The article is bunk and the language used is deceitful and apparently deliberately so.
I'm in UK and my ISP is TalkTalk, the first ISP here to introduce such a filter. It is entirely optional. The *account holder* controls it, not the government or the ISP or anyone else. I can switch it off or on at will and it takes just a minute or two to take effect. It is even customisable, for example I can allow/disallow any of the following categories:
Dating Drugs, Alcohol and Tobacco Gambling Pornography Suicide and Self-Harm Weapons and Violence
The above are default blocked *if* I enable the filter and don't deselect them. Additionally I can add:
File Sharing Sites Games Social Networking
Using the term "censorship" implies that something is redacted, withheld or forbidden or otherwise placed off limits in a way that is outside of the user's control. That is absolutely not the case. The account holder is fully able to switch the filter off or on as they see fit. I was informed of the availability of the filter via email from my ISP and tried it in various options in order to satisfy curiosity and then decided it can remain permanently off.
What the government has done is to require the major ISPs and telcos to implement a filtering system that allows the account holder to opt in or out and even to have fine grained control. Basically this means that adults control their accounts as they like but that children whose mobile phones and internet access is the responsibility of their parents are obliged to defer to the responsible adult.
Allowing adults full discretion is not censorship by any stretch of the imagination. Parents having some say in what their children consume is also not censorship - it is part of parenting.
"a future tyrant who will commit more atrocities than all of the terrorists combined."
Future?
The atomic detonations over Hiroshima and Nagasaki happened almost 70 years ago.
Did anyone count how many non-combatants were bombed and napalmed and otherwise killed in S.E. Asia in the 60s and 70s?
How many civilians have so far been killed by conventional warfare and by drone strikes in Afghanistan and Pakistan?
How about counting the number of birth defects caused by depleted uranium weapons in Iraq?
What about all the people who were tortured and kidnapped or "disappeared" by US sponsored forces in south and central America in the 70s and 80s?
I haven't done the maths but I find it incredibly difficult to believe that the numbers of casualties caused by anti US terrorism even looks like a pinprick next to the hundreds of thousands or even millions of non-combatants killed by the US in the modern era, and I am really confident that still holds true even if one completely disregards the use of atomic weapons over Japan.
I don't think one can fairly describe any particular modern US president as a tyrant because domestically they have all been subject to elections and held more or less accoutable (or can be), but the behaviour of the US in relation to other nations has often been tyrannical and brutal. If Caesar came back today he could easily understand various US campaigns in his own terms, including such noble qualities as self aggrandisement, greed, cruelty, curiosity untroubled by ethics, and good old vengeance.
This idea that terrorism has anything at all to do with persuading people to like or agree with the terrorists is laughable and underpins complete misunderstanding.
Nor is the goal to "change someone's mind by making them ever more angry at you".
Groups don't use terror to change personal opinions or to ingratiate themselves with their victims! They do it to force concessions (usually political or territorial) or to enforce submission, usually as a tactic in a wider strategy.
One obvious example: the 2004 Madrid bombings. A vicious mass murder of non-combatants by an Al Qaeda cell contributed to huge political upheaval, a change of government, and very soon afterwards the withdrawal of Spanish forces from Afghanistan.
Think about it for two seconds and then consider again if it is actually the case that terrorists care if people agree with them or like them.
That segment quotes the opinion of one person and is not representative of the entire article, nor does it embody a conclusion. For example another credible opinion offered is:
"There is no general consensus on the definition of terrorism. The difficulty of defining terrorism lies in the risk it entails of taking positions. The political value of the term currently prevails over its legal one. Left to its political meaning, terrorism easily falls prey to change that suits the interests of particular states at particular times. The Taliban and Osama bin Laden were once called freedom fighters (mujahideen) and backed by the CIA when they were resisting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Now they are on top of the international terrorist lists. Today, the United Nations views Palestinians as freedom fighters, struggling against the unlawful occupation of their land by Israel, and engaged in a long-established legitimate resistance, yet Israel regards them as terrorists."
Another opinion:
"There are multiple ways of defining terrorism, and all are subjective. Most define terrorism as "the use or threat of serious violence" to advance some kind of "cause". Some state clearly the kinds of group ("sub-national", "non-state") or cause (political, ideological, religious) to which they refer. Others merely rely on the instinct of most people when confronted with innocent civilians being killed or maimed by men armed with explosives, firearms or other weapons. None is satisfactory, and grave problems with the use of the term persist. Terrorism is after all, a tactic."
These are all different opinions from credible people.
Clearly governments of many kinds sponsor terrorists and sometimes even directly use terror themselves but none of them want to be classified as terrorists in international law so the term itself is used as a political tool. However if a powerful group starts to terrorise you or your community you will probably find the words terror, terrorism and terrorist are indeed easily and plainly understood.
Actually terror often works. An incident like this is explosive and dynamic and sudden but actually it is usually meticulously planned and done in the context of a campaign of attritional and unending activity, political and social as well as paramilitary or military.
Lenin and his Bolsheviks unleashed terror on their own population and by doing so destroyed all serious opposition and the party gained absolute power for 70 years without any further serious internal challenge. Mao's party in China exterminated many millions in subduing the population and has never lost power. In modern times it showed itself perfectly willing to kill thousands of civilians for simply protesting. Western forces in counter insurgency campaigns in Malaysia, Kenya,S.E. Asia, Afghanistan and elsewhere destroyed villages and tortured and murdered civilians, en masse on occasion, in campaigns which we prefer to term pacification but which are no different to what armies have always done - terrorizing a hostile or indifferent population while denying the enemy resources and support.
Many modern newly established or re-established post colonial states have been founded or governed by people who were at one time, by any definition, terrorists. Just look at the history of Zimbabwe, South Africa, and Israel for examples. There are lots more and this is easy to see and understand if you can set aside distaste, personal and political preferences and loyalties and examine the actors, the acts and the results. A man who was cutting throats or bombing hotels or arranging murders and kidnappings can become a prime minister or president and be perfectly respectable, even honoured.
Terror and terrorism are used by both established powers and states, and by groups seeking power or radical change or disruption. Everyone knows it can work and nobody does it expecting to be loved by their opponents or victims. If your propaganda is effective then you can terrorize and murder people while observing events from the vantage point of the politcal moral high ground.
By definition an interim injunction is neither permanent nor irreversible. To assert that interim means "permanent and irreversible" is actually to identify yourself as an idiot. I can see why you posted anonymously: you're too stupid to figure out how to make an account.
This will come as a surprise to you but self righteous certainty does not allow you to ignore facts or redefine words or somehow magically align the real world with your aggrieved perception of it. OK it does allow you to do that within your own atrophied mind and within your rent-a-homogenous-flapping-jaw peer group, but fortunately for the rest of the world that carries about the same moral force and earth shaking gravitas as a small child complaining he doesn't like to eat broccoli.
If the value in the research is merely novelty or as some fleeting attraction for the populist press then who cares anyway? If there is some genuine merit in the research then that will not be diminished by being published in September instead of August or on a Tuesday instead of a Monday etc etc.
The headline of horribly stupid because it identifies and ascribes intention and foresight to a process where those qualities are by definition absent. It's the village idiot's view of evolution and is as useful as thinking that the sun decides to rise each morning in order to warm the earth.
Monogamy didn't evolve to do X or Y or to prevent Z. It's one of many traits that allowed its carriers' offspring to endure.
In the article: "The judge, Colin Birss, ultimately sided with the car companies, despite saying he "recognized the importance of the right for academics to publish.""
This is very misleading. The judge did not "ultimately" side with anyone because this is an *interim* injunction during the course of more prolonged litigation. Citation:
The purpose of the interim injunction is to temporarily maintain the status quo while further evidence and arguments are presented, prior to any actual and significant judgement.
Once again slashdot avoids objective reporting and instead offers its readers what they actually prefer and craze: dishonest, misleading, untrue versions of the world that play to the infantile prejudices of the average self righteous and privileged pseudo liberal.
You have no argument. Porn, political content and torrent sites can all be blocked by exactly the same method. There is no technical difference. The difference lies in law and execution.
Your core assertion is that you can see the future(!) and that you know it to be a fact that an *OPTIONAL* filter will be used to *SECRETLY* and *COMPULSORILY* censor political content.
To support your assertion you have not one piece of evidence. You have no rational argument. You rest your *entire* position on your own construct of hysterical anxiety and a supposed power of prophecy or foresight.
For the censorship argument to be taken seriously you need to demonstrate compulsion or coercion. You need to be able to demonstrate, either with evidence or by deduction, that the state is engaging in censorship of the global www which we cannot detect or avoid. At the moment you can't even demonstrate that it *can* do so, let alone that it actually does because you can't make this case unless the day arrives when it becomes impossible or illegal to use an encrypted proxy. Unless that situation arises then anyone can check for themselves and see that your assertions are utterly groundless.
That's why I called you a fucking idiot. If you're not an idiot then come back with any relevant, rational argument that survives casual scrutiny.
The single "fact" you asserted was wrong (thepirtatebay.sx is not blocked on my TalkTalk ADSL connection *unless* I enable the filter).
You're basing your entire argument on your ability to prophesy the future! And then you're telling me that I'm at fault for "pretending" that your mystical predictions aren't factual. And I'm supposed to take that seriously? On that basis I'm perfectly happy to call you a hysterical and irrational paranoiac, a self righteous egomaniac and a fucking idiot. Please note: the insults are not in place of a reasoned argument and rebuttal, they are merely addenda, and gratis.
They are not filtering piratebay. If I use my browser to visit Pirate Bay's current address piratebay.sx there is no filter.
But of course don't let facts get in the way of enjoying a self righteous burst of indignation and teenage/mental defective style rebel pose.
Pirate bay is *supposed* to be blocked but that is by public order of a court, in a democratic country, according to law. It is not done on a whim and is not supposed to be optional.
There is already a filter system that attempts to filter out known child porn sites and similar. That is the kind of filtering that is not optional. It is done according to the law of the land.
The ISP level filtering this thread is about is:
ENTIRELY OPTIONAL.
again:
ENTIRELY OPTIONAL.
How difficult is that to understand? You don't like it? click click it is gone. You have some belief that there is some sinister filtering which is being hidden disguised? Maybe you only think you are seeing web pages but actually they have been substituted by a wicked cabal of civil servants, politicians and policemen (famous technology experts all!). So use tor and compare your browsing experience via tor with your browsing experience without any proxy. You know what? I actually did this. I am one of those inconvenient people who likes to check for himself. Doubly annoying for hysterical paranoiacs like you is that I can bring to this discussion something other than groundless anxiety: I can call on real experience and actual facts! Oh noes!
No, mujahideen is not interchangeable with taliban. Many mujahideen fought the Soviet army and then later fought the taliban. Other mujahideen fought the Soviets and then joined the taliban and fought other mujahideen. Many taliban were born after the Soviets left and were never anti-Soviet mujahideen. You can use wikipedia to read about the northern alliance and Ahmad Shah Massoud and then get someone who isn't a fucking moron (this will be someone who is not a blood relative) to explain it in even simpler terms. Probably they will have to physically beat the information through your thick skull with mallet.
It was never a secret that the mujahideen were funded and supported by the western powers via Pakistan. There was never any mystery about or ignorance of the fact that they had US and UK made weapons, training and political support. This all happened well before the www ever existed and I'm old enough to remember it well enough.
Your assertion that any of this is somehow related to an optional network filter in the UK is still fucking moronic.
You'll never be censored because you're too stupid to be dangerous to anyone except yourself.
You fail to make any reasoned rebuttal or any reasoned proposal but instead offer a couple of weak insults and quit. This is evidence that you are right?
You will never be censored because you have nothing to say.
That is complete nonsense and you'd have to be brain dead to believe it. Here is why: the taliban didn't even exist at the time of the Russian occupation. It emerged from the chaos of the civil and tribal wars that followed the Soviet exit.
You are confusing and conflating an ISP's filtering system with the directive of a court.
Pirate Bay was blocked by order of the High Court. That was a judgement made on the basis of law and in open court. It was unrelated to the current proposals requiring ISPs to change their filtering from default opt-out to default opt-in.
btw piratebay.org no longer exists. The Pirate Bay is now hosted at piratebay.sx
How is it optional? By being optional. What is so hard to understand. You have options. You can choose. You make the choice. You select from a menu of options. Or opt out. All the preceding words can be found in any English dictionary.
You always go through an ISP and all UK ISPs already filter in order to comply with existing law.
"who's to say it won't accidently be locked".... is that supposed to be an argument? Who's to say the moon won't suddenly spin out of earth orbit? Who's to say my car won't accidentally explode? Who's to say the Flying Spaghetti Monster will not be angry?
How about an argument or proposition that doesn't involve failing to understand plain English? Or one that doesn't require being in a permanent state of speculative hysterical anxiety as a precondition?
Here's what I would do if my ISP's optional filter somehow got gummed up and stuck (maybe it can get jammed up with virtual sticky tissues and drug paraphenalia?): First I would use a proxy. Second I would call the helpdesk and say "Your filter is all jammed up with the spunky tissues and prozac boxes discarded by anxious slashdot reading pansies. Please fix it, thanks Sanjay."
It isn't censorship. To be considered censorship requires that you cannot opt in or out. Censorship means *compulsion* whereas this is ENTIRELY OPTIONAL. You can opt in or out by clicking a link and checking a box.
This is *not* censorship. I have lived in countries where there is genuine censorship that prevents access to proxies, proxy software or even getting information on using such. Bypassing the censorship got you a prison sentence.
"Maybe they blocked PETA, the communist party, evidence of UK government wrongdoing" Maybe the earth is flat. Maybe the moon is made of cheese. Oh wait, that's all complete nonsense.
How about an actual reasoned objection instead of "Maybe " ?
But let's suppress laughter long enough to consider the "argument" that "maybe" my ISP's optional(!) filter secretly(!!!) blocks the communist party (it doesn't btw): the solution: switch off the filter! Here's how: click click.
Now let's stop laughing for another minute and assume that the wicked ever-so-secret filter (so evil and fiendishly secret that it announces itself when filtering and also tells you how to switch it off!) is secretly blocking PETA (I'm sorry to disappoint you but I checked and it isn't) and I am not the account holder so have no option to change the settings: the filter is on the network, not on my PC/device. There is nothing to stop me using a proxy to bypass the filter. Nothing. There is no block on anonymising or proxying services hosted on the www. With the filter on I can use hidemyass.com to visit piratebay.sx or to get info on proxying, get proxy apps etc etc. I can use ixquick or startpage web search engines and visit sites using their proxy service. And of course I can always run tor from my own machine and not need to bother with proxy websites.
The UK plan is for an *optional* filter. It's not an attempt to stop people at home looking at any of the stuff they can look at now. It's not even designed to stop mildly determined avoidance of the filter by people who aren't authorised to disable it. It's a measure mostly to restore public www space to the kind of social and legal standards we expect *and democratically legislate for* in the physical world, so for example in the same way that a minor is refused when trying to purchase legal highs or porn in a physical shop they will also not be able to purchase the same via the free wifi at the community centre or coffee shop or wherever. Hardcore pornography in the UK is not allowed to shown in public places or regular shops or on regular tv channels but is legally available to adults who want it. The same will be the default on the publicly available internet, while what you do in your own home, on your own account, will remain entirely up to you.
It has *nothing* to do with tracking. The ISP *already* knows which sites you visit. If they couldn't know this then you couldn't connect, could you? Doh.
How do you know what proportion of people will change the default? Are you claiming mystic powers of foresight?
Why would a credit report note that I did or did not choose to filter, for example, social networking sites or xxx video sites? Credit companies care about financial status, not whether I block access to social networking and gaming sites during homework times. Yours is such a ridiculous assertion that it is unanswerable and meaningless.
US, CAN, AUS might bar my entry because I disabled a filter and might have seen some boobies or some legal xxx or looked at some nasty stuff on youtube? Please get real.
You have resorted to arguments that are so childish and illogical that they go speeding past "reductio ad absurdum" like it isn't even a bump in the road.
Today, for the first time ever, I actually enabled the filter to see how it worked in practice, and did so using its crude "block everything from social media to self harm, drugs and xxx" settings. In use it is actually quite sophisticated and unsurprising. It blocks well known torrent indexing web sites but not trackers or torrent traffic. It allows access to sites that offer help to people who self harm but blocks access to sites where self harmers congregate and encourage each other. Similarly with drugs: I searched for "legal highs" and could read all about them but sites selling them were blocked. It allows access to The Sun "newspaper" but blocks that publication's page3.com soft porn site.
What happens when a page is blocked is that it's replaced with a notice telling you why and actually linking to the page where you can unblock it (assuming you have your ISP log-in details). It's hardly difficult. Anyone with the mental capacity to log in to a hotmail or youtube account will be fine. Clearly this will inconvenience some of the shrieking paranoiacs on slashdot but normal grown ups have nothing to worry about.
I switched the filter off again while composing this reply and within one minute I was again able to access sites that wanted to sell me drugs, xxx movies, help me harm myself and others and so on. Happiness is restored.
*I* decide if my connection is filtered, not you, not the government, nor anyone else. What the hell is wrong with that?
I do *NOT* have to individually opt-in to "content tagged as violent, extremist, terrorist, anorexia and eating disorders, suicide, alcohol, smoking, web forums, esoteric material and web-blocking circumvention tools".
I unchecked *ONE* box so that my broadband service is unfiltered. That's all. Those fine grain options become available if *YOU* *CHOOSE* filtering. *YOU* have the control and the choice!
People keep acting outraged and presenting this measure as censorship. This is not censorship. Censorship is when the decision to filter content and the selection of what is to be filtered is *outside of your control*. This filtering is entirely and 100% within the control of the account holder. You can switch it on or off at will.
The people who don't have control: minors, customers using your wifi, house guests, or anyone else who has no business accessing your internet account.
The people who do have control: you (the actual legal account owner), and anyone you authorise/enable to manage your ISP account.
My ISP offers a "family filter". When a customer joins the ISP they have the option to enable the family filter or not. I was already a customer when the filter was introduced. I received an email letting me know about the filter and a link to the "My Account" page where I can toggle it on or off. If I had children or ran a community group or business I would enable it. None of that applies and I prefer to leave my service unfiltered.
I have lost nothing and my freedom has not been curtailed in any way whatsoever.
It is perfectly reasonable a democratic society to want the same legal standards to apply to content delivered electronically as to content delivered on physical media such as books, DVD etc. We have laws concerning images of rape, bestiality, child abuse and so on because as a society we believe these kinds of images are damaging and unwelcome. The laws are made in parliament in a broadly free society by people we elect and who we can and do periodically remove if we like.
This legislation does not curtail the freedom of even one responsible adult. If you want to continue to use *your* internet connection to enjoy pornography then nothing will stop you from doing so. The main change will be to filter *public* connections.
If a minor goes into a store and try to buy pornography or extremely violent movies they are refused because as a society we believe this is something we prefer to disallow. A concerned parent or guardian might filter their home connection but every young person now has a mobile computer of some kind and the legal brickwall has crumbled to dust. What this law does is restore our society's ability to enact its democratic choices, and tries to put important parenting choices back into the hands of parents instead of the hands of unknown third parties who have proven to be lazy, incompetent, uncaring, greedy or even malicious.
Again: this legislation does not curtail the freedom of even one responsible adult.
I said nothing about being offended, mortally or otherwise. Another strawman.
A complete failure to actually specify what makes crunchbang crunchbang on the project's own site is about the only thing there that is really informative, and that's inadvertent.
Crunchbang seem unable to say what distinguishes it from its parent. They resort to terms so vague as to be meaningless, except that it ships with Adobe Flash. The users who supposedly gain some benefit from it don't seem to know either.
This is a news site and crunchbang is a just one of many almost identical generic exercises with not a single notable or non-generic feature. It isn't newsworthy in the same way that "I baked a cake and used a funny food colouring" isn't newsworthy. Slashdot would be a better news site if it avoided brainless LXer style filler.
Slashdot Mirror
The article is bunk and the language used is deceitful and apparently deliberately so.
I'm in UK and my ISP is TalkTalk, the first ISP here to introduce such a filter. It is entirely optional. The *account holder* controls it, not the government or the ISP or anyone else. I can switch it off or on at will and it takes just a minute or two to take effect. It is even customisable, for example I can allow/disallow any of the following categories:
Dating
Drugs, Alcohol and Tobacco
Gambling
Pornography
Suicide and Self-Harm
Weapons and Violence
The above are default blocked *if* I enable the filter and don't deselect them. Additionally I can add:
File Sharing Sites
Games
Social Networking
Using the term "censorship" implies that something is redacted, withheld or forbidden or otherwise placed off limits in a way that is outside of the user's control. That is absolutely not the case. The account holder is fully able to switch the filter off or on as they see fit. I was informed of the availability of the filter via email from my ISP and tried it in various options in order to satisfy curiosity and then decided it can remain permanently off.
What the government has done is to require the major ISPs and telcos to implement a filtering system that allows the account holder to opt in or out and even to have fine grained control. Basically this means that adults control their accounts as they like but that children whose mobile phones and internet access is the responsibility of their parents are obliged to defer to the responsible adult.
Allowing adults full discretion is not censorship by any stretch of the imagination. Parents having some say in what their children consume is also not censorship - it is part of parenting.
"a future tyrant who will commit more atrocities than all of the terrorists combined."
Future?
The atomic detonations over Hiroshima and Nagasaki happened almost 70 years ago.
Did anyone count how many non-combatants were bombed and napalmed and otherwise killed in S.E. Asia in the 60s and 70s?
How many civilians have so far been killed by conventional warfare and by drone strikes in Afghanistan and Pakistan?
How about counting the number of birth defects caused by depleted uranium weapons in Iraq?
What about all the people who were tortured and kidnapped or "disappeared" by US sponsored forces in south and central America in the 70s and 80s?
I haven't done the maths but I find it incredibly difficult to believe that the numbers of casualties caused by anti US terrorism even looks like a pinprick next to the hundreds of thousands or even millions of non-combatants killed by the US in the modern era, and I am really confident that still holds true even if one completely disregards the use of atomic weapons over Japan.
I don't think one can fairly describe any particular modern US president as a tyrant because domestically they have all been subject to elections and held more or less accoutable (or can be), but the behaviour of the US in relation to other nations has often been tyrannical and brutal. If Caesar came back today he could easily understand various US campaigns in his own terms, including such noble qualities as self aggrandisement, greed, cruelty, curiosity untroubled by ethics, and good old vengeance.
This idea that terrorism has anything at all to do with persuading people to like or agree with the terrorists is laughable and underpins complete misunderstanding.
Nor is the goal to "change someone's mind by making them ever more angry at you".
Groups don't use terror to change personal opinions or to ingratiate themselves with their victims! They do it to force concessions (usually political or territorial) or to enforce submission, usually as a tactic in a wider strategy.
One obvious example: the 2004 Madrid bombings. A vicious mass murder of non-combatants by an Al Qaeda cell contributed to huge political upheaval, a change of government, and very soon afterwards the withdrawal of Spanish forces from Afghanistan.
Think about it for two seconds and then consider again if it is actually the case that terrorists care if people agree with them or like them.
That segment quotes the opinion of one person and is not representative of the entire article, nor does it embody a conclusion. For example another credible opinion offered is:
"There is no general consensus on the definition of terrorism. The difficulty of defining terrorism lies in the risk it entails of taking positions. The political value of the term currently prevails over its legal one. Left to its political meaning, terrorism easily falls prey to change that suits the interests of particular states at particular times. The Taliban and Osama bin Laden were once called freedom fighters (mujahideen) and backed by the CIA when they were resisting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Now they are on top of the international terrorist lists. Today, the United Nations views Palestinians as freedom fighters, struggling against the unlawful occupation of their land by Israel, and engaged in a long-established legitimate resistance, yet Israel regards them as terrorists."
Another opinion:
"There are multiple ways of defining terrorism, and all are subjective. Most define terrorism as "the use or threat of serious violence" to advance some kind of "cause". Some state clearly the kinds of group ("sub-national", "non-state") or cause (political, ideological, religious) to which they refer. Others merely rely on the instinct of most people when confronted with innocent civilians being killed or maimed by men armed with explosives, firearms or other weapons. None is satisfactory, and grave problems with the use of the term persist. Terrorism is after all, a tactic."
These are all different opinions from credible people.
Clearly governments of many kinds sponsor terrorists and sometimes even directly use terror themselves but none of them want to be classified as terrorists in international law so the term itself is used as a political tool. However if a powerful group starts to terrorise you or your community you will probably find the words terror, terrorism and terrorist are indeed easily and plainly understood.
"Terrorism is about as effective as torture."
Actually terror often works. An incident like this is explosive and dynamic and sudden but actually it is usually meticulously planned and done in the context of a campaign of attritional and unending activity, political and social as well as paramilitary or military.
Lenin and his Bolsheviks unleashed terror on their own population and by doing so destroyed all serious opposition and the party gained absolute power for 70 years without any further serious internal challenge. Mao's party in China exterminated many millions in subduing the population and has never lost power. In modern times it showed itself perfectly willing to kill thousands of civilians for simply protesting. Western forces in counter insurgency campaigns in Malaysia, Kenya ,S.E. Asia, Afghanistan and elsewhere destroyed villages and tortured and murdered civilians, en masse on occasion, in campaigns which we prefer to term pacification but which are no different to what armies have always done - terrorizing a hostile or indifferent population while denying the enemy resources and support.
Many modern newly established or re-established post colonial states have been founded or governed by people who were at one time, by any definition, terrorists. Just look at the history of Zimbabwe, South Africa, and Israel for examples. There are lots more and this is easy to see and understand if you can set aside distaste, personal and political preferences and loyalties and examine the actors, the acts and the results. A man who was cutting throats or bombing hotels or arranging murders and kidnappings can become a prime minister or president and be perfectly respectable, even honoured.
Terror and terrorism are used by both established powers and states, and by groups seeking power or radical change or disruption. Everyone knows it can work and nobody does it expecting to be loved by their opponents or victims. If your propaganda is effective then you can terrorize and murder people while observing events from the vantage point of the politcal moral high ground.
How is it not effective?
By definition an interim injunction is neither permanent nor irreversible. To assert that interim means "permanent and irreversible" is actually to identify yourself as an idiot. I can see why you posted anonymously: you're too stupid to figure out how to make an account.
This will come as a surprise to you but self righteous certainty does not allow you to ignore facts or redefine words or somehow magically align the real world with your aggrieved perception of it. OK it does allow you to do that within your own atrophied mind and within your rent-a-homogenous-flapping-jaw peer group, but fortunately for the rest of the world that carries about the same moral force and earth shaking gravitas as a small child complaining he doesn't like to eat broccoli.
If the value in the research is merely novelty or as some fleeting attraction for the populist press then who cares anyway? If there is some genuine merit in the research then that will not be diminished by being published in September instead of August or on a Tuesday instead of a Monday etc etc.
And I wrote of instead of is. This is because I sleep around, have 9 children by 4 different mothers, and am exhausted to the point of dementia.
The headline of horribly stupid because it identifies and ascribes intention and foresight to a process where those qualities are by definition absent. It's the village idiot's view of evolution and is as useful as thinking that the sun decides to rise each morning in order to warm the earth.
Monogamy didn't evolve to do X or Y or to prevent Z. It's one of many traits that allowed its carriers' offspring to endure.
crave not craze. Slashdot's hysteria and ineptitude is so contagious that I'm going cravy.
In the article:
"The judge, Colin Birss, ultimately sided with the car companies, despite saying he "recognized the importance of the right for academics to publish.""
This is very misleading. The judge did not "ultimately" side with anyone because this is an *interim* injunction during the course of more prolonged litigation. Citation:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23487928
and
http://www.itpro.co.uk/security/20291/vw-gets-high-court-bans-scientists-revealing-luxury-car-security-codes
The purpose of the interim injunction is to temporarily maintain the status quo while further evidence and arguments are presented, prior to any actual and significant judgement.
Once again slashdot avoids objective reporting and instead offers its readers what they actually prefer and craze: dishonest, misleading, untrue versions of the world that play to the infantile prejudices of the average self righteous and privileged pseudo liberal.
If you don't care then why reply?
You have no argument. Porn, political content and torrent sites can all be blocked by exactly the same method. There is no technical difference. The difference lies in law and execution.
Your core assertion is that you can see the future(!) and that you know it to be a fact that an *OPTIONAL* filter will be used to *SECRETLY* and *COMPULSORILY* censor political content.
To support your assertion you have not one piece of evidence. You have no rational argument. You rest your *entire* position on your own construct of hysterical anxiety and a supposed power of prophecy or foresight.
For the censorship argument to be taken seriously you need to demonstrate compulsion or coercion. You need to be able to demonstrate, either with evidence or by deduction, that the state is engaging in censorship of the global www which we cannot detect or avoid. At the moment you can't even demonstrate that it *can* do so, let alone that it actually does because you can't make this case unless the day arrives when it becomes impossible or illegal to use an encrypted proxy. Unless that situation arises then anyone can check for themselves and see that your assertions are utterly groundless.
That's why I called you a fucking idiot. If you're not an idiot then come back with any relevant, rational argument that survives casual scrutiny.
The single "fact" you asserted was wrong (thepirtatebay.sx is not blocked on my TalkTalk ADSL connection *unless* I enable the filter).
You're basing your entire argument on your ability to prophesy the future! And then you're telling me that I'm at fault for "pretending" that your mystical predictions aren't factual. And I'm supposed to take that seriously? On that basis I'm perfectly happy to call you a hysterical and irrational paranoiac, a self righteous egomaniac and a fucking idiot. Please note: the insults are not in place of a reasoned argument and rebuttal, they are merely addenda, and gratis.
They are not filtering piratebay. If I use my browser to visit Pirate Bay's current address piratebay.sx there is no filter.
But of course don't let facts get in the way of enjoying a self righteous burst of indignation and teenage/mental defective style rebel pose.
Pirate bay is *supposed* to be blocked but that is by public order of a court, in a democratic country, according to law. It is not done on a whim and is not supposed to be optional.
There is already a filter system that attempts to filter out known child porn sites and similar. That is the kind of filtering that is not optional. It is done according to the law of the land.
The ISP level filtering this thread is about is:
ENTIRELY OPTIONAL.
again:
ENTIRELY OPTIONAL.
How difficult is that to understand? You don't like it? click click it is gone. You have some belief that there is some sinister filtering which is being hidden disguised? Maybe you only think you are seeing web pages but actually they have been substituted by a wicked cabal of civil servants, politicians and policemen (famous technology experts all!). So use tor and compare your browsing experience via tor with your browsing experience without any proxy. You know what? I actually did this. I am one of those inconvenient people who likes to check for himself. Doubly annoying for hysterical paranoiacs like you is that I can bring to this discussion something other than groundless anxiety: I can call on real experience and actual facts! Oh noes!
No, mujahideen is not interchangeable with taliban. Many mujahideen fought the Soviet army and then later fought the taliban. Other mujahideen fought the Soviets and then joined the taliban and fought other mujahideen. Many taliban were born after the Soviets left and were never anti-Soviet mujahideen. You can use wikipedia to read about the northern alliance and Ahmad Shah Massoud and then get someone who isn't a fucking moron (this will be someone who is not a blood relative) to explain it in even simpler terms. Probably they will have to physically beat the information through your thick skull with mallet.
It was never a secret that the mujahideen were funded and supported by the western powers via Pakistan. There was never any mystery about or ignorance of the fact that they had US and UK made weapons, training and political support. This all happened well before the www ever existed and I'm old enough to remember it well enough.
Your assertion that any of this is somehow related to an optional network filter in the UK is still fucking moronic.
You'll never be censored because you're too stupid to be dangerous to anyone except yourself.
You fail to make any reasoned rebuttal or any reasoned proposal but instead offer a couple of weak insults and quit. This is evidence that you are right?
You will never be censored because you have nothing to say.
That is complete nonsense and you'd have to be brain dead to believe it. Here is why: the taliban didn't even exist at the time of the Russian occupation. It emerged from the chaos of the civil and tribal wars that followed the Soviet exit.
You are not only anonymous but also an ignoramus.
You are confusing and conflating an ISP's filtering system with the directive of a court.
Pirate Bay was blocked by order of the High Court. That was a judgement made on the basis of law and in open court. It was unrelated to the current proposals requiring ISPs to change their filtering from default opt-out to default opt-in.
btw piratebay.org no longer exists. The Pirate Bay is now hosted at piratebay.sx
How is it optional? By being optional. What is so hard to understand. You have options. You can choose. You make the choice. You select from a menu of options. Or opt out. All the preceding words can be found in any English dictionary.
You always go through an ISP and all UK ISPs already filter in order to comply with existing law.
"who's to say it won't accidently be locked" .... is that supposed to be an argument? Who's to say the moon won't suddenly spin out of earth orbit? Who's to say my car won't accidentally explode? Who's to say the Flying Spaghetti Monster will not be angry?
How about an argument or proposition that doesn't involve failing to understand plain English? Or one that doesn't require being in a permanent state of speculative hysterical anxiety as a precondition?
Here's what I would do if my ISP's optional filter somehow got gummed up and stuck (maybe it can get jammed up with virtual sticky tissues and drug paraphenalia?): First I would use a proxy. Second I would call the helpdesk and say "Your filter is all jammed up with the spunky tissues and prozac boxes discarded by anxious slashdot reading pansies. Please fix it, thanks Sanjay."
It isn't censorship. To be considered censorship requires that you cannot opt in or out. Censorship means *compulsion* whereas this is ENTIRELY OPTIONAL. You can opt in or out by clicking a link and checking a box.
This is *not* censorship. I have lived in countries where there is genuine censorship that prevents access to proxies, proxy software or even getting information on using such. Bypassing the censorship got you a prison sentence.
"Maybe they blocked PETA, the communist party, evidence of UK government wrongdoing" Maybe the earth is flat. Maybe the moon is made of cheese. Oh wait, that's all complete nonsense.
How about an actual reasoned objection instead of "Maybe " ?
But let's suppress laughter long enough to consider the "argument" that "maybe" my ISP's optional(!) filter secretly(!!!) blocks the communist party (it doesn't btw): the solution: switch off the filter! Here's how: click click.
Now let's stop laughing for another minute and assume that the wicked ever-so-secret filter (so evil and fiendishly secret that it announces itself when filtering and also tells you how to switch it off!) is secretly blocking PETA (I'm sorry to disappoint you but I checked and it isn't) and I am not the account holder so have no option to change the settings: the filter is on the network, not on my PC/device. There is nothing to stop me using a proxy to bypass the filter. Nothing. There is no block on anonymising or proxying services hosted on the www. With the filter on I can use hidemyass.com to visit piratebay.sx or to get info on proxying, get proxy apps etc etc. I can use ixquick or startpage web search engines and visit sites using their proxy service. And of course I can always run tor from my own machine and not need to bother with proxy websites.
The UK plan is for an *optional* filter. It's not an attempt to stop people at home looking at any of the stuff they can look at now. It's not even designed to stop mildly determined avoidance of the filter by people who aren't authorised to disable it. It's a measure mostly to restore public www space to the kind of social and legal standards we expect *and democratically legislate for* in the physical world, so for example in the same way that a minor is refused when trying to purchase legal highs or porn in a physical shop they will also not be able to purchase the same via the free wifi at the community centre or coffee shop or wherever. Hardcore pornography in the UK is not allowed to shown in public places or regular shops or on regular tv channels but is legally available to adults who want it. The same will be the default on the publicly available internet, while what you do in your own home, on your own account, will remain entirely up to you.
It has *nothing* to do with tracking. The ISP *already* knows which sites you visit. If they couldn't know this then you couldn't connect, could you? Doh.
How do you know what proportion of people will change the default? Are you claiming mystic powers of foresight?
Why would a credit report note that I did or did not choose to filter, for example, social networking sites or xxx video sites? Credit companies care about financial status, not whether I block access to social networking and gaming sites during homework times. Yours is such a ridiculous assertion that it is unanswerable and meaningless.
US, CAN, AUS might bar my entry because I disabled a filter and might have seen some boobies or some legal xxx or looked at some nasty stuff on youtube? Please get real.
You have resorted to arguments that are so childish and illogical that they go speeding past "reductio ad absurdum" like it isn't even a bump in the road.
Today, for the first time ever, I actually enabled the filter to see how it worked in practice, and did so using its crude "block everything from social media to self harm, drugs and xxx" settings. In use it is actually quite sophisticated and unsurprising. It blocks well known torrent indexing web sites but not trackers or torrent traffic. It allows access to sites that offer help to people who self harm but blocks access to sites where self harmers congregate and encourage each other. Similarly with drugs: I searched for "legal highs" and could read all about them but sites selling them were blocked. It allows access to The Sun "newspaper" but blocks that publication's page3.com soft porn site.
What happens when a page is blocked is that it's replaced with a notice telling you why and actually linking to the page where you can unblock it (assuming you have your ISP log-in details). It's hardly difficult. Anyone with the mental capacity to log in to a hotmail or youtube account will be fine. Clearly this will inconvenience some of the shrieking paranoiacs on slashdot but normal grown ups have nothing to worry about.
I switched the filter off again while composing this reply and within one minute I was again able to access sites that wanted to sell me drugs, xxx movies, help me harm myself and others and so on. Happiness is restored.
*I* decide if my connection is filtered, not you, not the government, nor anyone else. What the hell is wrong with that?
I'm a customer of the ISP in question, TalkTalk.
I do *NOT* have to individually opt-in to "content tagged as violent, extremist, terrorist, anorexia and eating disorders, suicide, alcohol, smoking, web forums, esoteric material and web-blocking circumvention tools".
I unchecked *ONE* box so that my broadband service is unfiltered. That's all. Those fine grain options become available if *YOU* *CHOOSE* filtering. *YOU* have the control and the choice!
People keep acting outraged and presenting this measure as censorship. This is not censorship. Censorship is when the decision to filter content and the selection of what is to be filtered is *outside of your control*. This filtering is entirely and 100% within the control of the account holder. You can switch it on or off at will.
The people who don't have control: minors, customers using your wifi, house guests, or anyone else who has no business accessing your internet account.
The people who do have control: you (the actual legal account owner), and anyone you authorise/enable to manage your ISP account.
My ISP offers a "family filter". When a customer joins the ISP they have the option to enable the family filter or not. I was already a customer when the filter was introduced. I received an email letting me know about the filter and a link to the "My Account" page where I can toggle it on or off. If I had children or ran a community group or business I would enable it. None of that applies and I prefer to leave my service unfiltered.
I have lost nothing and my freedom has not been curtailed in any way whatsoever.
It is perfectly reasonable a democratic society to want the same legal standards to apply to content delivered electronically as to content delivered on physical media such as books, DVD etc. We have laws concerning images of rape, bestiality, child abuse and so on because as a society we believe these kinds of images are damaging and unwelcome. The laws are made in parliament in a broadly free society by people we elect and who we can and do periodically remove if we like.
This legislation does not curtail the freedom of even one responsible adult. If you want to continue to use *your* internet connection to enjoy pornography then nothing will stop you from doing so. The main change will be to filter *public* connections.
If a minor goes into a store and try to buy pornography or extremely violent movies they are refused because as a society we believe this is something we prefer to disallow. A concerned parent or guardian might filter their home connection but every young person now has a mobile computer of some kind and the legal brickwall has crumbled to dust. What this law does is restore our society's ability to enact its democratic choices, and tries to put important parenting choices back into the hands of parents instead of the hands of unknown third parties who have proven to be lazy, incompetent, uncaring, greedy or even malicious.
Again: this legislation does not curtail the freedom of even one responsible adult.
If the video shows men shouting allah akbar but nobody is doing anything fucking repulsive, depraved, pointless or idiotic then it's a fake.
an anonymous Debian developer who can't successfully install Debian has spoken. Hmm.
I'll repeat my core point which hasn't been addressed in any way:
This is a news site.
Crunchbang is only one of many almost identical generic exercises with not a single notable or non-generic feature.
It isn't newsworthy.
I said nothing about being offended, mortally or otherwise. Another strawman.
A complete failure to actually specify what makes crunchbang crunchbang on the project's own site is about the only thing there that is really informative, and that's inadvertent.
Crunchbang seem unable to say what distinguishes it from its parent. They resort to terms so vague as to be meaningless, except that it ships with Adobe Flash. The users who supposedly gain some benefit from it don't seem to know either.
This is a news site and crunchbang is a just one of many almost identical generic exercises with not a single notable or non-generic feature. It isn't newsworthy in the same way that "I baked a cake and used a funny food colouring" isn't newsworthy. Slashdot would be a better news site if it avoided brainless LXer style filler.