changes is trustworthy and not, say, someone else from the NSA.
3) The person reviewing the changes will recognize code that introduces a backdoor.
4) The person reviewing the changes is honest enough to report the backdoor they found rather than exploiting it themselves.
5) The person reviewing the changes has enough time and attention available to review the code thoroughly enough to find the backdoor (if they're worried about something in their personal life, or if the change introducing the backdoor is one of fifty or sixty changes they have to review before their vacation or the release of a new version tomorrow.)

I could come up with other assumptions, but I think you realize what I'm trying to say. If someone wants to get a backdoor into a piece of software badly enough, they're going to do it unless there's exactly one developer who never ever allows anyone else to change a single character in the piece of software.

Something constructive

[nurb432]

How about saving the content of some of these sites on Freenet instead of just trying to attract ( bad ) attention?

Re:Don't need government - doing it themselves.

[Eric Smith]

Actually, we haven't had a stable liberal party since the late 1700s. At some point (early-to-mid 20th century?) the definition of "liberal" changed dramatically. A classical liberal wanted the government to leave the people alone, while today the so-called liberals want the government to protect us from ourselves. The closest current thing to the original definition of liberal would be "libertarian".

Re:Don't need government - doing it themselves.

[TheRaven64]

He has no legal authority to do so, so no one would listen to him if he tried. While I agree with most of what you say, this makes me wonder where you've been for the last decade or so.

Untaxed money

[GaryOlson]

Anonymous electronic money transfers will not be allowed....Oh, there's no code in the CVS. Government has already been here and cleaned house.

wave's hand Nothing to see here, go about your business.

Re:Don't need government - doing it themselves.

[CaptainCarrot]

I suggest you check the Patriot Act carefully -- certainly some commentators believe that The Continuity of Government plan in conjunction with The Patriot Act gives Bush precisely that legal power. I am not a lawyer (and even if I were, I bet there would be a lot of disagreement amongst lawyers on this one), and I don't know whether that power, if it existed, was preserved in Patriot 2, so I'm not sure.

Then find out before you spout out this paranoid nonsense. Some commentators believe almost anything. On the Internet, you can probably even find commentators who believe that 9/11 was a government conspiracy hatched by Dick Cheney and space aliens as part of a plan to conceal the fact that Rush Limbaugh is Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher's illegitimate love child. Even if you're right, without knowing who the commentators are and on what they base their conclusions, and whether the specific provisions were included in Patriot 2, this is a totally useless thing to say.

Tell you what. Why don't you check the Patriot Act carefully and tell us exactly what you're referring to here?

Re:Craigslist

[Zekeums]

People have actually done that a lot, about the free stuff thing. Otherwise, though, they probably wouldn't shut it down. They would just make you pay to put your ads there.

Re:FreeNet

[DMUTPeregrine]

Yes, they'll try to shut down freenet. That said, freenet should be very, very hard to eliminate without taking the entire internet down.

Re:I'm breaking rules 1 & 2

[La Camiseta]

4chan B&

Wrong subject

[Quila]

It is loosely related to ITAR restrictions, but the specific subject is Gore's backdoors. He used the relaxation of ITAR as a carrot to get the back doors built in.

Re:Most likely to be Shutdown By Government?

[themushroom]

The government is not going to declare itself illegal. Even if, in some ways, it is. :)

Re:Don't need government - doing it themselves.

[hardburn]

And if congress was a single person, rather than a collective entity, that would mean something. Voters often don't like congress as a whole, but support their local congresscritters. The system was designed to work that way.

Illegal US Border Crossing

[0p7imu5_P2im3]

LOL... *wipes away tear*... whew! That was a good one.

Re:Don't need government - doing it themselves.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

You know...a few months ago...I'd have agreed that the Dems would be a hands down winner. But, after all the [several events deleted], I don't think it is a shoo-in.

I honestly didn't get McCain much a chance, but, they way things are looking now...I think it will be VERY close for the presidency, and while I know lots of things can change, I think McCain may indeed have a chance of taking it.

The mutual-dirtying of Hillary and Obama may have dropped their support a bit. But you're missing something about McCain: He's tweaked off SO many factions of the R base SO badly that he's in much deeper doo-doo. (Starting with the gunnies back in 2000 - and they have LONG memories.)

McCain is the most left-wing of the entire crop of Republican presidential hopefuls. And (just as it took Nixon to open relations with Communist China, because they Democrats wouldn't have taken the P.R. risk alone) McCain with a Democratic congress could push through a LOT more of the left-wing agenda than either of the main Democratic presidential candidates could get even a heavily-Democratic congress to approve. So the offended factions of the Republican base actually have an incentive to let the Democrats win the Oval Office rather than let McCain have it.

Watch them stay home in droves (giving the Democratic party another boost in congress), leave the presidential slot blank, write in a "failed" candidate, or vote for a third-party.

Libs most likely to be propped up by gov't

[marxmarv]

1. If you had to have a third party around for some reason or other, the libs are housebroken as far as the upper class is concerned, even if they can't be put in pocket right away. They may yap a lot but they know if they bite off too much of the social safety net, especially right now, they'll get more than a rolled-up newspaper across the nose.

2. The libs are fixed too. It's common knowledge that the election system is designed to preserve and promote an existing duopoly. Barring a massive catastrophe just before an election such as that terrorist attack in Spain, a significant shift away from the duopoly parties is highly unlikely. In case such a state of emergency should arise, legitimate or otherwise, some three-letter agency or other has the force of law to reschedule elections. I just forgot which one.

3. When people clamor for a third party, the Establishment can point to them the same way that Verizon (was it?) wanted to point to their in-house P2P network and reject anyone still discontented as angry white kids or whatever.

The Greens, however, are dangerous. They will piss off the wealthy and do advocate downward redistributions of accumulated wealth as a social justice issue. That will not be allowed to happen, even if the Establishment have to pull an Adlai Stevenson on the winner. The line could be "Aw, someone got sore that this guy got elected. Some say ((C)(TM) Fox News) it was suicide. Oh well, how about our nice home-grown VP?"

Re:Don't need government - doing it themselves.

[corbettw]

I stand corrected. Someone on the Internet said that someone else might think an obscure section of an unpopular law, that might not exist, might grant the President the power to cancel elections. So yeah, guess that's his evil plan after all. You've convinced me, congratulations.

Not to mention...

[Shark]

... that they apparently defeated the 'weapons industry' for the title of 'most profitable industry in the world'.

SCO

[dmbrun]

SCO http://www.sco.com/

They are in Chapter 11 bankruptcy at the moment. The next stage is Chapter 7 hopefully when Kimball's ruling comes through. Then the Government through the agency of the Delaware court will terminate them.

Probably been said or thought of...

[ZeroSerenity]

Microsoft. I had to say it.

shooop shooop shooop Whooosh! shooop shoop shoop

[Anonymous Coward]

Did thou hearest that whistle of an ether-fly? Get thee down from thy mount and hideth thy face in the Bushes! Worsted than an axe flying inches past thy headeth... It's raining vaginas and thee begot hit by a penis! Did thouest fvck!ng miss his joke? And no, the parent was a male, hence my implied use of "his post" in the previous sentence; because I know for certain that all tempted females on Slashdot are 13-year-old lipstick lesbians interning at the CIA and the FBI. Thou has wrot silliness in thy house. Washeth thy hands of thee and thou postest not again.

A little gem of internetry...

[Shark]

I didn't know about Sibel until I read it here. It may not have been your direct intent but spreading information the establishment does *not* want you to know is the only thing we can do to defeat those measures.

I must also commend you on doing it the right way, with just enough bias that it would make me want to look into it.

Keep up the good work, and may everybody else who reads this take it as a reminder to do the right thing while they still have enough freedom to do so.

"If we don't talk about it, it doesn't exist. Now *that's* the real power of the media" to loosely translate a movie quote.

Re:FreeNet

[bsDaemon]

You just make using it illegal. They'll never destroy it, just like that'll never destroy marijuana or coca. they just throw your ass in jail for having anything to do with it, and let you rot for a while

UWB = Ultrawideband

[A nonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrawideband

mySociety's parliament video site

[ReginaldSlapknackers]

Just announced yesterday: mySociety's House of Commons video site. Crowd-source some video timestamps today!

Why might the government seek to close the site down? After all, aren't mySociety "the biggest single catalyst for political change in this country"? (Lord Gould of Brookwood, House of Lords debate, 15/6/06)

Well, they may be, but they may have fractured, or at least bent, a copyright law or two.

You see, Parliamentary video exists under a draconian copyright license under which it "must not be hosted on a searchable website and must not be downloadable", apparently for fear of naughty citizens making humorous or satirical use of it; or indeed any use at all.

To which the mySociety guys and gals seem to have said a collective, "Well that's silly," and gone ahead and done it anyway. Good on you, people.

Seriously, do your bit for democratic transparency and go and timestamp a few videos now. It's curiously addictive.

One name:

[bradjs]

NASA. Perhaps they aren't "shutting it down" but they're letting it bleed to death.

Truly a dangerous site

[porcupine8]

Given that the government wants to ensure that we all remain educated Stupid in the Evil ignorance of oneism, I think that there is only one website that they find truly threatening.

(...On a side note, it's actually managed to get crazier just in the past few months. Mr Ray is certainly not one to be crowned Wisest Human on Earth and then simply rest on his laurels.)

Re:Truly a dangerous site

[QX-Mat]

That is more confusing than Lost. I'm actually frightened by that man.

Re:Don't need government - doing it themselves.

[Foobar of Borg]

The Democrats in congress have a lower approval rating than president Bush. That statement alone speaks volumes. How bad do you have to be to be WORSE then Bush?

The reason for this is because they were elected to stop all the bullshit that has been going on, but instead have been eating out of Bush's hand. They were supposed to end the war, impeach Bush et al., overturn the Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act, but they have instead gone along with Bush on most everything. They are hated more than Bush because they are supposed to be against Bush, but simply wind up working for him anyway.

Cowboy Neal

[cprocjr]

Will be shut down for being to popular!

Scientology

[JumperCable]

I'm surprised no one here has mentioned that one yet.

Banana-Tapioca Pudding Awards

[grikdog]

Sort of elitist and cute like Hasty Pudding, but only near-universal adoption for decades or hundreds of years will be considered. Since bananas are going the way of the dodo and the passenger pigeon as we speak (metaphorically, we're actually typing, of course), the category gets mixed in with the awful permanence in school lunches of tapioca cups that need no refrigeration and are, by definition, not cool.

Meanwhile, let's work on the idea that 4-dollar gas is a Bush-Cheney plot to MAKE Americans conserve gas.

Re:shooop shooop shooop Whooosh! shooop shoop shoo

[rubycodez]

acid needs to be stored away from oxygen, ultraviolet and chlorine. it should have a slightly bitter taste but be odorless and colorless. methinks it's time for you to replenish the old inventory with fresh.

SCOTUS?

[Naznarreb]

What with their wanting to allow people at Gitmo access to something that resembles due process, they're obviously in league with the terrorists.

DON'T ANSWER !

[Yvanhoe]

The men in black just took control of Slashdot and are wanting you to designate their next target !

b3ta

[instantiator]

b3ta Oh wait, it just happened...

the church of psychology

[instantiator]

the church of psychology Just as soon as I've written some material for it, scientology will have it pulled down...

Re:Most likely to be Shutdown By Government?

[Serious Lemur]

I'm wiping away tears while I mourn my lack of mod points right this instant...

Re:I'm breaking rules 1 & 2

[DamienNightbane]

Frankly, I'm honestly surprised it took this long for this comment.

Re:Don't need government - doing it themselves.

[apt142]

Even Lincoln had to run for re-election during the Civil War (and almost lost!); You should check out FDR. He is the one and only president to sit for more than two terms in office. Before FDR's time, a president really had no limits on how many times they could get re-elected. It was sort of a gentleman's agreement not to. The law binding that is a relatively recent addition.

Granted, there was WWII going on and we were knee deep in major war. And it happened because FDR was handling the war effort well. So, there is some precedence for this sort of thing.

Will it happen to Bush? I think your calculation of the odds were pretty good. Even with a loop-hole in the patriot act, I think it would be nearly impossible.

Re:Don't need government - doing it themselves.

[corbettw]

FDR ran for re-election the third time in 1940. The US wasn't in a war at that time, so I'm not sure why you even bring him up. And when he ran for a fourth term in 1944, we were in a major world wide conflict, and he still had to be re-elected. He didn't just say "OK, I'm still President, everyone get back to work."

So, what was your point exactly?

The Open Source Missile Control System

[AndyCanfield]

One year I signed up for a sourceforge project on Open Source Missile Control Systems. I did not notice that it was April 1. The project died before it was born. I thought it was a great idea.

Gnibbles

[m50d]

Not for any real reason, just to keep us on our toes.

Re:Don't need government - doing it themselves.

[mckorr]

Unfortunately I have to agree. I even heard a quote by McCain on the radio yesterday talking about how "Obama does not have the experience necessary to lead" (paraphrased). The Republicans want Clinton to win the Democratic nomination, because they are sure they can beat her. They may be right.

Personally I don't see a lot of difference between Clinton and the Republicans. She is certainly never going to relinquish the power that Dubya has consolidated into the Executive branch, and as such I would foresee a continued degradation of the Constitution with her (or McCain) in the Presidency.

Obama may not have "experience", but IMHO he's the best bet towards regaining some of the freedoms we've let be taken away from us during the last 8 years. The other two set the path towards a rebellion within 12 years.

"Most Likely to Shut Down the Government"?

[grgon]

There should also be the category "Most Likely to Shut Down the Government", though the former may be slightly more posslible. sigh. Any candidates?

Is the Army an Agency?

[ringman8567]

if so how about .ir

Collected types of bias

[whyde]

I forget where I got most of this list, but here is a handy reference to check your own thought processes:

Bandwagon effect: n. The tendency to do (or believe) things because many other people do (or believe) the same. Related to Groupthink.

Bias blind spot: n. The tendency not to compensate for one's own cognitive biases.

Choice-supportive bias: n. The tendency to remember one's choices as better than they actually were.

Confirmation bias: n. The tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions.

Congruence bias: n. The tendency to test hypotheses exclusively through direct testing.

Contrast effect: n. The enhancement or diminishment of a weight or other measurement when compared with recently observed contrasting object.

Disconfirmation bias: n. The tendency for people to extend critical scrutiny to information which contradicts their prior beliefs and accept uncritically information that is congruent with their prior beliefs.

Endowment effect: n. The tendency for people to value something more as soon as they own it.

Focusing effect: n. Prediction bias occurring when people place too much importance on one aspect of an event; causes error in accurately predicting the utility of a future outcome.

Hyperbolic discounting: n. The tendency for people to have a stronger preference for more immediate payoffs relative to later payoffs, the closer to the present both payoffs are.

Illusion of control: n. The tendency for human beings to believe they can control or at least influence outcomes which they clearly cannot.

Impact bias: n. The tendency for people to overestimate the length or the intensity of the impact of future feeling states.

Information bias: n. The tendency to seek information even when it cannot affect action.

Loss aversion: n. The tendency for people to strongly prefer avoiding losses over acquiring gains.

Neglect of Probability: n. The tendency to completely disregard probability when making a decision under uncertainty.

Mere exposure effect: n. The tendency for people to express undue liking for things merely because they are familiar with them.

Color psychology: n. The tendency for cultural symbolism of certain colors to affect affective reasoning.

Omission Bias: n. The tendency to judge harmful actions as worse, or less moral than equally harmful omissions (inactions).

Outcome Bias: n. The tendency to judge a decision by its eventual outcome instead of based on the quality of the decision at the time it was made.

Planning fallacy: n. The tendency to underestimate task-completion times.

Post-purchase rationalization: n. The tendency to persuade oneself through rational argument that a purchase was good value.

Pseudocertainty effect: n. The tendency to make risk-averse choices if the expected outcome is positive, but risk-seeking choices to avoid negative outcomes.

Rosy retrospection: n. The tendency to rate past events more positively than they had actually rated them when the event occurred.

Selective perception: n. The tendency for expectations to affect perception.

Status quo bias: n. The tendency for people to like things to stay relatively the same.

Von Restorff effect: n. The tendency for an item that "stands out like a sore thumb" to be more likely to be remembered than other items.

Zeigarnik effect: n. The tendency for people to remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks better than completed ones.

Zero-risk bias: n. Preference for reducing a small risk to zero over a greater reduction in a larger risk.

Ambiguity effect: n. The avoidance of options for which missing information makes the probability seem "unknown".

Anchoring: n. The tendency to rely too heavily, or "anchor," on one trait or piece of information when making decisions.

Anthropic bias: n. The tendency for one's evidence to be biased by observation selection effects.

Attentio

Re:Collected types of bias

[Alsee]

a handy reference to check your own thought processes

OK.

Bandwagon effect: Well I'm rather a non-conformist and I'm quite often on and arguing the unpopular side, so that's probably not an issue for me.

Bias blind spot: Well I don't have that problem, so I didn't bother reading any further.

Chuckle. P.S. I noticed something slightly odd. Except for Self-fulfilling-prophecy and Color-psychology being notably out of place, it is clearly three concatenated alphabetical lists. P.P.S. All the "n."'s were a bit redundant and pointlessly repeated again and again. They were kinda repetitititive too.

-

Voting software a likely candidate (so to speak)

[Douglas Goodall]

OPen source voting software would probably draw the ire of the government.

Re:Flash messages and BATCO

[davecb]

Us Canajans just had a rule that contact mssages were sent at FLASH priority in the clear... as the enemy who is currently shooting at you knows where he is, it is pretty easy for him to guess where you are.

Come to think of it, that allows a known-plaintxt attack on BATCO (;-))

--dave

Re:Don't need government - doing it themselves.

[zsau]

Actually you're only wrong inasmuch as Rush Limbaugh is Reagan and Thatcher's legitimate child. They were married on an obscure Russian island far above the Arctic Circle; I was the only witness. They wiped my camera on the trip home when going through one of those supposedly safe X-Ray machines at the airport. It is all a part of the Conspirital Cabal of Cartographers' plan to make me look like an insane conspiracy theorist so that no-one will believe either that they exist or that they rule the world.

Wait a sec

[tucker'sWang]

Were did i leave that tinfoil hat?

We the Sheeple.

[thtrgremlin]

I agree. Everybody taking the side of a majority, while in the best interest of the short term, is promoting exactly what we are complaining about. Everyone being told by the GOP or DNC who to vote for to give that party "the power" seems very similar to the way government works, in the bureaucratic sense. This arguing over what one person has the best chances over some "opponent" certainly has the best strategic advantage. I think Obama is good, but I really want to throw my vote to Ron Paul. People love him, but the media will always support big government (Our copyright law makes me physically ill at times thinking about it, and I will always be grateful to Lessig for opening my eyes to the real potential of the internet). The internet may be an integral part of our lives and infrastructure, but this election has been amazing with respect to the kind of influence the internet has had, and not had, so far on society ass a whole.

Maybe I have become cynical, but for all the complaints about the government, I believe more and more that it is the sum of what we all believe, contradictions, paranoia, and all; a government of the people, by the people, and for the people that can't hardly agree on anything, and scared everything.

Too many places to reply...

[thtrgremlin]

http://stason.org/TULARC/crafts/locksmithing/04-Is-it-legal-to-carry-lock-picks.html This site seemed to have good info on legality of carrying "burglary equipment" in North America.

CA California California Penal Code Section 466-469. Burglarious And Larcenous Instruments And Deadly Weapons. 466. Every person having upon him or her in his or her possession a picklock, crow, keybit, crowbar, screwdriver, vise grip pliers, water-pump pliers, slidehammer, slim jim, tension bar, lock pick gun, tubular lock pick, floor-safe door puller, master key, ceramic or porcelain spark plug chips or pieces, or other instrument or tool with intent feloniously to break or enter into any building, railroad car, aircraft, or vessel, trailer coach, or vehicle as defined in the Vehicle Code, or who shall knowingly make or alter, or shall attempt to make or alter, any key or other instrument named above so that the same will fit or open the lock of a building, railroad car, aircraft, vessel, trailer coach, or vehicle as defined in the Vehicle Code, without being requested to do so by some person having the right to open the same, or who shall make, alter, or repair any instrument or thing, knowing or having reason to believe that it is intended to be used in committing a misdemeanor or felony, is guilty of a misdemeanor. Any of the structures mentioned in Section 459 shall be deemed to be a building within the meaning of this section. http://www.lockpickguide.com/legalityoflockpicks.html
I was familiar with California law and had friends who were lock smiths; one in particular had just moved to California and was having issues because the state license was not transferable from Montana.

From what I have been told, and from what I have seen / encountered with police at least with respect to guns, knives, and swords you really need to kiss ass in order for the police no not make your day a nightmare. My wife frequently carries a sword (if you ask, you will get a story, you've been warned) and on a very regular basis she is explaining to security and police about both the law and safety precautions she takes.

When what you are doing could be legal, and could be illegal, be prepared to know your rights very well, have a story (a true one), and a lot of time to explain yourself while being very polite.

I live in California, and I would be surprised if your rights in any state would give you the benefit of the doubt that you are a locksmith student if you don't have your paperwork in order. In most all those laws, you need to be the one to prove you DIDN'T have intent, not the other way around. You are left with the burden of proof that you did not break the law, and had no intent of breaking the law either.

Is it really unfair to say that locksmith tools are de facto illegal?

Not even one word needed to rebut

[sm62704]

2600

Re:Not even one word needed to rebut

[Joe U]

Which has nothing to do with printed books.

Re:Not even one word needed to rebut

[sm62704]

Legally speaking, how is a printed book different from a web page in regards to the 1st amendment?

Re:Don't need government - doing it themselves.

[digitig]

I never said there was any evil plan, I merely said that it was an assumption that there wasn't.

I haven't rofled that hard in YEARS

[marxmarv]

I swear when I read that I thought you were kidding. Then I actually went to www.lp.org, and you WEREN'T. Bob Barr as the Libertarian candidate? Bloody hell, isn't that parody enough?! "The Party of Principle" nominates an anti-drug, anti-abortion candidate for president?

Re:I haven't rofled that hard in YEARS

[sm62704]

This is a wierd election, I swear I've dropped through a wormhole into Bizarro world. You have Barr, a Republican, running as the Libertarian candidate while a Libertarian, I've already forgotten his name even though I voted for him, running as a Republican (but losing).

I'm only voting for Barr because I know he'll lose. It's a protest vote, a vote against the status quo. If the Libertarians ever become mainstream, expect their stance on victimless crimes to change. This is not a nation of laws, it is a nation of money.

Re:Don't need government - doing it themselves.

[zehaeva]

Declare Martial Law and suspend the constitution. There no elections.

Wikileaks!!

[linhares]

The real question is: how many governments will wikileaks take down before it is taken down by a government? Today, Wikileaks exists only in /. people's minds... "that shit is cooool"! Until a bomb comes along. Then the entire globe will be talking about it, and government(s) will take action. Wikileaks should start seeding its "catalogue" on .torrent DVD files.

Re:Voting software a likely candidate (so to speak

[Hyperspite]

I wonder if anyone has tried to set up something on sourceforge....