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Can Linux be banned in .au?
cpt kangarooski writes "Well, an enterrising reporter over at Salon has found that certain blue comments in some Linux source code may make it eligible to be censored in Australia. Take a look here " Mmm...fun with censorship. Congrats go to Jamais Cascio (known as cynical around here), Slashdot reader, and author of the Salon article.
Perhaps a situation in which source code should NOT be considered communication....... :)
LOL! :)
"Fuck" is vulgar only if you make it so. Personally, it doesn't offend me one bit.
If you allow these bastards to control what people say and do, then they'll think it's okay.
This certainly is NOT okay. I really used to like Austrailia, but between this and gun laws,
they're pretty much off my list of places I'd like to visit.
Is there a complete list of banned words available somewhere? I'd like to add it to my signature :)
:)))
Fuck censorship and screw censors (that includes you slashdot-moderator-assholes!)
"anarchy", "gothic", "pierced", "tattoo", "Pamela" (just to piss off some people down under
If you're kid is 14 and hasn't heard those words, then something is *wrong*.
The idea of vulgar 'words' is simply crazy.. Words can't be vulgar, actions and ideas can. In many cases the word fuck has nothing to do with sex (which isn't vulgar anyways! it's perfectly natural).
It's sad to see slashdot subscribe to this BS too, I'm sure my post will be moderated down for the use of such language..
Words can't harm anyone.
Australia is going to block "be*ver"? The Canadian national animal!!? :)
So here is a description of the Canadian nickle:
It has Queen Elizabeth II on one side and a small fur bearing rodent, which is noted for its engineering skill. (Although it uses damn not f*ck)
I don't see a problem here. In the long run, this whole censorship mess is self-correcting. Australia will ban anything that offends anyone... which means things like Linux aren't used in Aussieland... which means that the whole country begins to slip behind the rest of the world -- a process accelerated by the brain drain they'll have as smarter people flee to other places... which means their entire society will become much weaker... which means they'll be invaded and conquered by one (or many) of their Asian neighbors whenever the next major war happens... which means the Australian censorship will result in the destruction of the Australian society.
See? No problem.
(Oh, you can replace "Australia" with any other country who does similarly stupid things.)
Encrypted web proxies.
See https://lm.lcs.mit.edu.
--Scott
Why can't people like that start "their very own internet" filled with decent and moraly and politicaly correct content? That way they won't bother the (normal) people that like to live in a "free" world where anybody can say what they like without getting arrested for it. Looks like we need some sort of web based Amnesty International!
They included this so I am assuming that they are Christians. Um.. didn't they just ban the Bible? I thought christians viewed that as a good book?
Instead of sending them material that will only reassure them that they passed the right law, why doesn't someone send them polite, well-informed letters asking them to change this law? Harsh tactics will only inspire harsh reactions.
When did you graduate? History has changed a lot in the last couple of decades...
F*ck is _never_ a proper engineering term. I'm against censorship, and definitily not a prig -- but I'm surprised that someone smart enough to kernel-hack has such a small vocabulary.
Sure it's funny...when you're 14...adults should have better verbal skills.
As the proverb says, "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions"... good intentions from some, Hell for all.
It's not unusual for politicians to attempt to stifle thought that contradicts their sense of the world, and then restrict the whole of humanity using children as the excuse. I'd have difficulty recalling anybody from high school that turned evil simply upon opening his mind... but the unconventional is always targetted by the clueless.
That, plus perhaps politicians over there are just as willing to ignore rationality, moderation and actual thought; and go for sensationalism, emoting, press conferences and votes as over here in the States -- a tactic loved by defense lawyers and demagogues worldwide.
No 'Clinton' ? :-)
The solution is not to change the comments in the
Linux source code, it is to change the law in
the AU. Just because someone passes a stupid law
you should not need to change what you are doing.
Why not just say "Black people can just ride on
the back of the bus".
Yeah, and next year we will learn that "int"
has been declared illegal in some other country.
Do not change the source. I am all for adding
some new "Fuck Australian censorship!" comments
in.
Why stop at Linux? Let's get slashdot banned too!:
"Hey Senator Richard Alston: Suck my dick!"
:-)
who's version of "Funniest Home Videos" had a clip of a kid jerking of a kangaroo? So having the word "fuck" in the source code is much worst.
Wrong.
Advice from the OFLC is that Linux on CD is
computer software and thus should already
be rated, as games on CD are now.
Given the `fuck' exists in both the source
and binary, an appropiate rating is M (the
OFLC uses the rating for film, arguing that
CRTs in computers are no different from
CRTs in TVs).
Linux distributors and resellers may be fined
for selling unrated CD-ROMs.
Linux downloaded from the web falls under the
new classification and blocking rules.
Cheers,
glen.turner@adelaide.edu.au
Linux -- rated MA
(if you are under 15, please get your parent's permission before using an ftp client).
Cheers,
Travis
I don't want to get involved in another civil war.
What if 'fuck' was a variable name? A replacement policy may result in namespace conflicts and an inability to compile the kernel! Perhaps it is time to fork kernel (clean tree + dirty tree?)...
Actually, they've demonstrated the opposite. But good that you brought it up.
I think you meant Joe McCarthy, not Eugene.
You weren't reading very well in History class, now, were you?
Carry on!
One of the better lines from that 80's highschool classic, Heathers. Check it out if you haven't, nice black comedy. =)
No! Don't go saying that and spoiling all the fun here. Can't you see we're having fun peeing all over ourselves in righteous indignation?
Somebody kick the dude outta here. He's introduced a thread of realism. Next thing you know we'll have to look away from our monitors and notice the real world.
After optimizing compiler:
switchTo.linux()
Interesting--this is probably the first time in my entire on-line life where comparisons to Nazis are sufficiently on-topic not to run afoul of Godwin's Law.
Cheers, Australia. And remember to thank your government for protecting you from this here furriner who thinks your government should go and fuck itself.
If reasonable adult Australians find the kernel comments offensive then they should not use the Linux kernel. And now that they know all about morality, they should concider teaching us about such high matters and not leave us in the dark. Humanity will forever be gratefull to them.
I like the word "fuck" better.
Hardly. Anyone resorting to foul language, is either dim-witted or the victim of his/her own bad habit. Don't pretend it's a badge of honor or accomplishment -- it's a telling sign of mental dwarfism.
By the way, I _have_ seen alot of badly messed up code in 15 years of programming. I've never once resorted to the "Seven Deadlies" to comment the original programmer's lack of skill.
Forget about just Unix, chap. Any operating system will have a 'root directory' which denotes where certain files go.
Good heavens.. the implications of the phrase 'root directory' are quite undignified.
How can a responsible parent deprive his son the right to read the evangelium of Torvalds and his 300 apostles? This beats me.
As the word ROOT has the same meaning as *uck in Australia and New Zeeland, will he/she also try to prevent him from gaining rootaccess?
It's all about hypocrisy.
On a related note, I get a real kick out of the Trinity Broadcasting Network...any number of their shows are taped in a studio that looks like a Las Vegas brothel...everything is the color of GOLD. It seems so hypocritical to see a religious institution that alleges concern for the plight of humankind, and yet screams Mo' MONEY Mo' MONEY Mo' MONEY!
It'd be _silly_ to do an Internet Death Penalty to Australia. It'd block the SSL telnet gateways/steganography channels/hacked p0rn ftp sites we could put up to help them. What we could do is to _flood_ them with p0rn. And, _of course_, _lots_ of open telnet gateways to avoid blocking (is there any good netizen here to go there and _hack_ all the censorware boxes to turn off filtering?)
Hi. Back in '92 when I was 15 years old, had the whole Minix/Linux thing going on.
What's wrong with 14 year olds reading the Linux source code, again?
I've seen newsgroup postings discussing the issue of spanking as an acceptable method of discipline for children. And HOLE? What about BLACK holes? What about the Beatles and their movie Yellow Submarine, where one of them mutters, "I've got a hole in me pocket..."? Maybe the prudish little pricks that passed this legislation figured that there'd be too many references with the word ASSHOLE and their own name in close proximity.
I have a good idea who is personally responsible :)
for majority of these "fuck" words. I also have
that person for a friend and I approve his
actions
BTW, he is consistent in all languages.
--P
> Besides the protection of minors starts at home. You don't want your kids seeing stuff they shouldn't, go online with them.
You have got no idea on how fscking irritating is to hack something with a non-techie loser watching over your shoulders.
I HATE EVEN PEOPLE WALKING NEXT TO ME WHEN I'M CODING!!! IF SOMEONE STARTS LOOKING AT THE FSCKING SCREEN I REDUCE ALL THE WINDOWS TO THEIR TITLEBARS AND CHANGE THE SCREEN FOCUS TO HIDE THEM TOO!!!
Double plus ungood!
Billions of people fuck, shit, and piss every day.
Get over it. What a bunch of weenies. Fuck you, Australia.
Talk about missing the point. It not about the 'right to cuss'. The article about cuss words in linux source, besides the minor point that it could happen, is an example of the absurdity
that is this legislation & others like it.
Say hello to the thought police.
Someone needs his ritalin...
... Umm...
Perhaps some therapy? Do you have feelings of coding inadequacy? I know, it's embarassing for you when people see that you're having trouble keeping track of all those GOTO statments in your BASIC.
10 PRINT "I'm such a h4x0r!"
20 GOTO
posted by: JerkBoB (jerkbob_at_pobox_dot_com_spamfree)
Censorship wouldn't be an issue if the developers of linux conducted themselves like mature adults. GROW UP! If linux is to replace windows in the corporate world, the developers of linux must act responsibly and professionally.
replace all occurences by shagged and we can :)
get banned in the UK also
An open letter to Bill Clinton:
If you need a new place to bomb to divert attention from some domestic issue/sex scandal, you're welcome to Canberra.
Anonymous Australian.
i love this -- from /arch/sparc/lib/checksum.S
/* Sun, you just can't beat me, you just can't. Stop trying,
* give up. I'm serious, I am going to kick the living shit
* out of you, game over, lights out.
*/
Why not a new distribution with all comments ;-)
removed? It might be called "Fuck free Linux"
Censorship in Australia isn't as bad as the US, its just we've got a conservative government at th emoment, sucking up to a "morals crusader" who holds the balance of power in the senate. I doubt this internet censorship would be enforced much. The "morals crusader" has been voted out and will be going back to his Tasmanian hideaway in about a month.
Solution to the censorship problems in Australia:
** Vote Labor next time **
As an australian atmo, I personally feel sick and ashamed to be one. This whole bill was smuggled though while there was a tax debate, which means *no-one* heard about it - and the australian media didn't cover it either :/
:)
The thing that makes me sick is that this is partially feasable - Telstra (our telco, government owned) bought AARnet a few years ago, which also had the only major non-telstra overseas link. All content coming in goes through either telstra lines, or an ISP's satellite. Telstra can monitor all traffic in over their stuff (approx 80%?), and put ridiculous fines on all non-telstra ISP's (there's another rant about telstra forcing out competitors to its own isp by hiking up its dedicated line charges).
And yes, i'm considering moving overseas
If they are censoring by keyword search, then they run the risk of censoring legitimate sites, like www.whitehouse.gov or www.senate.gov. Our high school ran into trouble when its favorite censorship software blocked all of the sites the Government class needed to visit. There was also a case where a piece of software blocked all pages with 'cum' on it, cum as in Cum Laud, etc. AOL I think blocked access to 'breast' as in 'breast cancer'. I'd also worry about lawsuits if a not bad site gets blocked and someone sues about it.
In conclusion, they must not be using a keyword block or they run real risk of looking really silly. Therefore, they must have planned to block by IP address or by sitename. Though I wonder what would happen if you spoofed www.whitehouse.gov for a few hours, they block it by IP, and then 'oops.'
Q - What happens if someone hacks a site and puts naughty language up on it? Does that site get banned forever?
-B
I'm an Australian ./er, and up to this point I've been quite proud to be from oz. However my somewhat small confidence in our government has been completely removed by the stunt that they've pulled.
:-(
As was said in a previous post, the government has quickly pushed the new law through the senate and completely ignored the *experts*, the nation wide protests, and the general opinion of anyone who gave a damn - oops don't want to get slashdot banned.
We really need some drastic action down here. I don't know how a law is *removed* but I imagine it's not a quick process
What do you do when the government ignores you ? I'd be interested to find out what I can do to help our seemingly hopeless situation.
Send them pictures of wildlife like beavers.. Gothic archetecture of europe... MIT's hacks... maybe greek mythology any thing with nymph in it... Recipies with pork or those which need a pot...o rware/ifilter.html
well just go through http://www.anatomy.usyd.edu.au/danny/freedom/cens
The Precedent:
...
1. Serbia violates civil rights of Kosovar citizenry.
2. US & NATO bombs the crap out of Serbia.
The Case:
1. Australian Government violates civil rights
of Australian citizenry.
2.
amaretto and cherry are banned?
WTF?
"Ve muzt pertekt zhe citishenry vrom foreign fewds!!?!?!"
> "reasonable effort" is undefined I believe
It is extremely well defined, "reasonable" being
a precise legal term, much like hackers regard
"word" as a precise CPU term. Three clauses of
the legilsation deal with "reasonable".
Essentially, reasonable effort is the blocking of
access to the site using the best available,
commercially viable technology within 6pm of
the next business day after the ABA notifies
you that an overseas site is to be blocked.
More worrying is that the same deadline is
attached to an ABA direction to prevent
access to "all similar material"!
You miss the point with the Linux source. It
will be rated M if it contains the word
"fuck". The guidelines of the Office of
Film and Literature Classificaton are clear
(and on the web at www.oflc.gov.au).
Linux distributors are currently breaching the
law: (1) they are selling M-rated software
on CD without a classification appearing on
the CD and (2) they are selling M-rated
material to people under 16.
When the Broadcast Service Act amendments
pass the House of Reps then major Linux
sites such as mirror.aarnet.edu.au will
also be M-rated. This isn't of much
concern, as the age-verification steps are
only required for R-rated material.
None of the above means that I agree with
the govt's stupidity (and I have been interviewed
on AU TV and radio saying as much). But it is
important to get the facts right, especially
in a forum like slashdot that seems to contain
more emotion than the considered logical
thought that programmers are notorious for.
People sprouting the wrong facts simply undermine
the case for those of us arguing with the
correct facts.
Cheers,
glen.turner@adelaide.edu.au
According to the article, the filtering software favored by the Ausie censors bans things with "names such as Pamela". Are they completely out of their head?!?
I guess they don't want to hear about the international space station project (one of the Astronauts is Lt. Col. Pamela Ann Melroy).
There goes Australian Women's Lib history, where Pamela Denoon was apparently a major player.
I wonder if it will also filter out info on the PAMELA Magnetic Spectrometer, scheduled for launch two years from now.
Do these censors have any idea how stupid they look when they suggest things like this.
----
Open mind, insert foot.
./i386/isa/aic6360.c:
- A.P.
--
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
What's next, running strings on all binaries looking for obscene material?
Well... the word 'binaries' itself is on the banned list ( here), so I guess that would be unnecessary. If they do decide to allow linux, it would have to be source-only distributions. Wonder what Microsoft will say about this.... :)
Ah well. Other horrible (and thus banned) words: mushroom. toys. leather. newsgroup. doom. web. shy. search. fist. glamour. beer. jenny...
Ouch. My head hurts.
It already is offensive in many parts of Northern Virginia. Lots and lots of people up here with a very large stick inhabiting their rectal cavity willing to go to court at the drop of a hat. This is due, in large part, to the large number of political extremists who like to hang around Congress trying to push their own agendas. I suspect other countries have a similar situitation around their lawmaking bodies, hence laws like this.
I read the internet for the articles.
I think it would be hilarious if the Austrailan parlament (that is what you use down there isn't it?) suddenly had an AdultCheck id on their main site because their webmaster was named Pamela or whatever, the list of words is large enough that virtually no site with content can escape.
I read the internet for the articles.
What, only reasonable means? What about nice, unreasonable means such as revolution.
Unfortunatly, Australia does not (AIUI) have a liberal democracy. Australia is like a giant prison and the politians are prison wardens. The only thing that has changed in the 211 years since its colonization is it is no longer ruled by England and the prisoners get to vote (not that it does them any good). The deomocracy is a facade.
Thankfully, I managed to escape after 7 years `imprisonment'. actually, it wasn't quite that bad, but I could feel the oppression. I've now been in NZ for almost 5 years, and though I rather like it here, I'm starting to wander. Our `esteemed leader', Jenny Shipley (haha, she'll be banned to:), seems to be very pro oppression. She may be NZ's first female primeminister, but from what I've heard, she's very unpopular amoungst the NZ women. My point here is I'm worried about NZ following in Australia's footsteps (she's very pro christianity too (as in the oppressive sort, I realize there are more liberal sorts out there)).
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
I personally detest censorship, especially on the net, but I wish people who tried to do it would at least be smart (I know, an oxymoron..) while trying to block out 'unsuitable' stuff they're also blocking out some of the most useful resources on the Internet, like information on gothic architecture, or looking up information on a long lost relative with the first name of Pamela.
`Jag
Let's find the email addresses of every member and fuctionary of their parliament and send them porn. Let's find every law official and send them porn, let's find everyone and anyone who would be involved with this stupid law and send them porn...let's make their filtering software overload, make their email system useless, and make sure to put in a message about how important free speech is on the Internet.
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
how much Australian legislation would fail to pass the filter?
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
Posted by NJViking:
./arch/sparc64/kernel/ptrace.c:/* Fuck me gently with a chainsaw... */
Posted by NJViking:
Have you noticed most of the greps are from the sparc part of the source tree? Hehehehe..
-= NJV =-
Posted by NJViking:
Actually:
sed s/fuck/fsck/g would do even.
Posted by Brendan Byrd/SineSwiper:
I mean, they have the same censorship laws. Austrailia Online?
--
Brendan Byrd AKA SineSwiper
Computer techie, PERL master, and all-purpose Internet guru
Posted by Kilbert:
In the June 1999 issue of Linux Journal they had an article(page 82) about the Totalisator Administration Board(TAB) of Queensland using Linux for their betting booths. Now wouldn't censorship put all of these guys and gals' hard work to nothing? I'm sure the representitaves in Austrailia like to indulge in a little betting after the daily round of votes...but I could be wrong.
later,
Kilbert
"anarchy," "gothic," "pierced" and "tattoo?" Yeah, dangerous and harmful words if I ever had to choose them. I had no idea the legislature down there was so backwards; just why, exactly, do they feel the need for these token moral crusades? The policitians admit they know their plans aren't even close to feasable, but they're in it for the press anyway.
Big fscking deal. This can be fixed easily in the next kernel release with:
/* Fuck Australian censorship! */ /* Fsck Australian censorship! */
-
+
What's next, running strings on all binaries looking for obscene material?
$ grep -i 'fuck' `find /usr/src/linux -name *.h -print` /usr/src/linux/include/asm-mips/mmu_context.h:/* Fuck. The f-word is here so you can grep for it :-) */
:)
:)
as for the censorship laws over here... well heh. i think there are going to be some very red faces
smash
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
--
Actually, Linux should be safe. Comments do not exist in the binary versions, so only the source is a problem. Minimal distributions can be made binary-only, with "full" distributions including source. (That's legal, as GPL doesn't -REQUIRE- you to bundle source & binary, merely have the source available.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
sed s/fsck/fuck/g might cause some problems, though. ;)
or Middlesex come to that.
Hmm.. I wonder if any of the Australian cricket team are playing for Essex this year?
Not to mention Richard Alston, the communications minister and architect of this oppressive law. I foresee a Big Brother Award for him.
Your computer has been Alstoned.
If there were a fewk occurrences in the linux source tree, can you imagine the Win9x source?
/* this code fscking sucks */ /* damn this fscking code */ /* i am 9 years old and have been kidnapped to write fscking code - halp! */
kerlel32.dll:8
kernel32.dll:9
kernel32.dll:11
hah hah hahh
coding is by nature a violent act - getting the machine to do what you want, how you want. A few explatives are bound to erupt from any given programmer.
Four-digit slashdot ID. Recognize.
While this more or less answers my question about restricting Linux -- which will probably be the first operating system to be rated MA for coarse language [...]
The US ratings system and the Aussie system are not exactly comparable. Aus-MA is *roughly* like the US-R, except that it's 15 and up (US=17/18 and up), and US-R can include harder stuff than it sounds like Aus-MA can. The US doesn't have an M rating, but it does have a PG13 rating, which seems to be a little more restrictive than an Aus-M.
The Australian R is the weird one, because -- as I point out in the article (yeah, I'm the one who wrote it) -- it's so ambiguously broad. The entire legal description of the Australian R rating for film is:
Film (other than X or RC) containing material that is unsuitable for minors.
How does that apply to web content? What is "unsuitable", and who decides? My article was really just an attempt, in a semi-humorous way, to show how ridiculous censorship laws are.
--Jamais Cascio
My home page, with links to other articles
There is nothing more effective in disabling the restraint I usually exercise in my use of language than fucking political morons trying to regulate what their tiny minds cannot comprehend, and thus fear.
it can be found here. they threw a dictionary through the filter... let me list a few of the more stunning ones...
adult
alcohol
amaretto
amateur
anarchy
anus
aryan
available
babe
banging
bangle
bare
bastard
beaver
beer
bikini
binaries
blonde
bloody
bomb
bottom
bra
bud
buxom
chat
cherry
chicks
cigar
circumcise
conception
condom
destined
doom
dynamite
enema
eros
escort
explosive
fantasies
fist
flesh
fondle
free
frigid
geisha
gin
girlie
girls
glamour
gothic
grenade
gun
hack
hacker
heroine [no more female heros?]
hole
homo
incest
intercourse
jenny [???]
kill
killer
kissing
klan
klux
knights [???]
knives
ku
latex
leather
lesbian
lingerie
liquor
lover
well, you get the picture... it's f***ing outrageous.
)O(
the Gods have a sense of humor,
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
To err is human, to moo bovine
There's a good version of it for modern times by Alara Rogers that I like, and have hanging around somewhere:
Google is really useful, let me tell you.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Well, one reason that people bow down to the man is that they have too much to lose. Taxes now are scads higher than they were during the times leading up to the Revolutionary War. And people accept it because, I think, they've got too much to lose. Our leaders back then were smugglers, firebrands, freethinkers....
The two routes that the state tends to drive rebels down are to either make the burden placed on the people so great that it crosses a threshold, or to take away anything that was holding him back. A classic example: Luke is unwilling to even go to Mos Eisley with Obi-Wan, until he discovers that his aunt and uncle are dead. Then he helps bring down the Empire. Me, I'm on the threshold route myself, and while I am majorly pissed off at the government, corporations, etc. I'm not doing anything. Yet.
Anyhow, as for Civil Disobedience, there's one thing that really cheeses me off about that. A *good* practicioner of it will break the law, and willingly accept his punishment. That's what keeps it civil, people. To break the law because the law is not just, but to accept the law because the law still deserves some respect in a general sense.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Am i the only person who wondered WTF a sound format had to do with Linux getting banned?
rOD!
--
Rod Begbie done this, and he's not
When I read Stallman's paper ( The URL again), I got the impression that when he removed the obscenities from the GNU Emacs source code, he wasn't really afraid that he'd face a quarter-million-dollar fine and five years in prison if he failed to do so.
I thought it was pretty obvious that he was more making fun of the stupidity of the law, as well as, more seriously, arguing how truly bad it was, by pointing out what anybody, even Senator Exon, must see as an absurd consequence.
I am partly responding to a couple of posts above, which seem to be responding in genuine fear to the possibility that the Linux source code would be banned in Australia. This is obviously absurd, and I got the impression that this article also was using this example to show how awful the law is, but not actually suggesting that it would happen. It's not "When we put in these filters, Linux source will be blocked," but rather "If we were to put in these filters, Linux source would be blocked, so we clearly cannot do that."
Then again, it often happens that just when I think I've become entirely disillusioned, something happens that shocks me anyway, showing that I still had some ideals left -- something that I thought was plain common sense actually turns out to be idealism. Could this be the case here? I mean, what kind of idiots have you got running things down there? Or do I not want to know?
David Gould
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
Check out Richard Stallman's response to the USA's Communications Decency Act of 1996:
Censoring My Software
He found himself in the same situation. The gist is that the GNU Emacs package includes a copy of Weizenbaum's Eliza program, which has a feature to detect profane and obscene words and admonish the user to "watch your language, please". Of course, in order for this to work, the code has to contain a list of such words, which makes it obscene.
So, RMS distributed a special CDA-compliant version, whose Doctor program had that feature removed. Ironically, this means that if you swear at the new version, it will swear back at you, where the "obscene" version would not.
I suppose this would have applied to Linux source as well, but GNU Emacs is the example that he chose to focus on at the time, and it works for the Australian situation now, as well. In a way, it is an even better example than the Linux source, because in Eliza, the obscenities are actually integral parts of the program's function, and especially because of the irony of the fact that removing them actually makes it possible for the program to output obscenities.
David Gould
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
That's me fscked then :
http://www.incubation.demon.co.uk/
... should show why.
But anyway, what about gothic architecture?
Literature? I know some Ann Radcliffe (18th
century novelist) is a bit arse, but this is
plain daft.
Chris Wareham
In the highly unlikely event that this would actually be a problem, sed s/fuck/mess/g woyld probably be simple cure.
I'm a bit shocked to find out that words such as tattoo, pierced and even Pamela are on the to-be-blocked lists though. I see the relation between those words and the filthy material.. but then we could block almost every word including Bill, Monica, cigar, president, beach... and of course all biological references to certain bodyparts.
Censorship based on words only is not only wrong, but also stupid.
Here now, I was just trying to read about Australian stupidity, I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition!
Why not ban MS file formats altogether? I mean, if we are going to censor let's censor something that actually does damage: non-standard "standards." Certainly does a lot more damage than Pamela and "available" (come on...available?)
Indeed, that's the biggest reason I'd like to see the Windows source made public despite my wish that the gubmint would laissez frigging faire already... I want to see all those juicy comments! As a non programmer I made a hobby out of collecting fun comments and error messages... Lost my collection of comments, still have the other. Another public archive should be started of these, perhaps.
Fuck Slashdot
But how many have the guts to smoke a joint or shoot heroin on the courthouse steps? Or give out free needles/food/bibles/whatever without a "permit"? Or help human beings escape from tyranny to potential freedom? Or stand in front of the tanks even when they know their chances are Slim to None?
Victimless crime laws encourage general disrespect for law, and deservedly so. The more petty and harmless the "crime", the more the public is treated like a child, the more it will start acting like one; and the greater the crackdown, the greater the numbers and extent of the backlash. But when it comes to the big issues, it takes an explicit gun in the face for some people to Just Say No...and all too many meekly, willingly cooperate in their own enslavement and destruction. As James Donald said on Cypherpunks, if just one "tax serf" out of every hundred said No to the IRS and backed it up when pushed to the wall, the house of cards would collapse.
This reminds me of Jamie McCarthy's take on modern-day "civil disobedience" in (Computer Underground Digest? Politech? Can't find the article offhand). Instead of taking the risks of getting hammered with firehoses and tear gas, today's rebels try to overload web servers and scribble/urinate on the pages contained therein. How long before "civil disobedience" becomes a banned search term somewhere? What about places where people WISH that was all they had to worry about?
Having said all that, as someone else (Will Rodgers?) said, "Profanity is the crutch of the ignorant, but every once in a while you've got to talk to one of those ignorant motherfuckers."
Fuck Slashdot
This would be funny if it wasn't so incredibly stupid.
How many web servers are going to serve up the Linux source? I doubt that it will be many.
The article states that the new law will apply content served by web servers, or this yet another case of people assuming that "web" and "internet" are synonymous?
>F*ck is _never_ a proper engineering term. I'm against censorship, and definitily not a prig -- but I'm surprised that
>someone smart enough to kernel-hack has such a small vocabulary.
At my job for a now-defunct telephony equipment vendor, one of the engineers showed me some source code with ``unprofessional" comments in it. In a nutshell, one of the programmers had used potty-language in the opening comments to vent frustration about some aspect of the project.
And a friend of mine, who writes Cobal for a living, once told me a tale or two about the comments he found in the code he had to maintain.
And then there was some suspicion that one reason it took Netscape so long to release the source code to their browser was that they had to grep for naughty words in the comments. Anyone want to bet that DOS/Windows/Windows NT is entirely free of said comments?
When's it's 3:00am after an 18- or 20-hour shift, & a programmer has spent half of that banging your head against a wall, I sincerely doubt he (or she) will mince his/her words in the documentation. Just be glad he or she has commented the difficult spots!
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
Meanwhile, I am an amateur musician. The cables running around my keyboards and synths look like anarchy itself. I don't play that much anymore. We have a friend living with us who has a babe of 10 months who just loves banging on things. She crawls around in her bare feet and likes watching leave it to beaver.
I'm afraid I have a bit of a beer belly, so I don't wear the bikini style swimsuits I did in high school. I guess that's what happens when you sit around compiling source code into binaries instead of throwing a long bomb on the football field. Oh well, I haven't hit bottom yet, while my wife is no blonde bombshell, she's pretty good looking.
My bud and I were chatting the other day about how he should get one of those bra things for the front of his cherry red corvette. Then his twin girls came out to show us pictures of the the baby chicks they had hatched at school.
I'm kinda glad I don't live in Oz -- I'd never be able to put out the San Francisco Free List.
Stupid people will be persecuted to the fullest extent allowed by law.
I'm also an Aussie ./er, and I think that soon we may need the help of hackers overseas to try to beat this law.
We'll need plenty of public proxy servers to get around this law and prove to these dickless people that you can't censor the net.
You'll be doing yourself a favour too if you help. Think what would happen if censorship in Australia actually worked: it'd become a precedent for other countries to follow suit, and before long you may find yourself also under censorship.
This is much bigger than just Australia!
Then perhaps some X rated JPGs need to be encoded in the Linux source so it IS deemed offensive.
As I see it, Linux is a big economic benefit to Australia right now. Causing Linux to be illegal in Australia would slap some idiot legislators upside the head with the realities of their stupidity.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Why the does this all sound like eastern europe to me ;-) ;-) ;-)
A state ISP and a "supposedly not state" academic network. All eastern europe countries used to be like that
I will not comment on how did this influence their Internet development
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Oh great, now the cat is out of the bag. Soon they will discover that the entire source of Linux is actually a heavily encrypted MPEG featuring bill Clinton in compromising positions with various Little Rock secretaries.
-josh
ONCE AGAIN...
Use of vulgarities is not an indication of a small vocabulary. It is use of expressive words. Nothing more, nothing less. You obviously don't know enough people with large word lists.
...suckling from the sweet amnion of life...
my arms are banned in Australia is that what they are saying? boy that is a muffed up country ...
Only 'flamers' flame!
I remember using a commercial software package (microMPX, I believe) that spawned a process called "pukeserver" and installed a directory appropriately named "sh*t", among other unsavory things. These were later modified to less colorful names, a process they even thought to document in the change notes.
The config option to enable BSD compatibility in networking used to be something like this, but It was only for a couple of patchlevels in the 0.99pl14 or 0.99pl15 days. I know I got a huge laugh out of it. Put those FreeBSD'ers in their place too.. ( :-) for the sarcasm impaired )
-Rich
There's been several comments about how Australia needs to change its laws concerning profanity. As I doubt that the hordes of Slashdot readers will fly down under, register, and vote in new laws to sanction profanity in source code, the only other option I see is to remove the off-color comments.
"Blasphemy!" and "That's censorship!" you may say. But what's more important to you? To get source code out into more hands, or your right to cuss? I like cussing too, but one day when your kids ask you what you did when you were young, do you want to tell them that you got source code out into the hands of programmers worldwide, or that you fought for your rights to put cusswords in source code?
Hmmm... Maybe that's why Calderra has been so
quiet lately - all their programmers, looking through the source of Win95 for evidence for their lawsuit have died laughing.
Well, this new dictionary is only 15 years overdue... (1984->1999)
-- Game over man, game over!
There was no public debate on this stupid legislation in Australia. It was snuck in to buy a vote from a a morals campaigner so a new tax could be introduced and will probably be overturned by the next government before it is ever put into effect.
I believe our politicians think the Web and the Internet are the same thing so although Slashdot might be blacklisted we should still be able to FTP or email kernel sources.
I don't think there will be many people left to download linux after the cultural revolution. Without freedom of speech that is where we are headed.
Still if we had a true democracy, shit like this wouldn't have passed into law in the first place.
Didn't this first appear on segfault.org? I've seen it a few places since, but it's still good to see Salon getting in on the act.
Imagine if the inclusion of the w*rd fuck were a reason for banning something in the eyes of these bastions of democracy. We'd see e-texts of Lady Chatterly's Lover being banned while the print version is readily available. I leave it as an exercise to the reader to think of myriad other examples of this sort of asininity (if that's a word).
Don't believe everything you read :)
:)
From what I've read over here in Aus the legislation isn't exactly well put together. An ISP only has to make a "reasonable effort" to block a site when requested. "reasonable effort" is undefined I believe.
Also, for a site to be blocked/taken down (depending if it's overseas or australian), the Australian Broadcasting Authority has to receive a few complaints about the content on a site. It will then ask the Classification Board to give the site a classification - same as used for films. If the site is given R (18+), then some form of adult verification must be installed.. again, undefined. If the site is rated X, or RC (banned), then the site is to be taken down if Australian, or blocked if overseas.
It's fairly obvious that this is unworkable, and I think it will die fairly quickly. All you'd need to do is send the output of an Altavista search on "free XXX" to the ABA and claim it offends you, and the ABA now has a few years of work ahead of them. I don't exactly think they'll appreciate it either..
The filter software mentioned in the article is what was presented to govt to show them that it was all possible.. No one actually has to use that software afaik.
Oh and I don't think the linux sources are in much danger. The ABA is pretty tolerant of swearing in film and tv in Australia - much more than in the US. It would take a fair bit of language alone to get given an R rating here
This Salon article has a bit more info..
Glyn.
(+the) :P
i remember looking for 'swearwords' in the dictionary at school when i was eight.. should the school be closed down for allowing me to see this...
no!
because I found out that all the words had meanings (duh) which have no relevance to slang.. eg bloody etc. perhaps something might be refering to the act of intercourse (oh no.. the censor police are coming) (not that i'd see any use in source code).
I feel if they're not going to ban every word the oxford dictionary. they shouldn't ban any at all.
cos how about if i find the word 'cup' offensive will they go about banning that too?
even tho this article is about Ozzie, all[?] countries have their own censorship laws and they are getting worse...
its sad, when we like to call outselves 'free' we have so many restrictions
Not a workday goes by that I haven't used "Fuck" multiple times, often with great vigor. It is an integral part of the software engineering field.
Blar.
Consider this, when only allowed for a certain public (let's say 16 years and older), this would make a lot more Linux users. Look at games, they prefer to get such a title to sell better, when Linux should get this over there, shouldn't there be a lot more of individual who just gonna try Linux.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? - Juvenal, Satires, VI, 347
I'm a HUGE opponent of censorship, but why does kernel source code need to swear, anyway? Every reference to "fuck" listed by Salon could be just as easily replaced by "screwed" or "screwed up" (for example, "This code screwed up by Torvalds" instead of "fucked by Torvalds", in one of their examples). Maybe we don't NEED to remove it, but I think it might enhance Linux's credibility a little, as well as removing any chance of source code being automatically censored by filters.
:)
Overall, the Salon article was very good and very funny. Just wait until the censorware starts blocking anything matching "f?ck"... and we're not allowed to fsck our hard drives...
Ryan
Well change the comments ;... (Which I feel can be a waist of space).. Instead of using the word "Fuck" used something less volgar liked Funk(ed).
I don't think we want to have linux censored by a whole country, that would be bad for the community.
I ate my tag line.
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
Granted, I don't know a tremendous amount about Australian politics, but I'm pretty sure the Spanish Inquisition was more tolerant!
kmj
kmj
The only reason I keep my ms-dos partition is so I can mount it like the b*tch it is.
I remember some years ago when AOL installed a filtering system across their entire system. I recall reading an article at the time which descibed an occasion when a chap in the North of England had tried to register a free account using a cover-mount CD.
He found that the registration form kept refusing his account information. Eventually, he rang to AOL support and after some thinking it was noticed that part of his address was Scunthorpe (the town).
It apparently took them some time to reprogram the system to not notice such anomalies - during which time the user was encouraged to log in with Sconthorpe as his town name.
Ever since then I have thought of AOL as the people who put the "cunt" in Scunthorpe!
A little planning goes a long way...
ALL versions of Unix need to be regulated under the new Australian censorship act. I understand 'root' is a fairly common euphemism down under, for the act of intercourse. Unacceptable.
I'm sure I'm not the first to have made seedy comments to my friends about wanting to "get root" on some lovely woman or other...
If you don't think that 'fucked' can be a correct description of a situation, you haven't seen really fucked up code yet... :)
Besides, you are complaining that kernel hackers have small vocabulary -- so you want to restrict it further?
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Think before you post.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Sure the whole thing is unworkable. I wouldn't be so cavalier about its effects, though. I don't know how reasonable the Australian legal system is, but in the US at least the threat of lawsuits does wonders for scaring people into over-compliance. Does an ISP really want to spend time and money (a lot of money) in court arguing that not blocking a site outright was a "reasonable" effort on its part? Probably not. When in doubt, do the safe thing.
This is similar to making a hard car speed limit of 20 mph. Sure, it's unenforceable and will not work, but now the police will have full justification to stop anyone whom they did not like (as in "he didn't look at us with proper respect"). Pissed at an Aussie ISP or just think that sex for pleasure should be banned? Call the police and complain that you searched for "Jenny" and found Jennycam. Why wasn't it blocked? Repeat at will and soon there would be great incentive for the ISPs to block everything but disney.com.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
I always did find Pamela offensive
Message on our company Intranet:
"You have a sticker in your private area"
beauty is only a light switch away
But wait, isn't "fuck" a valid engineering term?
"We are not tolerant people. We prefer drastically effective solutions"
Peace.
Fortune:
"Profanity is the one language all programmers know best"
~ Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity ~
Amazing .. everyones making all this fuss over a few pics of nude girlies .. almost as if .. as if the nude human body were offensive or something!
.. "imagine", they will say, "they thought sex was something evil, filthy and offensive".
One day, far off in the future, a more enlightened people will look back at this phase in history, and compare it to the dark ages
All this fuss about "protecting the kiddies", and yet not one bit of research has ever shown that the viewing of porn by minors is harmful.
Remember, "if God had meant for us to be naked, we would have been born that way".
i love the idea of an os with lots of cursing sprinkled throughout! truly, we are killing the phb mentality once and for all...
-- your knees hurt, don't they?
This fortune just popped up:
/* * [...] Note that 120 sec is defined in the protocol as the maximum /usr/src/linux/net/inet/tcp.c, concerning RTT [round trip time]
:*(
* possible RTT. I guess we'll have to use something other than TCP
* to talk to the University of Mars.
* PAWS allows us longer timeouts and large windows, so once implemented
* ftp to mars will work nicely.
*/
-- from
The comment is not there any longer -- too bad
Is there a collection of some sort with interesting comments in the sourcecode of various projects?
egrep -ri fuck /usr/src/linux yields:
/* Fuck me plenty... */ :-) :-) */ /* If you fuck with this, update ret_from_syscall code too. */ \ /* This card is _fucking_ hot... */ /* This card is _fucking_ hot... */ /* This card is _fucking_ hot... */ /* Fuck me plenty... */ :-) :-) */ /* If you fuck with this, update ret_from_syscall code too. */ \ /* This card is _fucking_ hot... */ /* This card is _fucking_ hot... */ /* This card is _fucking_ hot... */ /* Be careful, we could really get fucked during synchronous /* Be careful, we could really get fucked during synchronous /* task can fuck it up GTL */ /* XXX Fucking Cypress... */ /* fuck me plenty */ /* Binary compatibility is good American knowhow fuckin' up. */ /* XXX No fucking way dude... */
/usr/src/ of FreeBSD only yields:
/* XXX actually EFUCKUP */ /* XXX actually EFUCKUP */ /* XXX actually EFUCKUP */ /* Things are seriously fucked up.
./fs/binfmt_aout.c:
./lib/vsprintf.c: * Wirzenius wrote this portably, Torvalds fucked it up
./include/asm-mips/mmu_context.h:/* Fuck. The f-word is here so you can grep for it
./include/asm-sparc64/system.h:
./drivers/net/sunhme.c:/* Only Sun can take such nice parts and fuck up the programming interface
./drivers/net/sunhme.c:
./drivers/net/sunhme.c:
./drivers/net/sunhme.c:
./drivers/block/cmd640.c: * These chips are basically fucked by design, and getting this driver
./fs/binfmt_aout.c:
./lib/vsprintf.c: * Wirzenius wrote this portably, Torvalds fucked it up
./include/asm-mips/mmu_context.h:/* Fuck. The f-word is here so you can grep for it
./include/asm-sparc64/system.h:
./drivers/net/sunhme.c:/* Only Sun can take such nice parts and fuck up the programming interface
./drivers/net/sunhme.c:
./drivers/net/sunhme.c:
./drivers/net/sunhme.c:
./drivers/block/cmd640.c: * These chips are basically fucked by design, and getting this driver
./drivers/scsi/esp.c: * how bad the target and/or ESP fucks things up.
./drivers/scsi/esp.c: * phase things. We don't want to fuck directly with
./drivers/scsi/esp.c:
./drivers/scsi/qlogicpti.h:/* Am I fucking pedantic or what? */
./drivers/scsi/NCR53C9x.c: * how bad the target and/or ESP fucks things up.
./drivers/scsi/NCR53C9x.c: * phase things. We don't want to fuck directly with
./drivers/scsi/NCR53C9x.c:
./drivers/cdrom/sbpcd.c: CURRENT=req->next;
./arch/i386/kernel/mtrr.c:/* Some BIOS's are fucked and don't set all MTRRs the same! */
./arch/sparc/kernel/head.S:
./arch/sparc/kernel/process.c:
./arch/sparc/kernel/sunos_ioctl.c:
./arch/sparc/kernel/ptrace.c:/* Fuck me gently with a chainsaw... */
./arch/mips/kernel/irixelf.c:#if 0
Whereas "egrep -ri fuck sys bin sbin usr.sbin usr.bin lib libexec release crypto" in the
sys/alpha/tc/esp.c: * Things are seriously fucked up.
sys/boot/alpha/libalpha/elf_freebsd.c: return(EFTYPE);
sys/boot/i386/libi386/aout_freebsd.c: return(EFTYPE);
sys/boot/i386/libi386/elf_freebsd.c: return(EFTYPE);
sys/i386/isa/aic6360.c:
i hate how the government *assume* the majority of people *want* censorship
this is a major issue that obviously affects every net user
at worst, the new law should state for ISPs to *offer* guaranteed censored net access as an *option*
i suppose all irc/icq/any other chat form will be banned also
the net will be so cool then
log into a search engine and thats about the limit of where u can go
bah
the thing that really shits me is net users arent doing much about it and this helps the government *assume* ppl actually want it
if (once?) it is made law, i bet only then will the uproar will really begin
Do your best, hope for the best, suspect the worst.
sed 's/fuck/f\*ck/g';
How in the world did it occur to anyone to grep the source code for four-letter words?
:)
I mean -- I've been bored before, but I would usually read a book or something.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
...that the .au format should be banned. :)
.au format that caused me grief as much as it's the old Java sound API. It only recognized 8-bit mu-Law encoded .au files. Wait, it gets better. The only sample rate it understood was something like 8Khz. Not 11Khz, not 22.5Khz, -- 8! Took me FOREVER to find that out, but I digress.....)
(Ok, ok, it's not the
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
So if my name happens to be Pamela, I'm going to find my content banned in Australia? If I mention that my office environment is "total anarchy", the message will be silently dropped? This is why I find net censorship abhorant. This is as braindead as when an early version of the CDA tried to ban the word breast.
If the name Pamela is in the filter, I vote we also put in the names of a few Australian government officials that I find offensive.
Thad
The Bolachek Journals
Answer: Ban Altavista, Yahoo, etc
then they are forced to setup 'australian' versions, which is HEAVILY censored.
This legislation threatens us all (as a test case for liberal democracy) and MUST BE STOPPED BY ALL MEANS REASONABLE.
huh?
/*rude*/ code!
aarnet [the australian academic research network] is a high-speed network linking the universities in australia together. since about two years ago they switched to buying their bandwidth from Cable & Wiress Optus [2nd biggest telco in australia].
C&W Optus have their own very fat pipes out of australia. Since getting into the wholesale bandwidth game you'll find C&W Optus actually have a pretty substantial market share [they're Ozemail's upline provider for one].
So hey, relax. And stop looking at all that
--
Rare Window - free your photos
there I said it.
The ship sank. Get over it. (This sig was cut out from another's shirt and painstakingly hand-posted)
first to start wars. Plus they're not brain dead they are evil. Therefore the suits will be viewing all the porn in the world and selling it to the drug smugglers they also support and they will deputize smugglers so they can carry guns. It's time for a Internet Death Penalty on Australia's Internet connection.
The ship sank. Get over it. (This sig was cut out from another's shirt and painstakingly hand-posted)
they're not in it for the citizens best intest you dolt!
The ship sank. Get over it. (This sig was cut out from another's shirt and painstakingly hand-posted)
I think you'd be dissapointed.
;o)
When I worked on some M$ code (yeah yeah, flame me, I quit OK?) there was hardly any such language in there. About the worst (?) stuff you'd see was 'sucker' in comments.
'Bad' language in comments I guess is not a problem for non-Open Source products. Soon M$ will be using this as a Marketing argument.
Breace.
if a person is actually hacking and understanding the source, then they might just be mature enough to understand that "fuck" is a proper engineering term in some cases. Not your average joe uses linux right now. Mosty Linux users could be considered technically savvy and most of those people can be considered "more mature" intellectually.
BTW, I have played with the source and that word pops up in my head a lot during that quality time.
RB
Controlling the content on their web sites for the protection of their people reminds me of a few folks I read about in history class, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Chinese Gov't, Eugene McCarthy, I think George Orwell had a little book devoted to this subject as well. Is Australia the next manifest of this type of Big Brotherhood?
The two players in the game are John Howard (our illustrious Prime Minister) and Senator Brian Harradine, a Victorian-era spinster type on a morals crusade. It wouldn't matter much, except Sen Harridine held the balance of power in our federal senate (ie, if the government wanted to pass any legislation, they needed his vote). Little Johnny Howard, snake in the grass that he is, needed to pass the GST (another kettle of fish, basically a very reactionary tax) so in order to get Harradine's vote, he put together the wonderful Broadcasting Services (Online Services) Bill, knowing that sort of crap appealed to him. Unfortunately for little Johnny, even though the Online Services passed, Harridine still announced he would NOT vote for the GST. Fortunately, Harridine has since lost the balance of power, but we are still stuck with the bloody censorship bill....
_______________________ I am the eggman, wooo! _______________________
...with deleted blocks of text in them that the authors thought better of. Unfortunately for them, a keyword filter will not honor the MS Word format and will not care that the offending text was "deleted". Perhaps a more efficient and less embarassing solution to this particular problem would be to just ban MS Word document files.
Geeky modern art T-shirts
Well as a responsible parent I'll have to ban my
/usr/src might do the trick
14-year old son from reading the Linux source code. He could pick up this kind of language.
chmod o-r
--- Linux or FreeBSD, it's like blondes or brunettes. I like both. ---
So my email address & uni web page will be blocked, simply for being at Essex University?
:). I don't want people going around accusing me of hosting "unsuitable content".
I'm gonna sue the au. gov. for slander
Imagine all the businesses out there who will lose customers over this. Australia has a pretty large population, and if other nations join in, any commercial website that must compete with others will have to do a hell of a lot of research into each country's censorship laws just to be able to be viewed by anyone.
(Overlooking the obviously barmy idea of banning an opensource OS primarily transmitted by an unpolicable medium...)
What a ridiculously puritanical concept. I expect any minor capable of understanding enough to contemplate kernel hacking is probably bright enough to know a few dirty words. Such a "child genius" could probably find his/her way to www.persiankitty.com or some other free pornography link site.
I really wish censors would grow up and understand that there are bigger fish to fry than the casual use of questionably language for the sake of colloqiual explanation.
Besides the protection of minors starts at home. You don't want your kids seeing stuff they shouldn't, go online with them.
"I figured, therefore, Linux source code would have to be shielded from young eyes, lest they get the impression that "fuck" is a valid engineering term."
But it is.
This reminds me of 1984, where they change the language to better control people thoughts...
Can linux be banned in .au?
Probably not - but I guess we'll have to wait for
a) the bill to be passed into law
b) the law to come into effect
until then, less FUD, more support.
Remember the black webpages (world-wide) when the U.S. tried the same stunt? I see very little black today!
There's not much point sending the government here porn - they're already downloading it as fast as they can. ;)
This story was making the rounds of the ISP's here at least a week ago, but only made it into the public arena today..
I happen to live in Tasmania - home of the senator I hold responsible for most of this rubbish. He holds a balance of power and the government rushed the censorship legislation through to get him to agree to tax reform.
The censorship legislation they've enacted is so poorly thought out and unenforcable that it will inevitably be turned over as soon as cases start reaching court, IMHO.
--
make clean; make love --without-war
..and I'll form the head!!
There might be a problem on the first point, but not on the second. There is no penalty for selling M-rated anything to an underage person. An M rating is a 'guidance' type of classification, not a restriction. It's like "Parental guidance recommend, we suggest kids be at least 15".
An MA rating is different, you are required to be 15 by law (to see a movie for example) though in reality there is little enforcement of this that I'm aware of.
However, as stated the censorship legislation only calls for age verification when the user attempts to access R rated material online.
Hear, hear. The situation in Australia is not as bad as some international /. readers seem to think, and I have every confidence that the legislation will be overturned in a flurry of publicity as soon as they try to enforce these ludicrous laws.
--
make clean; make love --without-war
..and I'll form the head!!
Arrrggghhhhh if this happens over here I swear to god I will download a copy of avalance and shutdown the entire congressional email system.
---Got Coffee?---
I have a friend working for IBM down under, from a corporate standpoint everyone there is cold, anal and stuffy. It's the 'normal' folk who are rowdy, as the legends go. So my guess would be that the ceo's are just playing a holier-than-thou game, much like what goes on here in the states...
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
I'm in Australia and I know what the rating system is like, unless there is shitloads of swearing a movie will only get an M rating which is "Recommended for persons over the age of 15" so I doubt the linux source code will get banned.
I wanna see the Windows source code! All those stoners at Microsoft have probably loaded the source with all the damn comments it deserves :)
.. no wonder windows is so bloated.
Most likely all those 'comments' are compiled in though
void comment(char *this) { }
comment("This code is fucked");
comment("I am fucked");
comment("Bill is fucked");
No one expects the spanish inquisition!
But you've overlooked one important point: the OFLC only classify computer and video games, and by law, computer and video game distributors are required to submit their product for review before they can legally sell it. The OFLC do not classify productivity/application software and distributors of such software aren't required by law to submit their software for review by the OFLC.
By default, Linux won't be classified simply because it's not a game. However, if a complaint is made against it, it will be investigated by the OFLC (they will charge you $300 for the exercise). But it's extremely unlikely that it'll be classified unless it features MA, X or RC rated material (imagine Redhat's install process with a sexually explicit picture used as a background image).
Sarch
Fuck has to be an engineering term. I work in a room full of us engineers and I hear that term an awful lot. I believe its not quite as popular as "Piece of shit computer" which really is aimed at one of the more popular :-( operating systems
Though I'm not currently a parent myself my wife and I do intend to have kids someday. As a result I find this to be an interesting topic. I suppose that if they are quite young, say up to 5 or 6 years of age, then I might not let little Johnny or Janney view certain parts of the code. This is assuming that they have any interest in coding at that age.
:)
However, I don't think that banning a 14yr old is the answer either. I'm sure that most children that age have heard and said the word quite often in school, or at least away from teachers and parents. Maybe the better thing to do would be to explain to the child that even though such words are used in the code (and here we define the words in question) it doesn't give us the excuse to use such language in public. At the same time the parent will have to make sure that they set the example.
At 14yrs your child is in the process of becoming an adult. I think you'd have to give your child a little more credit than simply banning them. If they feel responsible for their own actions maybe they'll behave responsibly.
I'll guess I'll find out how good this advice is, or isn't when I have my own 14yr old son or daughter.
In recent moths we've regularly seen comments,
articles and complaints about the way Highschools (and the USA in general) reacted to the Highschool shootings.
One of the more shocking reactions to this was the hysteria that followed, restricting freedom of speech and even the way people dressed.
After reading the article on Australia's internet censorship and seeing things like Gothic, piercing, tattoo, heroine, etc. being banned, doesn't this produce the same results:
The deliberate suppression (oppression?) of minorities' opinions, ideas and expression of (their) culture?
Maybe Australian government should fund some re-education programs for the 'morally misguided'... (geeks, nerds, goths, maybe even jews, aboriginees, or anybody whose bloodlines cannot be traced back to the original 'colonists')
Hey even my e-mail address is going to get banned! Good thing I don't know anyone in the merry ol' land of Oz.
:)
Ah well, I wish I could remember now where I heard about them having to run sed through the Netscape source code before it could be released. Apparently Netscape programmers use no less dirty euphamisms than Linux programmers.
I wanna see the Windows source code! All those stoners at Microsoft have probably loaded the source with all the damn comments it deserves
"For just $10(US, please, not that monopoly money you guys use) a month I'll hook you up with an encrypted VPN pipeline to the States. We might have to change IP's on a fairly regular basis but that shouldn't be that much of a problem."
Of course, why pay for it? Just find a friend with a cable modem who will hook you up. As an added benefit, since you will be coming from a US IP address, you'll be able to FTP all that cryptograhic software you've been missing out on.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The bill as I can see so far requires the ABA to classify each web site claimed to be offensive by a person ringing in to their offices. The act does not mention anything about software. Games and software already have classifications on them.
Linux is avaliable on shelves in stores and on covers of magazines throughout Australia already so there is no need to panic. Although it was good of some to bring up topic..
This you could consider to be a nice little loophole.
Cheers
Hey, Don't knock it till ya try it. Marrying your sister might adversely affect the intellect of your offspring but at least you know the in-laws :-P
I expect the people who commented the code felt the need to make up for the fact that while using linux you are far less likely to use the word 'fuck' than when using certain other OSs.