There are anti-intrusion programs that'll run on your PC. If you've got a server, you need firewall software. I'd give you specific recommendations, but I am not running 24x7 to the Net and have only started to look into this for myself.
You can download PGP from http://www.pgpi.com, note that if the government breaks into your computer, they can get to your PGP private keys. The fix for that is to keep your private keys on floppy and run only when you need them.
Note that in a government where the crackers ARE the police, protecting your computer will make you an object of suspicion.
The best advice I can give you is to emigrate to a free country and encourage your smartest high-tech friends to go with you if these laws are not repealed QUICKLY.
This law is evidence that whatever social contract your people have with your government is a dead letter from their viewpoint. You no longer have any moral obligation to support or defend it.
Save your own butt. y2k info - http://www.ecis.com/~alizard/y2k.html
It's available, it has the rare feature of being interoperable between Mac and Windows environments... and if anyone can be found to write the code for the Linux port, it'll be interoperable between Mac / Windoze / Linux.
I've been telling people about PGPfone mainly for the interoperability with the security more as an interesting side effect, don't know if you've noticed this or not but most voice conferencing apps are basically single platform.
Interoperable, free of charge, and secure... what more do you want?
The answer of course... if the port got written as freeware and included in standard Linux distribution, it would REALLY piss off the Feds... possibly everybody's. With the exception of the smart minority of government people who will be using it to protect their own secrets. y2k info - http://www.ecis.com/~alizard/y2k.html
You want a solution? There IS no solution possible within the context of the public school game as we know it, too many well meaning incompetents with entrenched political power profit from the system as it is, injustices, stupidity, malice, and all. For solutions, going outside the box is necessary. Alternatives to public education from and for the people who want them, homeschooling, charter schools, and above all, educational vouchers are possible. Properly implemented vouchers, starting with vouchers which will transfer ALL school funds allocated to a student who uses them are probably the best answer. You don't like your school? Vouchers mean you can get parents and the best teachers to know to make one of your own. http://www.ecis.com/~alizard/voucher.html y2k info - http://www.ecis.com/~alizard/y2k.html
Why don't you commit suicide? That way no one will ever accuse you of "hiding behind dead students". Anonymous coward is a perfect description of you. y2k info - http://www.ecis.com/~alizard/y2k.html
Within the constraints of the public school game, I don't see ANY affordable solution. Even a prison with armed guards and video surveillance has semi-regular outbreaks of lethal violence.
In an ideal world, the school administrators, teachers, and students who have created the climate of violence would reexamine their beliefs and practices and resolve to do something else. If their heads were that together, the problem would never have been allowed to happen in the first place.
What's really going on is an escalation of the climate of repression. There are many forces which make constructive change in public education extremely improbable in the current political climate.
The only solution I see is to allow students and parents to opt out of the present system via homeschooling, charter schools, and ultimately voucher programs which will allow new kinds of schools to be not only set up, but to be affordable to those who want them.
Some kids like the current system. Under a voucher system, they could take their vouchers to their current schools. Others would like to see money which goes to the football program at an ordinary public school go to something useful, like new technology. Vouchers let people select environments that fit them best.
One size fits all public education is obsolete. Mosaic 2000 isn't a fix.
From a look at the Mosaic2000 site, I'd say that the people whose assumptions are being written into software are the same people, the administrators and law enforcement people who are ultimately responsible for the kind of high school environments who turn kids into killers. The people who by and large are the problem are not the first people I'd turn to a solution for, computerizing their mindset merely cranks out garbage more efficiently.
What are they going to be looking for in this context? "Does this student play violent computer games?" sounds like a good start.
WHO are they going to be looking at in this context? The captain of the football team who occasionally slaps his girl friend around or that "hacker" kid who got sent home because he was wearing a Marilyn Manson T-shirt?
Given the record of public institutions, it is smarter to assume the worst and let the people who believe that tax money should be spent on Mosaic prove their case to we the taxpayers. Further, the supporters of Mosaic 2000 who are citing previous success of similar programs in analyzing threats made towards judges and victims of domestic violence have made the gross error of thinking that students who have committed no crime should be treated the same way as Mosaic software handles people who have committed actual crimes. (threatening a judge is illegal, committing domestic violence is illegal)
But I hardly think it's worth the uninformed FUD, that Katz is spreading. We all need to learn a little more about this program before we judge it. Sure I'm wary of it, but at this point, hardly panicking. ----------------- end quote
The problem here is that by the time such a program becomes universally adopted by the public schools, it'll be way the hell too late for the victims, and from my look at the http://www.gdbinc.com/mosaic2000.htm site, I expect that there will be some. How many people here who are expressing faith in this unproved piece of software have even bothered to check out what its DEVELOPERS have to say about it? The thing of most concern here is that Mosaic 2000 was designed without substantial input from students... or teachers. I suppose that we should be happy that one token student and one token teacher were allowed to participate in the Mosaic 2000 advisory board. Due diligence in sanity-checking the initial assumptions on which an expert system is programmed is far more important here than it is in most cases, and I don't see this here. From the description provided by the developers, I think that the assumptions underlying Mosaic were an exercise in groupthink... from the kind of people who design the kinds of environments which make Littletons not only possible, but inevitable. y2k info - http://www.ecis.com/~alizard/y2k.html
This is probably the most intelligent comment I've seen posted as of when I read the responses to Jon Katz's article. The most amazing thing I saw when reading many of the other responses is that so many people still have faith in public institutions and public officials despite abundant evidence to the contrary. I also noticed that there were actually people who believe in the ability of computer software (at least anything capable of running on a 486) to predict human behavior to any useful extent. The bottom line from my point of view is that I think it's time to get our people out from under the hands of the public school administrators most likely to misuse tools like Mosaic. This is why I support vouchers, charter schools, and homeschooling. y2k info - http://www.ecis.com/~alizard/y2k.html
"Um... whoah... buy a house?? get a job??? where did you get the impression that this program will affect those things?! " The fact that a student even received a MOSAIC evaluation, i.e. was considered enough of a possible threat to require special security screening will be part of his student record. The results of that evaluation will be part of his student record. That student record will follow that person around for the rest of his life. Planning on getting a job requiring a security clearance? If you think that this software will be used only by sincere, knowledgable, and well-intentioned school administrators with only the best interests of the students at heart... and that the average school admin has any idea as to what those best interests are, you didn't learn a whole lot in public schools, did you? y2k info - http://www.ecis.com/~alizard/y2k.html
The immediate problem is easy enough for an experienced user to handle. Go to an anonymous remailer that handles news postings and post whatever amuses you. Real (cryptographically based) anonymous remailers don't depend on the ability of the owner to avoid search warrants.
For those who are unfamiliar with this, go to http://www.well.com/user/abacard/privacy.html and learn about anon remailers and other privacy protection methods.
The long term issues are whether or not court and politicians will try to close down anonymous remailers.
The justification for anonymous remailers has been for protecting whistle-blowers and people who *need* their privacy protected, i.e. people talking about their own abuse experiences.
It isn't surprising to find a judge that believes that such people don't deserve protection on the basis that protecting our masters in corporation and government is more important than any possible right to personal privacy. It is my opinion that such a judge has no place on the bench.
The biggest problem is that we have politicians and judges making decisions on high-tech issues that have literally never seen a C: prompt and think that all the Internet is some sort of online porn shop. The solution is to GET RID OF THEM. (disclaimer: I meant legal means)
While bushblowsdogs.com is probably still available, the problem is making it insulting, original enough that bush's clown troupe hasn't figured it out yet, and that Network Delusions will let people get away with.
It's a US Patent. The patent number is 5675103. Enter the patent number at the patent search sites below. See full text at US Patent Office Database site.
Slashdot Mirror
You can download PGP from http://www.pgpi.com, note that if the government breaks into your computer, they can get to your PGP private keys. The fix for that is to keep your private keys on floppy and run only when you need them.
Note that in a government where the crackers ARE the police, protecting your computer will make you an object of suspicion.
The best advice I can give you is to emigrate to a free country and encourage your smartest high-tech friends to go with you if these laws are not repealed QUICKLY.
This law is evidence that whatever social contract your people have with your government is a dead letter from their viewpoint. You no longer have any moral obligation to support or defend it.
Save your own butt.
y2k info - http://www.ecis.com/~alizard/y2k.html
Tell your browser to accept all cookies. Did this several months ago with no problems.
There's probably an equivalent for MSIE, but since I don't use it, I don't know what it is.
y2k info - http://www.ecis.com/~alizard/y2k.html
I've been telling people about PGPfone mainly for the interoperability with the security more as an interesting side effect, don't know if you've noticed this or not but most voice conferencing apps are basically single platform.
Interoperable, free of charge, and secure... what more do you want?
The answer of course... if the port got written as freeware and included in standard Linux distribution, it would REALLY piss off the Feds... possibly everybody's. With the exception of the smart minority of government people who will be using it to protect their own secrets.
y2k info - http://www.ecis.com/~alizard/y2k.html
You want a solution? There IS no solution possible within the context of the public school game as we know it, too many well meaning incompetents with entrenched political power profit from the system as it is, injustices, stupidity, malice, and all. For solutions, going outside the box is necessary. Alternatives to public education from and for the people who want them, homeschooling, charter schools, and above all, educational vouchers are possible. Properly implemented vouchers, starting with vouchers which will transfer ALL school funds allocated to a student who uses them are probably the best answer. You don't like your school? Vouchers mean you can get parents and the best teachers to know to make one of your own. http://www.ecis.com/~alizard/voucher.html
y2k info - http://www.ecis.com/~alizard/y2k.html
Why don't you commit suicide? That way no one will ever accuse you of "hiding behind dead students". Anonymous coward is a perfect description of you.
y2k info - http://www.ecis.com/~alizard/y2k.html
In an ideal world, the school administrators, teachers, and students who have created the climate of violence would reexamine their beliefs and practices and resolve to do something else. If their heads were that together, the problem would never have been allowed to happen in the first place.
What's really going on is an escalation of the climate of repression. There are many forces which make constructive change in public education extremely improbable in the current political climate.
The only solution I see is to allow students and parents to opt out of the present system via homeschooling, charter schools, and ultimately voucher programs which will allow new kinds of schools to be not only set up, but to be affordable to those who want them.
Some kids like the current system. Under a voucher system, they could take their vouchers to their current schools. Others would like to see money which goes to the football program at an ordinary public school go to something useful, like new technology. Vouchers let people select environments that fit them best.
One size fits all public education is obsolete. Mosaic 2000 isn't a fix.
http://www.ecis.com/~alizard/voucher.html
y2k info - http://www.ecis.com/~alizard/y2k.html
What are they going to be looking for in this context? "Does this student play violent computer games?" sounds like a good start.
WHO are they going to be looking at in this context? The captain of the football team who occasionally slaps his girl friend around or that "hacker" kid who got sent home because he was wearing a Marilyn Manson T-shirt?
Given the record of public institutions, it is smarter to assume the worst and let the people who believe that tax money should be spent on Mosaic prove their case to we the taxpayers. Further, the supporters of Mosaic 2000 who are citing previous success of similar programs in analyzing threats made towards judges and victims of domestic violence have made the gross error of thinking that students who have committed no crime should be treated the same way as Mosaic software handles people who have committed actual crimes. (threatening a judge is illegal, committing domestic violence is illegal)
y2k info - http://www.ecis.com/~alizard/y2k.html
The problem here is that by the time such a program becomes universally adopted by the public schools, it'll be way the hell too late for the victims, and from my look at the http://www.gdbinc.com/mosaic2000.htm site, I expect that there will be some. How many people here who are expressing faith in this unproved piece of software have even bothered to check out what its DEVELOPERS have to say about it? The thing of most concern here is that Mosaic 2000 was designed without substantial input from students... or teachers. I suppose that we should be happy that one token student and one token teacher were allowed to participate in the Mosaic 2000 advisory board. Due diligence in sanity-checking the initial assumptions on which an expert system is programmed is far more important here than it is in most cases, and I don't see this here. From the description provided by the developers, I think that the assumptions underlying Mosaic were an exercise in groupthink... from the kind of people who design the kinds of environments which make Littletons not only possible, but inevitable.
y2k info - http://www.ecis.com/~alizard/y2k.html
This is probably the most intelligent comment I've seen posted as of when I read the responses to Jon Katz's article. The most amazing thing I saw when reading many of the other responses is that so many people still have faith in public institutions and public officials despite abundant evidence to the contrary. I also noticed that there were actually people who believe in the ability of computer software (at least anything capable of running on a 486) to predict human behavior to any useful extent. The bottom line from my point of view is that I think it's time to get our people out from under the hands of the public school administrators most likely to misuse tools like Mosaic. This is why I support vouchers, charter schools, and homeschooling.
y2k info - http://www.ecis.com/~alizard/y2k.html
"Um... whoah... buy a house?? get a job??? where did you get the impression that this program will affect those things?! " The fact that a student even received a MOSAIC evaluation, i.e. was considered enough of a possible threat to require special security screening will be part of his student record. The results of that evaluation will be part of his student record. That student record will follow that person around for the rest of his life. Planning on getting a job requiring a security clearance? If you think that this software will be used only by sincere, knowledgable, and well-intentioned school administrators with only the best interests of the students at heart... and that the average school admin has any idea as to what those best interests are, you didn't learn a whole lot in public schools, did you?
y2k info - http://www.ecis.com/~alizard/y2k.html
The immediate problem is easy enough for an experienced user to handle. Go to an anonymous remailer that handles news postings and post whatever amuses you. Real (cryptographically based) anonymous remailers don't depend on the ability of the owner to avoid search warrants.
For those who are unfamiliar with this, go to http://www.well.com/user/abacard/privacy.html and learn about anon remailers and other privacy protection methods.
The long term issues are whether or not court and politicians will try to close down anonymous remailers.
The justification for anonymous remailers has been for protecting whistle-blowers and people who *need* their privacy protected, i.e. people talking about their own abuse experiences.
It isn't surprising to find a judge that believes that such people don't deserve protection on the basis that protecting our masters in corporation and government is more important than any possible right to personal privacy. It is my opinion that such a judge has no place on the bench.
The biggest problem is that we have politicians and judges making decisions on high-tech issues that have literally never seen a C: prompt and think that all the Internet is some sort of online porn shop. The solution is to GET RID OF THEM. (disclaimer: I meant legal means)
While bushblowsdogs.com is probably still available, the problem is making it insulting, original enough that bush's clown troupe hasn't figured it out yet, and that Network Delusions will let people get away with.
You can see images including drawings at the IBM Patent Search Engine