[I]:think that kiddie porn is an inimaginable crime
You really think so? They way child pornography laws are currently in the US, a lot of fairly acceptable activity cannot be legal filmed. I agree that a priest raping a 10 year old boy should certainly be illegal (weither it's fimed or not), but what if a consentual couple (both 17) take a pictures of each other engageing in some form of intimacy and the next year decide to look at these pictures? I don't see why they should be thrown in prison (where they might really be raped!).
Any law restricting free speech will be eventually be used in ways that limit essential liberty. Child porn laws will be used to censor the net, FCC decency regulations will be used to keep small buisnesses out of the media, etc. We must take the first ammendment literally if we are to a free people.
Word Perfect is great because it has exellent normal WYSIWYG functionality AND reveal codes for debugging, thanks for working for a company willing to challenge Microsoft.
Nice Bad Religion quote. BTW they wouldn't be around if all parent's supervised their kids. Greg Graffin was singing in Bad Religion when he was 15. Late 70's/early 80's punk was not the kind of scene any well meaning parent would want their kid in. Listen to some Dead Kennidies or find some pictures of a Wendie O. Williams show, read about the rampant abuse of amphetamines, or the prevailance of homosexuality. Pop-punk and peace-punk may have started with Crass and the Rammones, but that kinda thing wasn't what you saw in 1980 LA. Punk was a parents worst nightmare.
Think of what Bad Religion have become: an inspiration. Epitaph is a breath of fresh air in the smog of major label fith, and Bad Religion are still the most insightful artests in Rock. We needed someone to let their kids free (maybe, sometimes. . . 15 year olds are smarter then the rest of us). The government shouldn't censor kids, but parent's shouldn't either. Teenagers should be given far more freedom so they don't end up as subservient immature adults. Greg and Bad Religion are a great example of that.
Technical or human, good security requires balencing convenience and control. If you give your employies the power to refuse information to potential customers, you gain control and security but loose convience and maybe money. If you tighten your network down so much that users have to jump through hoops to send files to each other, you may be more secure, but the hassle will lead to lost productivity. You can't try to too hard for control or for freedom. You have to weigh threat and risk. You want to ensure against potential disasters, and eliminate any more likely security risks. It's probably too costly to treat a low threat but high risk (common) security hole as if it were a disaster. This is why stores find it cheaper to set prices assuming a certain ammount of shoplifting will occur. It would cost too much in lost sales and increesed labor to secure the store against all theft. Training your dumbass users, helpdesk, and even sysadmins to recognise social engneering, might just cost more then any losses from security breaches.
This should not be considdered censorship under the legal definition, since telco's are private componies and are not subject to the First Ammendment. It is, however, a false advertising issue. If an ISP claims to offer access to the Internet, you should get full access to the tcp/ip stack and a real contactable IP. NAT breaks the democracy of the Internet by not allowing nodes to be servers. Port blocking keeps you from experiencing all kinds of features.
If a buisness says they are an internet provider, they should sell sell access to the internet. If they don't, they are decieving customers, who should expect to be able to use the same wide array of services anyone with a real internet connection can. I would like the market to simply sort all this out. In a real free market, dissatisfied users could just sign up for a better ISP. In the real world, users are too stupid (they think they have "AOL which is the same as teh interweb" ). In the real world, monopolies control local telecommunications access and set prices. We need courts to define what access to the internet is.
In the real world security through obscurity works. Someone running a totally unknown OS/archetecture is not as likely to be exploited as someone who has a popular OS/arch. This does not mean the the sysadmins/developers of the system should assume that their undocumented/unpublic hardware/software will remain unknown. Good security keeps only a few secrets (passwords, keys, hashes of said passowords/keys), and assumes all else is known.
For examply, cray Unicos is not particularly secure; audits of it reveal the same types of valunerabilities as other UNIX systems. However, since cray hardware is so big, loud, and expensive, few people have access to it to test valunerabilies and fine tune exploits. If you take a linux box, a windows box, and a Unicos box and put them on the net, then enable a few common services (SMTP/HTTP/SSH/FTP/NFS/NTP/etc), and leave 'em up and running for a few years without patching anything, the windows and Linux machines will most likely get 0wned as exploits become public, while the cray probably will not. Does this mean that a determined hacker couldn't break into the Cray? No. Does this mean that if the Linux and Windows boxes were patched, the cray would still best them security-wise? Probabily not. But it does provide a small practical increese in security.
A more real case study---I run a public shell server on a PA-RISC box running linux, and let people add themselves to my system. I have thousands of users and constantly find exploits in their home dirs and in/tmp. However, the exploits all use x86 shellcode and don't work. I try and keep up to date with security fixes, but I am also glad to have a somewhat obscure archetecture as another layer of protection. Maybe I am being rooted and whoever is doing it is just being stealthy enough to keep me from knowing it. That is always a possability regardless of the popularity of my hardware/software.
Security through obscurity should not be relied on, but it does exist. We shouldn't lie about that.
BSD is unix...the codebase seperated from systemV in the 80s, but BSD started as a restribution of the original AT&T UNIX source. Since then, all the propritary Unix (and Linux) distributions have incorporated some BSD code, in particular sockets/networking related stuff. Its codebases that matter, not certification. Only one product seams to have the Open Group's latest UNIX '03 certification.
I don't mean libertarian in the oft-used capitalist sence. I just believe that the only legitamite use of force (and remember the defining factor of government is the right to use force) is in defence. I also don't particularly like the centralisation of socialist systems. They work if there is enough oversight, but it' easy to get bogged down in bureaucracy. What I really believe is: workers need to collectivly take ownership for the social aspects of their work. Both politics and economics should be egalitarian, non-coersive, and participatory. Most people who claim to support the free market really just want a fascist system where the military props up harmful organisations. Anyone who believes that corporations have any rights at all shares this view. A real free market would be socialist because the workers would have power as both educated producers and consummers. Our economy would be much more efficient if it weren't waisted on things the don't help anyone.
Think of how much goes up in smoke in weapons tests and warfare. Think of the marketing and advertising money speant on propaganda to warp people's minds. No reasonable intelligent, free thinking person would get information about a product's quality verses the competator's from the seller of the product. Think of all the money waisted on intellectual property that could be free. The executives of the RIAA don't make music, why should they profit from it in an age where recording and distribution are virtually without cost!
Since we can't fight the second law of therdynamics, we need to focus on efficiency instead of grouth. Fossil fuels and industrial pollutants will just become too waistefull otherwise, and usable reasorces will decline in ammount and increese in cost. People won't have this focus unless they learn a bit about physics, ecology, climate, biology, chemestry, etc. And they won't learn anything about these subjects as long as there are authoritarian public schools, and idiotic obsequious churches. All institutions that imploy massive hiararchial structure are dangerous. That is why I am an anarchaist at heart.
Meh. Worse things could be said then "coding communist". I personally agree with RMS in general (although I also can see why the BSDL is more free), but lets not get too politically correct. Stallman, in addition to creating and touting the GPL, is involved in a lot of left wing politics. Although Marxism is dead outside academia, as a culture, we still associate the radical left with communism. The label's connotation with the red scare and McGarthiesm is kinda scary, and so I personally don't call people communists unless they claim to be so. However, I don't take offence when people call Free/OSS leader's communist. Perhaps we are taking the best of communism (collective economics) and getting rid of the worst (centralisation and authoritarianism). As a libertarian socialist (anarcho-syndicalist in other terms), I personally like this idea.
Solaris 10 is a great technical computing or server OS. GNU/Linux has some advantages over it, for example debian's package system and free organisation. Overall Linux is easier to get up and running. Knoppix is trivial to boot. Paths and default executable placement are simpler in Linux. Linux is more ported. X11 support seams better in most Linux distros. Virtual consoles are a big plus when X gets messed up.
But Solaris has some cool features. Zones, dtrace, exellent SMP support, and surprisingly, a great price/performance ratio. I donno how well sun will do (I would guess they'll make some money in the short term on Opeteron systems and probably in the long term with Fujitsu massivly multi-core SPARC). But the current market for used sun workstations/servers is great because of Sun's overall decline. I was able to get (on ebay) a quad 450mhz ultrasparcII box with 2 gigs of ram, and dual 36 gig scsi drives, quad redundent power supples (800 watt), etc: for a measily $200. Solaris 10 installed great. Sun hardware is built to withstand hell and admins, students, hobbiests, or whoever, who normally couldn't afford this quality should really check it out. I also actually like CDE and the old Motief look. It's clean, simple, easy to work with, and doesn't try to be Microsoft Windows or MacOS. SPARC hardware also has a security advantage from being non-x86, espicially if you ditch solaris and go with BSD/Linux. Most attacks are from idiot script kiddies who just use the x86 shellcode they found on bugtraq. Even if you run an exploitable version of some service, likely you will be immune due to your somewhat obscure hardware.
Billy Hoffman, aka Acidus, is one of the top up and comming security experts; he probably knows more about card systems and ATMs then anyone outside "the industry". I had the privilage of seeing him speak and phreaknic and hope his contributions to the hacking community continue. People like him keep the rest of us free and informed dispite the massive corporate, academic, and government powers that would have otherwise. So....Thanks!
High school could be both more elitist and more populist, more technical and more creative, more broad and more specific, etc. It could be everything we want it to be... if it weren't compulsory. Human beings are naturally creative and curious. Give kids a fast uncensored internet connection, a library card, and access to real working professionals who can answer questions, and they will end up learning far more then they would in the brutal authoritarian environment of the public high school. Those who want more structure can go to private prep school or (god forbid*) parochial school. Those who are truely unmotivated to learn will simply get what they deserve...**
High school aged people in colonial america and europe were active participants in politics (think of all the young monarchs) and the economy (if they weren't full fledged workers, they were apprentices). Maturity was not an issue then, and shouldn't be now. Both teen-agers and adults have regressed to a state of infantile subserviance to a government that feels it must protect them from the evils of obscenity and crime. The only way to restore freedom to America is to destroy the police infested schools, the marketing dominated corporate media, and the pedophile controled church.
Leader's aren't going to to this...we need to take up arms and defent student's rights as human beings. They should not be subject to degrading searches for drugs. They have the RIGHT to put whatever they want in their bodies. They have the right to not be imprisoned for the sake of indoctronation for 12 years. We must never let our schooling get in the way of our education (thank you Mark Twain).
*I'm a pritty staunch anti-dogmatic agnostic
**I wonder if this is happening at a global level--a sort of social darwinism turned on it's head. The idiotic population of this nation has rejected reason and continues to support politicians who seak nothing short of golbal US dominence at vast human costs (read some of the work of Project for a New American Century) and corporation's who's only product is waste (marketing and advertising come to mind....if people were intelligent they would become informed about a product from consumer reports or a friend, not some paid shill). Meanwhile our economy continues to falter. The people of Asia and Europe are becoming more educated and more fit to actually produce something useful. And if they are paid less the us, so what, they deserve it more. The only negative aspect of globilisation I see is the threat of multinational corporations using capital flight to continuously move to the nations with the lowest labor standards or threaten to do so unless that nation they are currently in loosens it's regulation on safty and human rights. This should be stoped, not with meaningless protests, or appeals for more government regulation. We need an international union of workers, organised by industry, not class or nation. The IWW is a good start. http://www.iww.org/
One easy way to help bring about social conservatism's death is to just ignore whatever legislation it's forces pass. If your under 18, take pictures/movies of yourself and/or your sexual partner in the act. Give the pictures to your friends, host it on your homepage, or upload it to kazaa/emule. Hey....I did it when I was a minor (insert joke about lack or quiality of slashdot member's sexual history here). Fucking is fun....our geekyness already limits us from enjoying it, let's not let stuckup reactionary assholes keep us from even seeing pictures of it. Discriminating by age is as bad as discriminating by race or gender. All censorship is immoral. Fuck the corporate police state and resist any restriction on the free flow of information.
The real terrorist organisations are governments. Many of they already have nuclear weapons, and many more would be willing to build them. The US government is both the leading terrorist state, and the only nation to use nuclear weapons in war. We already have rogue extremists leading our nation. Why doesn't the rest of the world get together and send some weapons inspectors to help us disarm!
In those AI distopia movies I always root for the machines. Human emotion is stupid. Love does not conqueror all. Hate just makes people drive airplanes into buildings and build up nuclear stock piles. A rational, higher then human intelligence could actaully save us from ourselves.
heh...yet another example of how free user-contrib systems are so powerful : pear review. I can be stupid and lazy, and someone will catch me and either correct my mistake or inform me of it.
I agree. That's why the students who have some volition and inteligence left need to stage a revolution (violent only if attacked) and shut down the public and parocial schools. If humanity is going to survive we need Americans who have some basic notion of what goes on in the real world. The USA has enough WMDs to blow everyone sky high, and many those with their finger on the button have no notion of ethics or the culture and politics of anyone outside their home state. We need to end organised religion by letting students think independently (MAKE NO MISTAKE ABOUT IT, there is no seperation of church and state in public schools...They enforce a religous world view by forcing obedience and reiteration of "truth" as provided by authority instead of allowing free inquiry) Enforced ignorance could lead to fanatics like George Bush and his simple majority of medieval minded supporters bringing armegedon here and now in a global war on all who are unchristian (Muslems, Gays, and Scientists for example). We need to give our youth the reasorces necessary to rationally develop a useful and moral world view. We must destroy all authoritarian organisations. Like.....most schools and corporations. They waste people's minds and convert usefull reasorces into pollution (as in the case of cars, bombs, excess CO and CO2, Microsoft Windows etc). Education can only begin when society is just, and society will not be just unless people are educated. This paradox will never be resolved, but we must encourage freedom and truth if we expect to prevail as a species in the age of terrorism and American fascism.
Being able to search nearly all of humanity's knowledge is extremely powerfull. Being able to help create and build the data infastructure that eventually much of the industrilised world will relay on gives each and every one of us intellectual omnipotence.
The fact that anyone with an internet connection now can harness this much power must really disturb the politicians and CEOs who relay on our mediocre education system and centralised media to keep the masses ignorant and those with some knowledge incapable of sharing it. It's difficult to sniff ssh connections on hacked wifi Access Points. It's impossable to regulate freenet, tor, or even most conventional p2p networks. Google and wikipedia offer even more robust and democratic services, but they unfortunatly are very centralised. Google has pledged to do no evil, but I can imagine that the leaders of many hierarchical entities, from Microsoft to the NSA, would love to just watch (much less control) the content of these forces of potential social transformation and enlightnment. If google and wikipedia form a stronger alliance and people begin to use and contribute more, I suspect that the service will risk being shut down if it doesn't sell out to survalience, censorship and marketing/advertising. Google and wikipedia stand out as nonpareil examples of all thats good on the net. They can help each other out, but lets be vigilent to ensure their and our freedom.
Where ever the military is present, it projects it's coersive force; it should not be allowed in an institution of learning. Of course members of the military should be allowed on campus (just not as on duty uniformed soldiers). People certainly have the right to defend themselves, their community, and society (and even the hiararchial political structure that most people refer to when they say nation or country). Our military has done nothing to defend us and everything to make us open for attack. The US military has made America significantly less secure by engendering hate on a massive scale. When we train and fund terrorists, we can only expect the victims of those terrorists to fight back, furthermore, the terrorists themselves are liable to turn on us, as in the case of Al Quada. We can have an army, navy, etc...and they can have recruiting stations, but schools are not the place, espicially when your military has become the hired thugs of corporations. In the words of Smedly Butler (the most decorated Marine in history at the time of his death, 1940):
"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National city Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested." --in Common Sense, 1935
What's changed since then? Perhaps we should pose that question to the shareholders and boards of Haliburton, Coca Cola, Bectal, Lockhead, Microsoft, and countless other military contractors and direct corporate beneficiaries of military intervention in the undeveloped and developing world.
I personally have experienced some interesting conversations with military recruiters. I talked with one at length about Marxism (she was for it, I against!). I have also spoken with members of the military in a formal classroom setting. Engaging our armed forces in intellectual discusions can provide all kinds of insight and should be allowed. However, recruiters are paid to get you to enlist. They have that agenda and cannot as easily talk openly about their experiences. The military's role in school should be as the object of study, not another authority attempting to snare a piece of student minds and lives.
Fine, allow US military recruiters....Just give equil time to recruiters for AL Quada, the militaries of whatever country sends them, various revolutionarie armies (like the FARC), any gang or organised criminal organisation, etc.
The goal of the US military is killing. At time's their killing really does liberate someone...but increesingly, it's directed at civilains and the ultimate goal is to further the economic power of US elites.
Its pritty common to refer to the USA as America....but the term "Colonial America" is also popular, indicating that there was an America before the USA. The actual root of the word is probably cartographer Amerigo Vespucci.
In 1684 there were well over 235 people in America. Various accepted estimates of the pre-contact (15'th century and earlier) Native population of the continental U.S. and Canada range from 1.8 to over 12 million. Over the next four centuries, their numbers were reduced to about 237,000 as Natives were almost wiped out. In 1684, however, the natives were far from gone and there were already quite substantial european colonial settlements. People forget that european people lived in America for a longer period of time as colonials then as citizens of the USA.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonial_History_of_t he_United_States
David E. Stannard, "American Holocaust: Columbus and the Conquest of the New World," Oxford University Press, (1992)
Slashdot Mirror
[I] :think that kiddie porn is an inimaginable crime
You really think so? They way child pornography laws are currently in the US, a lot of fairly acceptable activity cannot be legal filmed. I agree that a priest raping a 10 year old boy should certainly be illegal (weither it's fimed or not), but what if a consentual couple (both 17) take a pictures of each other engageing in some form of intimacy and the next year decide to look at these pictures? I don't see why they should be thrown in prison (where they might really be raped!).
Any law restricting free speech will be eventually be used in ways that limit essential liberty. Child porn laws will be used to censor the net, FCC decency regulations will be used to keep small buisnesses out of the media, etc. We must take the first ammendment literally if we are to a free people.
Corel employees listen to NOFX?
Kick ass.
Word Perfect is great because it has exellent normal WYSIWYG functionality AND reveal codes for debugging, thanks for working for a company willing to challenge Microsoft.
Nice Bad Religion quote. BTW they wouldn't be around if all parent's supervised their kids. Greg Graffin was singing in Bad Religion when he was 15. Late 70's/early 80's punk was not the kind of scene any well meaning parent would want their kid in. Listen to some Dead Kennidies or find some pictures of a Wendie O. Williams show, read about the rampant abuse of amphetamines, or the prevailance of homosexuality. Pop-punk and peace-punk may have started with Crass and the Rammones, but that kinda thing wasn't what you saw in 1980 LA. Punk was a parents worst nightmare.
Think of what Bad Religion have become: an inspiration. Epitaph is a breath of fresh air in the smog of major label fith, and Bad Religion are still the most insightful artests in Rock. We needed someone to let their kids free (maybe, sometimes. . . 15 year olds are smarter then the rest of us). The government shouldn't censor kids, but parent's shouldn't either. Teenagers should be given far more freedom so they don't end up as subservient immature adults. Greg and Bad Religion are a great example of that.
Technical or human, good security requires balencing convenience and control. If you give your employies the power to refuse information to potential customers, you gain control and security but loose convience and maybe money. If you tighten your network down so much that users have to jump through hoops to send files to each other, you may be more secure, but the hassle will lead to lost productivity. You can't try to too hard for control or for freedom. You have to weigh threat and risk. You want to ensure against potential disasters, and eliminate any more likely security risks. It's probably too costly to treat a low threat but high risk (common) security hole as if it were a disaster. This is why stores find it cheaper to set prices assuming a certain ammount of shoplifting will occur. It would cost too much in lost sales and increesed labor to secure the store against all theft. Training your dumbass users, helpdesk, and even sysadmins to recognise social engneering, might just cost more then any losses from security breaches.
This should not be considdered censorship under the legal definition, since telco's are private componies and are not subject to the First Ammendment. It is, however, a false advertising issue. If an ISP claims to offer access to the Internet, you should get full access to the tcp/ip stack and a real contactable IP. NAT breaks the democracy of the Internet by not allowing nodes to be servers. Port blocking keeps you from experiencing all kinds of features.
If a buisness says they are an internet provider, they should sell sell access to the internet. If they don't, they are decieving customers, who should expect to be able to use the same wide array of services anyone with a real internet connection can. I would like the market to simply sort all this out. In a real free market, dissatisfied users could just sign up for a better ISP. In the real world, users are too stupid (they think they have "AOL which is the same as teh interweb" ). In the real world, monopolies control local telecommunications access and set prices. We need courts to define what access to the internet is.
In the real world security through obscurity works. Someone running a totally unknown OS/archetecture is not as likely to be exploited as someone who has a popular OS/arch. This does not mean the the sysadmins/developers of the system should assume that their undocumented/unpublic hardware/software will remain unknown. Good security keeps only a few secrets (passwords, keys, hashes of said passowords/keys), and assumes all else is known.
/tmp. However, the exploits all use x86 shellcode and don't work. I try and keep up to date with security fixes, but I am also glad to have a somewhat obscure archetecture as another layer of protection. Maybe I am being rooted and whoever is doing it is just being stealthy enough to keep me from knowing it. That is always a possability regardless of the popularity of my hardware/software.
For examply, cray Unicos is not particularly secure; audits of it reveal the same types of valunerabilities as other UNIX systems. However, since cray hardware is so big, loud, and expensive, few people have access to it to test valunerabilies and fine tune exploits. If you take a linux box, a windows box, and a Unicos box and put them on the net, then enable a few common services (SMTP/HTTP/SSH/FTP/NFS/NTP/etc), and leave 'em up and running for a few years without patching anything, the windows and Linux machines will most likely get 0wned as exploits become public, while the cray probably will not. Does this mean that a determined hacker couldn't break into the Cray? No. Does this mean that if the Linux and Windows boxes were patched, the cray would still best them security-wise? Probabily not. But it does provide a small practical increese in security.
A more real case study---I run a public shell server on a PA-RISC box running linux, and let people add themselves to my system. I have thousands of users and constantly find exploits in their home dirs and in
Security through obscurity should not be relied on, but it does exist. We shouldn't lie about that.
BSD is unix...the codebase seperated from systemV in the 80s, but BSD started as a restribution of the original AT&T UNIX source. Since then, all the propritary Unix (and Linux) distributions have incorporated some BSD code, in particular sockets/networking related stuff. Its codebases that matter, not certification. Only one product seams to have the Open Group's latest UNIX '03 certification.
h tm
http://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/xy.
All you need is cash to get certified, but to "be" UNIX, you need to be made of UNIX code. BSD qualifies.
Add to that list:
On the desktop there is MacOS.
On the super high end there is Cray with UNICOS and Sgi with IRIX. Sgi probably sells more Linux systems then IRIX ones now days.
I think HP still sells True64 systems but they were putting lots of True64 code into HP-UX.
I'm sure people still resell used Ultrix, NEXTStep, etc systems too.
I don't mean libertarian in the oft-used capitalist sence. I just believe that the only legitamite use of force (and remember the defining factor of government is the right to use force) is in defence. I also don't particularly like the centralisation of socialist systems. They work if there is enough oversight, but it' easy to get bogged down in bureaucracy. What I really believe is: workers need to collectivly take ownership for the social aspects of their work. Both politics and economics should be egalitarian, non-coersive, and participatory. Most people who claim to support the free market really just want a fascist system where the military props up harmful organisations. Anyone who believes that corporations have any rights at all shares this view. A real free market would be socialist because the workers would have power as both educated producers and consummers. Our economy would be much more efficient if it weren't waisted on things the don't help anyone.
Think of how much goes up in smoke in weapons tests and warfare. Think of the marketing and advertising money speant on propaganda to warp people's minds. No reasonable intelligent, free thinking person would get information about a product's quality verses the competator's from the seller of the product. Think of all the money waisted on intellectual property that could be free. The executives of the RIAA don't make music, why should they profit from it in an age where recording and distribution are virtually without cost!
Since we can't fight the second law of therdynamics, we need to focus on efficiency instead of grouth. Fossil fuels and industrial pollutants will just become too waistefull otherwise, and usable reasorces will decline in ammount and increese in cost. People won't have this focus unless they learn a bit about physics, ecology, climate, biology, chemestry, etc. And they won't learn anything about these subjects as long as there are authoritarian public schools, and idiotic obsequious churches. All institutions that imploy massive hiararchial structure are dangerous. That is why I am an anarchaist at heart.
Meh. Worse things could be said then "coding communist". I personally agree with RMS in general (although I also can see why the BSDL is more free), but lets not get too politically correct. Stallman, in addition to creating and touting the GPL, is involved in a lot of left wing politics. Although Marxism is dead outside academia, as a culture, we still associate the radical left with communism. The label's connotation with the red scare and McGarthiesm is kinda scary, and so I personally don't call people communists unless they claim to be so. However, I don't take offence when people call Free/OSS leader's communist. Perhaps we are taking the best of communism (collective economics) and getting rid of the worst (centralisation and authoritarianism). As a libertarian socialist (anarcho-syndicalist in other terms), I personally like this idea.
Solaris 10 is a great technical computing or server OS. GNU/Linux has some advantages over it, for example debian's package system and free organisation. Overall Linux is easier to get up and running. Knoppix is trivial to boot. Paths and default executable placement are simpler in Linux. Linux is more ported. X11 support seams better in most Linux distros. Virtual consoles are a big plus when X gets messed up.
But Solaris has some cool features. Zones, dtrace, exellent SMP support, and surprisingly, a great price/performance ratio. I donno how well sun will do (I would guess they'll make some money in the short term on Opeteron systems and probably in the long term with Fujitsu massivly multi-core SPARC). But the current market for used sun workstations/servers is great because of Sun's overall decline. I was able to get (on ebay) a quad 450mhz ultrasparcII box with 2 gigs of ram, and dual 36 gig scsi drives, quad redundent power supples (800 watt), etc: for a measily $200. Solaris 10 installed great. Sun hardware is built to withstand hell and admins, students, hobbiests, or whoever, who normally couldn't afford this quality should really check it out. I also actually like CDE and the old Motief look. It's clean, simple, easy to work with, and doesn't try to be Microsoft Windows or MacOS. SPARC hardware also has a security advantage from being non-x86, espicially if you ditch solaris and go with BSD/Linux. Most attacks are from idiot script kiddies who just use the x86 shellcode they found on bugtraq. Even if you run an exploitable version of some service, likely you will be immune due to your somewhat obscure hardware.
Billy Hoffman, aka Acidus, is one of the top up and comming security experts; he probably knows more about card systems and ATMs then anyone outside "the industry". I had the privilage of seeing him speak and phreaknic and hope his contributions to the hacking community continue. People like him keep the rest of us free and informed dispite the massive corporate, academic, and government powers that would have otherwise. So....Thanks!
High school could be both more elitist and more populist, more technical and more creative, more broad and more specific, etc. It could be everything we want it to be... if it weren't compulsory. Human beings are naturally creative and curious. Give kids a fast uncensored internet connection, a library card, and access to real working professionals who can answer questions, and they will end up learning far more then they would in the brutal authoritarian environment of the public high school. Those who want more structure can go to private prep school or (god forbid*) parochial school. Those who are truely unmotivated to learn will simply get what they deserve...**
High school aged people in colonial america and europe were active participants in politics (think of all the young monarchs) and the economy (if they weren't full fledged workers, they were apprentices). Maturity was not an issue then, and shouldn't be now. Both teen-agers and adults have regressed to a state of infantile subserviance to a government that feels it must protect them from the evils of obscenity and crime. The only way to restore freedom to America is to destroy the police infested schools, the marketing dominated corporate media, and the pedophile controled church.
Leader's aren't going to to this...we need to take up arms and defent student's rights as human beings. They should not be subject to degrading searches for drugs. They have the RIGHT to put whatever they want in their bodies. They have the right to not be imprisoned for the sake of indoctronation for 12 years. We must never let our schooling get in the way of our education (thank you Mark Twain).
*I'm a pritty staunch anti-dogmatic agnostic
**I wonder if this is happening at a global level--a sort of social darwinism turned on it's head. The idiotic population of this nation has rejected reason and continues to support politicians who seak nothing short of golbal US dominence at vast human costs (read some of the work of Project for a New American Century) and corporation's who's only product is waste (marketing and advertising come to mind....if people were intelligent they would become informed about a product from consumer reports or a friend, not some paid shill). Meanwhile our economy continues to falter. The people of Asia and Europe are becoming more educated and more fit to actually produce something useful. And if they are paid less the us, so what, they deserve it more. The only negative aspect of globilisation I see is the threat of multinational corporations using capital flight to continuously move to the nations with the lowest labor standards or threaten to do so unless that nation they are currently in loosens it's regulation on safty and human rights. This should be stoped, not with meaningless protests, or appeals for more government regulation. We need an international union of workers, organised by industry, not class or nation. The IWW is a good start. http://www.iww.org/
$700 is still mid-range. You want high end....check this out:
/
http://www.sgi.com/products/visualization/prism
One easy way to help bring about social conservatism's death is to just ignore whatever legislation it's forces pass. If your under 18, take pictures/movies of yourself and/or your sexual partner in the act. Give the pictures to your friends, host it on your homepage, or upload it to kazaa/emule. Hey....I did it when I was a minor (insert joke about lack or quiality of slashdot member's sexual history here). Fucking is fun....our geekyness already limits us from enjoying it, let's not let stuckup reactionary assholes keep us from even seeing pictures of it. Discriminating by age is as bad as discriminating by race or gender. All censorship is immoral. Fuck the corporate police state and resist any restriction on the free flow of information.
The real terrorist organisations are governments. Many of they already have nuclear weapons, and many more would be willing to build them. The US government is both the leading terrorist state, and the only nation to use nuclear weapons in war. We already have rogue extremists leading our nation. Why doesn't the rest of the world get together and send some weapons inspectors to help us disarm!
In those AI distopia movies I always root for the machines. Human emotion is stupid. Love does not conqueror all. Hate just makes people drive airplanes into buildings and build up nuclear stock piles. A rational, higher then human intelligence could actaully save us from ourselves.
man...I even googled "pear" and "peer" to make sure I used the right one when I wrote that....then I used the wrong one....I need sleep or somethin.
heh...yet another example of how free user-contrib systems are so powerful : pear review. I can be stupid and lazy, and someone will catch me and either correct my mistake or inform me of it.
I agree. That's why the students who have some volition and inteligence left need to stage a revolution (violent only if attacked) and shut down the public and parocial schools. If humanity is going to survive we need Americans who have some basic notion of what goes on in the real world. The USA has enough WMDs to blow everyone sky high, and many those with their finger on the button have no notion of ethics or the culture and politics of anyone outside their home state. We need to end organised religion by letting students think independently (MAKE NO MISTAKE ABOUT IT, there is no seperation of church and state in public schools...They enforce a religous world view by forcing obedience and reiteration of "truth" as provided by authority instead of allowing free inquiry) Enforced ignorance could lead to fanatics like George Bush and his simple majority of medieval minded supporters bringing armegedon here and now in a global war on all who are unchristian (Muslems, Gays, and Scientists for example). We need to give our youth the reasorces necessary to rationally develop a useful and moral world view. We must destroy all authoritarian organisations. Like.....most schools and corporations. They waste people's minds and convert usefull reasorces into pollution (as in the case of cars, bombs, excess CO and CO2, Microsoft Windows etc). Education can only begin when society is just, and society will not be just unless people are educated. This paradox will never be resolved, but we must encourage freedom and truth if we expect to prevail as a species in the age of terrorism and American fascism.
Being able to search nearly all of humanity's knowledge is extremely powerfull. Being able to help create and build the data infastructure that eventually much of the industrilised world will relay on gives each and every one of us intellectual omnipotence.
The fact that anyone with an internet connection now can harness this much power must really disturb the politicians and CEOs who relay on our mediocre education system and centralised media to keep the masses ignorant and those with some knowledge incapable of sharing it. It's difficult to sniff ssh connections on hacked wifi Access Points. It's impossable to regulate freenet, tor, or even most conventional p2p networks. Google and wikipedia offer even more robust and democratic services, but they unfortunatly are very centralised. Google has pledged to do no evil, but I can imagine that the leaders of many hierarchical entities, from Microsoft to the NSA, would love to just watch (much less control) the content of these forces of potential social transformation and enlightnment. If google and wikipedia form a stronger alliance and people begin to use and contribute more, I suspect that the service will risk being shut down if it doesn't sell out to survalience, censorship and marketing/advertising. Google and wikipedia stand out as nonpareil examples of all thats good on the net. They can help each other out, but lets be vigilent to ensure their and our freedom.
Where ever the military is present, it projects it's coersive force; it should not be allowed in an institution of learning. Of course members of the military should be allowed on campus (just not as on duty uniformed soldiers). People certainly have the right to defend themselves, their community, and society (and even the hiararchial political structure that most people refer to when they say nation or country). Our military has done nothing to defend us and everything to make us open for attack. The US military has made America significantly less secure by engendering hate on a massive scale. When we train and fund terrorists, we can only expect the victims of those terrorists to fight back, furthermore, the terrorists themselves are liable to turn on us, as in the case of Al Quada. We can have an army, navy, etc...and they can have recruiting stations, but schools are not the place, espicially when your military has become the hired thugs of corporations. In the words of Smedly Butler (the most decorated Marine in history at the time of his death, 1940):
"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National city Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested." --in Common Sense, 1935
What's changed since then? Perhaps we should pose that question to the shareholders and boards of Haliburton, Coca Cola, Bectal, Lockhead, Microsoft, and countless other military contractors and direct corporate beneficiaries of military intervention in the undeveloped and developing world.
I personally have experienced some interesting conversations with military recruiters. I talked with one at length about Marxism (she was for it, I against!). I have also spoken with members of the military in a formal classroom setting. Engaging our armed forces in intellectual discusions can provide all kinds of insight and should be allowed. However, recruiters are paid to get you to enlist. They have that agenda and cannot as easily talk openly about their experiences. The military's role in school should be as the object of study, not another authority attempting to snare a piece of student minds and lives.
Fine, allow US military recruiters....Just give equil time to recruiters for AL Quada, the militaries of whatever country sends them, various revolutionarie armies (like the FARC), any gang or organised criminal organisation, etc.
The goal of the US military is killing. At time's their killing really does liberate someone...but increesingly, it's directed at civilains and the ultimate goal is to further the economic power of US elites.
Its pritty common to refer to the USA as America....but the term "Colonial America" is also popular, indicating that there was an America before the USA. The actual root of the word is probably cartographer Amerigo Vespucci.
l
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a4_021.htm
That dates "America" to the early 16'th century.
I know its a joke
t he_United_States
but....................
In 1684 there were well over 235 people in America. Various accepted estimates of the pre-contact (15'th century and earlier) Native population of the continental U.S. and Canada range from 1.8 to over 12 million. Over the next four centuries, their numbers were reduced to about 237,000 as Natives were almost wiped out. In 1684, however, the natives were far from gone and there were already quite substantial european colonial settlements. People forget that european people lived in America for a longer period of time as colonials then as citizens of the USA.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonial_History_of_
David E. Stannard, "American Holocaust: Columbus and the Conquest of the New World," Oxford University Press, (1992)