but why is Slashdot posting this blatant advertisement as a news story
Because it's been so long since stories about the Baen Free Library were posted (i.e. giving away electronic copies of books in print helps sell them, but publishing books yourself means that there is nobody to weed out the crap ones)
"Dr. Richard Paley comes to our movement through his involvement in fighting other forms of anti-Christian hatecrimes. He has lead successful boycotts against Sears and Piggly-Wiggly and has spearheaded the movement to stop Evolutionism from being forced on the children of Marian County. His experience in dealing with secularism's desperate grasp on power has proved invaluable as we move into the next phase of our campaign. Dr. Paley teaches Divinity and Theobiology at Fellowship University."
Right, it sounds like a troll, but that line of questioning does make sense:
(a) If the computers are donated with an O/S on them, then nobody at the school agreed to an EULA.
(b) Nobody is being accused of copying the software. Hence, their use of the software is allowed under copyright law.
(c) If microsoft want to impose the additional restrictions which their EULA implies (includng the burden of audits) then they need to prove that an EULA was agreed to.
It's possible of course, that some copies of Windows were bought, which would give MS the legal backing to audit the premises where those computers are used in search of others. But that still doesn't cover donated computer/OS combinations.
To quote Schneier (who may have been quoting someone else) -- "it doesn't matter how much it costs to crack your firewall, it only matters how much it costs to buy your sysadmin"
Presumably, some top-management are uphappy about the idea of their network-support people having access to their private email.
there still exist free s/w while do pretty decent job I've found GPG to be very difficult to use, even as someone who uses the command line a lot, I've neither got the Windows nor the Linux version to encrypt anything yet.
they might not integrate into Outlook Does anyone know a decent Windows email client (i.e. not Pegasus or Outlook) which does handle PGP messages?
I put that up when my mum was blocked from reading my own website at school... I don't know which would be worse, someone at her school blocking a free-software/free-speech site, or the site being added by censorware companies themselves.
I'd add an anonymiser myself if I had the bandwidth, but it would give people too much false-security to be able to use one without an HTTPS connection
qANQR1DDBAQDAAHJSrgR4/zWmgIlOx7SKHg309W0V67HK6C3 Xp F1fXNrg8y6WQw6 7rX04W3zM/H0mDE83Xm+mi9RPJkaWSSrvW 8Xpm6mOgVFAvSqKY s5 =IoDB -----END PGP MESSAGE-----
The above phrase is encrypted. I do not know the key, nobody does. If you fail to decrypt the above phrase on request, you can go to jail. See the RIP law for etails. http://www.stand.org.uk/v
Re:Open source Food
on
On Hacktivism
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Ok I'll bite.
Lookup news on MacDonalds, GM crops, and hormone-injected beef in France.
Also lookup the US trade-barrier-attacks on French roquefort and fois-gras.
Maybe MacDoSerfs in america don't care about the shit they eat (yes, that claim can be proven) but if "You are what you eat" then yes, Europeans do care about the recipe used at their restaurants.
"This site may contain explicit descriptions of or advocate one or more of the following: adultery, murder, morbid violence, bad grammar, deviant sexual conduct in violent contexts, or the consumption of alcohol and illegal drugs. Then again, it may not. Who knows?"
Re:Civil disobedience
on
On Hacktivism
·
· Score: 5, Informative
No need. Just email a valid, encrypted file to somebody in the UK. They can go to prison for 2 years if they fail on request by the police to decrypt it.
The legal burden is on the owner of an encrypted file to prove that they never had the key, and anyone using encryption is guilty until proven innocent, on the basis that anyone using encryption must be a snuff-child-porn baron
First of all, every judge authorised to make wiretap decisions needs to have an encryption key signed by the secretary of state. Without this, the whole system falls apart, but nobody seems yet to have implemented it.
Secondly, a list needs to be electronically published and signed, containing the names and keys of all judges so authorised. Again, how else do they expect people to know who's got authorisation to get this data.
Thirdly, a standards body needs an XML template that the judges can fill in to authorise an electronic wiretap. Information required, the intended target, the name of the investigating officer, etc. Once these are in a standard form, they can be electronically processed.
This is all just what the story's proposing (albeit in a narrower sense) but did it ever occur to -anyone- before, to have something as basic as a way of finding out if an electronic warrant is valid?
If, as the article says, companies are spending hundreds of man-hours per week on this, they definitely need somewhere they can feed all the electronically-signed warrants, a computer which will determine their validity, log the information asked for, get the information, encrypt it both to the investigating officer's key, and to the judge's, then email it back to them.
Try explaining that to a policeman. "But I just want this information... and this, and this, and this... And I want it for free. And I want you to check this warrant for free also. And you can be sued if you accept an invalid warrant. And you can be sued if I take data not permitted by law. And you can be sued if your servers fuck-up while I'm poking around in them..."
Well actually, anyone going after my bike when it's at home (downstairs in the kitchen) will have my broadsword to contend with, so property defense may not have changed that much since good King John's day...
You should see how confused a webeditor gets when you email them asking for permission to list them on your news site.
Why are you even asking? It's your website! they say. Some people don't even realise the implications of their own usage-agreements
"Dear sir, I've written a news article praising your site, but due to your terms and conditions, I've removed all links to your site, thus not allowing you to capitalise on this publicity. I have also taken the liberty of obscuring your website name so as not to fall afoul of trademark laws. If and when you see fit to change your website disclaimer, you're welcome to a link"
The police have experimented with GPS-tracker bikes (like the cars in the body of this article) but they're so expensive that the police need to borrow them, use them on a decoy bike, and get them back afterward -- you can't use them on your own bike
(you can get them for cars if you trust the company, but cars cost more to replace. I'd also prefer GPS-tracker signals to be encrypted using a key I generate, which I can give to the company when I report it stolen)
Decoy bikes DO work though; there are many examples of police turning up to collect their decoy bike, along with a garage-full of other stolen ones.
Microdots and coding don't work at all. Datatags don't work, because they can't transmit outside of the bike's steelwork (i.e. you need to have the saddle out to detect them)
And yeah, the yellow-jacketed twats on scooters certainly don't help
I think we need the vice-chancellor, a pair of handcuffs, and a centrally-located bike rack at night...
While your naïvete is touching, it worries me that you could think it to be true.
Look at a half-century of wiretaps. They were supposed to prevent terrorism too. They were never used against terrorists. In fact, they were only used against serious criminals around 2% of the time.
Wiretaps were used in the phoney "war on drugs", they were used to spy on opposition politicians, they were used to spy on civil rights campaigners.
Yes, these new powers will weasel their way in by convincing an ignorant public that (a) they stand a chance of working, (b) that they were even designed to stop terrorism, (c) that they won't be abused, and (d) that they'll be used to target terrorists.
Right. I've invented a new form of clue-stick, and it consists of a slashdot-connected webcam in the bedroom of everyone who thinks ubiquitous surveillance is a good idea. "It's the price of preventing terrorist attacks" you can tell the wife.
Slashdot Mirror
but why is Slashdot posting this blatant advertisement as a news story
Because it's been so long since stories about the Baen Free Library were posted (i.e. giving away electronic copies of books in print helps sell them, but publishing books yourself means that there is nobody to weed out the crap ones)
Surely a check is difficult to use for someone with a different currency to your own?
have they started soliciting donations yet?
"Dr. Richard Paley comes to our movement through his involvement in fighting other forms of anti-Christian hatecrimes. He has lead successful boycotts against Sears and Piggly-Wiggly and has spearheaded the movement to stop Evolutionism from being forced on the children of Marian County. His experience in dealing with secularism's desperate grasp on power has proved invaluable as we move into the next phase of our campaign. Dr. Paley teaches Divinity and Theobiology at Fellowship University."
Author's biography, from the site
As one commenter said, "if they don't have the time/staff for a software audit, they certainly don't have the time/staff to migrate to linux"
Except that it looks like they might be getting a little help...
{/me} watches as a linux-team larger in number than any microsoft lawyer-army descends on portland.
Let the games commence
"K12LTSP"
I thought that sounded like a UK postcode, until I went to the site and saw their logo...
What's K12, and what does it stand for?
Right, it sounds like a troll, but that line of questioning does make sense:
(a) If the computers are donated with an O/S on them, then nobody at the school agreed to an EULA.
(b) Nobody is being accused of copying the software. Hence, their use of the software is allowed under copyright law.
(c) If microsoft want to impose the additional restrictions which their EULA implies (includng the burden of audits) then they need to prove that an EULA was agreed to.
It's possible of course, that some copies of Windows were bought, which would give MS the legal backing to audit the premises where those computers are used in search of others. But that still doesn't cover donated computer/OS combinations.
To quote Schneier (who may have been quoting someone else) -- "it doesn't matter how much it costs to crack your firewall, it only matters how much it costs to buy your sysadmin"
Presumably, some top-management are uphappy about the idea of their network-support people having access to their private email.
There's a discussion on how terrorists use steganography (or not)
there still exist free s/w while do pretty decent job
I've found GPG to be very difficult to use, even as someone who uses the command line a lot, I've neither got the Windows nor the Linux version to encrypt anything yet.
they might not integrate into Outlook
Does anyone know a decent Windows email client (i.e. not Pegasus or Outlook) which does handle PGP messages?
I'm at 50, so I'm not karma whoreing.
I'm at 50 too -- do you think we can sell the accounts on ebay?
Emulators? We don't need no damn emulators! Just get a job at a games company, and you can have a real SNES on your desk...
List of other anonymisers
I put that up when my mum was blocked from reading my own website at school... I don't know which would be worse, someone at her school blocking a free-software/free-speech site, or the site being added by censorware companies themselves.
I'd add an anonymiser myself if I had the bandwidth, but it would give people too much false-security to be able to use one without an HTTPS connection
Though I haven't been through that new math that they're teaching in schools now ...
It's not math you want to be worried about. It's science: "The world was created in seven days, evolution never happened"
Makes you wonder how long a "day" was before the light was separated from the darkness...
Strangely, that's exactly the signature I use in my email:
o .uk
3 Xp F1fXNrg8y6WQw6W 8Xpm6mOgVFAvSqKY s5
(my email)@blibbleblobble.co.uk
www.blibbleblobble.c
Encryption key on website
-----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE-----
qANQR1DDBAQDAAHJSrgR4/zWmgIlOx7SKHg309W0V67HK6C
7rX04W3zM/H0mDE83Xm+mi9RPJkaWSSrv
=IoDB
-----END PGP MESSAGE-----
The above phrase is encrypted. I do not know the key, nobody does.
If you fail to decrypt the above phrase on request, you can go to
jail. See the RIP law for etails. http://www.stand.org.uk/v
Ok I'll bite.
Lookup news on MacDonalds, GM crops, and hormone-injected beef in France.
Also lookup the US trade-barrier-attacks on French roquefort and fois-gras.
Maybe MacDoSerfs in america don't care about the shit they eat (yes, that claim can be proven) but if "You are what you eat" then yes, Europeans do care about the recipe used at their restaurants.
How strange. When I read that, I tried to remember my history, tried to think when Bush had been president.
I just realised he still is... That's scary!
cDc itself says:
d eadcow.com/
"This site may contain explicit descriptions of or advocate one or more of the following:
adultery, murder, morbid violence, bad grammar, deviant sexual conduct in violent contexts, or the consumption of alcohol and illegal drugs.
Then again, it may not.
Who knows?"
You can see it for yourself at:
https://proxy.magusnet.com:443/-_-http://www.cult
No need. Just email a valid, encrypted file to somebody in the UK. They can go to prison for 2 years if they fail on request by the police to decrypt it.
The legal burden is on the owner of an encrypted file to prove that they never had the key, and anyone using encryption is guilty until proven innocent, on the basis that anyone using encryption must be a snuff-child-porn baron
Okay, so what is needed?
First of all, every judge authorised to make wiretap decisions needs to have an encryption key signed by the secretary of state. Without this, the whole system falls apart, but nobody seems yet to have implemented it.
Secondly, a list needs to be electronically published and signed, containing the names and keys of all judges so authorised. Again, how else do they expect people to know who's got authorisation to get this data.
Thirdly, a standards body needs an XML template that the judges can fill in to authorise an electronic wiretap. Information required, the intended target, the name of the investigating officer, etc. Once these are in a standard form, they can be electronically processed.
This is all just what the story's proposing (albeit in a narrower sense) but did it ever occur to -anyone- before, to have something as basic as a way of finding out if an electronic warrant is valid?
If, as the article says, companies are spending hundreds of man-hours per week on this, they definitely need somewhere they can feed all the electronically-signed warrants, a computer which will determine their validity, log the information asked for, get the information, encrypt it both to the investigating officer's key, and to the judge's, then email it back to them.
Try explaining that to a policeman. "But I just want this information... and this, and this, and this... And I want it for free. And I want you to check this warrant for free also. And you can be sued if you accept an invalid warrant. And you can be sued if I take data not permitted by law. And you can be sued if your servers fuck-up while I'm poking around in them..."
Try explaining that to the sysadmins...
"Giving the Linus Torvulds award to the Free Software Foundation is like giving the Hans Solo award to the rebel alliance." -- RMS
Where's Robin Hood when you need him?
Well actually, anyone going after my bike when it's at home (downstairs in the kitchen) will have my broadsword to contend with, so property defense may not have changed that much since good King John's day...
Day 1: /News/microsoft.php points to a great article about microsoft.
/News/microsoft.php redirects everyone randomly to a porn site.
Days 2-6: People read it and link to it.
Day 7:
They'll soon stop linking
You should see how confused a webeditor gets when you email them asking for permission to list them on your news site.
Why are you even asking? It's your website! they say. Some people don't even realise the implications of their own usage-agreements
"Dear sir, I've written a news article praising your site, but due to your terms and conditions, I've removed all links to your site, thus not allowing you to capitalise on this publicity. I have also taken the liberty of obscuring your website name so as not to fall afoul of trademark laws. If and when you see fit to change your website disclaimer, you're welcome to a link"
The police have experimented with GPS-tracker bikes (like the cars in the body of this article) but they're so expensive that the police need to borrow them, use them on a decoy bike, and get them back afterward -- you can't use them on your own bike
(you can get them for cars if you trust the company, but cars cost more to replace. I'd also prefer GPS-tracker signals to be encrypted using a key I generate, which I can give to the company when I report it stolen)
Decoy bikes DO work though; there are many examples of police turning up to collect their decoy bike, along with a garage-full of other stolen ones.
Microdots and coding don't work at all. Datatags don't work, because they can't transmit outside of the bike's steelwork (i.e. you need to have the saddle out to detect them)
And yeah, the yellow-jacketed twats on scooters certainly don't help
I think we need the vice-chancellor, a pair of handcuffs, and a centrally-located bike rack at night...
Yeah. It'll prevent terrorist attacks.
While your naïvete is touching, it worries me that you could think it to be true.
Look at a half-century of wiretaps. They were supposed to prevent terrorism too. They were never used against terrorists. In fact, they were only used against serious criminals around 2% of the time.
Wiretaps were used in the phoney "war on drugs", they were used to spy on opposition politicians, they were used to spy on civil rights campaigners.
Yes, these new powers will weasel their way in by convincing an ignorant public that (a) they stand a chance of working, (b) that they were even designed to stop terrorism, (c) that they won't be abused, and (d) that they'll be used to target terrorists.
Right. I've invented a new form of clue-stick, and it consists of a slashdot-connected webcam in the bedroom of everyone who thinks ubiquitous surveillance is a good idea. "It's the price of preventing terrorist attacks" you can tell the wife.