Archaeologists excavating the ruins of the buried city of Nola have found documents which provide a stunning insight into the nature of Nolan society, and the possible causes for its destruction.
One of the documents, 'Specimen 42A/6', after translation from the ancient cunieform, reads:
"To the people of Nola - we have written to you several times asking you to cease and desist your illegal activities.
"This is your final warning that if you don't immediately amend your ways, the government of Rome, at the decree of Emperor Numa, will invoke the fire gods to destroy your city without any further notice.
"One last time, we state our demands:
1) Cease trading in scrolls and engraved tablets. No one is to possess scrolls or tablets unless they have been licensed from Softius Micrius Gatius Billius.
2) Cease all use of the rotary bearing horizontal transport system, commonly known as the 'Wheel'. Your persistent use of the Wheel violates patents MDCCLXXVI, DCCXLIV, MMMCCLXXXVIII and CDLXIII. OR, purchase a 'Wheel End User License', which entitles you to a subscription to 'Wheel version VIII', as long as you pay the royalty of two pieces of silver per thousand rotations per wheel, and pay for regular new releases.
3) Hunt and slaughter all carrier pigeons. These birds have been used for copyright infringement purposes, and must die.
4) Hunt all birds of species parakeet or lorikeet (nicknamed by your local population as 'Aves em-pee-threeius' - these birds have copyright-infringing capabilities, and have been used to illegally record and distribute copyrighted music.
"Lastly, once again, failure to immediately comply with these demands will result in the destruction of your civilisation."
Signed
Riaa Porcius
Intellectual Property Enforcement Division
Global Roman Empire
under the authority of Zeus
Of itself, it looks innocuous.
One can argue that any serious programmer will find a way to come up with $1k. It's not that much, considering that any decent musical instrument costs at least $1k, and impoverished musicians find a way to come up with that sort of cash all the time.
Forgive my paranoid leaning, but I can't rule out that this price may increase exponentially if/when.NET becomes more widespread. Don't forget that there are many well-funded interests whose financial welfare depends on silencing (or at least controlling) the independent creator.
So don't be surprised to see the $1000 entry level's facilities being eroded to nothing, and real access costing upwards of $50k+
...before you buy.
And not just the present EULA, but future copies.
It can't be ruled out that EULAs may have provisions forbidding deployment of code with open source licenses, or containing/facilitating content critical of Microsoft etc.
Something I've always wanted to do, might do it one day...
Install a matrix of tiny bright lamps on the back window, enough to display detailed graphics or text, but with enough space to not impair vision.
Then, I can have a row of buttons on the dash, such as:
1) display text 'Back off'
2) display text 'ASSHOLE'
3) flip the bird - animated hand/finger
4) display text 'thanks' (for letting me in)
5) anything else I feel like
If such a system was really smart, it could be programmed by a PDA.
But if a car had enough smarts, it could display such messages automatically.
If it was a Citizen-Micro$oft joint venture, then the watch would need to be 'activated' with your credit card number. Thereafter, each time you look at the time, or check the alarm, it would keep a tally, and debit your credit card monthly. Also, every two years, it would forcibly download new software, and debit your credit card for more than the original price of the watch.
Thinking along the lines of the Rastafarians who (in some places) have gained the ability to smoke pot legally as a 'religious sacrament'....
How about forming a new religion, dedicated to interpreting the holy scripture as given by the Great Kernel to humankind through/dev/random, and concealed in the Mysteries of the Digits of PI.
Amongst the religious edicts would be:
1) Any and all binary data may contain manifestations of the Lord Kernel. Therefore, followers are instructed to decode any and all binary data they get their hands on, and apply technical skills to defeat all encryption inherent in such data/code (including copy-protection barriers).
2) All followers must celebrate the Lord Kernel's holy abundance by freely sharing any data and code which they feel personally moved to make available.
3) The Lord Kernel's abundance takes precedence over any human notions of intellectual property
4) Members of the Church of the Great Kernel may transform their data in any way before transmission to other Members.
This way, the DMCA, SSSCA, ATA etc can be ruled unconstitutional as they interfere with religious practice.
There are upmteen rulings, such as with Napster, that deem cyberspace locations to be under the jurisdiction of the computers providing service at those 'locations', and/or the companies or individuals whose conduct at these 'locations' is under question.
But this ruling appears to contradict all those previous verdicts. Strangly, the ruling is silent on the question of 'who' or 'what' has jurisdiction in cyberspace.
If championed by a powerful and determined lawyer, this could be the basis for a massive legal challenge to the DMCA, and its subsequent watering down into oblivion.
Copyright protects the unique expression of a work--it certainly cannot protect the ideas that a particular work represents.
Ideally, that's how it should work.
For instance, if you read a book on carpentry, you are free to teach someone else carpentry. Or to write your own book on carpetry that covers the exact same material.
True, if the book is in physical paper form. But the analogy doesn't hold, because anyone can open a book without needing software, or having to agree to any terms.
But material in e-Book form is impossible to access without software, and it's illegal to use the software unless one agrees to the software's license agreement
Non-disclosure agreements exist outside the framework of the DMCA.
But, use of software which is needed to access certain information, is covered by the DMCA.
I suppose it's theoretically possible to require that one not disclose the information contained within a work, but, it wouldn't be the DMCA or copyright law which accomplished that legal feat.
That will be tested in the courts in due course.
The Microsoft EULA for FrontPage states that any use of FrontPage in conjunction with any site that contains anti-Micro$oft sentiment is in breach of license.
This goes directly against the First Amendment, but note that it's not a law, but part of a contractual agreement.
It'll be interesting to see whether ridiculous and draconian license conditions like these actually stand up in court.
It's time for the courts to rule on exactly what an End User License Agreement can actually dictate.
Lawyers, perhaps more than most of us, thrive or perish according to their ability to access information freely.
Since information is the capital with which lawyers can conduct their business, any sane lawyer could not help but feel threatened by any trend towards enforcing strict locks on information.
Imagine legal textbooks and other legal literature being published as e-Books with strict license agreements stipulating that the information contained can not be used in certain legal contexts (eg defending against DMCA prosecutions, or suing certain companies) - this is not dissimilar to Microsoft's EULA banning use of FrontPage with any website containing anti-Microsoft sentiments.
History is being made by this case.
It's not 'California v Dmitry Sklyarov', it's DMCA v the First Amendment'!
Good luck, Dmitry and Mr Keker!
The freedom of the masses depends on you.
These new certificates will help a lot to counter the stigma some people perceive regarding linux.
Maybe the IT management community (yes, those who think that 'hackers' are criminals who vandalise computers, rather than prolific and talented programmers) will start to realise that Linux isn't actually a bastion for pirates and crackers.
Good to see.
So any bets on how long it'll be before linux-certified engineers are earning higher average salaries than w--dows certified ones?
This is a war, and the territory in dispute is the conscious awareness of each and every web surfer.
The individual user strives to maintain a sense of personal identity, privacy, liberty and mental space, amidst an armada of mind invaders that seek to influence him/her otherwise.
On the other hand, the advertiser seeks to entice such individual to sell pieces of his/her consciousness in return for information, entertainment, software, even a pittance of money (eg AllAdvantage, Spedia and other 'pay to surf' schemes).
All these sold-off fragments of individual consciousness, aggregated together, amount to staggering amounts of collective volition that can be sold to the highest bidder, and focused into immense financial, policital, even military power.
In every war, there is an arms race. In this case, the advertiser has fought back with a new weapon that withholds the bait unless the surfer once again surrenders a piece of consciousness.
But just wait for the new generation of ad-blockers. For instance, smart proxies with built-in browser engines, that will obediently request all and every pop-up, and pretend the popup is showing, but actually doing nothing.
Or for a dumber approach, a program that shifts all browser windows except the active one off to the edge of the screen. And so on.
Then, watch for the advertisers fighting back. Perhaps Microsoft might install more spyware into Windows XP to test for and disable anti-ad software. Hey, if/when the SSSCA gets passed, then anything goes. All the ad-delivery software can then be built into the proprietary, security-protected layers, making it an offense to try to turn off.
Fight back, dear people, fight back. Your awareness is your greatest asset - please don't sell it off cheaply.
Mandrake has two wonderful package managers:
1) rpmdrake - full GUI-based package management
2) urpmi - a command-line rival to apt-get
Both of these, like the apt system, allow you to add extra media - CDs, directories and http/ftp URLs. In addition, their dependency checking and auto-resolution is excellent. Also, the search facilities are really good.
In contrast, I found Redhat's package management confusing to say the least.
To get even more 'oomph' in package management, you can install the rpmfind utility, which (in a way) is like apt on steroids
As for which installs more stuff, I'm not totally sure, but I know that Mandrake makes it easier to control what gets installed, so by spending a little time during setup (easy!), you can end up with something quite compact.
In conclusion, I feel Mandrake well deserves to be seen as the reference Linux distro, and one I'd recommend to any Windows emigrant.
{paranoia}
Millions of satellites, smaller and vastly more powerful satellites.
How long before satellites, with increasingly sophisticated cameras, DSP, raw CPU power, and cross-referencing data amongst satellite clusters, get so powerful that they can:
1) Read the fine print of newspapers on the surface
2) Accurately recognise faces where the satellite's elevation from the subject is less than 80 degrees, and
3) Read infra-red signatures through building roofs, sufficient to discern number of people inside and their movements?
{/paranoia}
During wartime, to the technically illiterate (most journalists and lawmakers), it feels morally unquestionable that innocent civilians should give up their right to privacy so that secret communications amongst terrorists be made as difficult as possible.
2 problems though:
1) Anti-encryption (and mandatory backdoor laws) simply won't work - terrorists will just get smarter at hiding/smuggling data. While the fanatical will is there, terrorists will find ways around any law.
2) Even if/when all terrorist groups are wiped off the planet, long after the first McDonalds opens up in downtown Kabul, no government is going to relax anti-privacy laws. The spectre of terrorism will persist in the American psyche for decades.
If the terrorists' aim was to wipe out America, then they have a long way to go and will most likely fail.
But if their aim was just to destroy much of the freedom average Americans enjoy, (jealousy?), then they have succeeded brilliantly.
The ingenius system Rubberhose.org allows the creation of large, small or tiny disk images, containing random data, into which not 1, not 2 but n files can be embedded.
Once the disk image is created, there's no way to determine how many pieces of information are embedded, so rubberhose offers true plausible deniability.
Rubberhose disk images can be easily sent by email, http, ftp etc.
Forced key escrow on rubberhose images is a farce, because the owner can hand over one or two private keys which will yield up only the data the owner wants to hand over - there's no way to prove the image contains any more data.
All this aside, my conclusion is that the only way to stamp out illicit information is to ban the internet, as the Taleban has done. The problem with this, of course, is the growing sector of the economy that depends on e-commerce.
Lets be realistic, no scarcity means no profit. No profit means no stuff. Yeah, you can hold up free software as an example of what can happen even if there is no profit, but free software is shit compared to its proprietary counterpart and everyone knows it. Stop trying to pull the wool over everyone's eyes.
OK - you got me there.
Scarcity is definitely the key to economic prosperity.
In that case, the US govt needs to offer huge tax breaks to companies who pollute the atmosphere and water supply, and deplete the remaining North American forests.
Abundant air to breathe? Communist conspiracy! We'll fix that! Make the air unbreathable, and spawn a whole new industry in supply and distribution of air tanks - all sizes, designer colours, purity levels to suit all budgets! Now that would create jobs and stimulate the economy. Ditto for the oceans, forests, etc etc. Privatise everything, and destroy anything that can't be privatised!
And, while we're at it, burn all library books, and replace them with secure e-books that only allow one reading per loan. And, don't forget, hire lots of FBI spooks to drive around in Tempest vans detecting EMR waveforms of computers running the Linux kernel - throw those pirating terrorist open source scum in the can for 20 years' hard labour!
In conclusion, more seriously, I sincerely regret that people can hold opinions such as yours. I'd go so far as to say that the combined electoral muscle of such beliefs contributed to leading the USA into a position of making enemies such as those involved in the WTC/Pentagon attacks last week.
Sorry, but I find your opinion disturbing. The fact that some people can actually entertain the notion that human sentiment can be changed by "rules" makes me feel less safe in this world. Please take care - such negative beliefs about humanity have a tendency to become self-fulfilling prophecies
The Web is only a means of expression of the feelings and opinions of people, yes, real live human beings - yes, organic biochemical aggregations exhibiting emotion.
Personally, I'd rather see the diversity of opinions and mind-sets being expressed out in the open, rather than being suppressed by paranoid authorities. In my profession as an alternative health therapist, I deal daily with the devastation caused by people who continually suppress their feelings until they break out in destructive ways.
As I've said in other posts, the real answer to overcoming evil in this world is to probe to its underlying causes - political, social, economic, psychological etc, and educate and empower people to heal and overcome the underlying pain which causes destructive manifestations.
Nothing but a process of education, instilling in people from an early age a sense of local and global accountability for their actions, desires and choices will make any real progress in preventing any future tragedies.
Lastly, in answer to your 'IP theft' point, let me say that IP laws add to the global scarcity consciousness, which is a major cause of crime and war. Isn't it time we recognised the immense human benefits that can come from the freeing up of information?
(to moderator - i know this is OT - please indulge me)
I don't know which is funnier - the previous reply's lampooning of a windows user trying to use Linux, or the/. moderator who failed to see the joke and gave it a 0 rating.
In the afterhaze of the tragic terrorist attacks, it would take an almost unimaginable lobbying effort on the part of privacy advocates to prevent online privacy being seriously eroded.
But I feel suppressing privacy is a most blatantly superficial solution, that does nothing to address the underlying causes of the attack.
From these attacks has come knowledge of two new weapons - (1) Aircraft, and (2) Anonymity.
Yes - anonymity as a weapon!
Americans would be reluctant to give up cheap convenient air travel/freight, as these are part of America's superlative economic infrastructure, but more and more, privacy/anonymity is being seen as a dangerous luxury.
Terrorists are showing alarming ingenuity at using the most commonplace entities as weapons, and no doubt will adapt to being able to function effectively under any set of rules, and find ways to use any new rule as an actual weapon.
Sadly, no law can suppress anyone's will to attack the USA - in fact, such rules can only increase anti-US sentiment, both within and without.
It refreshes me, though, to see the media giving some airing to opinions critical of US foreign policy and calling for the USA to see Sep 11 as a reality check. Sadly though, the bombings seem very unlikely to trigger any substantial revision of such policy, or any real investigation of the underlying causes of the Sep 11 tragedy.
Ban encryption/anonymity? Terrorists will simply resort to steganography. Any white noise such as image/audio data, even plain text, can be used as a carrier for hidden content. (Imagine lots of high-powered NSA mathematicians looking for hidden messages embedded in people's family photos - just like the religious fundamentals looking for 'secret brainwashing messages' in heavy metal rock albums!)
The only thing that can possibly prevent any future attacks on America is serious and deep reflection on WHY the USA has made itself unpopular in certain parts of the world.
Too many inter-related complex reasons to fathom in one mere/. post. But one reason I can think of is OIL GREED, and the average voter's refusal to accept any accountability for any deeper consequences of their lifestyle choices.
I could see the system working well, and resisting spam, if the following safeguards are put in place
1) No message to be delivered to an ENUM unless it's from another ENUM
2) No interference with existing email addresses - allow these to keep being used
3) Allow ENUM users to set 'privacy policies' on their ENUM, including 'no unsolicited promotional material'. Sending spam to an ENUM in defiance of applicable policies to be a criminal offense.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm waiting for the day when we start to have tools that allow UI interfaces to be designed on the fly, kind of like a TeX for the UI.
FLTK gets close to the mark. It's the easiest cross-platform opensource gui generator I've seen. http://fltk.sf.net
ROME, June 12, 2002
Archaeologists excavating the ruins of the buried city of Nola have found documents which provide a stunning insight into the nature of Nolan society, and the possible causes for its destruction.
One of the documents, 'Specimen 42A/6', after translation from the ancient cunieform, reads:
"To the people of Nola - we have written to you several times asking you to cease and desist your illegal activities.
"This is your final warning that if you don't immediately amend your ways, the government of Rome, at the decree of Emperor Numa, will invoke the fire gods to destroy your city without any further notice.
"One last time, we state our demands:
1) Cease trading in scrolls and engraved tablets. No one is to possess scrolls or tablets unless they have been licensed from Softius Micrius Gatius Billius.
2) Cease all use of the rotary bearing horizontal transport system, commonly known as the 'Wheel'. Your persistent use of the Wheel violates patents MDCCLXXVI, DCCXLIV, MMMCCLXXXVIII and CDLXIII. OR, purchase a 'Wheel End User License', which entitles you to a subscription to 'Wheel version VIII', as long as you pay the royalty of two pieces of silver per thousand rotations per wheel, and pay for regular new releases.
3) Hunt and slaughter all carrier pigeons. These birds have been used for copyright infringement purposes, and must die.
4) Hunt all birds of species parakeet or lorikeet (nicknamed by your local population as 'Aves em-pee-threeius' - these birds have copyright-infringing capabilities, and have been used to illegally record and distribute copyrighted music.
"Lastly, once again, failure to immediately comply with these demands will result in the destruction of your civilisation."
Signed
Riaa Porcius
Intellectual Property Enforcement Division
Global Roman Empire
under the authority of Zeus
Of itself, it looks innocuous. .NET becomes more widespread. Don't forget that there are many well-funded interests whose financial welfare depends on silencing (or at least controlling) the independent creator.
One can argue that any serious programmer will find a way to come up with $1k. It's not that much, considering that any decent musical instrument costs at least $1k, and impoverished musicians find a way to come up with that sort of cash all the time.
Forgive my paranoid leaning, but I can't rule out that this price may increase exponentially if/when
So don't be surprised to see the $1000 entry level's facilities being eroded to nothing, and real access costing upwards of $50k+
...before you buy.
And not just the present EULA, but future copies.
It can't be ruled out that EULAs may have provisions forbidding deployment of code with open source licenses, or containing/facilitating content critical of Microsoft etc.
Something I've always wanted to do, might do it one day...
Install a matrix of tiny bright lamps on the back window, enough to display detailed graphics or text, but with enough space to not impair vision.
Then, I can have a row of buttons on the dash, such as:
1) display text 'Back off'
2) display text 'ASSHOLE'
3) flip the bird - animated hand/finger
4) display text 'thanks' (for letting me in)
5) anything else I feel like
If such a system was really smart, it could be programmed by a PDA.
But if a car had enough smarts, it could display such messages automatically.
If it was a Citizen-Micro$oft joint venture, then the watch would need to be 'activated' with your credit card number. Thereafter, each time you look at the time, or check the alarm, it would keep a tally, and debit your credit card monthly. Also, every two years, it would forcibly download new software, and debit your credit card for more than the original price of the watch.
Thinking along the lines of the Rastafarians who (in some places) have gained the ability to smoke pot legally as a 'religious sacrament'....
/dev/random, and concealed in the Mysteries of the Digits of PI.
How about forming a new religion, dedicated to interpreting the holy scripture as given by the Great Kernel to humankind through
Amongst the religious edicts would be:
1) Any and all binary data may contain manifestations of the Lord Kernel. Therefore, followers are instructed to decode any and all binary data they get their hands on, and apply technical skills to defeat all encryption inherent in such data/code (including copy-protection barriers).
2) All followers must celebrate the Lord Kernel's holy abundance by freely sharing any data and code which they feel personally moved to make available.
3) The Lord Kernel's abundance takes precedence over any human notions of intellectual property
4) Members of the Church of the Great Kernel may transform their data in any way before transmission to other Members.
This way, the DMCA, SSSCA, ATA etc can be ruled unconstitutional as they interfere with religious practice.
So can we look forward to NASA taking it upon itself to sell chunks of outer space as real estate?
If so, how would it work? Would each country 'own' the outer space directly above it?
And who would own those areas of space above international waters?
And how would rents for space be calculated for non-geostationary satellites? Would the passes over India, say, be cheaper than passes over USA?
So when can I go to McDonalds in downtown Kabul and buy me a McHammed Afghaniburger with Cheese?
There are upmteen rulings, such as with Napster, that deem cyberspace locations to be under the jurisdiction of the computers providing service at those 'locations', and/or the companies or individuals whose conduct at these 'locations' is under question.
But this ruling appears to contradict all those previous verdicts. Strangly, the ruling is silent on the question of 'who' or 'what' has jurisdiction in cyberspace.
If championed by a powerful and determined lawyer, this could be the basis for a massive legal challenge to the DMCA, and its subsequent watering down into oblivion.
Copyright protects the unique expression of a work--it certainly cannot protect the ideas that a particular work represents.
Ideally, that's how it should work.
For instance, if you read a book on carpentry, you are free to teach someone else carpentry. Or to write your own book on carpetry that covers the exact same material.
True, if the book is in physical paper form. But the analogy doesn't hold, because anyone can open a book without needing software, or having to agree to any terms.
But material in e-Book form is impossible to access without software, and it's illegal to use the software unless one agrees to the software's license agreement
Non-disclosure agreements exist outside the framework of the DMCA.
But, use of software which is needed to access certain information, is covered by the DMCA.
I suppose it's theoretically possible to require that one not disclose the information contained within a work, but, it wouldn't be the DMCA or copyright law which accomplished that legal feat.
That will be tested in the courts in due course.
The Microsoft EULA for FrontPage states that any use of FrontPage in conjunction with any site that contains anti-Micro$oft sentiment is in breach of license.
This goes directly against the First Amendment, but note that it's not a law, but part of a contractual agreement.
It'll be interesting to see whether ridiculous and draconian license conditions like these actually stand up in court.
It's time for the courts to rule on exactly what an End User License Agreement can actually dictate.
Lawyers, perhaps more than most of us, thrive or perish according to their ability to access information freely.
Since information is the capital with which lawyers can conduct their business, any sane lawyer could not help but feel threatened by any trend towards enforcing strict locks on information.
Imagine legal textbooks and other legal literature being published as e-Books with strict license agreements stipulating that the information contained can not be used in certain legal contexts (eg defending against DMCA prosecutions, or suing certain companies) - this is not dissimilar to Microsoft's EULA banning use of FrontPage with any website containing anti-Microsoft sentiments.
History is being made by this case.
It's not 'California v Dmitry Sklyarov', it's DMCA v the First Amendment'!
Good luck, Dmitry and Mr Keker! The freedom of the masses depends on you.
These new certificates will help a lot to counter the stigma some people perceive regarding linux.
Maybe the IT management community (yes, those who think that 'hackers' are criminals who vandalise computers, rather than prolific and talented programmers) will start to realise that Linux isn't actually a bastion for pirates and crackers.
Good to see.
So any bets on how long it'll be before linux-certified engineers are earning higher average salaries than w--dows certified ones?
This is a war, and the territory in dispute is the conscious awareness of each and every web surfer.
The individual user strives to maintain a sense of personal identity, privacy, liberty and mental space, amidst an armada of mind invaders that seek to influence him/her otherwise.
On the other hand, the advertiser seeks to entice such individual to sell pieces of his/her consciousness in return for information, entertainment, software, even a pittance of money (eg AllAdvantage, Spedia and other 'pay to surf' schemes).
All these sold-off fragments of individual consciousness, aggregated together, amount to staggering amounts of collective volition that can be sold to the highest bidder, and focused into immense financial, policital, even military power.
In every war, there is an arms race. In this case, the advertiser has fought back with a new weapon that withholds the bait unless the surfer once again surrenders a piece of consciousness.
But just wait for the new generation of ad-blockers. For instance, smart proxies with built-in browser engines, that will obediently request all and every pop-up, and pretend the popup is showing, but actually doing nothing.
Or for a dumber approach, a program that shifts all browser windows except the active one off to the edge of the screen. And so on.
Then, watch for the advertisers fighting back. Perhaps Microsoft might install more spyware into Windows XP to test for and disable anti-ad software. Hey, if/when the SSSCA gets passed, then anything goes. All the ad-delivery software can then be built into the proprietary, security-protected layers, making it an offense to try to turn off.
Fight back, dear people, fight back. Your awareness is your greatest asset - please don't sell it off cheaply.
vi versus emacs?
Hrmmph!
Both those so-called 'programmers editors' are as bad as each other - catering to people with weak memories.
Why don't people use a real programmer's editor - cat
Go Mandrake. Pure and simple.
Mandrake has two wonderful package managers:
1) rpmdrake - full GUI-based package management
2) urpmi - a command-line rival to apt-get
Both of these, like the apt system, allow you to add extra media - CDs, directories and http/ftp URLs. In addition, their dependency checking and auto-resolution is excellent. Also, the search facilities are really good.
In contrast, I found Redhat's package management confusing to say the least.
To get even more 'oomph' in package management, you can install the rpmfind utility, which (in a way) is like apt on steroids
As for which installs more stuff, I'm not totally sure, but I know that Mandrake makes it easier to control what gets installed, so by spending a little time during setup (easy!), you can end up with something quite compact.
In conclusion, I feel Mandrake well deserves to be seen as the reference Linux distro, and one I'd recommend to any Windows emigrant.
{paranoia}
Millions of satellites, smaller and vastly more powerful satellites.
How long before satellites, with increasingly sophisticated cameras, DSP, raw CPU power, and cross-referencing data amongst satellite clusters, get so powerful that they can:
1) Read the fine print of newspapers on the surface
2) Accurately recognise faces where the satellite's elevation from the subject is less than 80 degrees, and
3) Read infra-red signatures through building roofs, sufficient to discern number of people inside and their movements?
{/paranoia}
During wartime, to the technically illiterate (most journalists and lawmakers), it feels morally unquestionable that innocent civilians should give up their right to privacy so that secret communications amongst terrorists be made as difficult as possible.
2 problems though:
1) Anti-encryption (and mandatory backdoor laws) simply won't work - terrorists will just get smarter at hiding/smuggling data. While the fanatical will is there, terrorists will find ways around any law.
2) Even if/when all terrorist groups are wiped off the planet, long after the first McDonalds opens up in downtown Kabul, no government is going to relax anti-privacy laws. The spectre of terrorism will persist in the American psyche for decades.
If the terrorists' aim was to wipe out America, then they have a long way to go and will most likely fail.
But if their aim was just to destroy much of the freedom average Americans enjoy, (jealousy?), then they have succeeded brilliantly.
The ingenius system Rubberhose.org allows the creation of large, small or tiny disk images, containing random data, into which not 1, not 2 but n files can be embedded.
Once the disk image is created, there's no way to determine how many pieces of information are embedded, so rubberhose offers true plausible deniability.
Rubberhose disk images can be easily sent by email, http, ftp etc.
Forced key escrow on rubberhose images is a farce, because the owner can hand over one or two private keys which will yield up only the data the owner wants to hand over - there's no way to prove the image contains any more data.
All this aside, my conclusion is that the only way to stamp out illicit information is to ban the internet, as the Taleban has done. The problem with this, of course, is the growing sector of the economy that depends on e-commerce.
Lets be realistic, no scarcity means no profit. No profit means no stuff. Yeah, you can hold up free software as an example of what can happen even if there is no profit, but free software is shit compared to its proprietary counterpart and everyone knows it. Stop trying to pull the wool over everyone's eyes.
OK - you got me there.
Scarcity is definitely the key to economic prosperity.
In that case, the US govt needs to offer huge tax breaks to companies who pollute the atmosphere and water supply, and deplete the remaining North American forests.
Abundant air to breathe? Communist conspiracy!
We'll fix that!
Make the air unbreathable, and spawn a whole new industry in supply and distribution of air tanks - all sizes, designer colours, purity levels to suit all budgets! Now that would create jobs and stimulate the economy. Ditto for the oceans, forests, etc etc. Privatise everything, and destroy anything that can't be privatised!
And, while we're at it, burn all library books, and replace them with secure e-books that only allow one reading per loan.
And, don't forget, hire lots of FBI spooks to drive around in Tempest vans detecting EMR waveforms of computers running the Linux kernel - throw those pirating terrorist open source scum in the can for 20 years' hard labour!
In conclusion, more seriously, I sincerely regret that people can hold opinions such as yours. I'd go so far as to say that the combined electoral muscle of such beliefs contributed to leading the USA into a position of making enemies such as those involved in the WTC/Pentagon attacks last week.
Sorry, but I find your opinion disturbing. The fact that some people can actually entertain the notion that human sentiment can be changed by "rules" makes me feel less safe in this world. Please take care - such negative beliefs about humanity have a tendency to become self-fulfilling prophecies
The Web is only a means of expression of the feelings and opinions of people, yes, real live human beings - yes, organic biochemical aggregations exhibiting emotion.
Personally, I'd rather see the diversity of opinions and mind-sets being expressed out in the open, rather than being suppressed by paranoid authorities. In my profession as an alternative health therapist, I deal daily with the devastation caused by people who continually suppress their feelings until they break out in destructive ways.
As I've said in other posts, the real answer to overcoming evil in this world is to probe to its underlying causes - political, social, economic, psychological etc, and educate and empower people to heal and overcome the underlying pain which causes destructive manifestations.
Nothing but a process of education, instilling in people from an early age a sense of local and global accountability for their actions, desires and choices will make any real progress in preventing any future tragedies.
Lastly, in answer to your 'IP theft' point, let me say that IP laws add to the global scarcity consciousness, which is a major cause of crime and war. Isn't it time we recognised the immense human benefits that can come from the freeing up of information?
(to moderator - i know this is OT - please indulge me)
/. moderator who failed to see the joke and gave it a 0 rating.
I don't know which is funnier - the previous reply's lampooning of a windows user trying to use Linux, or the
In the afterhaze of the tragic terrorist attacks, it would take an almost unimaginable lobbying effort on the part of privacy advocates to prevent online privacy being seriously eroded.
/. post. But one reason I can think of is OIL GREED, and the average voter's refusal to accept any accountability for any deeper consequences of their lifestyle choices.
But I feel suppressing privacy is a most blatantly superficial solution, that does nothing to address the underlying causes of the attack.
From these attacks has come knowledge of two new weapons - (1) Aircraft, and (2) Anonymity.
Yes - anonymity as a weapon!
Americans would be reluctant to give up cheap convenient air travel/freight, as these are part of America's superlative economic infrastructure, but more and more, privacy/anonymity is being seen as a dangerous luxury.
Terrorists are showing alarming ingenuity at using the most commonplace entities as weapons, and no doubt will adapt to being able to function effectively under any set of rules, and find ways to use any new rule as an actual weapon.
Sadly, no law can suppress anyone's will to attack the USA - in fact, such rules can only increase anti-US sentiment, both within and without.
It refreshes me, though, to see the media giving some airing to opinions critical of US foreign policy and calling for the USA to see Sep 11 as a reality check. Sadly though, the bombings seem very unlikely to trigger any substantial revision of such policy, or any real investigation of the underlying causes of the Sep 11 tragedy.
Ban encryption/anonymity? Terrorists will simply resort to steganography. Any white noise such as image/audio data, even plain text, can be used as a carrier for hidden content. (Imagine lots of high-powered NSA mathematicians looking for hidden messages embedded in people's family photos - just like the religious fundamentals looking for 'secret brainwashing messages' in heavy metal rock albums!)
The only thing that can possibly prevent any future attacks on America is serious and deep reflection on WHY the USA has made itself unpopular in certain parts of the world.
Too many inter-related complex reasons to fathom in one mere
demos work ok on win98, but in win2k, the ivm prog does nothing.
I could see the system working well, and resisting spam, if the following safeguards are put in place
1) No message to be delivered to an ENUM unless it's from another ENUM
2) No interference with existing email addresses - allow these to keep being used
3) Allow ENUM users to set 'privacy policies' on their ENUM, including 'no unsolicited promotional material'. Sending spam to an ENUM in defiance of applicable policies to be a criminal offense.