Different government elements have different goals and motivations, and even though I'm a tinfoil hat-type, I refuse to believe that this is intended as a sort of disguised voluntary blacklist.
That being said, open source has many enemies, and not all of those have objections against "playing it dirty". Should an open source opponent ever try to associate open source with, say, terrorism, and succeed; it will not exactly help those on this list sleep better.
Yes, I wonder about this a lot too. My grandfather, who was in the Dutch army during the German invasion in WW2, still follows the news quite closely. And he's clearly aware of what's going on today, possibly even more so than I am. However, people who lived through WW2 at an age at which they could understand what was going on AND are still alive and in good mental health are becoming quite rare.
It's the younger generations who will have to keep an eye open for such things, and I'm afraid (quite literally) that we're doing a terrible job. (Reading things like this doesn't exactly brighten our future either.)
The problem is, I think, that while a lot of people know what Hitler & friends did, very few young people are aware of how exactly he managed to obtain a position of power.
I don't have any interesting non-PC hacking projects of my own, but a friend once hacked a MIDI connection into an accordion. Seems to work pretty good too.
Yes, and I don't know which is more frightening: the fact that the US has prepared a tactical plan to invade an allied country in case they feel the need; or the fact that the Dutch government (my goverment, unfortunately) is still trying to maintain its ass-kissing relationship with the US goverment no matter what they do...
Speaking as a European, I would say that you are both mostly correct.
In Europe, most governments actually show that they care for the citizens that elected them. (There is always the knee-jerk reaction that you mention to anything reminding us of Nazi Germany, but since some people that lived through the holocaust are still alive today, and being reminded of that period is unsettling for them to say the least, that's one of the few areas where I think restrictions to free speech might be justifiable.) Social security ensures that good education and health facilities are available to anyone, including the poorest. Legal protection for citizens from large commercial entities is generally OK.
On the other hand, Europe is starting to suffer more and more from the same problems the US currently has. Our governments are becoming aware that a scared citizen doesn't question its government. Privacy and freedom are things for extremists, good citizens care about safety and nothing else. Social security is being slowly broken down, and large commercial entities are gaining more and more power over government decisions.
Well, that depends on what they're exactly saying they're selling I guess. If they sell it as a "licence to not get sued in case there is SCO IP in Linux", I can imagine they can get away that.
But if they sell it as a license to use the SCO IP, which _is_ part of Linux, I reckon the trouble they will be in if they are wrong has just grown a whole lot bigger, provided they actually sell some licences.
And IANAL, but reading their page it sounds a lot like they really are saying the latter.
Funny but also insightful! They haven't sold any because they can go to prison for selling something they don't own. You won't get a license even if you beg for it.
What are you doing to do, follow everyone with video cameras until they reveal they are a pervet?
I'm not saying I have the solution. But I'm sure that removing Freenet, or any other means of sharing the data, is not it. Consider that kiddie porn in itself isn't the real problem, the abuse required for it is. If there were a way to create it without actually harming children (virtual porn?) there probably wouldn't be a problem. I think every case of sexual child abuse is motivated either by: - Desire. Those who abuse children because they enjoy it will still enjoy (and do) it if they can't share pictures of it, so removing Freenet does not help. - Money (or other personal gains). There is no such concept as a "paysite" on Freenet, so no way for the offender to gain money off it. So if the offender's main motivation is money, he won't even use Freenet.
But FreeNET helps freedom of speech in China you may ask... Well just punish anyone you find with FreeNET on their computer to death! Perhaps the People's Firewall (sic) could reject packets which appeared to be encrypted (or all non-web traffic, as pointed out earlier).
Aside from being encrypted, traffic can also be hidden in other traffic, such as web traffic, by steganography. And the Freenet program itself could be disguised in a trojan-like way. Although this isn't currently being done as far as I know, it does mean that both problems are solvable.
I've heard (though not tried) that Freenet can be compiled using GCJ, the GNU Compiler for Java, to native machine code. In other words, you lose the Java overhead.
Actually, being slashdotted is perfect for the Freenet project, for two reasons:
1. More donations. Previous slashdottings have been very succesful in increasing the funds of the project.
2. More nodes. Although a great increase in nodes might increase the load on the network for a short while, in the long term the increase in network size will actually improve Freenet both in terms of reliability (more space, so less chance of content "dropping off the network") and speed (larger chance that there's a node with good connectivity nearby).
From the Freenet FAQ: I don't want my node to be used to harbor child porn, offensive content or terrorism. What can I do? The true test of someone who claims to believe in Freedom of Speech is whether they tolerate speech which they disagree with, or even find disgusting. If this is not acceptable to you, you should not run a Freenet node. There is another thing you can do. Since content in Freenet is available as long as its popular, you can help limit the popularity of whatever information you do not like. For example, if you do not want a file to spread you should not request it and tell everyone you know not to request that specific key. However, keep in mind that freenet is not designed so as to only allow communication between people if a sufficient number of people agree with the communication. Freenet is designed to make communication possible even if there's just one publisher and one reader, and this is already reasonably feasible on the current freenet.
Personally, I think the only way to stop kiddie porn is at the source. Removing the transport medium will only lead to those involved seeking another medium, and there's always SneakerNet.
From what I see at deal sites like fatwallet and bens bargain's, overall drive quality has gone down in the past year or so. Some drives are over abused though, as I've seen people rip DVD's and re-encode to the same drive and wonder why they fail after about 8 months...
As others have pointed out: bullshit. I have had rarely used drives fail all of a sudden, and others survive years of continuous random read/writes.
Also, ripping a DVD is not even very heavy work for a HD, since it's mostly sequential writes. Nothing compared to what a HD in a busy usenet server has to go through.
Bottom line is, you can never predict when any type of drive will fail, so make backups. I've had three HD's fail during the past half year; I sent them back to Maxtor and recieved a better drive in return for each of them. Since I had backups, I don't complain, even though the quality of harddrives seems to be lower than it used to be.
1) Take an interest in something he loves that you normally have no interest in. It depends on what kind of things you normally do together, but if you hate action movies renting one of his favorites, or watching star wars even if you hate it, or playing some multi-player games you don't like are all great ideas.
I'm not sure this is a good idea... the average geek is fairly intelligent and is likely to see through this. While he will probably understand the message, he might feel bad about spending time together doing something only he really enjoys, while he was probably hoping to make you enjoy valentine's day as well.
3) Agree not to make valentine's day a big deal. He's probably stressing out about what to get you for valentine's day, because he wants to do something special for you, but it's hard to feel special buying the same stuff everyone else is (you are obviously feeling somewhat of the same challenge).
To this I can only agree. Many geeks (including yours truly) are very unsure about buying gifts for non-geek people. Surprising the other with an unexpected-but-nice gift is nice, but if you mutually plan something you both enjoy, you'll also live towards the experience for a few days insteads of torturing yourselves over finding a good present. And if all goes well, you'll still both have something permanent in the form of the mutual memory of the experience.
Have you considered that maybe geeks have no sense of class (taste is entirely personal) because they don't care for it? I know I don't. Giving him something clearly "anti-geeky" might be understood as a suggestion to become less geeky, and I'm not sure if that's the kind of message you want to give on valentine's day. Personally, I associate "nice" analog watches and expensive shirts with manager types...
I'm supposed to be installing a virus scanner on my father's PC right now, but bursting into hysterical laughter is a pretty convincing sign to everyone here that I'm reading that "stoopid geek site" again. Damn you!
I've had some unfortunate accidents of this kind, and I blame myself. Since then I've decided to use the slightly slower, but safer way wherever possible. Suppose I want to remove the directory "foo" and the files in it, "bar01" through "bar50". I would have typed:
rm -rf foo
I now use:
rm foo/bar??
rmdir foo
Not as fast, but it prevents all kinds of stupid mistakes. At the very least, learn to use "rmdir" wherever possible since it can only remove empty directories.
I agree that the average Joe Terrorist (hmm... doesn't sound right...) will have to be more careful and has less chance of succesfully attacking a target in the US.
However, you should also consider that by fueling anti-US sentiments in the middle east, terrorist organisations have absolutely no problem finding new members prepared to give their lives for the cause.
I'm guessing that added together, these two effects still amount to an increase in terrorism. A different approach to terrorism (such as trying to remove the cause of those anti-US sentiments) might be much more effective.
Now I am not agreeing either that I want Big Brother watching my every move. I just don't see how we can have both the government checking out people/groups whoever, AND the same privacy we had post 9-11.
You're right, we can't. But do you really think that the government's checking out of everything helps prevent terrorism? The War on Terror might very well be fueling terrorism instead of extinguishing it.
Exactly. I think reading 1984 should be strongly encouraged by schools everywhere. (though it probably won't happen in the US because people might just notice the parallels between the War on Terror and the "War is Peace" philosophy).
It is essential for people to understand (not just "learn") why privacy is essential to safety.
Although I agree that he wasn't trolling, I do grow tired of the "good people have nothing to worry about" argument.
If a government knows everything about any citizen at any time, people in that government can abuse that information. Many people desire power over others, and the more power someone in a government position has, the more people will try to obtain such a position for the sake of power. Law abiding citizens do have something to worry about.
Slashdot Mirror
That being said, open source has many enemies, and not all of those have objections against "playing it dirty". Should an open source opponent ever try to associate open source with, say, terrorism, and succeed; it will not exactly help those on this list sleep better.
My grandfather, who was in the Dutch army during the German invasion in WW2, still follows the news quite closely. And he's clearly aware of what's going on today, possibly even more so than I am. However, people who lived through WW2 at an age at which they could understand what was going on AND are still alive and in good mental health are becoming quite rare.
It's the younger generations who will have to keep an eye open for such things, and I'm afraid (quite literally) that we're doing a terrible job. (Reading things like this doesn't exactly brighten our future either.)
The problem is, I think, that while a lot of people know what Hitler & friends did, very few young people are aware of how exactly he managed to obtain a position of power.
Hey! What about OpenCola?
I don't have any interesting non-PC hacking projects of my own, but a friend once hacked a MIDI connection into an accordion. Seems to work pretty good too.
Is that what they call it these days?
Yes, and I don't know which is more frightening: the fact that the US has prepared a tactical plan to invade an allied country in case they feel the need; or the fact that the Dutch government (my goverment, unfortunately) is still trying to maintain its ass-kissing relationship with the US goverment no matter what they do...
In Europe, most governments actually show that they care for the citizens that elected them. (There is always the knee-jerk reaction that you mention to anything reminding us of Nazi Germany, but since some people that lived through the holocaust are still alive today, and being reminded of that period is unsettling for them to say the least, that's one of the few areas where I think restrictions to free speech might be justifiable.) Social security ensures that good education and health facilities are available to anyone, including the poorest. Legal protection for citizens from large commercial entities is generally OK.
On the other hand, Europe is starting to suffer more and more from the same problems the US currently has. Our governments are becoming aware that a scared citizen doesn't question its government. Privacy and freedom are things for extremists, good citizens care about safety and nothing else. Social security is being slowly broken down, and large commercial entities are gaining more and more power over government decisions.
But if they sell it as a license to use the SCO IP, which _is_ part of Linux, I reckon the trouble they will be in if they are wrong has just grown a whole lot bigger, provided they actually sell some licences.
And IANAL, but reading their page it sounds a lot like they really are saying the latter.
arjen@rincewind#502:~$
Yes, that does look a lot like SCO's IP in Linux...
With some luck, in a year, the license document will be worth more as a collector's item than what SCO asks for it right now...
Funny but also insightful! They haven't sold any because they can go to prison for selling something they don't own. You won't get a license even if you beg for it.
I'm not saying I have the solution. But I'm sure that removing Freenet, or any other means of sharing the data, is not it. Consider that kiddie porn in itself isn't the real problem, the abuse required for it is. If there were a way to create it without actually harming children (virtual porn?) there probably wouldn't be a problem.
I think every case of sexual child abuse is motivated either by:
- Desire. Those who abuse children because they enjoy it will still enjoy (and do) it if they can't share pictures of it, so removing Freenet does not help.
- Money (or other personal gains). There is no such concept as a "paysite" on Freenet, so no way for the offender to gain money off it. So if the offender's main motivation is money, he won't even use Freenet.
But FreeNET helps freedom of speech in China you may ask... Well just punish anyone you find with FreeNET on their computer to death! Perhaps the People's Firewall (sic) could reject packets which appeared to be encrypted (or all non-web traffic, as pointed out earlier).
Aside from being encrypted, traffic can also be hidden in other traffic, such as web traffic, by steganography. And the Freenet program itself could be disguised in a trojan-like way. Although this isn't currently being done as far as I know, it does mean that both problems are solvable.
I've heard (though not tried) that Freenet can be compiled using GCJ, the GNU Compiler for Java, to native machine code. In other words, you lose the Java overhead.
1. More donations. Previous slashdottings have been very succesful in increasing the funds of the project.
2. More nodes. Although a great increase in nodes might increase the load on the network for a short while, in the long term the increase in network size will actually improve Freenet both in terms of reliability (more space, so less chance of content "dropping off the network") and speed (larger chance that there's a node with good connectivity nearby).
I don't want my node to be used to harbor child porn, offensive content or terrorism. What can I do?
The true test of someone who claims to believe in Freedom of Speech is whether they tolerate speech which they disagree with, or even find disgusting. If this is not acceptable to you, you should not run a Freenet node. There is another thing you can do. Since content in Freenet is available as long as its popular, you can help limit the popularity of whatever information you do not like. For example, if you do not want a file to spread you should not request it and tell everyone you know not to request that specific key. However, keep in mind that freenet is not designed so as to only allow communication between people if a sufficient number of people agree with the communication. Freenet is designed to make communication possible even if there's just one publisher and one reader, and this is already reasonably feasible on the current freenet.
Personally, I think the only way to stop kiddie porn is at the source. Removing the transport medium will only lead to those involved seeking another medium, and there's always SneakerNet.
As others have pointed out: bullshit. I have had rarely used drives fail all of a sudden, and others survive years of continuous random read/writes.
Also, ripping a DVD is not even very heavy work for a HD, since it's mostly sequential writes. Nothing compared to what a HD in a busy usenet server has to go through.
Bottom line is, you can never predict when any type of drive will fail, so make backups. I've had three HD's fail during the past half year; I sent them back to Maxtor and recieved a better drive in return for each of them. Since I had backups, I don't complain, even though the quality of harddrives seems to be lower than it used to be.
I'm not sure this is a good idea... the average geek is fairly intelligent and is likely to see through this. While he will probably understand the message, he might feel bad about spending time together doing something only he really enjoys, while he was probably hoping to make you enjoy valentine's day as well.
3) Agree not to make valentine's day a big deal. He's probably stressing out about what to get you for valentine's day, because he wants to do something special for you, but it's hard to feel special buying the same stuff everyone else is (you are obviously feeling somewhat of the same challenge).
To this I can only agree. Many geeks (including yours truly) are very unsure about buying gifts for non-geek people. Surprising the other with an unexpected-but-nice gift is nice, but if you mutually plan something you both enjoy, you'll also live towards the experience for a few days insteads of torturing yourselves over finding a good present. And if all goes well, you'll still both have something permanent in the form of the mutual memory of the experience.
Have you considered that maybe geeks have no sense of class (taste is entirely personal) because they don't care for it? I know I don't. Giving him something clearly "anti-geeky" might be understood as a suggestion to become less geeky, and I'm not sure if that's the kind of message you want to give on valentine's day. Personally, I associate "nice" analog watches and expensive shirts with manager types...
That would be too good to be true, since here in Europe, March actually lasts for an entire month!
I'm supposed to be installing a virus scanner on my father's PC right now, but bursting into hysterical laughter is a pretty convincing sign to everyone here that I'm reading that "stoopid geek site" again. Damn you!
rm -rf foo
I now use:
rm foo/bar??
rmdir foo
Not as fast, but it prevents all kinds of stupid mistakes. At the very least, learn to use "rmdir" wherever possible since it can only remove empty directories.
However, you should also consider that by fueling anti-US sentiments in the middle east, terrorist organisations have absolutely no problem finding new members prepared to give their lives for the cause.
I'm guessing that added together, these two effects still amount to an increase in terrorism. A different approach to terrorism (such as trying to remove the cause of those anti-US sentiments) might be much more effective.
You're right, we can't. But do you really think that the government's checking out of everything helps prevent terrorism? The War on Terror might very well be fueling terrorism instead of extinguishing it.
It is essential for people to understand (not just "learn") why privacy is essential to safety.
If a government knows everything about any citizen at any time, people in that government can abuse that information. Many people desire power over others, and the more power someone in a government position has, the more people will try to obtain such a position for the sake of power. Law abiding citizens do have something to worry about.