..it's because it is; Slashdot's editorial standards must be at an all time low. Censorship & monitoring evasion tools abound, both in the proprietary & open source world, and it makes a hell of a lot more sense to use open source solutions, especially if you're worried about ending up in prison for speaking your mind.
Yeah, right: Greece leads the EU on privacy, in a year that saw the board of the independent Privacy Authority resigning over rampant and unconstitutional CCTV use by the Justice Department. Incidentally, that happened just before the Greek PA was to investigate the 2005 wiretapping scandal that made international headlines. What kind of kool-aid are they taking over there in Privacy Int'l?
The sad truth is that privacy took a nose dive this year across the whole of the EU, with the Prum, VIS, PNR and Swift data accords being ratified and there weren't any silver linings.
Brown is obviously far from unbiased; he seems to base much of his points on a ZDnet blog post by George Ou and bashes its' detractors, while it's patently obvious that Ou's "performance comparison" is a shoddy and misleading piece of work (for instance, witness this comment thread).
Definitely soup! I don't know what Mulligatawny is, but I recently totalled a sturdy Jornada 690, after 4 years of faithful service, by biting on a crouton dipped in viscous soup. I never really managed to clean all the key switches, and since the power button was rendered inoperable, I had to decommision it.
More than anything else, it's the atmosphere. IMO, the Max Payne games are the only solid examples of noir storytelling in videogame form. As for what exactly is noir: "Dead giveaways of this genre are: narration in the first person, the loneliness of the hero (or more rarely, heroine) with no hope of redemption; a stubborn adherence to a code of honor in the face of depravity and evil (although noir is never condescendingly preachy); deadpan one-liners and morbid/stoic philosophy, usually delivered in a terse manner after violence or betrayal.[..]Noir has in recent years been succesfully blended with other genres and media, such as anime, fantasy, science fiction and computer games (e.g. Blade Runner, the Max Payne games and The Dresden Files). Also called hardboiled detective fiction." (from a copy of my post to another forum). Noir is exemplified in the writings of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. It's a hard to define, and demanding genre, with literary fans. See also here for more definitions and related resources.
Practically every subproject (and derivatives) of the Apache Jakarta project uses automatic unit test suites as part of their build systems, whether with the Ant, Maven or Forrest tools.
The keypairs on the card will be pre-generated when the citizen receives the card. IMHO a private key that has been in someone else's hands/machine is totally useless. This of course allows for involutary escrow..
The Belgian Federal Gov representative (Peter Strickx, ex-Sun, by total coincidence) plainly declared they do not want to have the necessary expertise in-house, but wants to outsource the whole thing (to Sun and ZETES, it now seems)
I completely agree with you that the above points raise valid doubts about the legality of the whole scheme; commercial entities should, of course, cooperate with governments in procuring the nessecary technology, but from that point on, said technology should be open to public scrutiny: this means opensourcing all software used in the process, and allowing citizens to generate their own keypairs, by visiting their local police station (you need to do that anyway, to have a paper ID card issued). Also, under no circumstances should corporate affiliates be allowed to run such government operations on a daily basis. If the Belgian (or any other) government cannot procure it's own technical expertise to handle system operation and maintenance, they should drop the scheme altogether. If both of these requirements are met, I would have no problem supporting electronic identity cards.
There's a chilling occurence in the game where terrorists bomb a marketplace in Baghdad, with the U.S. military acting as saviors, trying to prevent the incident. The way the incident is portrayed in the game is exactly the way the U.S. would like to see the media cover yesterday's real missile attack on Baghdad's crowded marketplace by coalition forces.
It's ironic and foreshadowing to such an extent, in predicting U.S. foreign policy, that one wonders if Gen. Franks is playing the game to figure out how to wage war..
Let me know when you find a few people who are willing to spend a year - or even a night - in jail for the sake of their fair use rights. Then we can talk about a campaign of civil disobedience.
Also, civil disobedience means being prepared: you have to study up on the law you're about to take on, and be absolutely certain that you want to commit to opposing this one piece of legislation over others (you cannot at once fight ALL oppresive laws by yourself). Be sure to read up on the subject (Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience" is a good start) and it's previous practitioners. Also, be prepared to deal with the consequences: aligning yourself in direct defiance of the state is a sure way to inflame it's proponents and incite non-official (but tacitly approved) retribution in most any part of the world. Try to align yourself with similar minded people. If you survive all this and your actions have an effect, be ready to enter into politics!
PS: To return to the subject, do not forget that IEEE is also a guild, not a samaritan organization to help downloaders, and aims chiefly to further the well-being of it's members. That's why it has a larger hope of succeeding against RIAA/MPAA, because it's yet another powerful lobby.
He'd better work on getting some new creative properties going instead of spreading Star Wars around. That crap is wearing pretty thin.
..Like "butter, spread over too much bread", perhaps? Seems to me that, instead of taking lessons from Peter Jackson, he's going the Gollum way.. I wonder in whose pocket the One Ring is, these days;-)
Not all information organization efforts can benefit from a two-way web, and some amount of moderation is always neccessary, as applied in the current model of cooperative weblogs (Slash, Postnuke, PHPnuke and others), in order to prevent degenerative effects. On the other hands, "grassroots" efforts such as Wikipedia and Freenet are natural candidates for the model of, more or less, direct interactivity that wikis provide. In both cases, information is accreted over time through community contributions, rather than actively harvested by site owners; whether it is authoritative depends on the level of community involvement and control provided by the software (eg. moderation and metamoderation).
All in all, apart from the obvious rhetoric point for democracy being served by the collaborative organization of information (which is valid), other advantages of blogs and wikis include the formation of communities revolving around areas of interest, and positive contributions to the 'information tag' game (trying to keep up with the news), especially where technology is involved. Of course, they can never totally supplant central information dispensation efforts (news agencies, zines and portals), but they don't have to: they are designed to supplement such efforts and provide a modicum of control and feedback by the public.
Tim Berners-Lee, in his book Weaving the Web and in articles about the Semantic Web talks about his original concept of the web consisting of internal (two-way) as well as external (standard) links, and page editing being interactive; and of how market forces and the then available technology diluted this concept into today's model of the web. Nowadays, server-based software such as Wiki and variants make collaborative web editing possible, but mass practical application of internal linking is still a long way away, due to issues of trust and synchronization, although steps are being taken in this direction as well.
I put in 40-60 hrs/week, but that includes a lot of things.. Let me explain:
At the moment, I'm working fulltime (employed, not interning) at a non CS/CE university engineering lab, participating in joint software development for EU-sponsored projects, doing some server maintenance, security admin work, following industry news and learning the ropes. Having actually majored in maths, I don't possess a degree in CS but have been enamored with the subject since the early 80's, though I started out late doing meaningful programming work (did solo jaunts into the weird & wonderful world of Turbo Pascal in the 80's; don't think they count:P).
The lab atmosphere is liberal, bandwidth is
readily available and the development team is geographically dispersed. Plus, we're always trying out new stuff, remodelling our programming discipline (using XP techniques, Open Source API's & tools, Java etc.), dabble in project coordination and try to maintain a competitive advantage -although strictly non-profit- accumulating knowhow about EU project workings and IT technologies. As you can imagine, not only we are more enthusiastic than the average salaried coder, but we usually put in more hours trying to keep up with all facets of our job description. Granted, it's also personal ambition that drives us (having started out late, I have a lot of trains to catch!), but I don't think I could maintain the same energetic approach working 9-5 for a company, coding payroll (no offense to payroll coders, it takes nerves of steel!), and wouldn't even be able to try a fraction of the stuff I do here. But that's the kind of tradeoff I'll make one day, because the marketplace offers the only true badge of distinction in this profession (I never set out to remain in academia, not in my country, anyway); and because I want to be able to start my own company someday, and apply these principles against the cold realism of free enterprise.
For me it's all about people, so I'm cramming on tech now to be able to focus on them later: the family I'll start (perchance!), the friends I hope to keep, and my team at work, which I always want to be able to see as companions in a grand adventure.
..And myself.. Maybe then I'll get some time off to do that trekking to the Amazon Basin and Kilimanjaro!;PP
Slashdot Mirror
..it's because it is; Slashdot's editorial standards must be at an all time low. Censorship & monitoring evasion tools abound, both in the proprietary & open source world, and it makes a hell of a lot more sense to use open source solutions, especially if you're worried about ending up in prison for speaking your mind.
Yeah, right: Greece leads the EU on privacy, in a year that saw the board of the independent Privacy Authority resigning over rampant and unconstitutional CCTV use by the Justice Department. Incidentally, that happened just before the Greek PA was to investigate the 2005 wiretapping scandal that made international headlines. What kind of kool-aid are they taking over there in Privacy Int'l? The sad truth is that privacy took a nose dive this year across the whole of the EU, with the Prum, VIS, PNR and Swift data accords being ratified and there weren't any silver linings.
Brown is obviously far from unbiased; he seems to base much of his points on a ZDnet blog post by George Ou and bashes its' detractors, while it's patently obvious that Ou's "performance comparison" is a shoddy and misleading piece of work (for instance, witness this comment thread).
The article is dated May 30.
Definitely soup! I don't know what Mulligatawny is, but I recently totalled a sturdy Jornada 690, after 4 years of faithful service, by biting on a crouton dipped in viscous soup. I never really managed to clean all the key switches, and since the power button was rendered inoperable, I had to decommision it.
More than anything else, it's the atmosphere. IMO, the Max Payne games are the only solid examples of noir storytelling in videogame form.
As for what exactly is noir: "Dead giveaways of this genre are: narration in the first person, the loneliness of the hero (or more rarely, heroine) with no hope of redemption; a stubborn adherence to a code of honor in the face of depravity and evil (although noir is never condescendingly preachy); deadpan one-liners and morbid/stoic philosophy, usually delivered in a terse manner after violence or betrayal.[..]Noir has in recent years been succesfully blended with other genres and media, such as anime, fantasy, science fiction and computer games (e.g. Blade Runner, the Max Payne games and The Dresden Files). Also called hardboiled detective fiction." (from a copy of my post to another forum).
Noir is exemplified in the writings of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. It's a hard to define, and demanding genre, with literary fans. See also here for more definitions and related resources.
Practically every subproject (and derivatives) of the Apache Jakarta project uses automatic unit test suites as part of their build systems, whether with the Ant, Maven or Forrest tools.
The keypairs on the card will be pre-generated when the citizen receives the card. IMHO a private key that has been in someone else's hands/machine is totally useless. This of course allows for involutary escrow..
The Belgian Federal Gov representative (Peter Strickx, ex-Sun, by total coincidence) plainly declared they do not want to have the necessary expertise in-house, but wants to outsource the whole thing (to Sun and ZETES, it now seems)
I completely agree with you that the above points raise valid doubts about the legality of the whole scheme; commercial entities should, of course, cooperate with governments in procuring the nessecary technology, but from that point on, said technology should be open to public scrutiny: this means opensourcing all software used in the process, and allowing citizens to generate their own keypairs, by visiting their local police station (you need to do that anyway, to have a paper ID card issued). Also, under no circumstances should corporate affiliates be allowed to run such government operations on a daily basis. If the Belgian (or any other) government cannot procure it's own technical expertise to handle system operation and maintenance, they should drop the scheme altogether. If both of these requirements are met, I would have no problem supporting electronic identity cards.
There's a chilling occurence in the game where terrorists bomb a marketplace in Baghdad, with the U.S. military acting as saviors, trying to prevent the incident. The way the incident is portrayed in the game is exactly the way the U.S. would like to see the media cover yesterday's real missile attack on Baghdad's crowded marketplace by coalition forces.
It's ironic and foreshadowing to such an extent, in predicting U.S. foreign policy, that one wonders if Gen. Franks is playing the game to figure out how to wage war..
Let me know when you find a few people who are willing to spend a year - or even a night - in jail for the sake of their fair use rights. Then we can talk about a campaign of civil disobedience.
Also, civil disobedience means being prepared: you have to study up on the law you're about to take on, and be absolutely certain that you want to commit to opposing this one piece of legislation over others (you cannot at once fight ALL oppresive laws by yourself). Be sure to read up on the subject (Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience" is a good start) and it's previous practitioners. Also, be prepared to deal with the consequences: aligning yourself in direct defiance of the state is a sure way to inflame it's proponents and incite non-official (but tacitly approved) retribution in most any part of the world. Try to align yourself with similar minded people. If you survive all this and your actions have an effect, be ready to enter into politics!
PS: To return to the subject, do not forget that IEEE is also a guild, not a samaritan organization to help downloaders, and aims chiefly to further the well-being of it's members. That's why it has a larger hope of succeeding against RIAA/MPAA, because it's yet another powerful lobby.
Seems to me that, instead of taking lessons from Peter Jackson, he's going the Gollum way.. I wonder in whose pocket the One Ring is, these days
On the other hands, "grassroots" efforts such as Wikipedia and Freenet are natural candidates for the model of, more or less, direct interactivity that wikis provide. In both cases, information is accreted over time through community contributions, rather than actively harvested by site owners; whether it is authoritative depends on the level of community involvement and control provided by the software (eg. moderation and metamoderation).
All in all, apart from the obvious rhetoric point for democracy being served by the collaborative organization of information (which is valid), other advantages of blogs and wikis include the formation of communities revolving around areas of interest, and positive contributions to the 'information tag' game (trying to keep up with the news), especially where technology is involved.
Of course, they can never totally supplant central information dispensation efforts (news agencies, zines and portals), but they don't have to: they are designed to supplement such efforts and provide a modicum of control and feedback by the public.
Tim Berners-Lee, in his book Weaving the Web and in articles about the Semantic Web talks about his original concept of the web consisting of internal (two-way) as well as external (standard) links, and page editing being interactive; and of how market forces and the then available technology diluted this concept into today's model of the web.
Nowadays, server-based software such as Wiki and variants make collaborative web editing possible, but mass practical application of internal linking is still a long way away, due to issues of trust and synchronization, although steps are being taken in this direction as well.
At the moment, I'm working fulltime (employed, not interning) at a non CS/CE university engineering lab, participating in joint software development for EU-sponsored projects, doing some server maintenance, security admin work, following industry news and learning the ropes. Having actually majored in maths, I don't possess a degree in CS but have been enamored with the subject since the early 80's, though I started out late doing meaningful programming work (did solo jaunts into the weird & wonderful world of Turbo Pascal in the 80's; don't think they count :P).
The lab atmosphere is liberal, bandwidth is readily available and the development team is geographically dispersed. Plus, we're always trying out new stuff, remodelling our programming discipline (using XP techniques, Open Source API's & tools, Java etc.), dabble in project coordination and try to maintain a competitive advantage -although strictly non-profit- accumulating knowhow about EU project workings and IT technologies. As you can imagine, not only we are more enthusiastic than the average salaried coder, but we usually put in more hours trying to keep up with all facets of our job description. Granted, it's also personal ambition that drives us (having started out late, I have a lot of trains to catch!), but I don't think I could maintain the same energetic approach working 9-5 for a company, coding payroll (no offense to payroll coders, it takes nerves of steel!), and wouldn't even be able to try a fraction of the stuff I do here. But that's the kind of tradeoff I'll make one day, because the marketplace offers the only true badge of distinction in this profession (I never set out to remain in academia, not in my country, anyway); and because I want to be able to start my own company someday, and apply these principles against the cold realism of free enterprise.
For me it's all about people, so I'm cramming on tech now to be able to focus on them later: the family I'll start (perchance!), the friends I hope to keep, and my team at work, which I always want to be able to see as companions in a grand adventure.