And commercialisation too. In fact it might even be a major driving force behind militarisation. If we'd kept the Internet solely restricted to free information sharing, and forbidden monetisation of it in any form, we wouldn't be in this escalating mess now, but then it wouldn't appeal to "consumers" would it?
Second this. Fast, lean, and to the point. No heavy page loads, no JavaScript, no unwanted clutter like "Friends" and so on. Seems like USENET was just too good for majority of the netizens.
All the files I store on the Cloud are encrypted locally on my machine by GPG before being uploaded to Google Drive, Mega or whatever. Now it is possible that a backdoor/exploit of my OS's code or GPG's code or hardware could leak my keys, but that's significantly more difficult to accomplish than simply changing a few lines of JavaScript the next time my browser pulls down the uploader's page.
Money is necessary when there's competition in society. When society transitions to cooperation (and not what passes under that name today), only organisation would be necessary, not money.
Agreed. For me, I use it almost exclusively as a platform for keeping in touch with orgs and people involved in my interests (ecology, conservation, astronomy). The vast majority of them are on facebook and apart from Twitter, you'll hardly find them anywhere else. The bigger organisations do have sites of their own, but not the smaller ones and the hundreds of individuals. They have all chosen FB Pages, and so either I keep in touch with them via facebook or practically isolate myself to just my neighborhood in this day & age of instant communication and so-called global village! I don't post personally identifiable things like family pictures or sensitive contact information, so I hope I've managed to strike a balance here that works.
Well I do use facebook to keep up with organisations and individuals working in the field of environment and conservation. There's no website out there that can collate information from dozens of organisations and hundreds of individuals (conservationists, researchers, photographers) all related by a single cause, and present it. I don't use facebook for games, nor stupidly post personal stuff like photos, addresses, phone numbers and the like. Until a large fraction of all these organisations and individuals set up multiple accounts on multiple sites (many of them aren't even on Twitter, let alone G+, tumblr and more obscure ones), I have to weigh the potential privacy benefits versus denying myself of information interesting to me. For the moment I stick with FB for this purpose, as I figure even if they were to data mine my profile and posts, all they'd get is a lot of ecology related stuff, and nothing really personal.
States are fictitious entities, and what exists in reality are individuals. There exists a need to make both private and public institutions as good as possible, and that can only come about through honesty on everyone's part. One example would be private schools that are affordable and do not set unrealistic entry standards to intentionally keep out what the management perceive as unsavoury segments of society. And on the other hand public schools should also improve their standards and not merely serve as a last resort for the lowest segments. Altruism is needed to some extent whether in public or private life. Otherwise we get evil/incompetent corporations and evil/incompetent governments and there's not a whole lot of difference between the two.
For people like me in India, 256 kbps connections are still pretty much considered "broadband" and are expensive enough. With such a connection the security implications of Cloud storage matters less than whether it is feasible at all to use it in the first place. For example I've got about 300 Gb of data on my harddrive and about 5 Gb on my Google Drive which I spent around 10 days uploading with the patience of a saint! I simply won't be able to upload all my data to any Cloud with the kind of connections here. Besides loosing control of your data, Cloud is also dependent on the network quality, and that's the big killer for much of the world. Data duplicated across two different hard disks ought to be very safe, for individual users. Companies would of course need to maintain copies at several geographic locations. The great advantage of Cloud is mobility, but with storage densities increasing much of that attraction is getting diluted too. Combine that with loss of control and security risks and I can't see what the great fuss is about.
If NSA or some agency had got its hands at the hardware level, engineers and admins would've noticed it by now, just like Stuxnet was noticed. A malware that's completely invisible would also likely be a useless malware, and the moment there are effects to be observed, close testing ought to reveal it. What we need is cooperative internationally monitored agency for testing and auditing hardware, much like the standards bodies but much more in detail. If it's international, one country's engineers won't hesitate to reveal the dark designs of another country. Yes they can bought off but not all, not everywhere.
As for using Microsoft, well for security a fully open source bootstrapped software stack is a minimum these days. Closed source software is just too easy to infiltrate by governments. Intimidating one company is easier than fooling all the eyes on the Internet!
Strictly speaking, no one, but that doesn't mean NSA would've got their hands and backdoors everywhere. And even if they "implant" at the hardware level, shouldn't it be possible to detect this by close analysis and reverse engineering, and there ought to be some way to cripple the function once it is detected? Regularly audited code-bases for operating systems (like OpenBSD) could be stored on international servers, and all it'd take is a single clean copy of compiler to bootstrap. At the application level, strong encryption ought to set them back for some more years yet. Anyway I guess we ought to continue to take reasonable steps instead of despairing at NSA's perceived omniscience and doing nothing...
LOL... Or concerned and highly knowledgeable people can invest in ground-up (from the hardware level) effort towards building alternative infrastructures. Not impossible if enough interested parties can come together and work honestly...
As governments become shadier, the impetus for people to uphold honesty goes down too. Slowly it becomes a "anything goes" situation. I mean if a common man does X he's branded a cyber criminal and faces years in prison, while if a government does the same, not only are they above legal consequences, but even above moral consequences it seems. The more fanatical a group/government becomes, the more time and money they start spending on stridently insisting they are for the larger good. Watching this over and over again in all parts of the world. In other words, nothing has actually changed, but just that what promised to be a truly revolutionary thing (the Internet) has had it's full potential crippled and poisoned. Now it's almost just another corrupt institution, but even then, it's good still outweighs the bad. Imagine what could have been...
I just use GPG on client side, encrypt, and then transfer the files to any cloud service. The service doesn't have the key and their client cannot get at my key. The only way would be to infiltrate my system, bundle malware into GPG, or use the rubber hose on me, all of which are rather extreme scenarios!:-P
Staggering hypocrisy on the part of the US government. The same country which has used Agent Orange, Napalm, Cluster bombs, Nuclear weapons and depleted uranium shells, does not hesitate to talk about the horror of another country taking it's own baby steps after the footsteps of the founding father of modern warmongering.
Estimates of up to 400,000 people killed or wounded by Agent Orange, 388,000 TONS of napalm dropped on Vietnam... Where is the accountability from the USA for these war crimes? On the other hand it does not even bind itself to Protocol III of UN CCW, nor sign the NPT.
God I'm fed up with the moral high ground being claimed here. It would be better for the US government to flat out state it's ACTUAL geopolitical interests in this war and wade right in (which it'll do anyway). A modicum of honour in there in at least admitting to be bad.
Right now I see no ethical difference between the leader of a supposed leading nation of humanity's best values and thugs like Assad, and that's frightening and sad.
And don't forget that it is the "first world" countries (not necessarily the US) that supplied these bastards with all their arms and ammunition including chemical ones.
Plain military power rules everywhere it seems. Fuck humanity, fuck ethics, fuck values.
Spy on me all you want (my own govt, NSA, whomever)... Nothing's gonna happen except losing some storage and time! As for the laws that allow these kinds of unethical behaviour to go on, as long as we (people of the world) remain ignorant and divided by and large, there's nothing that can really be done. We *need* carrot-and-stick rulers and hence that's what we get. If the world were to become all nice and a paradise tomorrow it'll be too good for most of us, and we'd fuck it up and bring it down to the current level soon enough. So meanwhile people are fighting with various means to educate and enlighten on the one hand, and take corporates and governments to courts on the other hand, but this is going to be a long struggle. Unethical digital behaviour is *nothing* compared to the unethical real-world behaviour and no one's even been able to do anything about the latter yet...
This is sad. With the state of medicine these days, I doubt there'll be the amount of physical suffering you imagine you'll suffer, and as for the mental angle...
Haha I wish! I'm in India and getting it shipped is a no-go. I hope they open a store or franchise here in the future.
I can't think of as sweeping a monopoly as that of MS, for any other branded global product! People seriously should get out of the Microsoft gravity well.:-P
ThinkPenguin is a ray of hope. Unless Linux finds a reasonable level of support from hardware makers it's going to keep getting more difficult to counter the strategies of Microsoft, Apple and co.
An alternative to buying from ThinkPenguin (since shipping is likely to be a put-off for international orders) is to purchase individual components from those manufacturers who don't restrict their hardware with Windows only drivers or are particularly uncooperative with the FOSS community. This won't directly sway the issue of Secure Boot, but still the FOSS community does number in the tens of millions at least, and so coordinated action can send strong signals, provide it can unite together.
Anyone knows of a updated online database for hardware (and their makers) that plays well with FOSS?
My thoughts exactly. How in the world has Microsoft, one single software firm, managed to usurp power enough to dictate to hardware manufacturers, to users, to institutions and soon enough even to governments is shocking.
I for one would be willing to support hardware makers with a slightly pricier hardware if it meant that by doing so, they could get out from MS's unethical monopoly once and for all. Microsoft should concentrate on making compelling software that'd naturally motivate people to go out and buy it, and not worm itself in everywhere like a plague using every kind of legal loophole and arm-twisting there is. They should be alarmed that practically nobody respects them as a company, even though out of sheer inertia the vast majority still continue to use their products. And no, Bill Gates's admirable charity work doesn't condone MS's behaviour even a bit.
Ultimately change is in the hands of us users, but I hope change comes before it becomes too late too change due to an unholy confluence of laws, politicians, business, police all colluding together. The signs are clear that all over the world they are willing to happily do so; are we willing to collude together to save the open-mindedness that the Renaissance ushered in, or are we headed towards a second, 'scientific' dark age?
Like most other technology, a connected home is a good convenience within strict limits. I feel veering towards both extremes of universal connectivity and knee-jerk rejection born from fear are both not good. Each person must think things through and decide what they desire for themselves and market forces shouldn't dictate things. There's also a certain joy in doing things manually and not sitting uselessly like a lump of flesh surrounded by a sea of robots, feeling useless. Life is there in small tasks too, not just grand flights of fancy.
also, don't install any programs from sources other than official repositories (except for things like flash from adobe website) and don't install garbage apps and avoid torrrent clients which are a breeding ground for malware for all operating systems.
I've been using Transmission, Deluge, and KTorrent since several years and I've not encountered a single instance of malware which I didn't specifically download myself. Things might be different on Windows though where I guess it's popular to bundle malware with freeware torrent clients, but that just means you need to use a well known and trusted client; no need to avoid torrents.
Which is the real reason for the second amendment.
With an armed populace the government fears the people. This is freedom.
With an unarmed populace the people fear the government. This is tyranny.
Get guns. Film the police. Vote no on almost every new law. Vote in every election. Vote for the nobody. Vote for the new guy.
Never vote for the incumbent. Never vote for his most likely opponent. Stay involved. Question authority. Do not fly.
Break their power over us by arming yourself. (Guns/Information)
Break their power over us by disarming them. (Money)
You do not get a small accountable government by just demanding it of them. You must demand it of yourself.
You must be self sufficient as much as possible. You can not effectively hold power over those you owe everything to.
Pay your bills. Do not over spend. Save. Work. Expect nothing from them and more from yourself.
Support your family. Hold your values.
Remember. These people are elected. This is our fault. We must fix it.
Won't arming everyone simply lead to civil war and chaotic and impulsive violence? Can every single American be trusted with a gun? Look at places like Afghanistan where a significant fraction of the populace are armed; it sure is hell on earth.
Agree with your other points regarding voting and using knowledge as power, being self-sufficient, and family values.
I believe guns simply don't make for a stable society though.
I consider myself religious (in the sense I believe in the abstract God), but I'd leave the blacklist empty too. Ideally children should be personally monitored by their parents when they use the Net, and most importantly, should be educated well, so that they are able to avoid unhealthy obsessions and think for themselves without hand-holding.
Any filtering is best done on the client side, as needed by each family. If a family is too ignorant (or too wise) not to do so, then let the children take care of themselves. Compared to so many Real World dangers, content on the Internet is at worst mildly disturbing; not a big deal. I mean, I've had unrestricted access to the Net since early teens, and I haven't got messed up as far as I can tell.
I wouldn't support ANY censorship of any content, however vile it may be, EXCEPT to protect children and early teens, and that implemented at the end-user side, not by ISPs or Governments, who'll be all too easily tempted to misuse the power.
The violence you routinely get to see on regular TV (films, news, reality shows etc.) is far more pervasive and insidious, as it's easily viewed and constantly broadcast, as opposed to some obscure website you'd have to take the trouble to search out and visit. And violence IMO is FAR more damaging to the growing psyche than sex or nudity.
Slashdot Mirror
And commercialisation too. In fact it might even be a major driving force behind militarisation. If we'd kept the Internet solely restricted to free information sharing, and forbidden monetisation of it in any form, we wouldn't be in this escalating mess now, but then it wouldn't appeal to "consumers" would it?
Why not simply exchange currency at the local foreign exchange bank and mail it to a PO box?
Second this. Fast, lean, and to the point. No heavy page loads, no JavaScript, no unwanted clutter like "Friends" and so on. Seems like USENET was just too good for majority of the netizens.
All the files I store on the Cloud are encrypted locally on my machine by GPG before being uploaded to Google Drive, Mega or whatever. Now it is possible that a backdoor/exploit of my OS's code or GPG's code or hardware could leak my keys, but that's significantly more difficult to accomplish than simply changing a few lines of JavaScript the next time my browser pulls down the uploader's page.
Money is necessary when there's competition in society. When society transitions to cooperation (and not what passes under that name today), only organisation would be necessary, not money.
Agreed. For me, I use it almost exclusively as a platform for keeping in touch with orgs and people involved in my interests (ecology, conservation, astronomy). The vast majority of them are on facebook and apart from Twitter, you'll hardly find them anywhere else. The bigger organisations do have sites of their own, but not the smaller ones and the hundreds of individuals. They have all chosen FB Pages, and so either I keep in touch with them via facebook or practically isolate myself to just my neighborhood in this day & age of instant communication and so-called global village! I don't post personally identifiable things like family pictures or sensitive contact information, so I hope I've managed to strike a balance here that works.
Well I do use facebook to keep up with organisations and individuals working in the field of environment and conservation. There's no website out there that can collate information from dozens of organisations and hundreds of individuals (conservationists, researchers, photographers) all related by a single cause, and present it. I don't use facebook for games, nor stupidly post personal stuff like photos, addresses, phone numbers and the like. Until a large fraction of all these organisations and individuals set up multiple accounts on multiple sites (many of them aren't even on Twitter, let alone G+, tumblr and more obscure ones), I have to weigh the potential privacy benefits versus denying myself of information interesting to me. For the moment I stick with FB for this purpose, as I figure even if they were to data mine my profile and posts, all they'd get is a lot of ecology related stuff, and nothing really personal.
States are fictitious entities, and what exists in reality are individuals. There exists a need to make both private and public institutions as good as possible, and that can only come about through honesty on everyone's part. One example would be private schools that are affordable and do not set unrealistic entry standards to intentionally keep out what the management perceive as unsavoury segments of society. And on the other hand public schools should also improve their standards and not merely serve as a last resort for the lowest segments. Altruism is needed to some extent whether in public or private life. Otherwise we get evil/incompetent corporations and evil/incompetent governments and there's not a whole lot of difference between the two.
For people like me in India, 256 kbps connections are still pretty much considered "broadband" and are expensive enough. With such a connection the security implications of Cloud storage matters less than whether it is feasible at all to use it in the first place. For example I've got about 300 Gb of data on my harddrive and about 5 Gb on my Google Drive which I spent around 10 days uploading with the patience of a saint! I simply won't be able to upload all my data to any Cloud with the kind of connections here. Besides loosing control of your data, Cloud is also dependent on the network quality, and that's the big killer for much of the world. Data duplicated across two different hard disks ought to be very safe, for individual users. Companies would of course need to maintain copies at several geographic locations. The great advantage of Cloud is mobility, but with storage densities increasing much of that attraction is getting diluted too. Combine that with loss of control and security risks and I can't see what the great fuss is about.
If NSA or some agency had got its hands at the hardware level, engineers and admins would've noticed it by now, just like Stuxnet was noticed. A malware that's completely invisible would also likely be a useless malware, and the moment there are effects to be observed, close testing ought to reveal it. What we need is cooperative internationally monitored agency for testing and auditing hardware, much like the standards bodies but much more in detail. If it's international, one country's engineers won't hesitate to reveal the dark designs of another country. Yes they can bought off but not all, not everywhere. As for using Microsoft, well for security a fully open source bootstrapped software stack is a minimum these days. Closed source software is just too easy to infiltrate by governments. Intimidating one company is easier than fooling all the eyes on the Internet!
Strictly speaking, no one, but that doesn't mean NSA would've got their hands and backdoors everywhere. And even if they "implant" at the hardware level, shouldn't it be possible to detect this by close analysis and reverse engineering, and there ought to be some way to cripple the function once it is detected? Regularly audited code-bases for operating systems (like OpenBSD) could be stored on international servers, and all it'd take is a single clean copy of compiler to bootstrap. At the application level, strong encryption ought to set them back for some more years yet. Anyway I guess we ought to continue to take reasonable steps instead of despairing at NSA's perceived omniscience and doing nothing...
LOL... Or concerned and highly knowledgeable people can invest in ground-up (from the hardware level) effort towards building alternative infrastructures. Not impossible if enough interested parties can come together and work honestly...
As governments become shadier, the impetus for people to uphold honesty goes down too. Slowly it becomes a "anything goes" situation. I mean if a common man does X he's branded a cyber criminal and faces years in prison, while if a government does the same, not only are they above legal consequences, but even above moral consequences it seems. The more fanatical a group/government becomes, the more time and money they start spending on stridently insisting they are for the larger good. Watching this over and over again in all parts of the world. In other words, nothing has actually changed, but just that what promised to be a truly revolutionary thing (the Internet) has had it's full potential crippled and poisoned. Now it's almost just another corrupt institution, but even then, it's good still outweighs the bad. Imagine what could have been...
I just use GPG on client side, encrypt, and then transfer the files to any cloud service. The service doesn't have the key and their client cannot get at my key. The only way would be to infiltrate my system, bundle malware into GPG, or use the rubber hose on me, all of which are rather extreme scenarios! :-P
Staggering hypocrisy on the part of the US government. The same country which has used Agent Orange, Napalm, Cluster bombs, Nuclear weapons and depleted uranium shells, does not hesitate to talk about the horror of another country taking it's own baby steps after the footsteps of the founding father of modern warmongering. Estimates of up to 400,000 people killed or wounded by Agent Orange, 388,000 TONS of napalm dropped on Vietnam... Where is the accountability from the USA for these war crimes? On the other hand it does not even bind itself to Protocol III of UN CCW, nor sign the NPT. God I'm fed up with the moral high ground being claimed here. It would be better for the US government to flat out state it's ACTUAL geopolitical interests in this war and wade right in (which it'll do anyway). A modicum of honour in there in at least admitting to be bad. Right now I see no ethical difference between the leader of a supposed leading nation of humanity's best values and thugs like Assad, and that's frightening and sad. And don't forget that it is the "first world" countries (not necessarily the US) that supplied these bastards with all their arms and ammunition including chemical ones. Plain military power rules everywhere it seems. Fuck humanity, fuck ethics, fuck values.
Spy on me all you want (my own govt, NSA, whomever)... Nothing's gonna happen except losing some storage and time! As for the laws that allow these kinds of unethical behaviour to go on, as long as we (people of the world) remain ignorant and divided by and large, there's nothing that can really be done. We *need* carrot-and-stick rulers and hence that's what we get. If the world were to become all nice and a paradise tomorrow it'll be too good for most of us, and we'd fuck it up and bring it down to the current level soon enough. So meanwhile people are fighting with various means to educate and enlighten on the one hand, and take corporates and governments to courts on the other hand, but this is going to be a long struggle. Unethical digital behaviour is *nothing* compared to the unethical real-world behaviour and no one's even been able to do anything about the latter yet...
This is sad. With the state of medicine these days, I doubt there'll be the amount of physical suffering you imagine you'll suffer, and as for the mental angle...
What a narcissist! Ironic as well...
Haha I wish! I'm in India and getting it shipped is a no-go. I hope they open a store or franchise here in the future.
I can't think of as sweeping a monopoly as that of MS, for any other branded global product! People seriously should get out of the Microsoft gravity well. :-P
ThinkPenguin is a ray of hope. Unless Linux finds a reasonable level of support from hardware makers it's going to keep getting more difficult to counter the strategies of Microsoft, Apple and co. An alternative to buying from ThinkPenguin (since shipping is likely to be a put-off for international orders) is to purchase individual components from those manufacturers who don't restrict their hardware with Windows only drivers or are particularly uncooperative with the FOSS community. This won't directly sway the issue of Secure Boot, but still the FOSS community does number in the tens of millions at least, and so coordinated action can send strong signals, provide it can unite together. Anyone knows of a updated online database for hardware (and their makers) that plays well with FOSS?
My thoughts exactly. How in the world has Microsoft, one single software firm, managed to usurp power enough to dictate to hardware manufacturers, to users, to institutions and soon enough even to governments is shocking. I for one would be willing to support hardware makers with a slightly pricier hardware if it meant that by doing so, they could get out from MS's unethical monopoly once and for all. Microsoft should concentrate on making compelling software that'd naturally motivate people to go out and buy it, and not worm itself in everywhere like a plague using every kind of legal loophole and arm-twisting there is. They should be alarmed that practically nobody respects them as a company, even though out of sheer inertia the vast majority still continue to use their products. And no, Bill Gates's admirable charity work doesn't condone MS's behaviour even a bit. Ultimately change is in the hands of us users, but I hope change comes before it becomes too late too change due to an unholy confluence of laws, politicians, business, police all colluding together. The signs are clear that all over the world they are willing to happily do so; are we willing to collude together to save the open-mindedness that the Renaissance ushered in, or are we headed towards a second, 'scientific' dark age?
Like most other technology, a connected home is a good convenience within strict limits. I feel veering towards both extremes of universal connectivity and knee-jerk rejection born from fear are both not good. Each person must think things through and decide what they desire for themselves and market forces shouldn't dictate things. There's also a certain joy in doing things manually and not sitting uselessly like a lump of flesh surrounded by a sea of robots, feeling useless. Life is there in small tasks too, not just grand flights of fancy.
also, don't install any programs from sources other than official repositories (except for things like flash from adobe website) and don't install garbage apps and avoid torrrent clients which are a breeding ground for malware for all operating systems.
I've been using Transmission, Deluge, and KTorrent since several years and I've not encountered a single instance of malware which I didn't specifically download myself. Things might be different on Windows though where I guess it's popular to bundle malware with freeware torrent clients, but that just means you need to use a well known and trusted client; no need to avoid torrents.
Which is the real reason for the second amendment. With an armed populace the government fears the people. This is freedom. With an unarmed populace the people fear the government. This is tyranny. Get guns. Film the police. Vote no on almost every new law. Vote in every election. Vote for the nobody. Vote for the new guy. Never vote for the incumbent. Never vote for his most likely opponent. Stay involved. Question authority. Do not fly. Break their power over us by arming yourself. (Guns/Information) Break their power over us by disarming them. (Money) You do not get a small accountable government by just demanding it of them. You must demand it of yourself. You must be self sufficient as much as possible. You can not effectively hold power over those you owe everything to. Pay your bills. Do not over spend. Save. Work. Expect nothing from them and more from yourself. Support your family. Hold your values. Remember. These people are elected. This is our fault. We must fix it.
Won't arming everyone simply lead to civil war and chaotic and impulsive violence? Can every single American be trusted with a gun? Look at places like Afghanistan where a significant fraction of the populace are armed; it sure is hell on earth.
Agree with your other points regarding voting and using knowledge as power, being self-sufficient, and family values.
I believe guns simply don't make for a stable society though.
I consider myself religious (in the sense I believe in the abstract God), but I'd leave the blacklist empty too. Ideally children should be personally monitored by their parents when they use the Net, and most importantly, should be educated well, so that they are able to avoid unhealthy obsessions and think for themselves without hand-holding.
Any filtering is best done on the client side, as needed by each family. If a family is too ignorant (or too wise) not to do so, then let the children take care of themselves. Compared to so many Real World dangers, content on the Internet is at worst mildly disturbing; not a big deal. I mean, I've had unrestricted access to the Net since early teens, and I haven't got messed up as far as I can tell.
I wouldn't support ANY censorship of any content, however vile it may be, EXCEPT to protect children and early teens, and that implemented at the end-user side, not by ISPs or Governments, who'll be all too easily tempted to misuse the power.
The violence you routinely get to see on regular TV (films, news, reality shows etc.) is far more pervasive and insidious, as it's easily viewed and constantly broadcast, as opposed to some obscure website you'd have to take the trouble to search out and visit. And violence IMO is FAR more damaging to the growing psyche than sex or nudity.