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Proprietary Software is the Driver of Unprecedented Surveillance: Richard Stallman (factor-tech.com)
From a wide-ranging interview of Richard Stallman, president of the Free Software Foundation, programming legend and recipient of at least 15 honorary doctorates and professorships: "The reason that we are subject now to more surveillance than there was in the Soviet Union is that digital technology made it possible," he says. "And the first disaster of digital technology was proprietary software that people would install and run on their own computers, and they wouldn't know what it was doing. They can't tell what it's doing. And that is the first injustice that I began fighting in 1983: proprietary software, software that is not free, that the users don't control." Here, Stallman is keen to stress, he doesn't mean free in the sense of not costing money -- plenty of free software is paid for -- but free in the sense of freedom to control. Software, after all, instructs your computer to perform actions, and when another company has written and locked down that software, you can't know exactly what it is doing. "You might think your computer is obeying you, when really its obeying the real master first, and it only obeys you when the real master says it's ok. With every program there are two possibilities: either the user controls the program or the program controls the users," he says. "It's free software if users control it. And that's why it respects their freedom. Otherwise it's a non-free, proprietary, user subjugating program."
Given the opportunity, users will fuck up anything and everything. There is a reason we don't give users more than the bare minimum of control that they need. It's because we don't want to spend all of our time chasing our tails in circles trying to patch up everything the ruin.
The Free Software Foundation requirements are so restrictive that no mainstream Linux distribution qualifies. Stallman is living in a fantasy world where he thinks billions of people are going to start learning command lines and troubleshooting their own comparability issues. This is not reality.
Open source MUST be made easy to use or else Average Joe User will never use it. In the real world, rightly or wrongly, people care about EASE OF USE more than abstract philosophical concerns about free software.
The open source movement needs more businesspeople and fewer armchair philosophers. We do not need yet another FOSS project reinventing the wheel and having 3-5 developers trying to drum up support for their spin on something that has been done 50 times already. We need to see more along the likes of RedHat and Canonical if open source is going to take over the mainstream.
And then they can't be spied on and tracked via the web, because FF is free software.
Keep dreaming...
... to read the article T_T
For the average person trying to decide whether to run some new support ticketing package on IIS or LAMP is thinking "free" as in beer, not free as in "I can get in and fork this web server library to suit my purposes." Most people have no more sense of whether or not their free-as-in-hackable module or plugin or OS is watching them or recording telemetry for their own good or not. And most them don't care, either. They just want it to work.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
In the past, it certainly drove surveillance. Now it's the cloud driving surveillance (especially since Windows 10 is always tied into one.) Google tracks the pages you view, Facebook does the same plus uploads conversations on your phone to the cloud, the Google Home and Amazon Echo record constantly, etc. Surveillance might happen in closed source non-cloud-based apps, but those are a drop in the ocean at this point.
I think water is wet.
With respect to both Stallman and Slashdot, he's been leading this crusade for over three decades with little change to his message. How is an interview where he reiterates his main arguments against non-free software still news?
Now I think he's just right, and almost all the time.
The ones who destroy property and hurt people are called criminals. Nearly every movement has some dummies who break the law in it's name. In order for it to be a terrorist organization, the movement needs to endorse criminal activity, and antifa does not. The only thing antifa endorses is an opposition to fascism.
Most people in Antifa cannot even define actual fascism. This is video taken from an Antifa rally. The crowd literally CHEERS quotes from Hitler, not realizing that they are Hitler quotes:
http://tomwoods.com/leftists-accidentally-cheer-hitler-speeches/
I hate fascism. That is why I also hate Antifa.
Has crap functions.
Few take the time to research what they are loading, even when offered the choice will load the "Bing search bar" when installing software.
Many lean on "trusted" sources used to be Godfather of software, then became Cnet or Download dot com, then became Google or the IStore.
These entities take only the time needed to profit from offering these softwares, and only remove things that are grievous and give them bad press (when brought to their attention by others).
Laziness and Greed on both parties parts is what drives the distribution of shitty software.
Rick B.
Everyone who considers using Firefox should read its privacy policy.
Firefox collects a lot of personal information, and sends it to a variety of organizations/companies, including Google.
The privacy policy dated September 28, 2017 contains awful stuff like:
Free/Open Software is an ideal of the STEM community. It is great and I think it is better. However the entire global software user base is not of the STEM mindset. Many companies want to have a business model of selling software licenses. Some sell both licenses and support. Stallman has long preferred the idea that we as a society share information the is easy to copy. He supports a reasonable compensation related to creative works. But puts more emphasis on compensation through continued support of that creative work. He cites situations where people use non-free/open software, support ends for that software and people are then often forced to either discontinue use, increase vulnerability or loss of productivity risks, and/or purchase a new license of what is essentially the same software that has extra non-security related enhancements. For the latter argument it is made that users end up paying not just for the enhancements, but also for the original product as well as a built in support retainer in many cases.
It is my belief that the problem Mr. Stallman really wants to fix is this last business model. For every person in the world to have full control over all the information they are given is a great idea. Reality is that the Human condition of greed, or improving ones self by disadvantaging another, prevents FOSS. It, indeed then, would be enough to mandate software and information not be double charged. That either an ongoing support license for use or a support license retainer built into an original product followed by cheaper enhancements with a further retainer built in be possible. Many companies already do this. It isn't FOSS, it isn't giving the user base full control over information. That isn't possible due to greed. In the same way certain governments such as Marxist Communism really isn't possible.
But, to defend greed just a bit, a sense of bettering ones self does drive many people to do things that are not comfortable, that are above average, that give them a sense of fulfillment in their lives. For those of us that embrace FOSS we are free to continue our scientific sharing of ideas. We should be thankful that those who oppose or seek to abuse FOSS must follow the same rules that protect non-free closed software.
There is or can be built a machine that can simulate any physical object. -Church-Turing principle
is how many geeks who should know better, see nothing wrong with so-called "smart" so-called "telephones" -- which are the antithesis of what we computer hobbyists were trying to build for all those decades. The answer is to stop giving Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, and such companies any of your time or money, and to stop being an enabler in the abusive relationships those companies have with your friends and co-workers.
even if all your software on your client device is free software, the issue is the software that actually runs the things that matter is on the server side, where companies and governments run it in private. That is where the most concerning of the privacy-defeating activities happen, and it is beyond the ability of the GPL to fix this problem.
Why? Phrasing it this way is perfectly cromulent. And it follows good "inverted pyramid" journalistic style by putting the most important information first. Sure, you could do it with extra quote marks instead of the colon, but the communication is just as clear this way. Purpose served.
That's why Stallman says "open source" is only the FIRST STEP. Being open means you can even know that it is spyware. The second step is that it has to be open to edits so you can replace the parts you don't like. And if you aren't a programmer, that's ok, there's probably someone who is who is just as upset about the spyware and will write you a (hopefully also open-and-free) tool to fix that part of the code for you.
Nice equivocation. Yes, no movement is immune against some of its members being criminals. Antifa's entire modus operandi, however, is based on violence — For the Greater Good[TM]. They not only don't discourage it, as any half-decent organization would, they openly encourage it:
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Free software (Linux) drives most mass deployments of software (as used for surveillance) because the marginal cost of the software is so small.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I feel we need a whole new category of licences, ones that do discriminate against different types of usage.
It should not be permitted to USE free software to take away the freedom gained from free software.
Also, there should be a licence that doesn't permit distribution alongside proprietary software, linking or no, but thats a different story.
In the bigger picture the free and open software movement is rotting, any system can be gamed, and thats what has happened, we havent evolved and we need to.
Its probably too late.
You can use open source software for just as much spying and lack of privacy.
How we license a product doesn’t dictate what it does or how it is used.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
... keeping the population under control and the corrupt in power is the reason for surveillance, surveillance is not some new thing. That was the elites entire agenda since forever.
In his 1970 book Between Two Ages: America's Role in the Technetronic Era, Brzezinski wrote the following.
"The technetronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society would be dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values. Soon it will be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and maintain up-to-date complete files containing even the most
personal information about the citizen. These files will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the authorities."
Between two ages
The grand chessboard
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The difference maybe being that it's trivially easy to remove any and all spying from OSS without compromising functionality.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The ones who destroy property and hurt people are called criminals.
And the most successful criminals are called "governments". They're the ones who kill hundreds or thousands of times more people than any serial killer, yet they never get punished; instead, they are loaded with honours and enriched.
"Il est défendu de tuer; tout meurtrier est puni, à moins qu’il n’ait tué en grande compagnie, et au son des trompettes".
("It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers to the sound of trumpets").
- Voltaire
(Although nowadays "the sounds of drones, bombers, helicopters, cannon and machine-guns" might be more exact).
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
You appear to be conflating "supporting Hitler" with "having learned, off by heart, everything he ever said".
If he said 2 + 2 = 4 does that mean the answer's 5?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Could I use Kali or whatever to spy on other people? Yes, but that's not the issue.
The difference is that with Windows 10 or Chrome, even if I'm not in Soviet Russia, I'm enabling someone to spy on me.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
So what? Hitler said a lot of things that make sense. For example, he was against smoking and made several anti-smoking speeches.
As pretty much any other dictator. It's quite easy to cut Hitler speeches to support right-wingers as well. I can even do it with Lenin's speeches.
The closest you get to this is Qubes, which is a PITA to run. (I haven't looked at the RCs for v4, which is supposed to be easier.)
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
I bought a surround surroundbar from Vizio for my TV. It has an app to allow you to control it from your phone or tablet. It wanted permission to report it's location with the explanation that it would help it to find "wireless networks". Why a glorified remote control would need to find networks is a problem, but reporting home about where I'm at is out of the question. I just refused to install it and used the remote.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Android is the perfect example. It tells users what permissions apps require, and that doesn't matter one bit to most people. Most people don't want control, they want convenience. 99.99% of people (probably more) use apps which request permissions to pretty much their entire phone: location, accounts, phone book, etc. Apps like WhatsApp or Facebook, and many where the permissions aren't even warranted (such as many games). 'Free' software, the way Richard Stallman thinks about it, does nothing to help. There have been many cases of malicious code being put into open source software, or specific distributions of it, and that's precisely because this code is open, because those who create it have no vested interest in protecting it, and because it's 'free as beer' and people love stuff that's free as beer, and don't look too closely into what it might do.
If you were to try to do that, eventually one of your users would decide they don't like it, fix the software, and their fork would become more popular than yours.
The amazing thing is that you can say something like that, while living in a world where all the malware just happens to be proprietary, and there isn't any Free malware at all. It's like you didn't even notice reality. Even if you lacked the ability to reason out why Free malware wouldn't take off, you had empirical evidence all up in your face, showing you that it simply hasn't. 100 out of 100 malware authors choose to make their malware proprietary. You don't even have to know why; it simply is. (But yes, if you really think about it, then you can pretty easily come up with some great reasons why granting maintenance rights to malware victims would be an extremely stupid idea.)
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
You hate fascism, so you are anti-fascism. You are antifa. It is not people's obligation to memorize every single thing that Adolf Hitler has ever said. And the fact that Hitler said something, does not inherently make that thing bad. Of the quotes used, only one was particularly objectionable, "It's not the truth that matters but victory", and even that can be argued to be woefully accurate, since it is effectively equivalent to "history is written by the winners", and, yeah, it is. I'd counter that both truth and victory matters. I think anti-capitalism sentiments are foolish, but I don't outright reject those who condemn certain aspects of capitalism. And I do reject pure laissez faire economics, as the concept ignores the tragedy of the commons. And the applause that the crowd gives is more of a "that was kinda weird, and you stumbled on your words a lot, but it was brave of you to come down here and say what you had to say. I didn't particularly disagree with any of it" sort of cheer.
That said, yeah, guess what, most people are morons. If you deliver a speech with the correct vocal inflections and you use enough big words and complicated sentences, you can get people to cheer for any damned thing. This is the same reason why shitty sitcoms use laugh-tracks. Just because it isn't particularly difficult to wield a crowd doesn't mean that the sentiment of antifa is invalid.
If you want to condemn those particular antifa organizations that support violence, that's perfectly fine by me. I condemn them too. I believe that this is not the time for vigilantism by a long shot. But just because you condemn those particular organizations does not mean that you condemn antifa. Antifa merely means anti-fascism. It is up to the individual to decide for themselves how that shall oppose fascism, and I very much hope that they do so within the bounds of the law.
Very fair, English is hard some days. :-)
There is or can be built a machine that can simulate any physical object. -Church-Turing principle
Maybe he was just misquoted?
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
The arguments aren't worth the karma hit to want to login.
This is what's wrong with Slashdot.
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
None of the quotes used by the gentleman in that video were fascist. None of it supported authoritarianism, dictatorial power, nationalism, forcible suppression of opposition nor control of industry and commerce.
Utter nonsense. The very first quote was about the destruction of capitalism, which theoretically can only be achieved via dictatorial powers (central control by a small group). Read your Marx. Socialism is central control of production, which is by definition "authoritarian". AND nationalism. AND his quote directly speaks to suppression of opposition.
So that's three of your points shot down by the very first quote.
This second quote, "Benefit to the community precedes benefit to the individual", is the core belief of both Socialism and Communism. It is blatantly collectivist and therefore inherently authoritarian.
The third quote is just more of the same: "The Third Reich will always retain its right to control the owners of property..."
Again, a central-control, authoritarian idea.
Your protestations are just ludicrous. He was saying exactly those things you claim he was not.
You don't know the difference between economics and arithmetic? Must be one of them thar librerlarts majors.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The USA's very existence is based on the same thing - an armed insurrection against the God-anointed King.
But I suppose that was OK.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
And "fascism" simply refers to "fasces" — or "bundles". Are you sure, you want to argue over semantics?
Your hope is misplaced — whatever the word "antifa" means or is supposed to mean, the organization(s) calling themselves or known as "Antifa" today are violent by nature, admit being violent, and are proud of the violence.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
The violence of the revolutionaries was aimed at the king's soldiers, not the fellow civilians disagreeing.
No, it was not against the King — it was for Independence. For self-government. The so-called "Antifa" aren't opposing the Federal government at all — they're happy to see its power expand (which, accidentally, makes them Fascist). They simply don't like the current President, that's all.
Whether that was Ok or not, thanks for conceding, that the violence of today's "Antifa" is not accidental, but pervasive and systematic, and encouraged by the rest of the organization.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I like your faith.
However, I reckon you could easily hide spyware in open source software such that it is very hard to find and impossible for the vast majority of people.
If Ubuntu put spyware in their Linux distribution, how would you find it? And don't say "I'd audit the source code" because, firstly there's rather a lot of it and secondly, you have no guarantee that the source code you have is the same source code from which Canonical built the binaries.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
O Rly?
Won't even bother reading the rest, because you're a proven liar and most probably fat too.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It's also impossible for the majority of people to crack software. Yet it seems that nobody has ever had a problem getting their hand on it.
The reason for this, as with finding backdoors and spyware in OSS is that it only takes ONE person to remove the part that bugs people, repackage it and release it to those that cannot do it themselves.
And it's also trivially easy to see whether the source code I have is the same that canonical uses to build its binaries. Hash both binaries and see if they come up identically.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Destroying capitalism is not only done with fascism. It can theoretically be done democratically. It can also be done by an unorganized populist revolt. Again, to clarify, I think destroying capitalism is stupid, but it is not inherently fascist.
If ya didn't know, Hitler, and the Nazis were extremely anti-communist. I agree that the second quote is collectivist, but that is not inherently authoritarian. I'll grant you that "the Third Reich will always retain it's right to control the owners of property" is a fascist statement. But, again, When you change the line to "the United States..." and you are not speaking as a leader of the United States, (As Hitler was a leader of the Third Reich when he made that statement, whereas this is just some random unnamed protester) then it comes off as a condemnation of the state of the united states government, not as a mandate. So, again, it's not fascist. It's decrying the current US government as being fascist. Again, being pro-US government, I don't approve of it. But, you can be antifa, and anti-us government.
Perhaps don't be so quick to dismiss a person's ideas as ludicrous. You're right to disagree with the statements made. But you're wrong to think that they can only be interpreted as promotion of fascism. They make no mention of nationalism, no mention of a dictatorial power, no mention of suppression, and only mention government control over property as a condemnation of the US.
You are more than welcome to condemn any organization calling themselves antifa that admit to being violent and are proud of that violence. I've visited a number of antifa websites, and they do not admit to violence, nor pride in violence. I've been to other sites that do admit to violence, and sure, fuck those guys. (Or better yet, help them to understand how vigilante violence outside of the law does not serve the cause of opposing fascism.) But it is absolutely possible to be nonviolent antifa.
Likewise, I believe that the best way to remove people from fascism is to welcome them, listen to them, and help them slowly to understand the the internal conflicts within their set of personal principles required for them to support fascist notions and demagogues.
All that said, it might be approaching time to fall back and concede this particular term. It's a term from the 30s from when organizations were fighting actual fascist regimes, at which point, violent conflict is potentially (arguably) required. It has a muddied meaning in the modern conversation because, like so many other modern movements, it is loosely organized, and does not have a formal statement of goals and values. You see similar problems with "alt-right", "occupywallstreet", "gamergate", and to a lesser extent, "Black Lives Matter". In each case, some people may hold to noble uncontroversial principles, but because they are not explicit and formalized, negative aspects latch on and any noble sentiment becomes silenced. I'd like to see our society stop trying to organically build their movements out of trending hash-tags and start building movements by coming up with beliefs first and a name second. It is otherwise just too easy to usurp a hashtag. Maybe, in time, there will be a separation of nonviolent anti-fascists, and violent antifa, splintering into two different names with more formalized positions. But that has not happened yet.
Of course, it is inaccurate to define terms by the mere etymology. And yet, that's exactly what you did, when you define "Antifa" as simply "anti-Fascist" — a statement I ridiculed so successfully.
It is not just their violence (the forcible suppression of opposition), that makes them pro-Fascism. They are all, to a man, collectivist and see nothing wrong in expansion of government and its ever wider control of industry and commerce. They may not be nationalistic, but this part of the definition you offered is not, actually, present in the dictionary one.
And that is, what various people in this thread have been telling you and others. "Antifa", contrary to the word's etymology, means "Fascists".
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
None of it to be praised — most of it to be ashamed of.
More bullshit. The revolutionaries had nothing against the particular king — George III — indeed, with the British monarchy what it was at the time, it made no sense to single out one person, who didn't even have all that much power.
No. The revolution was against the ruling regime — for all the enumerated reasons. The King, whoever he was, was merely a symbol of it.
On contrast, the "Antifa" today are perfectly content with the regime overall — indeed, they'd like it to be more oppressive (and Fascist): higher taxes, more mandates, more regulations. They don't hate the President, as Americans hated the King. Indeed, had it been President Clinton, they would've loved it... They just hate Trump — the one person.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
MANMAN is proprietary, been around since the 1970s and runs on FORTRAN.
All it does is make drive MRP, I don't think it does any surveillance. Except maybe lot and serial number tracking. And that's an add-on module.
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT