I don't just put my faith in political parties, which is why I support NO2ID both financially and by supporting and organising local events listed in their fortnightly newsletter. They work to inform public opinion, which in turn puts pressure on the politicians to do things. It's not a perfect system, but I'm doing my part.
The parent stated that they were supporting the Pirate Party because the Lib Dems would keep the database. The Lib Dems have stated that they won't. If you're not going to believe them, why would you believe the Pirate Party over them? After all, every opposition party states they will lower taxes etc. etc....
And while I may not believe the Tories, who tried to introduce a national ID card before, and who voted the Identity Cards Act in Parliament, I'm more inclined to believe the Lib Dems (and the Greens) who have been opposed to the entire National Identity Scheme from day one, especially since it's consistent with their other policies on the National DNA Database and so on.
I can't vouch for the Tories (they definitely want to keep the "biometric visa" ID cards for foreign nationals, among other things), but the claim that the Lib Dems would keep the National Identity Register is unmitigated horseshit and slander.
The Liberal Democrats have always said that they will scrap the card, scrap the register and repeal the Identity Cards Act which allows the State to create such databases. You can't get more strong opposition to the scheme than that.
The Tories might have said they'll scrap the cards, but they've said nothing about scrapping the Register, or repealing the Identity Cards Act 2006. The cards are just for show, the danger comes from the database. While the Tories are actively opposing No2ID, I wouldn't trust a word they say.
To be fair, No2ID didn't particularly encourage people to sign this petition; they knew from the get-go that it would be a waste of time, compared to encouraging people to sign up to the No2ID campaign where they will be kept up-to-date with the latest news and given the oppotunity to participate in a local group campaigning to local government and media...
No2ID, the UK's leading campaign against the National Identity Card and the Database State, realised even before this petition was launched that the site exists only to encourage "fire and forget" activism from people. People signing up to No2ID are encouraged to subscribe to a fortnightly e-mail newsletter which keeps them up to date with the latest news on ID Cards in Government and across the country.
The No2ID campaign has encouraged a 30% swing in public opinion against Identity Cards, has encouraged councils and other organisations across the country to oppose the Government's plans, and formed a wide alliance of political parties and unions from all sides of the spectrum in opposition to this scheme. It's unlikely that the Tories would have come out against ID cards (albeit in a half-arsed way) without No2ID's influence.
If people want to make a difference, joining and supporting No2ID is the best way to do so. There are local groups nationwide, which can always benefit from more supporters.
There's the possibility of an MITM attack with client to server encryption, yes. But not over a local wireless network, which is what we're talking about here.
Last I checked, Gaim's Jabber module didn't support OpenPGP; while Gaim's encryption works with any Gaim user, Jabber's works with any Jabber client that supports it. It's horses for courses really.
Or use Jabber - Jabber supports OpenPGP which means you can use it with your existing GPG setup to securely communicate with other users, if you're talking to another Jabber user.
If you're just worried about having your conversation sniffed over a local wireless network, most Jabber servers support SSL between client and server. Since all communications, including those which go via transports to MSN etc. users, go over this link, it's a good way of securing all your IM.
I know where you're coming from. I find that RSS helps a lot - I have a bunch of news sources that I believe to be fairly unbiased (like Reuters) and others which I know to be biased (like Indymedia and the UK Liberal Democrats) stuck in my RSS reader, and scroll through the headlines when I take a break from coding. I probably only read a small number of the articles in detail, but I get enough of an impression of what's going on from the headlines to know when someone's bullshitting me. Give it a go, it seems to be a fairly low-maintenance way of keeping yourself at least basically informed.
I also try to catch at least one half-hour news show in the evening on TV, while I'm making the dinner or something. I appreciate that this may not be possible for you, and I'm lucky that my girlfriend is also interested in current affairs so it's something we can do together. Of course, the problem then is finding an unbiased news source, but between Channel Four news and the BBC I think I'm doing OK.
I was quite happy while playing Deus Ex: Invisible War to find different situations where you could use your gender to your advantage, depending on the gender of your character. In one part, playing as a male character allows you to seduce another man to get you ahead in the game.
Outside the roleplaying aspect there, there are no gratuitous attempts to make sexuality obvious - it's just a game where one of the NPCs is gay and you can take advantage of that if your character is male. That's all there is to it. And I think that's what we need to see, rather than cheesy stereotype-reinforcing games which try too hard to be "gay friendly".
Get yourself an ass-covering letter. Go to your boss and ask them to sign a letter which states that you, J Random Sysadmin, advised them to stop using Internet Explorer in favour of Firefox for reasons of security on suchandsuch a date.
Be serious about this - on the one hand, it might make your boss realise that you're not dicking about. And if he still refuses to switch, and you've got a signed letter, it might save your job some day.
This is a simple idea, and a useful, community editable database of geographically linked information for London already exists in The Open Guide to London. And it's licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license which allows commercial usage. So all you'd need to do is implement some way of searching by OS co-ordinates (most nodes in the Guide have this information) which should be pretty trivial, and you're away.
Updating OSS is generally a lot easier than updating Windows. The software is more compartmentalised, and updates tend to involve less downtime.
Serious Windows installations need to do major testing each time M$ release a security patch, in case the patch breaks something else. Of course, serious OSS installations need to do this too, but it's much less likely to actually happen.
Re:Might be a good alternative for some.
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Dude, Jesus is down with threesomes?
Re:Never been done before...
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There's also a chapel in the upside-down level of System Shock 2, which looks rather pretty and in which all kinds of scariness takes place.
I think that's a little overkill. Generally when my phone rings I'll either leave it ringing until I'm ready to answer, or answer the call without raising the phone to my ear, while walking to a convenient place to converse. If you answer the call, you've got about ten or fifteen seconds of leeway before the person who called assumes you're not going to speak, which is normally plenty of time to reach a convenient place for conversation.
Using only plain ringtones, its rather difficult to be able to have a somewhat unique ringtone. Having musical ringtones makes that option much more accessible.
Yeah. My old phone (non-polyphonic) had the intro to DeathBoy's rather excellent track Valentines </plug> - it was unique, I programmed it myself, the dozen notes sounded reasonable as a ringtone, and nobody else had it...
I think it is unethical to taint the free software movment with this dogma.
RMS is the Free Software movement. To complain about him "tainting" it is like complaining about Bill Gates "tainting" the Windows movement. You might not agree with everything RMS says (even I don't, and I'm considered by many to be a Free Software evangelist), but he started the Free Software Foundation and is its mouthpiece.
So rather than pay a little extra to cover the cost of your horrifically polluting equipment, you're suggesting that people should drive eight hundred fucking miles spewing all kinds of crap out the arse end of your car to pick up the same equipment with no consideration for its environmental impact?
My boss and I are currently doing our best to document our network here at work. The easiest way we've found is for a stranger to the system (viz. me) to try and do things, and document what he does. Then the experienced admin (him) neatens it up.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't just put my faith in political parties, which is why I support NO2ID both financially and by supporting and organising local events listed in their fortnightly newsletter. They work to inform public opinion, which in turn puts pressure on the politicians to do things. It's not a perfect system, but I'm doing my part. The parent stated that they were supporting the Pirate Party because the Lib Dems would keep the database. The Lib Dems have stated that they won't. If you're not going to believe them, why would you believe the Pirate Party over them? After all, every opposition party states they will lower taxes etc. etc.... And while I may not believe the Tories, who tried to introduce a national ID card before, and who voted the Identity Cards Act in Parliament, I'm more inclined to believe the Lib Dems (and the Greens) who have been opposed to the entire National Identity Scheme from day one, especially since it's consistent with their other policies on the National DNA Database and so on.
I can't vouch for the Tories (they definitely want to keep the "biometric visa" ID cards for foreign nationals, among other things), but the claim that the Lib Dems would keep the National Identity Register is unmitigated horseshit and slander.
The Liberal Democrats have always said that they will scrap the card, scrap the register and repeal the Identity Cards Act which allows the State to create such databases. You can't get more strong opposition to the scheme than that.
Source: http://freedom.libdems.org.uk/the-freedom-bill/full-text-of-the-freedom-bill/#idcards is the text of the Freedom Bill which the Lib Dems would introduce to restore civil liberties.
The Tories might have said they'll scrap the cards, but they've said nothing about scrapping the Register, or repealing the Identity Cards Act 2006. The cards are just for show, the danger comes from the database. While the Tories are actively opposing No2ID, I wouldn't trust a word they say.
No2ID, the leading anti-ID-Register campaign, have published a response to Blair's claims.
To be fair, No2ID didn't particularly encourage people to sign this petition; they knew from the get-go that it would be a waste of time, compared to encouraging people to sign up to the No2ID campaign where they will be kept up-to-date with the latest news and given the oppotunity to participate in a local group campaigning to local government and media...
No2ID, the UK's leading campaign against the National Identity Card and the Database State, realised even before this petition was launched that the site exists only to encourage "fire and forget" activism from people. People signing up to No2ID are encouraged to subscribe to a fortnightly e-mail newsletter which keeps them up to date with the latest news on ID Cards in Government and across the country.
The No2ID campaign has encouraged a 30% swing in public opinion against Identity Cards, has encouraged councils and other organisations across the country to oppose the Government's plans, and formed a wide alliance of political parties and unions from all sides of the spectrum in opposition to this scheme. It's unlikely that the Tories would have come out against ID cards (albeit in a half-arsed way) without No2ID's influence.
If people want to make a difference, joining and supporting No2ID is the best way to do so. There are local groups nationwide, which can always benefit from more supporters.
There's the possibility of an MITM attack with client to server encryption, yes. But not over a local wireless network, which is what we're talking about here.
Last I checked, Gaim's Jabber module didn't support OpenPGP; while Gaim's encryption works with any Gaim user, Jabber's works with any Jabber client that supports it. It's horses for courses really.
Or use Jabber - Jabber supports OpenPGP which means you can use it with your existing GPG setup to securely communicate with other users, if you're talking to another Jabber user.
If you're just worried about having your conversation sniffed over a local wireless network, most Jabber servers support SSL between client and server. Since all communications, including those which go via transports to MSN etc. users, go over this link, it's a good way of securing all your IM.
I know where you're coming from. I find that RSS helps a lot - I have a bunch of news sources that I believe to be fairly unbiased (like Reuters) and others which I know to be biased (like Indymedia and the UK Liberal Democrats) stuck in my RSS reader, and scroll through the headlines when I take a break from coding. I probably only read a small number of the articles in detail, but I get enough of an impression of what's going on from the headlines to know when someone's bullshitting me. Give it a go, it seems to be a fairly low-maintenance way of keeping yourself at least basically informed.
I also try to catch at least one half-hour news show in the evening on TV, while I'm making the dinner or something. I appreciate that this may not be possible for you, and I'm lucky that my girlfriend is also interested in current affairs so it's something we can do together. Of course, the problem then is finding an unbiased news source, but between Channel Four news and the BBC I think I'm doing OK.
I was quite happy while playing Deus Ex: Invisible War to find different situations where you could use your gender to your advantage, depending on the gender of your character. In one part, playing as a male character allows you to seduce another man to get you ahead in the game.
Outside the roleplaying aspect there, there are no gratuitous attempts to make sexuality obvious - it's just a game where one of the NPCs is gay and you can take advantage of that if your character is male. That's all there is to it. And I think that's what we need to see, rather than cheesy stereotype-reinforcing games which try too hard to be "gay friendly".
Get yourself an ass-covering letter. Go to your boss and ask them to sign a letter which states that you, J Random Sysadmin, advised them to stop using Internet Explorer in favour of Firefox for reasons of security on suchandsuch a date.
Be serious about this - on the one hand, it might make your boss realise that you're not dicking about. And if he still refuses to switch, and you've got a signed letter, it might save your job some day.
And what about the bisexuals and asexuals? And that's before we get into the transgendered aspect ;)
This is a simple idea, and a useful, community editable database of geographically linked information for London already exists in The Open Guide to London. And it's licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license which allows commercial usage. So all you'd need to do is implement some way of searching by OS co-ordinates (most nodes in the Guide have this information) which should be pretty trivial, and you're away.
Probably true. Then again, I'd almost certainly be happy to let a Debian/stable box update itself without user intervention.
Updating OSS is generally a lot easier than updating Windows. The software is more compartmentalised, and updates tend to involve less downtime.
Serious Windows installations need to do major testing each time M$ release a security patch, in case the patch breaks something else. Of course, serious OSS installations need to do this too, but it's much less likely to actually happen.
Dude, Jesus is down with threesomes?
There's also a chapel in the upside-down level of System Shock 2, which looks rather pretty and in which all kinds of scariness takes place.
I think that's a little overkill. Generally when my phone rings I'll either leave it ringing until I'm ready to answer, or answer the call without raising the phone to my ear, while walking to a convenient place to converse. If you answer the call, you've got about ten or fifteen seconds of leeway before the person who called assumes you're not going to speak, which is normally plenty of time to reach a convenient place for conversation.
Using only plain ringtones, its rather difficult to be able to have a somewhat unique ringtone. Having musical ringtones makes that option much more accessible.
Yeah. My old phone (non-polyphonic) had the intro to DeathBoy's rather excellent track Valentines </plug> - it was unique, I programmed it myself, the dozen notes sounded reasonable as a ringtone, and nobody else had it...
I think it is unethical to taint the free software movment with this dogma.
RMS is the Free Software movement. To complain about him "tainting" it is like complaining about Bill Gates "tainting" the Windows movement. You might not agree with everything RMS says (even I don't, and I'm considered by many to be a Free Software evangelist), but he started the Free Software Foundation and is its mouthpiece.
No, that'd break the Toy Story naming scheme :)
So rather than pay a little extra to cover the cost of your horrifically polluting equipment, you're suggesting that people should drive eight hundred fucking miles spewing all kinds of crap out the arse end of your car to pick up the same equipment with no consideration for its environmental impact?
Fucker.
From Apocalypse Now, a film which would undoubtedly be heavily censored by this device:
Kurtz: We train young men to drop fire on people. But their commanders won't allow them to write "fuck" on their airplanes because it's obscene!
My boss and I are currently doing our best to document our network here at work. The easiest way we've found is for a stranger to the system (viz. me) to try and do things, and document what he does. Then the experienced admin (him) neatens it up.
one particular category of knowledge - the Linux OS
:p
Linux is not an operating system