A public library library is a public resource funded by the community for the benifit of the community. As such, anyone should be able to use that public resource however they want as long as they are not directly harming anyone else.
the ACLU scares me a bit.. (they seem to take an almost rabid view of what should be "okay" by strange veiled references to the Constitution)
The ACLU is extreme because they have to be. They're one of the few organizations advocating freedom in a country where there are a lot of people advocating the oposite from even more extreme positions than the ACLU (Think the christian cohalition)
I just think common sense should be used.. if you have a childrens section at a library, give me one good reason there SHOULDNT be porn filters on the machines? what are 10 year olds looking for that this would harm?
Here you seem to be missing something. The consept of a piece of filtering software that blocks out all the porn and nothing else doesn't exist. What does exist is "Filtering Software", written with the mindset that it's worse to not block something that might be offensive than it is to block out important resources.
Really, do you want to allow some arbritrary company to be able to decide what your kids can and cannot view? What you can view? I sure don't.
I don't even think that it would be possible for you to decide beforehand what might be usefull information for kids. They need free access to information just as much, if not more, than adults do.
It's actually Less of a waste to vote for a third party candidate than for a democrat or republican.
Think about it. Your vote can't possibly effect which candidate gets elected, there's 250,000,000 people in the USA. Even if only 5% vote, that's still 50 *million* people voting. What your vote can do is make a political statement. And if enough people vote for the Libertarians that they can even get 10% of the votes, then next election people will consider them to be an actual relevent compeditor to the two major parties - and then they'll stop throwing away their vote on candidates who are "the lesser of two evils". If that happens, and a libertarian candidate gets elected, even to Congress, you will have helped change the way this country is run, which is more than you could ever do voting for the republicrats.
Note that I am by no means condoning the use of this or any other program to interfere with the free exchange of data, but if it's going to happen anyway, it might as well be done with Free Software so that I can modify it to function in a less opressive way for use in my community.
LOL! I agree entirely. Of the three, I don't think that RMS really wants to be president - he has more important things to do - that leaves only ESR and Weird Al
But really, instead of righting in "ESR" on the ballot sheet, vote instead for ESR's political party, the Libertarians
Think CHILD PORN. Child pornography exploits children in order to make it. By making it legally viewable you all people to produce it because there is a demand. Exploits and molests children. Stamp the demand injure less children. The extremes of anything are usually bad..
If you want the use of children in the production of sexually explicit imagery to be illegal then that's fine. Illegalizing an action that most likely causes harm is probably a good idea. Data that has been transfered can even be used to prove that a crime has been committed (such as child porn leading to police tracking down the creators).
Censorship is just wrong. It has always been wrong and it will always be wrong. No mere possible physical/possible emotional harm of people could possibly compete with the downright evil of censorship.
Preventing people from having and transferring data is *always* bad. I don't care what that data is, I don't care what the circumstances are. People have the right to transfer whatever bits they want to transfer, and neithor governments, you, or anyone else has the right to stop them.
The government is subsidizing public schools which manage to pay $60+ for books that cost $3 to print and would be worth $15-$25 in a free market enviornment.
"You may not let anyone else ever even think about using your licensed copy of this software. This software comes with no gaurantee that it will work at all. If it doesn't even come close to doing what it's supposed to do, tough luck! We reserve the right to terminate your license at any time for any reason we deem necessary and not refund your money. By using this software, you agree that we own your eternal soul, even if you're an atheist."
Assume you own a server to run the following protocols: HTTP, POP/POP3, SMTP, NNTP, telnet, FTP. Can such a machine be secure under -any- OS? If this was sitting in your basement, what would you do with it (after loading Q3A/UT and distributed.net's latest client;-) to make sure the script kiddies didn't f*ck with you?
How I'd go about giving it maximum security.
(Disclaimer: I've never actually set up a server running more than HTTP + FTP + POP3)
Partition the machine into the following partitions:
/ (ro)
/home/httpd (ro if possible)
/home/mail (rw)
/home/news (rw)
/home/ftpd (ro if possible)
Install the most recent version of OpenBSD
Install any security fixes
Remove distributed.net's latest client and Q3A
Create the following new users: httpd, pop3d, nntpd, ftpd, telnet, unperson, admin
Set the permissions for all the files on the machine as strict as possible.
Setup a program to forward all requests on ports below 1024 to ports 10000 through 11024.
Set each server as it's own user, and make sure that one user can't effect the files of another in any way.
Set up each server on standard_port+10000, and have them each store their files in their own partiton (mounted under/home)
Use the simplest, most secure server for each task. Yes, this means you can't use apache.
Don't allow telnet logins as anyone but admin.
Set up the admin account with the minimum set of privilideges nessisary to administer the machine.
Go "chown root/bin/chmod; chmod og-rwx/bin/chmod"
"chmod a-x" any programs that aren't absolutey nessisary to the machine working, like 'su', 'chown', 'fortune', etc.
Change your root and admin passwords weekly.
Do anything that you should do that I missed.
This should, at best, prevent anyone from messing with the machine at all. At worst, if someone does get in, they shouldn't be able to do anything - anything at all.
Children can handle any information that anyone else can handle. Parents should have a right to express their opinion/beliefs relating to any information that their children get, but parents shouldn't be able to restrict their children's access to information.
It COULD be a good thing if it was applied to children only, and had a way for their parents to override it if they chose to do so. Unfortunatly, they (the govt.) have chosen to apply it to everybody.
Information should *never* be filtered, especially information that children are getting. Allowing people to decide what other people get to know produces a closed minded society, and that is a Bad Thing(tm).
Still, it gets the gist of the idea right. Thank god Jane's noticed the hacker/ cracker difference. I wish they point out the importance of that more. Yea, they noticed it for one paragraph, and then ignored the comments that they had made by mis-using hacker and hack for the rest of the article.
Actually, as the publishers they presumably are liable. Compare it to newspaper editors who routinely gets sued.
The difference is that the Slashdot crew doesn't do the publication or editing --- they don't look over the comments before the comments are posted, and therefore can disclaim responsibility for the comments.
Slashdot Mirror
It's possible to separate freedom into two catigories: personal and economic.
Democrats tend to be for personal freedom and against economic freedom.
Republicans tend to be against personal freedom and for economic freedom.
The only political party that I know of that is for *both* types of freedom is the Libertarian Party
A public library library is a public resource funded by the community for the benifit of the community. As such, anyone should be able to use that public resource however they want as long as they are not directly harming anyone else.
The ACLU is extreme because they have to be. They're one of the few organizations advocating freedom in a country where there are a lot of people advocating the oposite from even more extreme positions than the ACLU (Think the christian cohalition)
Here you seem to be missing something. The consept of a piece of filtering software that blocks out all the porn and nothing else doesn't exist. What does exist is "Filtering Software", written with the mindset that it's worse to not block something that might be offensive than it is to block out important resources.
Really, do you want to allow some arbritrary company to be able to decide what your kids can and cannot view? What you can view? I sure don't.
I don't even think that it would be possible for you to decide beforehand what might be usefull information for kids. They need free access to information just as much, if not more, than adults do.
Not the ones running for office in the good old USA.
Niether the Democrats (who call themselves "Liberals"), nor the Republicans ("Conservitives") are for reducing the size and waste of government.
Of the existing political parties in the US, only the Libertarians are for reducing the size (and power) of government.
It's actually Less of a waste to vote for a third party candidate than for a democrat or republican.
Think about it. Your vote can't possibly effect which candidate gets elected, there's 250,000,000 people in the USA. Even if only 5% vote, that's still 50 *million* people voting. What your vote can do is make a political statement. And if enough people vote for the Libertarians that they can even get 10% of the votes, then next election people will consider them to be an actual relevent compeditor to the two major parties - and then they'll stop throwing away their vote on candidates who are "the lesser of two evils". If that happens, and a libertarian candidate gets elected, even to Congress, you will have helped change the way this country is run, which is more than you could ever do voting for the republicrats.
Many people seem to be unaware that there does exist an Open Source censoring proxy program called Active Guardian.
It's not finished, and it apparently only currently compiles on Slackware 3.4, but it exists, and it needs improving.
It's website is at:
http://www.activeguardian.com/
Note that I am by no means condoning the use of this or any other program to interfere with the free exchange of data, but if it's going to happen anyway, it might as well be done with Free Software so that I can modify it to function in a less opressive way for use in my community.
LOL! I agree entirely. Of the three, I don't think that RMS really wants to be president - he has more important things to do - that leaves only ESR and Weird Al
But really, instead of righting in "ESR" on the ballot sheet, vote instead for ESR's political party, the Libertarians
Yes, but Bill Bradley is for gun control, a stance that harms freedom to an equal or greater extent than mandatory library censorship.
Remember, as long as we have our guns, we can revolt if it gets too bad. As soon as they take our guns away, we're at their mercy.
The Libertarians are the only party that's for freedom all around, AFAIK.
The problem is, we 'undesirables' don't tend to kill all that easy...
Well, there's at least one political party that we *know* won't be legislating censorship anytime soon, the Libertarian Party
They're for personal freedom on every issue - which is nessisary for a truely free society.
If you want the use of children in the production of sexually explicit imagery to be illegal then that's fine. Illegalizing an action that most likely causes harm is probably a good idea. Data that has been transfered can even be used to prove that a crime has been committed (such as child porn leading to police tracking down the creators).
Censorship is just wrong. It has always been wrong and it will always be wrong. No mere possible physical/possible emotional harm of people could possibly compete with the downright evil of censorship.
Preventing people from having and transferring data is *always* bad. I don't care what that data is, I don't care what the circumstances are. People have the right to transfer whatever bits they want to transfer, and neithor governments, you, or anyone else has the right to stop them.
This may be offtopic, but seeing as it is the first post, I don't quite see how it can be redundant...
Yes, I see a problem.
The government is subsidizing public schools which manage to pay $60+ for books that cost $3 to print and would be worth $15-$25 in a free market enviornment.
Well, I can't think of anyone else who'd tend to do a better job and is at least a *little* bit known.
I intend to continue using my computers as computers even if society colapses...
I have as much power as I want, and both my computers couldn't care less what year it is.
That software licence is copyright © 1980-1999 Microsoft Corporation, all rights reserved and you are using it without permission.
Well, If I were able to vote next year I'd be voting for Harry Browne. He's the Libertarian Party canidate.
As for the best possible presidential canidate I can think of... ESR for president!
How I'd go about giving it maximum security.
(Disclaimer: I've never actually set up a server running more than HTTP + FTP + POP3)
This should, at best, prevent anyone from messing with the machine at all. At worst, if someone does get in, they shouldn't be able to do anything - anything at all.
I disagree.
Children can handle any information that anyone else can handle. Parents should have a right to express their opinion/beliefs relating to any information that their children get, but parents shouldn't be able to restrict their children's access to information.
Information should *never* be filtered, especially information that children are getting. Allowing people to decide what other people get to know produces a closed minded society, and that is a Bad Thing(tm).
Still, it gets the gist of the idea right. Thank god Jane's noticed the hacker/ cracker difference. I wish they point out the importance of that more. Yea, they noticed it for one paragraph, and then ignored the comments that they had made by mis-using hacker and hack for the rest of the article.
Btw, anyone who cares you can find a picture of the cover at: http://www.OpenBSD.org/images/openbsd26_cover.gif
You've got a lot of options.
Well, more grumbling never hurts. Mabie it'll eventually get loud enough that a bunch of people will actually get together and *do* something.
Actually, as the publishers they presumably are liable. Compare it to newspaper editors who routinely gets sued.
The difference is that the Slashdot crew doesn't do the publication or editing --- they don't look over the comments before the comments are posted, and therefore can disclaim responsibility for the comments.