While I am pleased that there is a scientific mapping of DoS attacks I would like to take the opportunity to point out certain dynamics in DoS attacking, particularly if used as a disinformation and political tool by government.
1) Right now, any insecure computer can be cracked for use in a DoS attack, thereby indirectly implicating an innocent person. Anyone can get hijacked in this way and framed for another attack, particularly if the investigators choose not to trace back to the original source.
2) DoS and other infowar techniques have been used by the political opponents of Indymedia and other "subversive" websites. I am not referring to the Indymedia subpoena related to the Quebec protests, which was referred to earlier on this site, but to the simple denial of service that crashes these things when they are needed most.
3) Lets say that there is, hypothetically, some politically motivated DoS going on. If so, it;s quite silly and wasteful. The sites that are being DoS'ed are usually those prominent targets, big corporations and government sites which are sometimes capable of holding off attack but are always capable of sending many goons after you. Might I suggest that there are more effective ways of using technology as a political tool.
McConnell noted that the advanced technology gives China the power to electronically
lock out U.S. intelligence monitoring and lock in the Chinese population.
"Even if the Chinese use weak encryption the sheer volume of their communications will make it impossible for us to monitor. If China were to erect a public key infrastructure it will severely impact our intelligence gathering ability," stated McConnell.
He also stated that Clinton was aware that the advanced surveillance technology might be abused by hostile foreign powers.
"Can Key Recovery be used against dissidents and political opponents?" asked Adm. McConnell.
"In a word, YES," he concluded emphatically.
wtf? Like we care about freedom of information for these people. The Chinese are already locked into China's version of the internet, China's cell networks, etc. They already monitor what's going in and going out, and what's said within the country.
And ours for that matter.
Consider that, whatever the nature of this Clipper technology, the Chinese have the best cryptographic technology that our corporations have, much of which is better than that used by the government. The Chinese are, technically, as adaptable as the US and other Western countries. This knowledge is how they are catching the Chinese-American researchers who they keep detaining for spying and disclosing state secrets and such. They are catching Falun Gong organizers who plan via email.
With the international situation as it is, and has been for some time, with China, with an essential cold war, spy as much as you can mentality spearheaded by corporations and governments on both sides, there are no technological solutions to our relations with China. No amount of surveillance or control will resolve the fact that we have to come to terms with a power that is as big and has as many gadgets as we do.
Well, I got a brilliant idea today while I was having a beer with some friends. This idea was not concieved of at any workplace using any of the tools that my workplace provides, but it will definitely help me at work.
I love my job, 'cause I'm a writer (all I ever wanted to be), and I am thinking about writing at least a little bit all the time. In a sense, it's not work at all, but more an ongoing project of becoming more effective at my skill and art. Likewise, I am working all the time, and get tired of my work very rarely.
I think this is a good goal to have for work. Independence is a big part of it for me- it's essential that I am self reliant and able to work without a boss over my shoulder.
Personally, I think the exploitation is worse since IT workers keep the machines running... so the mentality is set up that, since the machines need to run, the IT folks need to always be on call.
That's right, friends, what's more important to your boss is the machine. Not you.
This is quite evident to most people who work on production lines doing highly technical work. The reason technically skilled people are so unique is that they can fit themselves into the little box of functionality determined by the technology's requirements. To the bosses, this isn't like the requirements of an artist, which include freedom of some sort.
The economy is crashing and many people find that they can locate more replaceable machine-servants than they could in the upswing.
So, in accordance to your lesser value, IT on call staff, your flexibility is gone, and your job perks are gone, and you see your job as the stark situation that it is-- slavery to the machine.
This is the kind of work that would benefit from independent collectives of people each knowing the same group of machines and being interchangably knowledgable about them. But companies like as few people as possible to have access to their system.
You all havw a right to spend your resources any way you want, but a Linux server in a toaster isn't a good way to do it in my opinion.
If you want to promote Linux, take the time and instead of praising your geekly glory by making a photogenic linux toaster that will get you linked on slashdot and will slashdot your linux toaster anyway, go teach some kids some linux.
Teaching is unglamorous, dull and frustrating work, nowhere near as entertaining as making a Linux toaster.
As long as the service of being cryogenically preserved is a commodity, unsubsidized by the government or most insurance, the rich, prominent, and powerful will be the people self selected to undergo the service.
These people will also set up bank trusts, etc. to preserve their interests as they lie dead and frozen. They will influence politics to preserve their property rights as they lie dead, concentrating more and more property and political control in the hands of the dead and their trustees.
I can even imagine the trusteeships being battered back and forth in the marketplace, as the companies that control the wealth of the dead compete with each other.
All in all a fucked up scenario. What do people think about existing or prospective national and international law to deal with this problem? Mind you, I'm partial to the belief that either we have to live in a differnet economic system, or we must make cryogenics a state supported medical service available to all - decided by lot, democratic selection, condition of health or some other scientific standard.
Yo, this is the second thing that I've seen that confirms my view that we humans know significantly less about genetic science than we thought we knew.
The clones we made of sheep, mice, and other animals resembled the products of buggy code made by lazy programmers or those forced to write shit by insane business models (remember the sig, "it compiles! Ship it!"). We didn't realize the significance of the slow, steady process of genetic replication within the embryo.
Likewise, we hurled gazillions of dollars at the genome project, in private and public searches. Why were the gazillions hurled? Because of the notion that we could find nice, patentable pieces of genetic code, controlling various physiological processes.
Now that we realize we have got a map to nowhere, lets table the whole deal until we understand more about the operation of genes.
I am all for scientific research but I worry that further pushes down this line of inquiry will be driven by the profit motive, not any kind of medical or healing motive.
I don't think K5 has been slashdotted since the crapflooder rebellion of last year.
Michael, why the heck are you using Rusty's socialist rantings, with which I most heartily concur, to make money for VALinux? You have the biggest case of cognitive dissonance that I have ever seen.
Furthermore, I think young people need to get together when they have the advantage (when still in HS) with their intellectual property, and form a corporation with a collective structure of the inventors making decisions, so they can leverage a bit more decisionmaking power with their IP.
when you are a kid, you would probably be more likely to share the profits a bit if it would enable you to act as an adult with your property through this corporation, rather than getting taken advantage of at a young age.
I am sure that all of you are well aware that the entire notion of sentient extraterrestrial life visiting earth is improbable to a very high degree.
The notion of reverse engineered alien technology is laughable, of course,
they put it under the Monty Python foot and all that.
However, do remember that many people, geeks among them, feel that alien visitation is a credible excuse for much of the malicious government activity out there.
This is misinformation, propaganda, a straw man that isn't scientifically supportable and that plays directly into the interests of the Air Force and other government agencies. These interests are the groups that divert much of the technological and scientific knowledge and energy on this earth to destructive and controlling means.
It is in our interest to ignore the "aliens" and to engage those who run around proselytizing about them in debate
Noam Chomsky was the head of linguistics there I thought. He still is if he hasn't retired.
Besided being a groundbreaker in his time in linguistics, he is one of the aharpest writers on the corporate media as it relates to U.S. foreign policy that I've ever seen.
The word 'goat' is in the article, for chrissakes. You sux0r.
Re the changeover, like VALinux is gonna support this, anyway. what a useless cost outlay to make them even less congnizant of the daily operations of your site.
This is why u guys should have stayed independent. If you actually WANTED to move to a *BSD you could. Now if you want to VAL is gonna see this article, disregard the date and accuse you of crying wolf and other forms of mismanagement.
I have only had to rent a car twice and both times they took the debit card.
Hotels, some places they take cash with photo ID, some places debit card. I think it is a lot easier out of the country as they really like getting american currency anyway
-- perdida (not wanting to be modded down as over-rated, hence unchecked the +1)
The same government that is slavering over the lucrative uses of e-currency doesn't like it when an old technology such as credit cards comes into contact with electronic currency creates crime.
Well, fuck them. Go develop a more secure credit card system.
Or get rid of credit cards all together.
As I think about it, yes, please, do! The cred card has been one of the most abusable, fraud-prone forms of transaction since its inception. it creates lots of ways of creating debt that wouldn't otherwiose be there by encouraging people to spend money they don't have at exorbitant interest rates.
I do not have a single credit card. Contrary to popular opinion it has never stopped me from renting a car or getting a hotel room. I do have a credit history, too, if I need REAL credit like the kind for buying a house or other major investments.
As soon as we semi-privatized space developemtn we opened the door to this sort of thing.
Space is not a military project though it does have national security aspects to it; astronauts and cosmonauts adjust and repair classified satellites, and both space agencies shoot up spy satellites in unmanned missions on behalf of national security.
However, after the Cold War the priority of space went lower again. The the commercial cachet of space was one of the things that many space agencies around the world, but especially the Russians, used to raise funds for their ailing program.
So, is space for war, or science, or money? Now that we have multiple agencies with different reasoning on this issue conributing to a single space station, we had better get a treaty together settling these issues as a matter of international law. And quick.
I wouild think that the US, with its great plans for weapons in space (DUMB!!!), is probably the least likely to go for a more commercialized space program. Of course it's the best funded, too. Probably the best solution is to give more aid to developing countries so they can enjoy the benefits of space without having to sell them off to the highest bidder.
I think that policymakers focus on guns, games, etc. because they can be eliminated using traditional authoritarian police measures from schools, homes and the other places where children live. Every parent, no matter whether they abuse their child or are a moidel parent, can feel better when they remove evil games or install software to spy on kids or set up a snitch line. That is why law enforcement finds these approaches politically useful.
Cultural change against bullying must come from the kids themselves. Perhaps they need to think of themselves as a cohesive group with a common interest and goal.. in which case, resistance against the curtailment of everyone's rights would be a good option.
The notion that security through obscurity doesn't work only holds up to a point. If you focus enough distributed processing power on any security problem, like, say, through posting it to slashdot, you will overwhelm and outpace the sincere efforts to patch the problem that are being undertaken by the hapless victims.
Of course you can also claim that helpful slashdotters may lend advice to DoubleClick but er.. that is not going to happen. Slashdotters might help some open source site that was being lax and got exploited, but not DoubleClick who has copmmitted so many prior offenses against the mores of the/. community.
You know what, this fucking sucks. I have no idea why people did not predict this in advance.
Napster was a wonderful, democratic thing. you could put anything on it you wanted, which meant people were listening to home grown good music and brilliant DJs who produced on their computers instead of Britney Spears. The Britney was a second-order effect of the Napster phenomenon, whose purpose was the creation of a huge music bazaar.
Music swapping (not napster in specific) revolutionized my own taste in music. I was finding archival jazz, the latest electronica from around the world, Japanese girls singing bossa nova tunes over perfect retro backgrounds..instead of all the crap on the stupid radio and at Tower Records.
If the recording company thinks that they can turn Napster into its second order effect- basically, a huge Tower Records store set up in your computer- its head is up its asshole, which we all know is even bigger than the goatse.cx man's!
Unfortunately, the worthy intentions of the book, and its cultural analysis, leave few ends to those of us who want to avoid the effects of commercialized filtering. Many Americans, like some hobbits, have an irritating tendency to shut out all but the most eminently practical things there in front of them. They will gladly put up a digital windowblind, no matter if an outside force has brought it in.
The question of how we filter is more cultural, then, than political. For this, the only options we have in politics to address are law, policy and economics, none of which are exact or direct instruments.
Our options right now are a legislative wall and a market-based, open and voluntary evolution of filtering software.
I would direct my energy at preventing the government from institutionalizing this software until a content neutral or a content specific manner can be found to block the most dangerous sites while protecting the richness of information of the Net at large.
Rigid laws must be passed as to what can be blocked and what cannot be blocked in public access places and in workplaces (corporate software filtering union organizing sites is one example I can think of).
But for the rest of us and for the home, we should not restrict the choice of blinds.. in this case the civil libertarian principle applies, and the cure is worse than the ailment.
We can only hope that the people like you, who have an independent sense of information-- the readers of this book and other messages like it-- will raise their own families with only the most limited and reasonable filters, over which they have complete control.
Unfortunately, as I stated in an earlier post, there is no way to prevent the divergence of media, or the Balkanization as you put it, without resorting to even more stentorian methods of control.
When you walk around in a world of printed media, it is already enclosed in private places and relationships. You walk into an adult book store to pay for the stuff. That is a place where common ground is excluded; the common ground (the street) cannot legally be a place to display the porn.
On the Internet, there is nothing intrinsically preventing the porn marketer from doing something that, to continue the metaphor of the real life adult shop, would make the windows as light and bright as Macy's, attractive to everyone who wants to see it and obnoxious to those who don't. There should be some kind of filtering software to demarcate a public space which those who want to make a buck will freely violate.
We support laws for the restriction of smoking advertisements, which use strategic locations and attractive appearances to get attention- just like porn sites. I definitely prefer filtering software, which you can choose to download and use, to laws that would make the entire internet a public space. Even better, a free market to promote competition of filtering software will improve the software far better than a static law will.
I feel those who wopuld like a wholly unregulated Net, which has no mechanism that protects us neither voluntarily or through law, are unaware of the true content, architecture and behavior of the modern Net. It is no longer a primarily scientific system... just read this CNN article about how searches can't even touch most of the hidden Internet anymore.
Slashdot Mirror
While I am pleased that there is a scientific mapping of DoS attacks I would like to take the opportunity to point out certain dynamics in DoS attacking, particularly if used as a disinformation and political tool by government.
1) Right now, any insecure computer can be cracked for use in a DoS attack, thereby indirectly implicating an innocent person. Anyone can get hijacked in this way and framed for another attack, particularly if the investigators choose not to trace back to the original source.
2) DoS and other infowar techniques have been used by the political opponents of Indymedia and other "subversive" websites. I am not referring to the Indymedia subpoena related to the Quebec protests, which was referred to earlier on this site, but to the simple denial of service that crashes these things when they are needed most.
3) Lets say that there is, hypothetically, some politically motivated DoS going on. If so, it;s quite silly and wasteful. The sites that are being DoS'ed are usually those prominent targets, big corporations and government sites which are sometimes capable of holding off attack but are always capable of sending many goons after you. Might I suggest that there are more effective ways of using technology as a political tool.
McConnell noted that the advanced technology gives China the power to electronically lock out U.S. intelligence monitoring and lock in the Chinese population.
"Even if the Chinese use weak encryption the sheer volume of their communications will make it impossible for us to monitor. If China were to erect a public key infrastructure it will severely impact our intelligence gathering ability," stated McConnell.
He also stated that Clinton was aware that the advanced surveillance technology might be abused by hostile foreign powers.
"Can Key Recovery be used against dissidents and political opponents?" asked Adm. McConnell.
"In a word, YES," he concluded emphatically.
wtf? Like we care about freedom of information for these people. The Chinese are already locked into China's version of the internet, China's cell networks, etc. They already monitor what's going in and going out, and what's said within the country.
And ours for that matter.
Consider that, whatever the nature of this Clipper technology, the Chinese have the best cryptographic technology that our corporations have, much of which is better than that used by the government. The Chinese are, technically, as adaptable as the US and other Western countries. This knowledge is how they are catching the Chinese-American researchers who they keep detaining for spying and disclosing state secrets and such. They are catching Falun Gong organizers who plan via email.
With the international situation as it is, and has been for some time, with China, with an essential cold war, spy as much as you can mentality spearheaded by corporations and governments on both sides, there are no technological solutions to our relations with China. No amount of surveillance or control will resolve the fact that we have to come to terms with a power that is as big and has as many gadgets as we do.
-perdida
I work all the time!
<scooby>Huh?</scooby>
Well, I got a brilliant idea today while I was having a beer with some friends. This idea was not concieved of at any workplace using any of the tools that my workplace provides, but it will definitely help me at work.
I love my job, 'cause I'm a writer (all I ever wanted to be), and I am thinking about writing at least a little bit all the time. In a sense, it's not work at all, but more an ongoing project of becoming more effective at my skill and art. Likewise, I am working all the time, and get tired of my work very rarely.
I think this is a good goal to have for work. Independence is a big part of it for me- it's essential that I am self reliant and able to work without a boss over my shoulder.
Personally, I think the exploitation is worse since IT workers keep the machines running... so the mentality is set up that, since the machines need to run, the IT folks need to always be on call.
That's right, friends, what's more important to your boss is the machine. Not you.
This is quite evident to most people who work on production lines doing highly technical work. The reason technically skilled people are so unique is that they can fit themselves into the little box of functionality determined by the technology's requirements. To the bosses, this isn't like the requirements of an artist, which include freedom of some sort.
The economy is crashing and many people find that they can locate more replaceable machine-servants than they could in the upswing.
So, in accordance to your lesser value, IT on call staff, your flexibility is gone, and your job perks are gone, and you see your job as the stark situation that it is-- slavery to the machine.
This is the kind of work that would benefit from independent collectives of people each knowing the same group of machines and being interchangably knowledgable about them. But companies like as few people as possible to have access to their system.
You all havw a right to spend your resources any way you want, but a Linux server in a toaster isn't a good way to do it in my opinion.
If you want to promote Linux, take the time and instead of praising your geekly glory by making a photogenic linux toaster that will get you linked on slashdot and will slashdot your linux toaster anyway, go teach some kids some linux.
Teaching is unglamorous, dull and frustrating work, nowhere near as entertaining as making a Linux toaster.
But a lot more useful way to pass your free time.
in a capitalist society.
Let's assume the technical problems are solved..
As long as the service of being cryogenically preserved is a commodity, unsubsidized by the government or most insurance, the rich, prominent, and powerful will be the people self selected to undergo the service.
These people will also set up bank trusts, etc. to preserve their interests as they lie dead and frozen. They will influence politics to preserve their property rights as they lie dead, concentrating more and more property and political control in the hands of the dead and their trustees.
I can even imagine the trusteeships being battered back and forth in the marketplace, as the companies that control the wealth of the dead compete with each other.
All in all a fucked up scenario. What do people think about existing or prospective national and international law to deal with this problem? Mind you, I'm partial to the belief that either we have to live in a differnet economic system, or we must make cryogenics a state supported medical service available to all - decided by lot, democratic selection, condition of health or some other scientific standard.
Yo, this is the second thing that I've seen that confirms my view that we humans know significantly less about genetic science than we thought we knew.
The clones we made of sheep, mice, and other animals resembled the products of buggy code made by lazy programmers or those forced to write shit by insane business models (remember the sig, "it compiles! Ship it!"). We didn't realize the significance of the slow, steady process of genetic replication within the embryo.
Likewise, we hurled gazillions of dollars at the genome project, in private and public searches. Why were the gazillions hurled? Because of the notion that we could find nice, patentable pieces of genetic code, controlling various physiological processes.
Now that we realize we have got a map to nowhere, lets table the whole deal until we understand more about the operation of genes.
I am all for scientific research but I worry that further pushes down this line of inquiry will be driven by the profit motive, not any kind of medical or healing motive.
I'm an antiwar.com reader from way back.
I am also a left winger who appreciates reading news and views from those I disagree with
-perdida
have fun in mexico!
-perdida
I don't think K5 has been slashdotted since the crapflooder rebellion of last year.
Michael, why the heck are you using Rusty's socialist rantings, with which I most heartily concur, to make money for VALinux? You have the biggest case of cognitive dissonance that I have ever seen.
-perdida
Furthermore, I think young people need to get together when they have the advantage (when still in HS) with their intellectual property, and form a corporation with a collective structure of the inventors making decisions, so they can leverage a bit more decisionmaking power with their IP.
when you are a kid, you would probably be more likely to share the profits a bit if it would enable you to act as an adult with your property through this corporation, rather than getting taken advantage of at a young age.
I am sure that all of you are well aware that the entire notion of sentient extraterrestrial life visiting earth is improbable to a very high degree.
The notion of reverse engineered alien technology is laughable, of course,
they put it under the Monty Python foot and all that.
However, do remember that many people, geeks among them, feel that alien visitation is a credible excuse for much of the malicious government activity out there.
This is misinformation, propaganda, a straw man that isn't scientifically supportable and that plays directly into the interests of the Air Force and other government agencies. These interests are the groups that divert much of the technological and scientific knowledge and energy on this earth to destructive and controlling means.
It is in our interest to ignore the "aliens" and to engage those who run around proselytizing about them in debate
.
Noam Chomsky was the head of linguistics there I thought. He still is if he hasn't retired.
Besided being a groundbreaker in his time in linguistics, he is one of the aharpest writers on the corporate media as it relates to U.S. foreign policy that I've ever seen.
-perdida
a whole day of shitty april fools articles.
The word 'goat' is in the article, for chrissakes. You sux0r.
Re the changeover, like VALinux is gonna support this, anyway. what a useless cost outlay to make them even less congnizant of the daily operations of your site.
This is why u guys should have stayed independent. If you actually WANTED to move to a *BSD you could. Now if you want to VAL is gonna see this article, disregard the date and accuse you of crying wolf and other forms of mismanagement.
-perdida
1) If I respond to this story on topic and sincerely, am I being trolled?
2) If I troll the story, am I trolling the story and being trolled?
Too confusing.. must go smoke a joint.
I have only had to rent a car twice and both times they took the debit card.
Hotels, some places they take cash with photo ID, some places debit card. I think it is a lot easier out of the country as they really like getting american currency anyway
-- perdida (not wanting to be modded down as over-rated, hence unchecked the +1)
which i also hate, as it levies fees just to put my identity on my money when I spend it, which is not what I want to do anyway.
I never spend money I haven't got, except for on a major investment. The only time I did that was for student loans.
-perdida
The same government that is slavering over the lucrative uses of e-currency doesn't like it when an old technology such as credit cards comes into contact with electronic currency creates crime.
Well, fuck them. Go develop a more secure credit card system.
Or get rid of credit cards all together.
As I think about it, yes, please, do! The cred card has been one of the most abusable, fraud-prone forms of transaction since its inception. it creates lots of ways of creating debt that wouldn't otherwiose be there by encouraging people to spend money they don't have at exorbitant interest rates.
I do not have a single credit card. Contrary to popular opinion it has never stopped me from renting a car or getting a hotel room. I do have a credit history, too, if I need REAL credit like the kind for buying a house or other major investments.
We've already got that.
As soon as we semi-privatized space developemtn we opened the door to this sort of thing.
Space is not a military project though it does have national security aspects to it; astronauts and cosmonauts adjust and repair classified satellites, and both space agencies shoot up spy satellites in unmanned missions on behalf of national security.
However, after the Cold War the priority of space went lower again. The the commercial cachet of space was one of the things that many space agencies around the world, but especially the Russians, used to raise funds for their ailing program.
So, is space for war, or science, or money? Now that we have multiple agencies with different reasoning on this issue conributing to a single space station, we had better get a treaty together settling these issues as a matter of international law. And quick.
I wouild think that the US, with its great plans for weapons in space (DUMB!!!), is probably the least likely to go for a more commercialized space program. Of course it's the best funded, too. Probably the best solution is to give more aid to developing countries so they can enjoy the benefits of space without having to sell them off to the highest bidder.
Some things are better left under state control.
I think that policymakers focus on guns, games, etc. because they can be eliminated using traditional authoritarian police measures from schools, homes and the other places where children live. Every parent, no matter whether they abuse their child or are a moidel parent, can feel better when they remove evil games or install software to spy on kids or set up a snitch line. That is why law enforcement finds these approaches politically useful.
Cultural change against bullying must come from the kids themselves. Perhaps they need to think of themselves as a cohesive group with a common interest and goal.. in which case, resistance against the curtailment of everyone's rights would be a good option.
Did anybody notice that that microwave plasmoid cooks up nitrous oxide?
-perdida
yaaagh. Bugtraq != slashdot not even en francais.
/. community.
The notion that security through obscurity doesn't work only holds up to a point. If you focus enough distributed processing power on any security problem, like, say, through posting it to slashdot, you will overwhelm and outpace the sincere efforts to patch the problem that are being undertaken by the hapless victims.
Of course you can also claim that helpful slashdotters may lend advice to DoubleClick but er.. that is not going to happen. Slashdotters might help some open source site that was being lax and got exploited, but not DoubleClick who has copmmitted so many prior offenses against the mores of the
The unprotected consumers lose out, again.
You know what, this fucking sucks. I have no idea why people did not predict this in advance.
Napster was a wonderful, democratic thing. you could put anything on it you wanted, which meant people were listening to home grown good music and brilliant DJs who produced on their computers instead of Britney Spears. The Britney was a second-order effect of the Napster phenomenon, whose purpose was the creation of a huge music bazaar.
Music swapping (not napster in specific) revolutionized my own taste in music. I was finding archival jazz, the latest electronica from around the world, Japanese girls singing bossa nova tunes over perfect retro backgrounds..instead of all the crap on the stupid radio and at Tower Records.
If the recording company thinks that they can turn Napster into its second order effect- basically, a huge Tower Records store set up in your computer- its head is up its asshole, which we all know is even bigger than the goatse.cx man's!
Esteemed Mr. Baggins,
Thank you for the honor of your reply.
Unfortunately, the worthy intentions of the book, and its cultural analysis, leave few ends to those of us who want to avoid the effects of commercialized filtering. Many Americans, like some hobbits, have an irritating tendency to shut out all but the most eminently practical things there in front of them. They will gladly put up a digital windowblind, no matter if an outside force has brought it in.
The question of how we filter is more cultural, then, than political. For this, the only options we have in politics to address are law, policy and economics, none of which are exact or direct instruments.
Our options right now are a legislative wall and a market-based, open and voluntary evolution of filtering software.
I would direct my energy at preventing the government from institutionalizing this software until a content neutral or a content specific manner can be found to block the most dangerous sites while protecting the richness of information of the Net at large.
Rigid laws must be passed as to what can be blocked and what cannot be blocked in public access places and in workplaces (corporate software filtering union organizing sites is one example I can think of).
But for the rest of us and for the home, we should not restrict the choice of blinds.. in this case the civil libertarian principle applies, and the cure is worse than the ailment.
We can only hope that the people like you, who have an independent sense of information-- the readers of this book and other messages like it-- will raise their own families with only the most limited and reasonable filters, over which they have complete control.
Sincerely yours,
Reva "Perdida" Altamira
Unfortunately, as I stated in an earlier post, there is no way to prevent the divergence of media, or the Balkanization as you put it, without resorting to even more stentorian methods of control.
When you walk around in a world of printed media, it is already enclosed in private places and relationships. You walk into an adult book store to pay for the stuff. That is a place where common ground is excluded; the common ground (the street) cannot legally be a place to display the porn.
On the Internet, there is nothing intrinsically preventing the porn marketer from doing something that, to continue the metaphor of the real life adult shop, would make the windows as light and bright as Macy's, attractive to everyone who wants to see it and obnoxious to those who don't. There should be some kind of filtering software to demarcate a public space which those who want to make a buck will freely violate.
We support laws for the restriction of smoking advertisements, which use strategic locations and attractive appearances to get attention- just like porn sites. I definitely prefer filtering software, which you can choose to download and use, to laws that would make the entire internet a public space. Even better, a free market to promote competition of filtering software will improve the software far better than a static law will.
I feel those who wopuld like a wholly unregulated Net, which has no mechanism that protects us neither voluntarily or through law, are unaware of the true content, architecture and behavior of the modern Net. It is no longer a primarily scientific system... just read this CNN article about how searches can't even touch most of the hidden Internet anymore.
-perdida