Actually, these exact issues (are you using a sony vaio by any chance?) are what sent me back to debian from ubuntu.
I had to compile alsa myself after each distribution upgrade, and then when I went to Intrepid the nVidia X server refused to start when the laptop was in its dock, regardless of which version of the drivers I tried.
"Tell me about a single case of "illegal information" whereby the governmental powers were not directly involved in the establishment of what is "illegal", subsequent "investigations" or "prosecutions"."
Why should I?
That's not what I'm claiming.
You claim that the only purpose of making information illegal is as a pretext to interfere and intervene in communications. I disagree. Banning the propagation of some materials is an end in itself, especially if backed up with adequate protections to stop the government routinely intercepting everything in a trawling expedition.
For many decades there were types of information that were illegal to propagate (treasonous plots for example), but that didn't mean that the postal service was considered fair game.
I'm sorry, but I don't buy into your all or nothing libertarian dogma, and neither do many others.
It's also funny because a decade or so back we may have said the same about apps on commercial UNIX boxes.
I may well be lucky because I fit precisely the demographic that is making linux and making it for themselves. I am a UNIX focused software developer. Pretty much everything I want and need is there, for home and business use. At work I have need for a couple of commercial apps, but they're available for Linux too.
"While Linux itself is very much ready from a stability standpoint, the software (and to some extent, hardware) support just isn't there. "
All depends on what you want. There's a hell of a lot of software flexibility over MS operating systems if what you want is to set up a DNS forwarding proxy, or quickly and easily start coding in pretty much any given language.
As for hardware support, I'm sorry, but nothing else comes close to the range of hardware supported by Linux. I have debian running on servers, desktops, laptops, netbooks, NAS devices, mobile phones...
"The real problem is that Linux is trying to be Windows,"
How so?
Please, explain. I'm genuinely interested in why you think that, when it seems clear to me that they are very different operating systems. One is UNIX through and through and runs on a massive variety of hardware, the other is an x86 only OS with totally different ways of doing things.
Linux doesn't look like windows or act like windows, as far as I can tell.
I can't say I've had any problems reading attachments from other people so it's not something I've looked at. I run my own mailserver (Postfix/Dovecot) so I don't have to attach to an exchange server or anything like that. I use alpine or thunderbird as a client depending on whether I'm logging in from one of my systems or over ssh. I assume some of my friends must use outlook...
"It's hard as hell to make it your only desktop; you'll spend all your time wrangling with WINE."
I would dispute that, I've been using it as sole desktop for a couple of years now.
I'm not a (PC) gamer, which probably helps, but I've yet to find anything I want to do that I need windows-only programs for. Of course I'm not one of these seemingly billions of users that absolutely must have Photoshop, and pirate it.
I suffered from the same on my Vaio. I could here it doing it, spinning down and up again every few seconds. There were workarounds but I recall the Ubuntu guys saying "not our problem" yet at the same time other distros and OSs were fine.
"Well you can't have it both ways. The whole point of making some bit patterns "illegal" is to provide a pretext for (essentially arbitrary) governmental intervention. There is no other reason for it."
Actually, that said, I don't support anybody's right to distribute CP. But I do dispute the government's right to spy on any/all communications "just in case".
I'm perfectly happy that some bit patterns be illegal. That's fine. Neither do I accept the argument that if the rules are not set at an absolute (i.e. no information can ever be illegal) that we necessarily invite the opposite extreme (totalitarianism), so long as we don't allow the fact that illegal data exists to be a license for government intervention.
Absolutionist thinking is generally nonsense, anyway.
There are other ways to go about this. I am not responsible for propagating your speech if I consider it offensive. Sorry.
I think you should be able to, but I'm damned if I'm giving my time and resources (i.e. *money*) to you to propagate things I violently disagree with. It's not just bits. I don't think for a second that the government should have the power to intercept or decode anybody's private communications, but that is a far cry from "I am prepared to disseminate any and all information".
I'm not.
"But once you decide that any information can be "criminal" there is no avoiding the only logical outcome, that all information must be controlled and censored all the time, with all the associated totalitarian consequences"
And here is where I suggest you go back on the medication.
I said nothing about the legality of anything. I said the *I*, personally, a private citizen, am not willing to take part in information exchange that I can't monitor, because I am not comfortable doing so. You feel free to do what you like and I will support your right to do so. Just don't expect me to actually actively support your activities. These are different.
All the new initiatives, all the rhetoric on security, all the police powers. All evil.
Not only that, but in the UK the education policy has resulted in a decade or more of both grade inflation and falling literacy, the elderly are being given a raw deal on pension rises due to a change in the measurement of inflation and the government are trying to monitor and restrict the internet.
Those are not good examples of areas where the government is being good, pure, honest and beneficial to the people.
I will fight censorship wherever possible, I think the creation fo secret blocklists is despicable and open to abuse (which means they definitely are already and will continue to be abused).
BUT, where Freenet is concerned, I'm sorry, but I'm just not willing to give over any resources whatsoever to the storage and propagation of child porn.
Freenet's a nice idea, but I'm not participating until I can control what's on my node. And I know that this is fundamentally against the design and principles of Freenet.
"Let me know how well the structure of society works out for you when someone breaks into your house at 3:00 and starts stabbing you."
Let me know when that's anything much more than a gun nut's fantasy. Home invasions are very very rare.
In disarmed UKia we have a lot less murder and rape than in the US. I'm not saying this is because of our gun policy, I'm just saying, there's not actually a strong case to arm the populace either.
"Would it make you happier if I just said that you set the stage for it when you willingly surrendered a right sometime in the 20th century that you had previously held for hundreds of years?"
That would certainly please me more, I dislike this focus on that one piece of legislation that had very little real effect on the rights of UK citizens.
"just to point out that the UK populace set a precedent for surrendering their rights long before the surveillance society came onto the scene."
These precedents have been set in most western nations. People (and states) in the US have been surrendering more and more rights to the federal government for decades. Hell, the US has a long history of abuses against its own citizens (mandatory sterilisation of those considered mentally deficient through about half of the 20th century, for example).
There certainly is controversy over the handling of Phorm, if not on its intent and the acceptability of its purpose.
When Phorm was trialled without consent the police investigated both them and the ISP and dropped the case (or were asked to by government). The EU got involved and is still trying to get answers out of the UK government about why this happened, why there were no trials and why it's allowed to continue...
Bah, Maybe not controversial amongst the public any further than "they're watching us all man!" and "calm down, who cares?" being as far as these conversations usually go.
But that's the point, you'd never get anyone to agree to that, and then over time they'd stretch the definitions to the point of the ridiculous.
Isn't my mind part of my body? It distresses me and makes me ill to know what's gong on next door....
I don't subscribe to these bullshit arguments myself, but they do crop up. There are huge proportions of the population of the western world that would be horrified at the idea of just letting people do whatever they want. Like the drug thing - many folks consider drug use to be a moral failing and not acceptable regardless of harm, they'll never agree to stop interfering in the lives of others.
The 1997 myth is a favourite of US gun associations.
"I'm talking about the voluntary surrender of a right that the populace held for hundreds of years and the precedent that such surrender set."
Then find another example, there are plenty. 1997 is not an example of this. There was no right to use firearms destroyed by the law brought in then. There was no ability to use firarms to defend yourself before then. We did not give up any "rights" in 1997. For a long, long time before that licenses for firearm ownership were only available at the discretion of the police.
"Think you'll still have that right in a generation or so?"
That's got nothing to do with what I'm trying to say. The UK is badly in need of people to stand up for their rights, and is getting worse every day.
Just please, please, please, would Americans stop crowing about nineteen ninety bloody seven when FUCK ALL happened to impact anyone's rights.
After 1997 around 125K have firearm licences. The difference is that they are now not allowed handguns.
1997 is not a significant date for this "rights" discussion. You had zero right to defend yourself with those firearms for a long time before that. The handgun ban was brought in to stop nuts shooting up schools. And it did.
The British public has no appetite for guns and hasn't had for many years and I sure as fuck don't want armed chavs roaming the streets.
I'm sorry, but your NRA talking point about 1997 is just plain wrong. I mean it. If you want to look at rights loss in the Uk there are hundreds of valid studies. If you even want to look at a link between loss of handguns and freedom, go ahead, but look further back.
I'm getting pretty tired of explaining this on the internet now, but I'll spell it out one last time -
In the discussion on citizens rights in the UK, 1997 gun legislation is completely, totally, utterly irrelevant.
Please take that back to your gun club speaker and make sure he get the message.
"When will people realize that real freedom is the freedom to do whatever the hell you want, provided that it isn't harming your neighbor?"
Never.
And even if they did, they'd keep expanding the definition of harm. I've heard people claiming harm for all sorts of things, like having openly gay individuals living next door harms their property prices, or somehow "gayifies" their children and thus harms them.
People will never give up on their drive to interfere with and disapprove of other people's lives. More's the pity.
"Also in a normal online game the time you press the button at your end means nothing... what matters is when the button press event gets to the server."
Not true.
At least it didn't used to be. Back in *my* day we had quakeworld, which had to be some sort of client/server consensual reality. Your game would feel useless playing over anything less than LAN otherwise. The server kept track of where it thought you were, your input would directly affect your client and then the server would update. A disagreement would cause the client to reset to what the server thought the situation was, as you can't have clients running the show (cheats), but it's a collaborative process.
FPS would be unplayable if your keypress had to echo to the server and back before your screen updated.
It's more than that. It is controversial, I'm afraid.
There's the whole is it/is it not legal debate, the controversy over the police investigations, the government capitulation and potential EU investigation of the whole thing.
There's also the fact the Joe public has never heard of Phorm and wouldn't particularly care or work out the consequences if he did. So it's basically an argument between monied interests, the British police and government on one side and geeks. privacy advocates and the EU on the other.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, these exact issues (are you using a sony vaio by any chance?) are what sent me back to debian from ubuntu.
I had to compile alsa myself after each distribution upgrade, and then when I went to Intrepid the nVidia X server refused to start when the laptop was in its dock, regardless of which version of the drivers I tried.
Debian lenny, OTOH, just works.
Hell no, I'm just not in a place to make a fair judgement!
"Tell me about a single case of "illegal information" whereby the governmental powers were not directly involved in the establishment of what is "illegal", subsequent "investigations" or "prosecutions"."
Why should I?
That's not what I'm claiming.
You claim that the only purpose of making information illegal is as a pretext to interfere and intervene in communications. I disagree. Banning the propagation of some materials is an end in itself, especially if backed up with adequate protections to stop the government routinely intercepting everything in a trawling expedition.
For many decades there were types of information that were illegal to propagate (treasonous plots for example), but that didn't mean that the postal service was considered fair game.
I'm sorry, but I don't buy into your all or nothing libertarian dogma, and neither do many others.
This may well be true.
It's also funny because a decade or so back we may have said the same about apps on commercial UNIX boxes.
I may well be lucky because I fit precisely the demographic that is making linux and making it for themselves. I am a UNIX focused software developer. Pretty much everything I want and need is there, for home and business use. At work I have need for a couple of commercial apps, but they're available for Linux too.
"While Linux itself is very much ready from a stability standpoint, the software (and to some extent, hardware) support just isn't there. "
All depends on what you want. There's a hell of a lot of software flexibility over MS operating systems if what you want is to set up a DNS forwarding proxy, or quickly and easily start coding in pretty much any given language.
As for hardware support, I'm sorry, but nothing else comes close to the range of hardware supported by Linux. I have debian running on servers, desktops, laptops, netbooks, NAS devices, mobile phones...
"The real problem is that Linux is trying to be Windows,"
How so?
Please, explain. I'm genuinely interested in why you think that, when it seems clear to me that they are very different operating systems. One is UNIX through and through and runs on a massive variety of hardware, the other is an x86 only OS with totally different ways of doing things.
Linux doesn't look like windows or act like windows, as far as I can tell.
Actually, linux needs threads because they are useful and so much easier to code for than multi-process applications. Multi-process programming sucks.
Threads are a great addition to linux.
I actually have no idea.
I can't say I've had any problems reading attachments from other people so it's not something I've looked at. I run my own mailserver (Postfix/Dovecot) so I don't have to attach to an exchange server or anything like that. I use alpine or thunderbird as a client depending on whether I'm logging in from one of my systems or over ssh. I assume some of my friends must use outlook...
No idea. Sorry!
"It's hard as hell to make it your only desktop; you'll spend all your time wrangling with WINE."
I would dispute that, I've been using it as sole desktop for a couple of years now.
I'm not a (PC) gamer, which probably helps, but I've yet to find anything I want to do that I need windows-only programs for. Of course I'm not one of these seemingly billions of users that absolutely must have Photoshop, and pirate it.
have they not fixed that yet?
I suffered from the same on my Vaio. I could here it doing it, spinning down and up again every few seconds. There were workarounds but I recall the Ubuntu guys saying "not our problem" yet at the same time other distros and OSs were fine.
"Well you can't have it both ways. The whole point of making some bit patterns "illegal" is to provide a pretext for (essentially arbitrary) governmental intervention. There is no other reason for it."
Total nonsense.
Sorry.
Actually, that said, I don't support anybody's right to distribute CP. But I do dispute the government's right to spy on any/all communications "just in case".
I'm perfectly happy that some bit patterns be illegal. That's fine. Neither do I accept the argument that if the rules are not set at an absolute (i.e. no information can ever be illegal) that we necessarily invite the opposite extreme (totalitarianism), so long as we don't allow the fact that illegal data exists to be a license for government intervention.
Absolutionist thinking is generally nonsense, anyway.
I'm sorry, but you've missed the point.
There are other ways to go about this. I am not responsible for propagating your speech if I consider it offensive. Sorry.
I think you should be able to, but I'm damned if I'm giving my time and resources (i.e. *money*) to you to propagate things I violently disagree with. It's not just bits. I don't think for a second that the government should have the power to intercept or decode anybody's private communications, but that is a far cry from "I am prepared to disseminate any and all information".
I'm not.
"But once you decide that any information can be "criminal" there is no avoiding the only logical outcome, that all information must be controlled and censored all the time, with all the associated totalitarian consequences"
And here is where I suggest you go back on the medication.
I said nothing about the legality of anything. I said the *I*, personally, a private citizen, am not willing to take part in information exchange that I can't monitor, because I am not comfortable doing so. You feel free to do what you like and I will support your right to do so. Just don't expect me to actually actively support your activities. These are different.
All the new initiatives, all the rhetoric on security, all the police powers. All evil.
Not only that, but in the UK the education policy has resulted in a decade or more of both grade inflation and falling literacy, the elderly are being given a raw deal on pension rises due to a change in the measurement of inflation and the government are trying to monitor and restrict the internet.
Those are not good examples of areas where the government is being good, pure, honest and beneficial to the people.
I'm not sure it is.
I will fight censorship wherever possible, I think the creation fo secret blocklists is despicable and open to abuse (which means they definitely are already and will continue to be abused).
BUT, where Freenet is concerned, I'm sorry, but I'm just not willing to give over any resources whatsoever to the storage and propagation of child porn.
Freenet's a nice idea, but I'm not participating until I can control what's on my node. And I know that this is fundamentally against the design and principles of Freenet.
you are one of those scary people who believe everything the gov't does = evil.
Until such time as the western governments stop being evil all the time, I think that's a perfectly reasonable position to take.
"Invisible Pink Unicorn (Praise unto her name. May her holy hooves never be shod) "
Ah... it warms the cockles of my heart to see a fellow unicornian, we're a rare breed these days.
We know she is pink because she told us so, we know she is invisible because no-one has ever seen her. Peace Be Upon Her Holy Hooves.
"Let me know how well the structure of society works out for you when someone breaks into your house at 3:00 and starts stabbing you."
Let me know when that's anything much more than a gun nut's fantasy. Home invasions are very very rare.
In disarmed UKia we have a lot less murder and rape than in the US. I'm not saying this is because of our gun policy, I'm just saying, there's not actually a strong case to arm the populace either.
"Would it make you happier if I just said that you set the stage for it when you willingly surrendered a right sometime in the 20th century that you had previously held for hundreds of years?"
That would certainly please me more, I dislike this focus on that one piece of legislation that had very little real effect on the rights of UK citizens.
"just to point out that the UK populace set a precedent for surrendering their rights long before the surveillance society came onto the scene."
These precedents have been set in most western nations. People (and states) in the US have been surrendering more and more rights to the federal government for decades. Hell, the US has a long history of abuses against its own citizens (mandatory sterilisation of those considered mentally deficient through about half of the 20th century, for example).
There certainly is controversy over the handling of Phorm, if not on its intent and the acceptability of its purpose.
When Phorm was trialled without consent the police investigated both them and the ISP and dropped the case (or were asked to by government). The EU got involved and is still trying to get answers out of the UK government about why this happened, why there were no trials and why it's allowed to continue...
Bah, Maybe not controversial amongst the public any further than "they're watching us all man!" and "calm down, who cares?" being as far as these conversations usually go.
But that's the point, you'd never get anyone to agree to that, and then over time they'd stretch the definitions to the point of the ridiculous.
Isn't my mind part of my body? It distresses me and makes me ill to know what's gong on next door....
I don't subscribe to these bullshit arguments myself, but they do crop up. There are huge proportions of the population of the western world that would be horrified at the idea of just letting people do whatever they want. Like the drug thing - many folks consider drug use to be a moral failing and not acceptable regardless of harm, they'll never agree to stop interfering in the lives of others.
"I'm not parroting NRA talking points."
The 1997 myth is a favourite of US gun associations.
"I'm talking about the voluntary surrender of a right that the populace held for hundreds of years and the precedent that such surrender set."
Then find another example, there are plenty. 1997 is not an example of this. There was no right to use firearms destroyed by the law brought in then. There was no ability to use firarms to defend yourself before then. We did not give up any "rights" in 1997. For a long, long time before that licenses for firearm ownership were only available at the discretion of the police.
"Think you'll still have that right in a generation or so?"
That's got nothing to do with what I'm trying to say. The UK is badly in need of people to stand up for their rights, and is getting worse every day.
Just please, please, please, would Americans stop crowing about nineteen ninety bloody seven when FUCK ALL happened to impact anyone's rights.
In 1997 under 125K had firearm licenses
After 1997 around 125K have firearm licences. The difference is that they are now not allowed handguns.
1997 is not a significant date for this "rights" discussion. You had zero right to defend yourself with those firearms for a long time before that. The handgun ban was brought in to stop nuts shooting up schools. And it did.
The British public has no appetite for guns and hasn't had for many years and I sure as fuck don't want armed chavs roaming the streets.
I'm sorry, but your NRA talking point about 1997 is just plain wrong. I mean it. If you want to look at rights loss in the Uk there are hundreds of valid studies. If you even want to look at a link between loss of handguns and freedom, go ahead, but look further back.
I'm getting pretty tired of explaining this on the internet now, but I'll spell it out one last time -
In the discussion on citizens rights in the UK, 1997 gun legislation is completely, totally, utterly irrelevant.
Please take that back to your gun club speaker and make sure he get the message.
"When will people realize that real freedom is the freedom to do whatever the hell you want, provided that it isn't harming your neighbor?"
Never.
And even if they did, they'd keep expanding the definition of harm. I've heard people claiming harm for all sorts of things, like having openly gay individuals living next door harms their property prices, or somehow "gayifies" their children and thus harms them.
People will never give up on their drive to interfere with and disapprove of other people's lives. More's the pity.
"Also in a normal online game the time you press the button at your end means nothing... what matters is when the button press event gets to the server."
Not true.
At least it didn't used to be. Back in *my* day we had quakeworld, which had to be some sort of client/server consensual reality. Your game would feel useless playing over anything less than LAN otherwise. The server kept track of where it thought you were, your input would directly affect your client and then the server would update. A disagreement would cause the client to reset to what the server thought the situation was, as you can't have clients running the show (cheats), but it's a collaborative process.
FPS would be unplayable if your keypress had to echo to the server and back before your screen updated.
It's more than that. It is controversial, I'm afraid.
There's the whole is it/is it not legal debate, the controversy over the police investigations, the government capitulation and potential EU investigation of the whole thing.
There's also the fact the Joe public has never heard of Phorm and wouldn't particularly care or work out the consequences if he did. So it's basically an argument between monied interests, the British police and government on one side and geeks. privacy advocates and the EU on the other.
I'd call that a bit of a controversy.