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Richard Stallman: Cell Phones Are 'Stalin's Dream'
jbrodkin writes "Cell phones are 'Stalin's dream,' says free software pioneer Richard Stallman, who refuses to own one. 'Cell phones are tools of Big Brother. I'm not going to carry a tracking device that records where I go all the time, and I'm not going to carry a surveillance device that can be turned on to eavesdrop.' Even the open source Android is dangerous because devices ship with proprietary executables, Stallman says in a wide-ranging interview on the state of the free software movement. Despite some progress, Stallman is still dismayed by 'The existence and use of non-free software [which] is a social problem. It's an evil. And our aim is a world without that problem.'"
Oh come on, trying to get everyone to stop using mobile phones is a little bit far fetched. It's also not like you can make the cell phone technology in any other way, location tracking will always be possible. That's why there are laws that restrict access to such records. AND if you really want to blow up a pizza place, leave your phone home that one time.
And the social problem of non-free software? People do not care. They never have, they never will. I doubt Stallman cares about every little detail about things he uses but isn't that interested in. When he is cooking his tv dinner, he just wants a microwave that works. When Stallman goes to his weekly pony riding classes, he just wants a pony that works without going into every mundane detail. Some little girl could think that Stallman is evil because he doesn't raise, feed and have the pony at his home as part of the family, but while Stallman doesn't have time to raise a pony, he wants to ride one. That's when you take what's easy for you without going in to details.
Too many zealots and not enough free thinkers getting air time.
They are so handy. I guess the best tools of evil sucker the users in with their unmissable features.
!
Legit privacy concerns aside, this sentence reads "silence of the f* lambs!!!" .
Carry it, but turn it on when you need to use it to make a call? You don't have to be tracked all the time, because it doesn't have to be on all the time. It's still useful to have for emergencies when you're traveling, for example.
"Turned on to eavesdrop"? I mean, seriously. Wrap it in tin foil if you're that paranoid. :-)
harbinger.
RMS is seen as crying wolf, but many of his weirdest predictions have come true.
Viz. The Right to Read
And we're already there with Amazon's action's regarding remote Kindle book manipulation.
Cell phones? Remember the article on government snooping while the phone's turned off? The fact that cell phones can and do track you is blindingly true, but for some reason, people don't even want to hear it.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
This problem will only be solved or approached once
(1) citizens can program, and once there is a language intuitive, useful and easy enough to pick up for non-programmers.
(2) programs can be changed on-the-fly -- like in OLPC/XO where you can switch to the source mode and edit the python code for each activity
As long as programming is not understood by users, the source might as well be not open, because they can not read and make sense of it anyway.
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
Some of us who do software development have families to feed. All software can't be free. Not all developers can be paid to do open source development and research at MIT. I support open source, but open source isn't the savior of humanity to bring world peace. Free software is like some FSM for RMS. He practically worships it.
The issue with tracking where you go isn't the use of free or proprietary software in the cell phone. The tracking is done thanks to the fact that your provider knows what cell tower you are connected to. I don't see how this issue could be solved, even with a fully free software phone.
I bat there are few hidden tinfoil hat ads somewhere in there...
The freedom to record all that is around me or said to me is basic. The freedom to know where I have been and be able to offer a proof as to where I am is also basic. Imagine that a crime takes place and the criminal looks a lot like you and also drives a white Toyota. Instead of being half way to a conviction in the legal system you have proof of where you were when the crime went down. Also imagine the cops being able to do a sweeping search and being able to find witnesses and criminals who were within the same area at the time of the crime.
The idea that others may know does not imply a loss of freedom. It does create restraints upon criminals.
I own and operate a fairly famous restaurant, and see a lot of people every week. Just this past week on Friday evening an older guy and I began chatting about Big Brother and the eaves dropping nanny state we live in. He told me that one of his friends and him would talk about "things" down in his workshop on his property, but that he made anyone that came there take the batteries *out* of their cell phones, because they can record and transmit conversations even when you think they are off. He said we learned this little intelligence hack from the Chinese who have been doing it for a few years now. I have no idea, but have manually disabled the GPS tracking feature in the phone, however any picture I take with the phone still has the lat/lon data in the photo. I don't want the latitude and longitude dammit!
More than a few times I have told my wife that I wanted to throw our phones in the fireplace, but she is the trusting type, and doesn't seem to believe me when I tell her how her phone can violate hers and our privacy. I honestly hate cell phones on so many levels, but they are still one notch below my hatred of Facebook. To me the two go hand in hand. It is so easy to post things that may seem innocent on Facebook, but they end up being used against us. Facebook is number one in the privacy violation department, and we do it to ourselves. That is why both my wife and I have deleted our Facebook accounts and thankfully moved on over the last month and a half. I never liked Facebook anyway, but was on there to try to protect her. There is something gossipy and just plan creepy about it. Hell, i had customers who weren't even my friends on facebook coming in and asking me about posts i had made because they had been gossiping i guess with some of my Facebook friends in real life. JUST WIERD! My wife had her co-workers on there and supervisors on there. It was a recipe for disaster, and it almost ruined our marriage, and it definately creeped us out really good. Anyway, hopefully for my wife and I our cellphones will be the next to go... We aren't being luddites, but rather trying to retain at least a semblance of privacy in a nosy, gossipy, and evil networked world...
My vote is for Zach Galifianakis to play rms when "Richard Stallman - The Movie" is filmed.
Stallman is right in the sense that we're all carrying around tracking devices and it's a scary concept when you put it that way but are you really going to knock down the reality door to the mobile phone users and get them to stop using the phones? Probably not. While I respect Stallman to the highest degree, immediately after reading this comment, I couldn't help but think of John Malkovich's character in Red.
You know, he may be a fanatic, but he is quite realistic with the "tracking" part. If you understand german, check out this animation (you can still watch the animation if you don't understand german and get the overall idea though).
Basically, some politicians asked for the 6 months of basic data about his phone useage ( which towers he was near to, with whom, when and for how long he was on the phone) mobile phone providers are required to keep in germany, and journalists at Die Zeit combined those with publicly available updates from his twitter and FB account and his party's website to reconstruct where he was and what he was doing in those 6 months.
They were not only able to track him, but also to build quite a detailled profile of his everyday life and personality that way
"DRM is like the Ford Pinto: it's a smooth ride, right up the point at which it explodes and ruins your day."-C.Doctorow
I'm fairly certain rooting your phone and installing a new OS removes most of those nice proprietary apps. That's part of why I rooted mine. The rest was to fix the bluetooth stack, but that hardly counts as spying.
...that the guys most paranoid about people listening in on their conversations are the ones with the least interesting things to say...?
Putting moderation advice in your
Well, I think it is because of this fanaticism that he was able to do what he did.
He cared enough about the issues to do something it.
What other programmer do you know who cares so deeply about the license restrictions/freedoms/rights of end-users ?
Because that is what the GPL is about, it is not about Open Source for developers.
Anyway I think the FSF and friends might be on the right track with the freedombox idea.
New things are always on the horizon
A cell I can't take the battery out and replace it (because it will invariably NOT last for long) is the definition of a throwaway cell. Best to throw it away right away.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Affordable motorcars are Hitlers dream. What's his point?
He has just the right mix of genius and batshit crazy.
-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
I find it hard to understand why people bash Stallman and his views on software. I get the impression they have never even tried to understand where he is coming from and simply dismiss him because he looks and sounds a certain way. He is caricatured as a loony preaching foreign concepts and people don't try to get past that.
I used to be an open-source advocate until I learned about rms and the FSF. I read a collection of his essays* and never looked back - my life has changed. Whenever I see people spout flawed arguments such as "Programmers will starve!" or "Nobody will write software!" I can't help but look upon them in a negative light.
I ask all of you, be open-minded and digest the arguments.
*http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/fsfs/rms-essays.pdf
I guess Stallman has never heard of Cyanogenmod or any of the multitudes of other totally open AOSP roms available? Despite what they want you to think you DO NOT have to run the software that ships on your phone.
As far as tracking goes, it is a bit of hyperole. If you are doing something and don't want to be tracked, take out your sim, put in a paygo sim, boom you are anonymous. Bonus points by putting the original sim in the trunk of a friends car.
If terrorists can be anonymous using paygo sims, so can the avg. joe.
Now substract everything you know only because he himself chose to publish it on twitter, facebook and his blog, and all you're left with is the surprising revelation that he's in his office a lot.
Have you actually tried blocking the signal with a Faraday cage?
At work, coworkers sometimes forget their mobile phone on their desks when going to lunch. If the phone rings then we do something about it, such as locking it into a heavy-duty transportation box, hiding it under their desk, etc.
Last time we put a coworker's iphone into a cookie tin (ok, the tin was not strictly a cookie tin but a flat tin can used for yummy Tunesian pastries, but I digress). The iphone lost signal. After the coworker came back and we had discussed Faraday cages we put the iphone into a different tin can (one used for Malaysian sweets) but it kept the signal. Puzzled, we tried with a different brand of mobile phone (HTC I believe) - it kept the signal inside both tin cans.
Conclusions:
- The iPhone antenna is worse than that particular HTC
- Blocking radio signals is hard.
The next experiment we are going to do will involve grounding the tin can. (preferably in a new tin box so we have a change to eat pastries again).
The phone company keeps location based information of what mobile phone antenna's your mobile phone is close to, all the time. No one needs GPS for that. It is called triangulation.
New things are always on the horizon
Well considering the previous story was about a contractor being jailed for 15 years for 'spreading freedom' in Cuba, perhaps Stallman knows more than most about being tracked by cell towers. As a friend of the revolution, having visited Cuba and given various speeches on software freedom, he's possibly a person of interest to his own government's agencies. Hence his stance on RFID chips and the like.
I'd agree that tivoized Android devices are a bad thing. In the sense that phones not supported by CyanogenMod prevent you from running your own bootloader and the hence access the usual freedoms available on PCs.
But I disagree with the statement regarding eavesdropping: "If it's all free software, you can probably protect yourself from that, because that's caused by the software in the phone". Probably?? I suspect support for eavesdropping is purposely built into the silicon for post 9/11 counter-terrorism measures.
combined those [mobile phone records] with publicly available updates from his twitter and FB account
All of which is entirely voluntary. So in fact, presuming a modicum of common sense, they guy was giving away this information willingly. No one made him carry a phone (or to carry it switched on). No one made him pursue his vanity on twitter or FB, these were all choices he made. If he didn't realise that some analysis would reveal more than he wished, more fool him.
If Richard Stallman was truly interested in his own privacy, he wouldn't go about courting publicity wherever he goes. He's as much a media tart as all the celebs who tweet, pose for tabloid photos or give TV interviews. However, if his privacy concern is primarily for me/the rest of the planet - well, thank you very much but I simply don't want your help.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Well until GNU/Hurd is not running on mobile phones, i stick with android...
They used his cell phones coordinates - and just about everything else - to put together his life. In the days of Flip and cell phone cameras and ATM cameras and traffic light cameras and Twitter and txting Big Brother doesn't have to work very hard, and whether you have a cell phone or not, everything you do can be monitored. Maybe if he just wore a tin foil hat everything would be OK.
I think there are a lot of practical and otherwise obstructions to remove the entire library from my house, load it up a truck and lend it to a friend. My friend also just wanted to lend one book.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
Can't sleep clowns will eat me. Can't sleep clowns will eat me. Can't sleep clowns will eat me.
"I remember the day when men were men and broke their own horses!" Sound familiar?
.....it's easy to simply leave it home when you don't want to be tracked/eavesdropped. I feel sorry for anyone who is trying to eavesdrop on my on my mundane days.
And your point is that if Stallman one day decides to have a phone, he should pick an iPhone because it's easier to block?
The benefits outweigh the cons, unless 30 years down the road I get a tumor on my thigh.
This is essentially the same thing as wiretapping, which has been a legally regulated capability for telco's for decades. Keep in mind, that wiretapping also 'transmitted' location information, but since the location information was known a priori by the sender and receiver (of the tap), then it could be omitted from the communication channel (zero information gain).
When internet usage boomed, governments also regulated that ISPs must have the capability to 'tap' your internet connection (also from home), which is why ISPs are now regulated to log everything that users do for several months.
Cellular wiretapping is essentially a combination of voice, location, and data monitoring. The location information is encoded by which cell towers acknowledge your IMEI (and GPS receiver coordinates). Nothing has changed in the least about who has control over the infrastructure (except here). Users of Free Software on communication devices can at least have SOME control over the backdoors - i.e. who can turn on your GPS receiver remotely or force a firmware upgrade over the air. Unfortunately, most of the important software that has anything to do with communication is still proprietary, and locked (encrypted?) in the baseband processor stack on most mobile phones and wireless communication devices. For older GSM mobile phones, some users have the option to swap out the baseband processor stack and run OsmoconBB.
Until cellular voice / data / location information can be sufficiently anonymised there is really little difference about which technology Big Brother uses to monitor you. Keep in mind that you (the sender / receiver) can often be tied back to a specific IMEI number or MAC address (and even communication pattern).
ifconfig hwaddr 00:11:22:33:44:55 <=> iwconfig hwaddr 00:11:22:33:44:55 <=> imconfig imei AA-BBBBBB-CCCCCC-D ?
This is about you. I mean it. Look at the farmers who are forced by GMO companies to abide their wishes. Those farmers have a family to feed as well, which is why they need to be free.
What if you have to pay for anything that you program? What if you have to pay for each implementation that uses images, sound or videos? What if you cannot even define a normal user interface because somebody holds a "one click" patent? What if only a few large company can implement a network application because all specifications are proprietary?
Mr Stallman is fighting for you. So please stop whining and open your eyes.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
Don't know about Stalin since he's dead, but they sure as shit were not Mubarak's dream ;-)
[...] we put a coworker's iphone into a cookie tin [...]
Conclusions:
- The iPhone antenna is worse than that particular HTC
- Blocking radio signals is hard.
The next experiment we are going to do will involve grounding the tin can. (preferably in a new tin box so we have a change to eat pastries again).
It's more probable that it's the contact between the lid and the box that varied. Perhaps one of the tins was lacquered, or something else that prevented a good, low impedance, bare-metal to bare-metal bond being made.
He just needs to stop communicating it this way. He's starting to ratchet up the rhetoric to the point where the fight against non-free software resembles a cosmic war.
This is not a good vs. evil zero-sum game, Mr. Stallman. Eliminationist rhetoric has no place in our society.
I think Stalin would have been pretty disappointed with an instrument of control and oppression that could be circumvented so trivially.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Stallman is always such a fundamentalist. Any philosophy taken too far no longer makes sense.
'The existence and use of non-free software [which] is a social problem. It's an evil. And our aim is a world without that problem.
Okay, so my mom uses a program to help her with her quilting. Who in the hell is going to write that for her if no one is paid to do it?
The whole "programmers scratching an itch" model fails rather dramatically in the realm of applications that lack any programmer interest.
Open source and open standards are cool and a great way to manage a part of the software industry, but it seems obvious that there will always be a need to have proprietary software that is sold by the copy.
Stallman's message would be a lot more inteligible and acceptable if it weren't so ridiculously out there.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
Stallman has a good point, but there is a point where Ben Franklin's quote about safety for security becomes ridiculous. The internet can be used as a means of control, as well as a source of free speech and democracy. It's really all in the safeguards and culture that surround the new technology. You can abuse GPS, but it also gets my directionally challenged arse to the proper destination 9 times out of 10.
I support him trying to change the culture surrounding technology, but closed source has its place too. Actually, I kinda like the competition between the two philosophies.
... the devices in question characteristically feature an "off" switch.
When we are in the work camps and the non-geeks ask us why we didn't warn them, we will respond "Erm, there was this one guy called Stallman who kept trying to warn us, but we wouldn't listen". Stallman will become a legend, maybe even Skylab's Terminators will talk about him once they have destroyed Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
Mr. Stallman: If you are concerned about it recording where you go all the time, wrap it in aluminum foil when you're not using it. Ebil big brother can't track you or listen to your conversations if the phone can't radiate. As for free software, well, if you keep insisting that everyone should use it because it's more free, most people are going to tune you out. If you say people should use it because it works better, more people will listen to you. Stop acting like the complete aspie you are - you can do it if I can, you've got 12 years on me.
Yes, he should select a phone with a poor antenna, and eat more cookies and sweets.
A cell I can't take the battery out and replace it (because it will invariably NOT last for long) is the definition of a throwaway cell. Best to throw it away right away.
Throw them in my direction.
I'm using a 1st generation iPhone with the original "non-removable" battery.
It's almost 4 years old and the battery charge still lasts almost as long as it did when it was new.
Putting moderation advice in your
But Stalin would also have loved computers. They are the perfect tool of big brother. I mean really folks here is a news flash for everybody. Technology can be used for good or for evil.
Jet aircraft can fly people to hospitals where they can get treatment or carry bombs.
The printing press can be used for the Bible, Penthouse, Mien Kampf, and text books. I will let you all argue over which is and is not evil.
And a cell phone can be used to call for help when you car is stranded or if you are hurt.
And the internet can be used to view websites like Godhatesfags, slashdot, whitehouse.gov and REI.com. Again you can pick which of those is evil and which is good.
Welcome to the real world. Many things can be used for good and evil. That is just the way of the universe.
Oh and China is pushing Linux!
EVIL!!!!!!!
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
a lot of you in other countries havent gone through this, but in turkey, everyone knows that they are being listened. the government refuses that they are listening to everyone's cell phones, however, always anything that is detrimental to the interests of the current government 'leaks' to pro-government newspapers from unknown sources. ironically, neither police or secret service unable to 'find' who does this. it keeps on going and going. even the judges' phones are being wiretapped, without authority. some judges started to buy jammers. despite ALL of these are in mainstream media, and everyone discusses, situation still hasnt changed. wiretapping goes on, noone is able to 'find' who is doing it. even ordinary people started to pay attention to what they are telling over the phone to each other. it was officially stated that over 60,000 people were being wiretapped at a given moment, but, naturally these are only those who went through 'due process'. everyone knows much more is being covered.
it is probably happening in usa, u.k. etc too. but, the difference is, the governments there are not so clumsy as to go on using everything they find out by leaking it to their supporter media. they are probably using those much more wisely. how do i know ? well, the entire listening equipment and infrastructure here in turkey was bought and installed by american corporations.
Read radical news here
Ahh, yes. Like his fanatical rant about the evils of DRM in books, and how it could be used to control what we were allowed to read, right? glad that one never happened.
It'd be a lot easier to dismiss RMS as a "nut" if he wasn't right so damn often.
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
"... The existence and use of non-free software [which] is a social problem. It's an evil. And our aim is a world without that problem"
-- Sent from my iPod
.. but I'm kind of expecting Stallman to eventually be found in a darkend room with both himself and the walls shrouded in tinfoil. The man is definately crossing the line into frothing lunatic.
RMS only believes in a very specific view of "freedom" - his own. What about my "freedom" as a developer to choose the license model for my software or my "freedom" as a software consumer to choose which software I get?
When Richard Stallman makes paranoiac comments like that, he makes a pretty good argument for getting a closed-source device. The guy lives on an extremely slow Chinese netbook, avoids using as much of the Internet as possible, and is basically a hermit! His version of "freedom" actually makes him one of the most enslaved people on the planet. He's dependent on what other people say to make judgments because he won't use their devices and has little access to modern news sources because he's afraid of most of the web. Meanwhile, an iPhone owner might not have his pick of apps, but at least he can actually communicate with the outside world and get knowledge about what really matters -- political freedom, not theoretical software freedom.
I heard they can be used for tracking devices and radios that will transmit instructions to your brain. Has Mr Stallman removed these malicious bones from his mouth?
So your country needs better privacy laws. This sort of thing is illegal in Canada, for example. The horse has left the barn: cell phones aren't going anywhere.
Cell phones have at least three uses:
1) being reachable anywhere
2) being able to call somebody from anywhere
3) replacing a landline
1) requires tracking, that's how cellular networks work in the first place. So, buy a Tracphone like the drug dealers do if you're worried about it. Forward to it from your secured asterisk system (assuming you don't trust Google Voice either).
2) also requires tracking, but only when you turn it on, if you leave it off most of the time. Don't turn it on in places that you don't want anybody to know about (like when RMS is strolling through the Cambridge Apple Store). If the FBI wants to know when you're at home or at the office, the cell phone isn't necessary.
3) #1's solution works here too, but if you're only turning it on at home, then why bother replacing the landline in the first place? (OK, aerial cables are fragile.) But with #1 and #2 available, #3 isn't really an issue.
Generally, worrying about "them" tracking you is a good way to puff up your ego - as if you're really that important that people are going to bother analyzing your travel patterns. If you are, there are workarounds.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Nothing at all. Just as long as the watchers are not offended by what they see. Now where did I put that Goatse link again?
Have gnu, will travel.
He's the kinda guy that puts a Post-It note over his laptop's webcam because he doesn't like it staring at him.
Thank you for talking sense.
Prepare to be shunned.
There is nothing wrong with open source as a concept, but calling someone who wants to keep their code to themselves evil is ludicrous. If I spend months and months slaving over hot butterfly brains, no one can tell me what to do with the fruits of my labor. The world is certainly a better place thanks to Torvalds et al, but they had no moral obligation to give away their work.
lose != loose
Conclusions: - The iPhone antenna is worse than that particular HTC - Blocking radio signals is hard.
If a metal part of the phone touches the metal tin, you didn't make a Faraday cage you made an ugly antenna. That or the metal tin wasn't actually metal.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
Well, I can't speak for anyone else, but getting totally fucked over by allowing myself to become dependent on orphanware, is how I became an "OSS geek." Proprietary executables have serious practical real-world disadvantages.
Free software isn't a religion; it's a rational strategic reaction. My Amiga went years without an OS update. OS/2 too. My current work machine can't run a lot of software because it has an obsolete version of Mac OS X and there is no upgrade for this hardware.
The proprietary compilers for the proprietary language that my former employer used (Clipper and Visual Objects) sucked and weren't getting maintained, and there wasn't anything to do about it except throw away thousands of lines of code that our products depended on. (Our solution was: go out of business. Problem solved.)
Then I look at all the computers I now own, and am grateful that every single one of them can and does get maintenance, because they run Free Software. The only way these computers will ever become obsolete, will be if I decide they're too old/slow/powerhungry. (It's surprisingly how many peoples' computers become obsolete for reasons other than those things.) The only weakness is that some of them have Nvidia hardware and I run the proprietary drivers, so some day I will upgrade a kernel, and the driver will no longer exist because Nvidia will decide, "fuck you, user." Fortunately, this day hasn't come yet for those machines -- and it won't come for any of my newer hardware, ever. (Why? Because I preemptively prevented it, by thinking about it before stupidly buying things which require proprietary drivers.)
If you use proprietary software, you get fucked, and that is the common case, not the rare case. It happens to most users at one time or another. Some of them realize what caused their problems and become "OSS geeks," and some of them don't get it, and repeat the mistake again and again and again, never ever learning how they set themselves up to become dependent on third parties.
How do you propose to have a phone that neither itself nor the phone companies know the general (ie, which cell tower vicinity) location of?
And its worth noting that the world we live in simply isnt possible without instant methods of communication. Maybe Stallman wants to live in the 80s, not have a phone, live on campus at Berkeley, read his email by using wget, and not shower, but the rest of us have actual jobs and work to do. The man makes no money nor has a paying job; is it suprising that he thinks that a cellphone is unnecessary?
So its fine and dandy for him to explain how the rest of the world should behave; but Ill note that he doesnt have rent or bills to pay, which makes it rather easier to do things that are simply unworkable in the real world.
It will not be the first or the last time.
I swear everybody needs to read A Tale of Two Cities.
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."
Or as the Talking Heads said, "Same as it ever was."
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
... the man can be a fanatical lunatic, and I think at this point this does the cause more harm than good.
By telling us it how it is? If you have evidence to the contrary, then please inform us. Otherwise, your comments are glib and baseless. I imagine that in police states with high rates of cell phone usage, such as China or Iran, the authorities do indeed track people in exactly this way. It would also be naive to assume that the DHS hasn't tried it yet.
Personally, I've had a cell phone since 1995 and am rather disappointed with them. Even if you ignore the tracking issue, by now so much more should be possible with them. Much of my disappointment has been due to the proprietary software. I used to ask myself, Why is it that these phones only seem to do what my telco wants and not what I want? I mean, I'm the customer, aren't I? Why aren't any manufacturers offering me what I want?
The answer is simple: I am not the customer: the telco is. Compared to the rest of us, telcos buy cell phones in enormous quantities from the manufacturers, so they end up dictating the specifications. Linux-based phones have been around for years in small numbers, but the reason each of those models always seems to die an early death is because the telcos avoid them like the plague. Why? Because it would give their subscribers too much freedom. It's hard to make lucrative deals with 3rd party software companies for the right to, say, offer the only email option on a particular phone, if that's too easy to circumvent.
Like Internet access, since life with a cell phone has become unthinkable for so many of us, at this point I believe it would be appropriate for, e.g. the European Union (don't bother counting on Uncle Sam), to introduce some regulations and standardization that will guarantee end users the freedom and privacy that they deserve. For instance, always make it possible to install a range of operating systems (including FOSS ones) on any smart phone and make geographic tracking unlawful if not approved of by the subscriber.
Er, that wasnt to control what we were allowed to read. That was a legal obligation due to that book not being properly licensed by Amazon; the real world equivalent would be if amazon had sold stolen merchandise-- I dont think you would be allowed to keep said merchandise.
To date, I am unaware of DRM being used for anything except profiteering; please show me one example of its use in censorship (isnt the point of DRM to get someone to use something, just a limited number of times?)
The iPhone antenna is worse than that particular HTC
You were canning it wrong.
I always figure that the more "Big Brother" decides that your cell phone is absolute proof of your location, then the more easily it becomes for criminals to prove they weren't someplace by simply leaving their cell phone somewhere else.
And he would have tight control on cell phones as well. Like North Korea and Cuba does.
Sure the IBM pc would have been allowed. The Apple II never! A mega corp under that government's control is okay. The C-64 really would have been there worst nightmare. BBSs every where and on in every bedroom. Printers would have also been tightly controlled.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
It's often said that there's a fine line between genius and insanity. But in many cases, people seem to straddle the line and jump back and forth between both sides. IMO Mr. Stallman is a perfect example of that.
Slashdot: come for the pedantry, stay for the condescension.
From the article:
But the free software movement he created did lead to the proliferation of Linux-based servers which are prevalent in data centers and power much of the Internet. This is perhaps ironic because Stallman expresses resentment about the credit given to the Linux kernel at the expense of his own GNU operating system.
I do not see how this would be ironic. I think the author does not understand that when people talk about a "Linux-based server" they virtually always mean a server with GNU/Linux.
It's not "Android", it's "GNU/Android"!
Seriously, RMS... wear tinfoil hats much???
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Neckbeards unite in freedom!
Landlines can be used to determine your whereabouts as well.
For someone who is always harping on freedom, Stallman doesn't seem to understand it. I am FREE to charge for my software so that I can eat and pay my bills. My customers are FREE to pay for it if they so choose. The exchange is mutual and consensual. Commercial software developers only FORCE our customers to pay for software if they want to use it. Until we start forcing them to pay for software they don't want, the only evil is him trying to take our FREEDOM of choice away. Stallman isn't some savior, he's the very fascist that he claims to be rallying against.
I really think he has a mental disorder, it goes way beyond tin foil hat. While I too would love to dream about a society where software is just created out of the goodness of peoples hearts, viruses and malware dont exist and everyone is connected to the internet....I usually wake up...Stallman doesn't but does very little to address the reality that people still need to make money, people wont just blindly trust other people and people will be willing to pay for a convenience or better experience than their free equivalent will provide. While I respect Stallman's right to live his life as he chooses IMHO paranoia and fear is not a brand of freedom I want to partake in.
With all due respect to Mr. Stallman here, I find his correlations laughable. Owning a computer, Internet connection, cell phone, GPS, or damn near any other object that can be used to track and profile someone is simply a choice one makes. Risk vs. reward.
And the main reason most intelligent people should not get this worked up about it (including Mr. Stallman) is because we have allowed our Government far too much control already, and unfortunately, there's not a damn thing that "free software" or any other movement short of a revolution is going to do about that. If the Government wants to put you under surveillance, you will be put under surveillance (FYI, they do still have those "analog" ways of surveillance, you know, with humans...). If they want to lock you up and throw away the key, they can. They will. They have. And there's not much you can really do about it.
So therein lies the issue. Restrict your lifestyle to the point of becoming obselete within the very fabric of society under the illusion that you still maintain some level of control and/or anonymity by doing so, or simply succumb to the same level of ignorance (or acceptance) that most people in society function with today, and reap the rewards of being "connected".
Mr. Stallman, you're far too late with your concerns. And you're intelligent enough to know that.
If i dont want to be tracked, u turn it off. Easy enough.
If i turn it on, the next cell station knows where i am regardless if the phone is open source or not.
If i really need it and dont want to be tracked, then i use a sim card which does not require my name and a cheap used handset, bought with cash.
If i am really paranoid, i get the phone from a shop somewhere outside the country of use and only use data transfers with vpns.
So nothing of this has to do much with open source or not, even if i appreciate it. Even if i have an open source phone, if the manufacturer is evil, then he puts the tracker in the firmware.
So i prefer the off/unidentified mobile solution over any "open source snakeoil"
I can't add much to what he says, other than read my older posts, going back for years, on the cell phone issue. I rang the bell on this in 2001, when they made GPS mandatory on all phones sold after 2005. 911 my tired ass. They wanted tracking.
It's impossible to dispute. The phone can track you, eavesdrop on you, identify you. It is used that way, without warrant, now. And in the future, it will only become worse.
If you think that's fine, think of this: do you think you could track any government official in the TSA? The intelligence agencies? Corporate gods?
You can be tracked anywhere. They can demand ID at any time. They can photograph you, record video, take your fingerprints, retina scans and DNA at a whim. But - try taking a photo of a cop. Or use crowdsourcing to track a cop car or a Homeland Security honcho. Try protesting Manning's torture, or the wars. That's the key. All the surveillance is for thee, but not for your overlords. Two layers: those with power and those without. To be tracked is to be a prisoner, de facto.
I wonder if he uses credit cards... debit cards, or hold his money in a bank...
Without someone like him, the moral arguments would be coming entirely from the proprietary camp. As you may recall, Microsoft and others tried to advance a hard moral line against FOSS for a while, saying it was like communism and ought to be illegal.
IMO it didn't work partly because there were clear moral arguments coming from Stallman's software libre corner, and those arguments were associated with the 'GNU' in GNU/Linux enough to lend weight to his views. If people had waited until MS started their anti-FOSS BS to make moral justifications supporting FOSS, I think it would be all over by now and people on /. would be exchanging occasional anecdotes about that embarrassing old slashcode-on-Linux that Slashdot finally got rid of in 2009 because there were no new servers that would recognize OS code signed by FOSS groups (essentially anti-FOSS DRM used to 'protect' people).
calling out astroturfing, and it should b std on /.;-)
He has a lot of trouble using them, what with multipath interference from his TIN-FOIL HAT and all.
Your points are takek, but you allude to a problem you aren't addressing - they aren't phones anymore. They are personal computers, and they are completely transparent to those who want power.
Now, how to make a "superphone" that isn't easily tracked. That's a tech problem. We have the pieces to do it, and no doubt assembling them to solve it will soon be illegal.
Pieces:
1. Mesh networking. No central control. Peer to peer up to a point.
2. Encryption at all points in the communication process.
3. Microphones with a PHYSICAL off switch. Critical.
4. Video cameras with a PHYSCIAL off switch. Critical.
4. GPS with a PHYSICAL off switch. Critical. No software control of the device. Cut off the power at will.
5. A TOR-like onion routing network architecture, to prevent easily tracking the ID of a user.
6. Use internet backbones that are not subject to government interception. No visits from people who have offers you can't refuse. Invent them if we must.
7. Free up, for public use and no other, old TV channel spectrum for mesh networks and new radio backbones for city-city-country comm.
8. Open sourced hardware. No secret sneak circuits. God knows what they are hiding in our PCs and phones now.
9. For superphones to exist, and to address bandwidth issue, restrict users to audio and limited data. If you want to watch TV, get a government-approved cell phone.
Anonymous communications is utterly, almost uniquely necessary to maintain a free society against tyranny. Without it, you are a prisoner, happily eating tacos and watching Lost reruns. As long as you don't bug anyone important (and you'll never know who), you can go on adding hot sauce. But if you ever question, or protest, they have you where they want you. Are you a prisoner, or are you a free human? Choose. Not much time left.
Our real "bosses" in the national security meta-state certainly communicate almost anonymously. They just don't want you to do the same.
it think this is an aspect of a larger issue: as technology becomes more complex, people are incapable of evaluating it, so they give up...this is also a political problem: people don't care to vote, either:-(
so the solution is in the political realm: free/ossoftware should have the same status as firearms, as definted in the 2nd amendment, FOR THE SAME REASONS
I wouldnt beat up Stallman too much. This dialog although seemingly paranoid is a point of view that must be raised and kept active if personal freedom is important. Someday we will be all required to have a mobile device and a facebook page. I always envisioned bar code tattoos on the neck but a mobile device is much better cause of the games. Fighting for our freedom and rights is not a periodic battle but one that has to be fought at all times. Devices and technology that make it easier to track, control, and enslave people should be avoided and be exposed for what they really are... UNNECESSARY.
people on ludes should not drive
in that they prohibit cellphones inside classified environments...
of course, removing the battery can defeat remote monitoring, unless they've got blu-nrg (tm Vs;-) planted in cellphones...and if so, wtf are we still dependent on imported oil;-);-);-)
I wouldn't think it that hard for someone with a makerbot to start printing parts for little hinged glue-on mic covers for cell phones. It's already possible to buy pre-paid sim cards (for T-Mobile in USA, at least) without showing any ID. So, one needn't necessarily suffer the technological shortcomings of a Walmart "burn phone" for a little more privacy in cellular communication.
I did jury service recently.
Once the police had reasonable grounds to obtain a warrant, they were able to obtain records from a suspect's cellphone records. This did not include recordings of his conversations -- but it did include the time and duration of calls made and received, and fairly accurate location information gleaned from his proximity to the transmitters. ... and all of this was admissible evidence in court.
Last week we saw some stuff about Android trojans. The right flaw in Android, and a trojan could make your GPS switch/indicators dummies, and intermittently phone home with your location, quite easily. Or, make it record from the mic, at high gain, and upload the files to base when it's convenient. A black-hat could get that onto your phone, or a government, or a corporation with some part in the development and distribution of the phone and its software (In my case, Google, HTC and Three have all got their mitts on the Android distro at some point in the chain).
Yeah, you have to be a bit of a swivel eyed conspiracy theorist to pin it on governments or phone companies. Over here in Britain, the News of the World phone hacking scandal is topical -- a PI gained access to various public figures' voicemail boxes. So here's a scenario: a hacker under the employ of a newspaper gains physical access to your phone for half an hour or so, roots it, installs location and eavesdropping software, leaves it looking as if it's not been tampered with. I think that's plausible.
The solution is to be smarter about mobile phone use. Ie, learn to use a map instead of needing a GPS if you're going somewhere where you don't want to be tracked, talk to people in person if you don't want to be overheard, etc.
This is not much different from getting credit card records from your bank to figure out that you've been buying porn online again or that last week you went to Vegas instead of the Burbank conference that you told you boss you were going to.
I wonder how many people have already said it in responses to this article?
You are absolutely encouraged to charge people money for the act of writing free software.
But at the same time -- the world doesn't revolve around making the thing you happen to be good at profitable.
I used to believe that Richard Stallman had the key to the salvation of our industry, but nowadays the guy seems to have pretty much lost it.
Free and Open Source Software would probably do much better without that dump of fanaticism.
I'm all for free and open source software, and I don't support intellectual property in the form of patents and copyrights. I recognize that the FSF has brought us the GPL and a coherent set of free software tools. But it's the FSF itself and Stallman's intransigence who has also debilitated us into stupid internal fights over Free Software vs Open Source. It's very good that the people actually writing the software don't care much and just keep doing their wonderful contributions.
Don't listen much to RMS these days, but focus on reducing patent and copyright reaches.
Mobile phones are mostly harmless, and if it's not you can just root it and flash it. There are fully open-source software distributions that you can put into your phone and will not contain impossible-to-audit software. You can even audit what closed source programs are transmitting over the Internet and to whom. It's reasonable to trust certain companies with information about your location in exchange for a service. I like to use Latitude for example. I believe the privacy contract that I accepted with Google is enforceable, and that my data is generally safe for them. It just takes disabling it for it not to transmit my location anymore. I have open source software in my phone that I can audit and check. I can disable my data connection. I have no reason to believe that Google will use my location information for nefarious purposes, and I could chose not to share it otherwise.
Keep it real people. Paranoia is never good. Control over your phone is good, intellectual property is bad. But the beyond-1984-esque paranoia is no subject matter for a civilized conversation. It's just a touch of senility and some Luddite behavior of RMS. I believe he's desperately looking for attention since most of the things he has done are not very visible outside nerdland. He's probably a bit angry at the fact that Free Software (as he calls it) is thriving as Open Source, and GNU is thriving as Linux, and Ubuntu, and Android, and that no one knows who's the FSF outside our industry. Jealousy and the need for an ego stroke seems to be behind all his recent ranting.
I'd tell RMS to keep doing software, keep preaching on the moral good of free vs proprietary, but cut on the paranoia speeches, and the extreme fundamentalism. It's not good for the image of our community. We've been trying hard to go mainstream for many years. It's better to have more freedom than non, and in that same line then mainstream is actually a good thing that RMS seems to be trying to undermine.
What's the problem of having a few proprietary packages in a mostly open stack?, not using mobiles?, not using computers?. Come on, even RMS had to use proprietary Unix once to develop GNU. Before it used to be all proprietary. Now that's the other way around in many industries, including mobile, servers, embedded, I mean, all computing but PCs is quite open. If else we should be celebrating the widespread use of free software on mobiles instead of going into a tantrum.
I for one congratulate Google for Android, Canonical and Shuttleworth for Ubuntu, heck, I even congratulate Apple for WebKit, and Oracle for Btrfs. Heck, even the big proprietary software vendors are all contributing their wares under FSF approved licenses, just as RMS prescribed.
Quit ranting and celebrate old man, your contribution is all over the place. The philosophical side of it is well understood by a large group within the industry. You've won for all what's worth. Change that face. It seems you're hardwired for negative thinking.
But how is that any different from any other computer? If your *work* machine can't run software you need, your work should provide you with new hardware or different software. But the machine keeps running all of the software it always has.
If you use proprietary software, you get fucked, and that is the common case, not the rare case. It happens to most users at one time or another. Some of them realize what caused their problems and become "OSS geeks," and some of them don't get it, and repeat the mistake again and again and again, never ever learning how they set themselves up to become dependent on third parties.
And some of us got tired of having to dual-boot just to play games, of trying to hack various things together to get games to run under wine, of having a selection of high-quality games smaller than the selection available for OSX, of having distro updates hork the system (*cough*Ubuntu 10.10*cough*), of getting told "STFU and RTFM" when asking for help, of being told "you don't want to do that" when asking how to do something without being asked why I wanted to do it, of being told "recompile it with X, Y, Z flags" to solve various problems, of being told to "submit a patch" when asking about a bug or missing feature, of running software with fewer features for... what, ideological reasons? Should I go on?
I'm a software developer as a profession and as a hobby, but I have very little interest in fixing my tools (let alone my operating system!) as a prerequisite to working on the stuff I actually care about.
Honestly, I have no reason to fully switch back to Linux, and I will not have a reason unless (or, if you insist, until) I get somehow meaningfully screwed over by proprietary software. Thus far, the only times I have been screwed over by software in any meaningful way have been caused by problems with Linux (e.g. the aforementioned Ubuntu 10.10 update which pretty much made my system unusable).
IMNSHO, it's kind of stupid to refuse to use proprietary software on the chance that it will screw you over someday. If it works well, use it, and if it does screw you over (e.g. Sony removing OtherOS), then switch to alternatives - and that applies to open source software as much as it applies to proprietary software.
Now, before people flame me, I do like Linux, and I use it daily, along with several useful open source tools, but until the open source community can match a lot of the "evil" proprietary software out there, I have a very strong incentive to stay with proprietary software.
It would be nice if we could rid the world of tricky, restrictive licenses.
Pockets of lock-in restrict truly free development.
Maybe, but he's dead.
Karl Rove on the other hand, is still alive.
It's Obama wielding these powers these days. And he seems content to be just as bad if not worse than Bushco. Just ask EFF or the ACLU.
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
Freedom is very important, but alas Stallman is concentrating on a less important freedom - that of software. A much more important freedom is that of people. If only he would put his efforts and publicity into that goal - of us as people being free. Then he would be worth listening too. How do we become free? Libertarianism.
Stallman has become a parody of himself. This guy only will talk to the press if he can control the published story, and he complains about cellphones being Stalinesque? He's about control, not freedom. Pot, meet kettle.
And they want their rash idealism back.
Remember how EVERYTHING was going to be free? Free information, free software, free everything. Didn't quite work out for good reasons, and now we've moved on. He clearly hasn't. While I agree with him that cel phones are a good way to be tracked, I also know that if I ever *need* to hide from the government, I can put that fully charged cel phone on the back of a UPS semi and get a pay-as-you go.
As others have said, his brand of 'freedom' sounds more like a blend of wishful thinking and paranoia.
How will having an encrypted TOR'd mesh network affect my latency, do tell?
Open sourced hardware.
Whos footing the bill on the SOC design? How are you going to convince a manufacturer to pump out your design? Why should they expect it to be more profitable than the ill-fated OpenMoko?
restrict users to audio and limited data. If you want to watch TV, get a government-approved cell phone.
Im sorry, I must have missed the part in the consitution where thats the government's roll, or why that is not a state-reserved right.
And Im rather suprised that the solution to "government is scary and wants to spy on me" is "outlaw all smartphones that arent government certified"; Im sure Stallman would be THRILLED at that suggestion.
Anonymous communications is utterly, almost uniquely necessary to maintain a free society against tyranny
Im not sure what makes you think thats true; and even if it is, we DO have laws which make it illegal to do unauthorized wiretaps / searches / seizures (in fact, we have an amendment). If you think the government has no issue flaunting that, what makes you think they wont operate TOR exit nodes, or insert backdoors into the smartphones @ manufacture, or forge phony certs (you didnt mention what type of encryption youre talking about, which is rather important if you want to avoid MITM attacks).
When Richard Stallman uses the term free software, he doesn't mean that it necessarily comes free of cost.
Consider a computer program with wide appeal to the general public, not necessarily one that a single customer has commissioned. Once you've distributed the first copy for a fee, the owner of this copy can in theory use "liberty" to price you out of the market and keep you from selling more copies. Then where will you get the money to keep your business going?
For instance, the Mozilla Corporation is for-profit
Mozilla Corp's revenue from the free Firefox software comes from a model similar to Google AdSense for Search. But this revenue source doesn't necessarily apply to every kind of application. For example, what model could a video game distributed as free software use?
Should be GNUtjob. Or GNU/Linuxtjob.
I mean, really... Doesn't he learn from all the times he's been wrong?
Does anyone remember that crazy 'right to read' screed he wrote? You know, about having your books tied to your ID on a single device and not being allowed to share those with another person without special permission from the publisher, and how if the publishers changed their minds they'd just delete stuff from your reading device even if you'd already paid for it and were busy reading it? I mean, has _any_ of that craziness come to pass?
Oh... wait... That pretty much describes the Kindle. Yet at the time he wrote it everyone called him nuts and said that future would never come to pass. Sure, we still have paper books to fall back on, but almost everything he described (with the exception of the love story and the happy ever after ending) HAS come true.
The thing is, you don't change the world by being agreeable. You don't get compromise by being 'reasonable'. Most negotiations end up somewhere in the middle. So if your starting point is reasonable and you meet the corporations and the power brokers in the middle, you're just ever so slightly less screwed. But if you start from an extreme position, no matter how misunderstood you'll be by most people, at least that half-way point of compromise is better for your future.
I'm not seeing the fundamental difference between corporations and governments.
There are plenty of examples of corporate actions that operate at a loss to gain a little power. They can turn that little seed of power into quite the large sum of money. Arguably, abusive monopolies are pretty similar to oppressive governments. It's not exactly the same, but it's similar.
Your initial point centered around the idea that Stallman wasn't sane, so you're a douchebag.
You conflate several issues - open standards, software patents, and FOSS. These are unrelated. One can be a proponent of open standards and yet work on closed source software (example: Opera).
Face it: Free Software has totally failed. Use *only* Free Software (with no closed source drivers and BIOS) and do not use popular Web services (they're closed source, too) and the people actually able to be happy with what is left now are down to a single digit percentage of all people using computers and software and cellphones and the net.
Why? Because the Free Software movement just did not manage to get something really new and usable out of the door. It failed big time, it fucked up, it gambled away whatever advantages it had for a while. There's no Linux and no GNU/Linux and no Hurd on the desktops and laptops and tablets and mobile phones today. And it's more than just ironic that the only system where Linux really got into the hands of the masses is Android with which Google inserts its tentacles in every single of your digital orifices. And people get Android phones not because it is based on Linux but because of the closed source apps.
So: Yeah, Stallman is right and has ever been. But he failed and all the developers and evangelists and idle talkers failed too. It's really that simple. It's an epic, tragic failure. Stallman and all those who fought and bickered about Qt/Gtk and Gnome/KDE and top quoting in email while Linux lost the battle for the desktop and email lost against Facebook are just losers. I hate to say this, but others were better. They delivered. OS X is better than Linux in all practical terms and MeeGo is a sad joke against iOS.
I don't know if he's ever slipped up and accidentally said open source, but he's pretty adamant that he supports free software and *not* open source software.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html
The definitions are almost the same, but they're philosophically different. Free software is about freedom; open source software only suggests that it is a practically better model. That's what Stallman says, anyway.
He also addresses the idea of free microwaves or microwave dinners (tables actually).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNBMdDaYhZA
Supposedly, you can modify a table or a dinner without their blue prints, but it's less feasible with programs. I can see a couple holes in that argument, but they're not gaping. Trying to modify a compiled program isn't impossible, but it's somewhat insane. On the other hand, I modifying a microwave would be easier with the schematics.
It strikes me as odd that Stallman and many /. readers demand free and opensource software all the time.
How is software different from any other product or service ?
Do we expect car designers to "opensource" their car designs and give them away for free ?. Maybe the cars should be free as well.
Come on ! Most people work to feed their family. And if a programmer spends hist work time on developing software he wants/must get paid because THAT is how he feeds his his family. And somebody must pay that salary - and like for all other products/services it should be the customer.
I am willing to to pay a REASONABLE price for my software. We can debate if MS is overcharging - but I would not expect them to give away their software.
Well, I can't speak for anyone else, but getting totally fucked over by allowing myself to become dependent on orphanware, is how I became an "OSS geek." Proprietary executables have serious practical real-world disadvantages.
Free software isn't a religion; it's a rational strategic reaction. My Amiga went years without an OS update. OS/2 too. My current work machine can't run a lot of software because it has an obsolete version of Mac OS X and there is no upgrade for this hardware.
Ouch. You went from AmigaOS to OS/2? Wow. Talk about hard luck. Great systems, but brutal market consequences.
What Apple hardware really doesn't have any upgrade path, aside from the XServe?
The last I checked, there were 4.6 billion mobile phone contracts. Most people in the world possess mobile phones. This means that almost anyone can talk to almost anyone else, instantly. This is of enormous, epochal importance.
While the resources for surveillance have increased, the amount of communication and mobility has increased more rapidly. The more people who have mobile phones, and the more they use them, the less effective surveillance can be. This means that the widespread adoption of mobile phones has meant a net gain in human freedom.
And that is exactly why everyone wants mobile phones.
Except Stallman, who made heroic contributions to the modern world, and yet doesn't understand that he achieved success.
That is the same as saying that low wages, lack of education, child labour and the power of large factory owners were unrelated in the 19th century. Open standards, maintainable products (or FOSS in the software case) and software patents are all about corporate greed and the counter movement from a threatened society.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
if the work on implementing a GSM base station using free software will result in this being proven right or wrong once and for all.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
No Stallman no GNU no GNU no Linux no Linux:
MICROCRUFT rules the world! You want evil? How about a stuxnet worm that blows a reactor?
(To say nothing of the 10's of millions held hostage to a bug-ridden OS and the slimey cohorts who profit from it at your expense.
All you gentle people throwing stones - you're MORONS!
Software and the Net have helped cause popular revolutions for anyone who has no voice. The reaction has been to take away freedoms one paper-cut at at time while surveiling and data-mining us into facism.
Here's one guy with a proven track-record of standing up, for decades, and all you sniveling retards (Anon no-less) can do is , throw verbal stones in your ignorance.
It's been Stallman-vs-BraveNewWorld since the beginning and you're only getting a preview of what the BNW holds in store.
AssHats!
resist propaganda
Nah, his punishment is living to a ripe 150 and mumbling in emacs; which all our adoring spawn will mistake for tongues. Specially enrapt with that one clear rebel-yell (gasp) of a strange and foreign word 'freedom'; long surgically removed from all "Web-ter(Tm)" word-aries (what's diction?) commercially released for non-distribution decades earlier.
resist propaganda
Surely he has heard of it?
All you gentle people throwing stones - you're MORONS!
Blah, blah, blah. Blow me. Now go down and pray at your Richard Stallman altar in your basement. I criticized his latest statement, not everything that has gone before. I actually like the guy. Get a fucking grip, you loon.
I use Cyanogen, a community modified Android. Best parts of both closed and open source models for security.
:P :P
Oh and I put a pretty nice VOIP set up on there and sell them too!
Someone should point out that with Ethernet Over Powerlines the government could use an 800kb connection to record how long there is between each voltage draw on your PC. Or you know, run a keylogger. Open source power supplys!
Oh, also my phones use inter-operable (open source SIP clients, Nimbuzz instead of Skype) parts so you can change with no trouble (best I can do considering I can't secure the POTS).
Facepalm! Guess I told you how to make one, no reason to buy from me
I'm sure your install will go smooth
phaistoscommunications.com - 647-247-8336.