the same way the State uses citations and fines to fund it's policing of its citizens! Funny story about how Dallas installed 62 cameras to monitor traffic (er. people) only to find they worked so well that funding to maintain them dried up. So they turned off 1/4 of them thinking ppl wouldnt know which ones. Kinda like plywood cutouts of police cars to stop speeding.
For all of agore's good works of late, he remains incapable of addressing the pressing issues outside of the context of Capitalism, or it's present incarnation of hyper-consumerism. The result is just a transmogrification of one bad approach for another; ala advertisements from GE on how it's 'goin green' or how ADM is turning a new leaf. The context, capitalism can profit from saving the planet, appears to me to be little different from a hospital cost-shifting that $84 plastic tray table the patient eats from. I suggest you check out "A really inconvenient truth" by Joel Kovel. Its very illuminating
These are the ills of becomming a consumer, credit-driven society. As much as i can appreciate the need for some peasant in a developing country to have access to credit, the fact remains that the notion of an ownership society is largely a myth. The banks own most if not all of it while we peons live in perpetual serfdom. One should never forget to laugh when our President extols the virtues of privatization; bearing in mind that, of the entire world population, only a scant 5% own stock in anything at all. While the private companies to whom everything on the planet is being doled out to have (legally) only the interests of those shareholders in mind. If this system (capitalism) is going to survive, its going to happen by forcing corporations to take social responsibility through share-holder revolt. Or society will have to revoke the notion of 'personhood' from corporations all together and go after their excesses.
First, a couple of points related to earlier posts:
There is little difference between a journalist/reporter who blogs and one who works for a paper. The major difference is the editor and publisher filters. There are great stories reported on that never make to the press or make it only after being heavily skewed. A good reporter on a blog doesn't have that concern. I could be wrong (happened before:), but I suspect that there is a new generation of journalists for whom the Internet will be their primary focus, as printed stories or pods. Just look at currentTv's vanguard for a taste of things to come. As the older generation dies off, so to may follow the paper.
Next, there has been some commentary on the uselessness of feedback and comments. I find it strangely funny that it would be here on/. since this site IS a forum of public opinion; and where, if one takes the time to read all the posts, a balanced viewpoint can be derived.
Which brings up the subject of why papers/Tv are/is so shallow. It takes time to read it all! An hour just on this thread alone! How many ppl have the time to spend to follow in depth? This is why ppl are uninformed, they settle for the headlines and take them as fact because they (mis-guided?) trust the source. (ala Iraq==9/11)
IMO, the best way to get information is the combination of decent reporting followed up by public commentary. It offers the reader greater balance and the reporter more material for possible follow-ups. The purpose of tech-as-delivery-mechanism is to provide an easy way for the reader to disseminate it all, like the press improving over word-of-mouth.
A few years back, I decided to try and combine my internet skills with my interests in advocating for local news outlets, believing, like you, that all news happens locally, somewhere. And that the people best suited to cover it was the local reporter, not some big-shot from the major daily who drove in for a day or two of interviews.
After doing some research, i concluded that most small papers lacked the user-base and a revenue model to make their web presence profitable. With subscriptions on the wane and a diminishing advertising pool, I thought that by providing a medium that encouraged public feedback while extending its range could result in a product greater than the sum of its parts.
My approach tried to convince the independent papers that it would be in their interest to affiliate with each other under a neutral umbrella site that would give them and their advertisers a larger audience AND benefit the reader by giving them broader access to relevant news happening around the State. That regardless of political/social orientation, this amalgam of papers would benefit each and all. A mash-up, as it were.
vt.newsweeklies.net was the mock-up of this endeavor but it died on the vine. Largely due to my inadequate presentation I'm sure, but i suspect mostly due to the luddites who run the papers. They, the editors and publishers, barely use computers and seem (by and large) to have little use for the Net. They couldn't grasp the potential, even though they knew the writing was on the wall.
For a small, rural, hometown paper, there simply aren't enough readers to justify spending $ on their web presence, specially since it lacks any solid revenue model to cover the costs. So, what has filled the vacuum? Sites like frontporchforums, a bbs where people make their own news but where true reporting and journalism is non-existant.
what i would like to see, unless prevailing wisdom declares it ungood, is to think in terms of running multiple instances of a UA, say one for general browsing and another to run a specific webapp.
Since Web2.0 has evolved the www from documents/pages into webapps with callbacks, if FF enabled extension creators with the ability to control chrome, the webapp could look more like say, kai powertools.
People could then download a (signed) webapp that would have the functionality to render widgets like a native app.
"Christians are commanded to spread the message of God's sacrificial death and perform works of service to demonstrate God's love and convince people to convert. No interpretation needed, it's plain as day" Yea, God's love must have carried the day over that 400 years of inquisition to those millions burned at the stake. Or the indigenous peoples in the world treated as sub-human barbarians Or the children sent to be abused in orphanages throughout CA
Methinks 'convincing people to convert' was not a nice chat at the dinner table as much as at the point of a crucifix.
Oh, and lets' not overlook the accumulation of vast wealth the church accrued in this 'holy' endeavor.
The issue is not what is contained in the Koran, or the Bible, or any other document of antiquity. The problem is with those people who believe and take literally words that "may have had" some relevance in the past in context to that millieu, believing that its mythology is just as appropos today. These people hide their personal biases under the guise of worship and a wish to turn back the clock to some more glorious time. It may be only a small but vocal minority, the mullahs, the preachers, the zealots, the un-stable at large; and they can be found hiding under the skirts of any religion.
There is a difference between using ones' faith to speak truth to power and using it to blindly stir up hatreds. It's one thing for a spiritual leader to denounce, say khomeini legitmately denouncing the USA because of the suffering it caused during the reign of the Shah, or even Rev Wright calling out the USA for the blood on its hands. Fair enough! An open-mind should at least listen long enough to weigh the argument on its merits. But to simplistically cite some dusty tome as the be-all and end-all of moral righteousness while convieniently overlooking the total hypocracy in those words (ala equality) is fairly opening yourself up as a target for more enlightened minds.
What this, or any documentary, should do is encourage, in this case muslims, to make one of their own; a professionally crafted work that details the ills and shortcommings of the Christian religion:) Certainly there is plenty of material for them to focus on. As long as access remains open, then point-counterpoint at the very least offers full-spectrum dialog; which would be preferable to point-suppressionpoint I know that there are eminently qualified muslim documentarians who may not agree w/their fundamentalist bretheren, but for sake of balance, could quite easily be persuaded to put Christianity under a harsher light of scrutiny. Let the chips fall where they may.
I am not familiar w/the details, but my understanding of Bhuddism, is that when a dali lama dies, his re-incarnated self is revealed and then is supposed to be relocated to China proper. Perhaps this harks back to a time when spreading the faith meant being around the most souls, but since the communist revolution has taken on a sense of captivity.
I would like to hear the input of others more knowledgable on the matter (and please forgive my spelling errors)
Like you, I only run E, first 16 now 17 as a WM. I used to run gnome+E17, but found i never really used the desktop, only the apps.
I justify the hassles it takes to get running, the minor aggravations involved in building or fetching packages, because of its beauty and, more important, the ability to wrap and flip thru virt desktops.
E is the only WM that has this capability and i have gotten so dependent on ctl-alt-arrow or just mousing thru edges as part of my work habits, that i cant go back to 'clicking' from one desktop to another.
Absolutely, presuming one has the HD space to have both installed, it's real easy to cherry-pick the desirable apps and run a different WM completely. Personally, I like E17 and a gnome-panel
Us and Them says it all. If you've ever had a glimpse inside a prosecutors office, specially w/a few cops present, you'd know that it has always been "Us vs. Them" accompanied by off-color jokes. Thats the way the systems works for most LEA. Otherwise good people turned into pit-bulls for believing more in "we're a nation of laws" rather than examining whom those Laws serve.
Any ambitious LEA is going to put ethics behind getting results, even if the results send innocent people to bad places; because just like the people they're supposed to serve, their consent has largely been manufactured and is reinforced (or corrupted) w/power and influence. That's our Justice System. Just like our Banking System, or our Military Industrial Complex. Run by and for people above the law and with the resources to stay there forever.
In fairness to the officers of the court: it's totally overburdened, completely stressful, often thank-less, barely pays, and is probably by intention and design rather than stupidity.
Concur 100% if you read my earlier reply (cid=22834218) you might come away with a different take. As Noam Chomsky points out: No State is representative of its people so much as its elites. If true, the from the Govt perspective, it is a war, one they are fighting for their survival (despite this 8% controlling over 2/3 everything as it is). But tho the State may be filling prisons as fast as they can be built, (costplus by kbr) the war, tho it may be 'on' the Internet, is more about datamining and honeypotting the Internet in order to profile and control the populace. The Govt already know about our 'public' life. Our buying habits, our money, our past; what they dont know is our preferences, our 'alter-life', our private interests. Mining the net gives them that power.
The ENDGAME is that, if we dont find ourselves shipped off to some "education camp", then we are all become prisoners in our own homes. "Good" compliant citizens who fear the State will expose our darker secrets and ruin our lives. If nothing else, they can turn curiosity into 'thought crimes' and send us a fine "a pervert tax"
Maybe like the soviets, maybe not. But its not lazy law enforcement as much as it is State control to whatever degree it is capable of. All under the banner of "Public Saftey" and ever-funded from the public trough.
You've probably noticed: the criminals are winning; it's only the poor and unlucky who feel the pain. The rich and the connected never feel a thing. Whether its cartels of bankers or drug barons the money involved has totally overwhelmed the legal system. Despite overcrowded prisons, more and more laws that generate revenue through fines and taxes, we never get ahead of the game. The "War" is a racket, a shake-down.
And the more people that it pisses off, the greater the arm of the Law has to reach out to control it. So, here's the thing about this thread: Tracking a GET to the IP to convict of a crime! Wow. Gives new meaning to 'reach out and touch someone'. So, what might there be hiding under the skirts of the KP crusade? How about sniffing packets on port 119 for specific newsgroups, then track the IP of the client to its source. Used to be that only posters had to worry about breadcrumbs, now i'm not so sure. A sting on alt.binaries.sex.pedo.children.under.4 headers would be sure to make headlines, but what about ppl interested in the rec.goldenshowers or alt.binaries.pictures.zoophilia or alt.gay.sodomy.fuck.bush.up.the.ass or alt.free.tibet? 50K newsgroups, 1000's of alts, what a goldmine!
The databases would grow in previously unthinkable ways; not only would the govt know your 'public' face (the consumer you) but also your private face (your prefs and favs). This kind of datamining would enslave us all because everyone, at sometime, will have something to hide.
Here in VT, its called the "Dept of Saftey", e.g. the State Police banner under which they 'manage' their citizenry; presumably to keep us from hurting ourselves. In reality though, it simply (re)enforces the power of the State to meddle in our lives, removes all personal responsibility (think no-fault insurance). It also supports a corrupt insurance industry and, with the promise of new cool-tools from DHS, over-taxes its populace while further nanni-fying them. People should be held accountable for what they do, not for what they might do, or think. And if what they do harms another's person or property, pay dearly enough that it doesnt happen again. Thought-crimes, driving w/out a seatbelt, speeding (whatever that means), are unconstitutional and un-enforceble laws that would hold no traction in a fully informed society. The function of the police should be to aid and assist those in need and apprehend serious criminals. Controlling the citizenry, speed-traps etc.. moving from point A to B, in the course of their lives is not doing society any favors. Its a shake-down and dt puts the police in an adversarial position w/those those eventually may need them most. But the State doesnt see it or care to see it because their holding on to power in a skewed "us-vs-them" mentality it all that matters. As long as that mentality remains pervasive people will be regarded and treated like sheep.
If you checked out any of the above links, then you would see that it definitely affects linux hosts. From what i was able to glean, the problem stems from infected PC's that contain usernames and password info for their ftp account on a linux box From there a payload is delivered to the linux box that inserts a small httpd into the kernel and covers its tracks. So yes, its a linux rootkit, but only doable if the linux host is running ftpd (pro/pure?) as a means for letting remote users access the filesystem. At least, that's my take.
thank-you. Your thoughtful post sheds an enlightened note as to why one can never trust what the State or its military has to say about anything. As has been proven over the last 50 years: They lie in the name of preserving an Institution that has little concern over the well-being of it's rank-n-file or the constituency they presumably serve. They lie, period; for whatever reason, well-intentined or otherwise, in the name of an Establishment corrupted by greed for money and power to take what rightfully does not belong to them. War is a racket and its prosecution and privatization has bankrupted our society to the point of extinction through generational terrorism
"There is no way to peace. Peace is the way." Mahatma Gandhi
fortunately for us all, our government, for all its resources and powers, have proven itself repeatedly to be incompetent both in using what it has and in its efforts to keep it secret.
Can we stop calling it wiretapping and recognize it for the datamining it is; the resurection of TIA,Carnivore, and every other insidious State monitoring program birthed in the last 10years?
This is way beyond a communication between two endpoints (as we all are aware) and the phrase 'tapping' just softens the perception. As others have suggested, having the govt filter and screen all domestic data/voice communication in some orwellian scheme that gives it control over its citizens is today a fact.
It is something most conservatives and corporations have endorsed since it's inception; so they have the backlash of their constituents and shareholders to fear while they wait for their reserved seats to take them to some fantasy land of golf courses and boat drinks.
The unprecedented seizure of private land by eminent domain and subsequent transfer of wealth into corporate hands; the plunging of its taxpayers into massive debt while forever bailing out Wall Street has destroyed the american monetary system. This is Regan's legacy. La La Land for a few, sweatshops for the rest.
They know that 'We the People' wont remain asleep forever. If the full extent comes out there's going to be all hell to pay; and when that day comes those in whom we've blindly put our trust are going to need some 'crowd control' while they head for the exit doors.
Personally, I was steered to GNU as a cs student in 1990/1991 trying to do classwork from home and looking for an alt to coherent. Linux was at.098 and my flavor of choice became softlanding (SLS). At that time, IFRC, the GNU plan was to replicate unix from the outside in and linus got impatient bec they were still too far away from a kernel. He kicked the ball in gear and by the time i got involved, there were about a few dozen ppl world-wide trying to get decent network and device drivers built. Then came slack and linux was on it's role. But it linus never laid a line, someone else would have, cuz it was an idea whose time had come. And stallman made that possible bec w/out GNU the kernel would never have had a running start.
Until roughly 9/11, the Internet had been able to remain a content-neutral
place, until capitalists could find a way to harness this new-fangled thing.
With the likes of AOL and Yahoo opening their portal doors, everyone could
pretty much find what they're looking for; now they can just as easily publish
same.
Right-wing and Left, porn, god, cooking recipes, doesn't matter. It's out
there by the bucketful. Information, dis-information, noble deed-doers and
everyone's strange uncle; all hanging around, sitting in your computer, just a
click or two away.
Do you and your cohorts ascribe to complete freedom or believe
that censorship plays an important societal function; and if so, who do you
feel is qualified for that role? If so, would it start with self, the Imam or
the politician, and in any case, is it possible that you are being decieved?
I think the original hopes and promise of the Net, getting beyond DARPA and
military applications, was that it would become a tool to make people more
tolerant of differences as they became exposed to greater diversity. A
grass-roots' agent of change.
Maybe that's happening here in the U.S., in the West, in the Industrialized
nations. And maybe it's possible that the WWW IS helping people recognize
they're not so different after all. I'd like to believe that, as much as I'd
like to hit a few net denizens with a clue stick. But the blow-back is that if
true, then the machine that tries to keep people at each others' throats, that
finds ever-better ways to distract them from the real issues, is at risk of
losing its power. As such, the mantle of neutrality vanishes as role of the
Net becomes either a vehicle of subversion or subjugation.
What signs of radicalism do you see in your neck of the woods that looks
beyond extremism, either from the State Autocrats or fundamentalist
Wahabism as the only viable alternative able to challenge the status quo? Or
is cyberspace still little more than a cool place to hang out.
Use of the Internet as an Information device can often separate users from
non-users by class and education. The "silent majorities", the common-man,
remain largely unaware and could possibly care less. I'm sure this applies
equally to the farmer in Appalachia or to the Bedouin trader.
Have you found that to be the case in the Mid-East? Does Internet usage help
to put aside sectarian and tribal differences and find a common ground? If so,
how?
Do websites and IM and SMS and P2P sharing help people bridge the internal
divide?
Does it bring a Shia closer to a Sunni, a fundamentalist closer to a
Secularist? Do wealthy children of your Establishments get down to the Oldies
or the Rap tunes with their working-class neighbors?
How is the Arab (cyber)world different from the Arab street? Are people
generally more pro-western, or less iconoclastic in their beliefs? I'd imagine
many arab youth are into the games, GTA?
WOW? Does this put them at odds with the rest of your society?
Here in the U.S. at least, Pandora's box has been opened and now people are
confronted with the fact that its harder to keep secrets; that your
normal-looking neighbors are into {pick your poison/compulsion}. That most
everybody deviates to some degree. One likes to be spanked, another likes
golden showers and a third likes to watch. That normal as you know it is a
construct that doesn't actually exist. Search enough and you'll find a forum
in any neck of the woods. (here's one in mine: www.anonymousconfession.com)
that reveals everybodys' private lives and tastes sliping out in all their
droll and inoccous glory. Normal is only an illusion re-inforced by the
system.
So, is the web and the Net breaking its' users perception of normalacy in your
neighborhood? Are you some finding any chauvanists into wearing panties?
Is it safe to say that life in Jordan( a representative monarchy?) is any
different from Syria, or Egypt, Saudi Arabia, or any UAE member states? You
are in Amman? Cosmopolitan? Up with current trends? Sure, educated arabs from
Beruit to Bagdad may be tuning in, blogging, rel
Slashdot Mirror
the same way the State uses citations and fines to fund it's policing of its citizens!
Funny story about how Dallas installed 62 cameras to monitor traffic (er. people)
only to find they worked so well that funding to maintain them dried up. So they
turned off 1/4 of them thinking ppl wouldnt know which ones.
Kinda like plywood cutouts of police cars to stop speeding.
For all of agore's good works of late, he remains incapable of addressing the pressing issues outside of the context of Capitalism, or it's present incarnation of hyper-consumerism.
The result is just a transmogrification of one bad approach for another; ala advertisements from GE on how it's 'goin green' or how ADM is turning a new leaf. The context, capitalism can profit from saving the planet, appears to me to be little different from a hospital cost-shifting that $84 plastic tray table the patient eats from.
I suggest you check out "A really inconvenient truth" by Joel Kovel. Its very illuminating
These are the ills of becomming a consumer, credit-driven society. As much as i can appreciate the need for some peasant in a developing country to have access to credit, the fact remains that the notion of an ownership society is largely a myth. The banks own most if not all of it while we peons live in perpetual serfdom.
One should never forget to laugh when our President extols the virtues of privatization; bearing in mind that, of the entire world population, only a scant 5% own stock in anything at all.
While the private companies to whom everything on the planet is being doled out to have (legally) only the interests of those shareholders in mind.
If this system (capitalism) is going to survive, its going to happen by forcing corporations to take social responsibility through share-holder revolt. Or society will have to revoke the notion of 'personhood' from corporations all together and go after their excesses.
First, a couple of points related to earlier posts:
/. since this site IS a forum of public opinion; and where, if one takes the time to read all the posts, a balanced viewpoint can be derived.
There is little difference between a journalist/reporter who blogs and one who works for a paper. The major difference is the editor and publisher filters. There are great stories reported on that never make to the press or make it only after being heavily skewed. A good reporter on a blog doesn't have that concern.
I could be wrong (happened before:), but I suspect that there is a new generation of journalists for whom the Internet will be their primary focus, as printed stories or pods. Just look at currentTv's vanguard for a taste of things to come. As the older generation dies off, so to may follow the paper.
Next, there has been some commentary on the uselessness of feedback and comments. I find it strangely funny that it would be here on
Which brings up the subject of why papers/Tv are/is so shallow. It takes time to read it all! An hour just on this thread alone! How many ppl have the time to spend to follow in depth? This is why ppl are uninformed, they settle for the headlines and take them as fact because they (mis-guided?) trust the source.
(ala Iraq==9/11)
IMO, the best way to get information is the combination of decent reporting followed up by public commentary.
It offers the reader greater balance and the reporter more material for possible follow-ups.
The purpose of tech-as-delivery-mechanism is to provide an easy way for the reader to disseminate it all, like the press improving over word-of-mouth.
A few years back, I decided to try and combine my internet skills with my interests in advocating for local news outlets, believing, like you, that all news happens locally, somewhere. And that the people best suited to cover it was the local reporter, not some big-shot from the major daily who drove in for a day or two of interviews.
After doing some research, i concluded that most small papers lacked the user-base and a revenue model to make their web presence profitable. With subscriptions on the wane and a diminishing advertising pool, I thought that by providing a medium that encouraged public feedback while extending its range could result in a product greater than the sum of its parts.
My approach tried to convince the independent papers that it would be in their interest to affiliate with each other under a neutral umbrella site that would give them and their advertisers a larger audience AND benefit the reader by giving them broader access to relevant news happening around the State. That regardless of political/social orientation, this amalgam of papers would benefit each and all. A mash-up, as it were.
vt.newsweeklies.net was the mock-up of this endeavor but it died on the vine. Largely due to my inadequate presentation I'm sure, but i suspect mostly due to the luddites who run the papers. They, the editors and publishers, barely use computers and seem (by and large) to have little use for the Net. They couldn't grasp the potential, even though they knew the writing was on the wall.
For a small, rural, hometown paper, there simply aren't enough readers to justify spending $ on their web presence, specially since it lacks any solid revenue model to cover the costs. So, what has filled the vacuum? Sites like frontporchforums, a bbs where people make their own news but where true reporting and journalism is non-existant.
what i would like to see, unless prevailing wisdom declares it ungood, is to think in terms of running multiple instances of a UA, say one for general browsing and another to run a specific webapp.
Since Web2.0 has evolved the www from documents/pages into webapps with callbacks, if FF enabled extension creators with the ability to control chrome, the webapp could look more like say, kai powertools.
People could then download a (signed) webapp that would have the functionality to render widgets like a native app.
Just a thought
And I've never been prouder of my State (vermont) for demanding the return of its guard.
"Christians are commanded to spread the message of God's sacrificial death and perform works of service to demonstrate God's love and convince people to convert. No interpretation needed, it's plain as day"
Yea, God's love must have carried the day over that 400 years of inquisition to those millions burned at the stake.
Or the indigenous peoples in the world treated as sub-human barbarians
Or the children sent to be abused in orphanages throughout CA
Methinks 'convincing people to convert' was not a nice chat at the dinner table as much as at the point of a crucifix.
Oh, and lets' not overlook the accumulation of vast wealth the church accrued in this 'holy' endeavor.
The issue is not what is contained in the Koran, or the Bible, or any other document of antiquity.
The problem is with those people who believe and take literally words that "may have had" some relevance in the past in context to that millieu, believing that its mythology is just as appropos today.
These people hide their personal biases under the guise of worship and a wish to turn back the clock to some more glorious time.
It may be only a small but vocal minority, the mullahs, the preachers, the zealots, the un-stable at large; and they can be found hiding under the skirts of any religion.
There is a difference between using ones' faith to speak truth to power and using it to blindly stir up hatreds. It's one thing for a spiritual leader to denounce, say khomeini legitmately denouncing the USA because of the suffering it caused during the reign of
the Shah, or even Rev Wright calling out the USA for the blood on its hands. Fair enough! An open-mind should at least listen long enough to weigh the argument on its merits.
But to simplistically cite some dusty tome as the be-all and end-all of moral righteousness while convieniently overlooking the total hypocracy in those words (ala equality) is fairly opening yourself up as a target for more enlightened minds.
What this, or any documentary, should do is encourage, in this case muslims, to make one of their own; a professionally crafted work that details the ills and shortcommings of the Christian religion:)
Certainly there is plenty of material for them to focus on.
As long as access remains open, then point-counterpoint at the very least offers full-spectrum dialog; which would be preferable to point-suppressionpoint
I know that there are eminently qualified muslim documentarians who may not agree w/their fundamentalist bretheren, but for sake of balance, could quite easily be persuaded to put Christianity under a harsher light of scrutiny.
Let the chips fall where they may.
I am not familiar w/the details, but my understanding of Bhuddism, is that when a dali lama dies, his re-incarnated self is revealed and then is supposed to be relocated to China proper.
Perhaps this harks back to a time when spreading the faith meant being around the most souls,
but since the communist revolution has taken on a sense of captivity.
I would like to hear the input of others more knowledgable on the matter (and please forgive my spelling errors)
Like you, I only run E, first 16 now 17 as a WM. I used to run
gnome+E17, but found i never really used the desktop, only the apps.
I justify the hassles it takes to get running, the minor aggravations involved in building or fetching packages, because of its beauty and, more important, the ability to wrap and flip thru virt desktops.
E is the only WM that has this capability and i have gotten so dependent on
ctl-alt-arrow or just mousing thru edges as part of my work habits, that
i cant go back to 'clicking' from one desktop to another.
Absolutely, presuming one has the HD space to have both installed, it's real easy to cherry-pick the desirable apps and run a different WM completely. Personally, I like E17 and a gnome-panel
Us and Them says it all. If you've ever had a glimpse inside a prosecutors office, specially w/a few cops present, you'd know that
it has always been "Us vs. Them" accompanied by off-color jokes.
Thats the way the systems works for most LEA. Otherwise good people
turned into pit-bulls for believing more in "we're a nation of laws"
rather than examining whom those Laws serve.
Any ambitious LEA is going to put ethics behind getting results,
even if the results send innocent people to bad places; because
just like the people they're supposed to serve, their consent has
largely been manufactured and is reinforced (or corrupted) w/power and influence. That's our Justice System. Just like our Banking
System, or our Military Industrial Complex. Run by and for people above the law and with the resources to stay there forever.
In fairness to the officers of the court: it's totally overburdened, completely stressful, often thank-less, barely pays, and is probably
by intention and design rather than stupidity.
Concur 100%
if you read my earlier reply (cid=22834218) you might come away with
a different take.
As Noam Chomsky points out: No State is representative of its people
so much as its elites. If true, the from the Govt perspective, it
is a war, one they are fighting for their survival (despite this
8% controlling over 2/3 everything as it is).
But tho the State may be filling prisons as fast as they can be built,
(costplus by kbr) the war, tho it may be 'on' the Internet, is more
about datamining and honeypotting the Internet in order to profile
and control the populace.
The Govt already know about our 'public' life. Our buying habits,
our money, our past; what they dont know is our preferences, our
'alter-life', our private interests. Mining the net gives them
that power.
The ENDGAME is that, if we dont find ourselves shipped off to some
"education camp", then we are all become prisoners in our own homes.
"Good" compliant citizens who fear the State will expose our darker
secrets and ruin our lives. If nothing else, they can turn curiosity
into 'thought crimes' and send us a fine "a pervert tax"
Maybe like the soviets, maybe not. But its not lazy law enforcement as much as it is State control to
whatever degree it is capable of. All under the banner of "Public Saftey" and ever-funded from the
public trough.
You've probably noticed: the criminals are winning; it's only the
poor and unlucky who feel the pain. The rich and the connected never feel a thing. Whether its cartels
of bankers or drug barons the money involved has totally overwhelmed the legal system.
Despite overcrowded prisons, more and more laws that generate revenue through fines and taxes,
we never get ahead of the game. The "War" is a racket, a shake-down.
And the more people that it pisses off, the greater the arm of the Law has to reach out to control it.
So, here's the thing about this thread: Tracking a GET to the IP to convict of a crime!
Wow. Gives new meaning to 'reach out and touch someone'.
So, what might there be hiding under the skirts of the KP crusade? How about sniffing packets on
port 119 for specific newsgroups, then track the IP of the client to its source. Used to be that
only posters had to worry about breadcrumbs, now i'm not so sure.
A sting on alt.binaries.sex.pedo.children.under.4 headers would be sure to make headlines, but what
about ppl interested in the rec.goldenshowers or alt.binaries.pictures.zoophilia or
alt.gay.sodomy.fuck.bush.up.the.ass or alt.free.tibet? 50K newsgroups, 1000's of alts, what a goldmine!
The databases would grow in previously unthinkable ways; not only would the govt know your 'public' face (the consumer you) but also your private face (your prefs and favs). This kind of datamining would enslave
us all because everyone, at sometime, will have something to hide.
Let the InfoWars begin.
correction in order: not do but watch, in fairness, there
is a difference
Here in VT, its called the "Dept of Saftey", e.g. the State Police banner under which they 'manage' their citizenry; presumably to keep us from hurting ourselves. In reality though, it simply (re)enforces the power of the State to meddle in our lives, removes all personal responsibility (think no-fault insurance).
It also supports a corrupt insurance industry and, with the promise of new cool-tools from DHS, over-taxes its populace while further nanni-fying them.
People should be held accountable for what they do, not for what they might do, or think. And if what they do harms another's person or property, pay dearly enough that it doesnt happen again.
Thought-crimes, driving w/out a seatbelt, speeding (whatever that means), are unconstitutional and un-enforceble laws that would hold no traction in a fully informed society.
The function of the police should be to aid and assist those in need and apprehend serious criminals. Controlling the citizenry, speed-traps etc.. moving from point A to B, in the course of their lives is not
doing society any favors. Its a shake-down and dt puts the police in
an adversarial position w/those those eventually may need them most.
But the State doesnt see it or care to see it because their holding on to power in a skewed "us-vs-them" mentality it all that matters.
As long as that mentality remains pervasive people will be regarded and treated like sheep.
If you checked out any of the above links, then you would see that it definitely affects linux hosts. From what i was able to glean, the problem stems from infected PC's that contain usernames and password info for their ftp account on a linux box From there a payload is delivered to the linux box that inserts a small httpd into the kernel and covers its tracks. So yes, its a linux rootkit, but only doable if the linux host is running ftpd (pro/pure?) as a means for letting remote users access the filesystem.
At least, that's my take.
http://www.okean.com/asianspamblocks.html
http://www.okean.com/sinokorea.txt http://www.okean.com/sinokoreacidr.txt
note that below just block port 25
wget http://www.okean.com/antispam/iptables/rc.firewall.sinokorea
wget http://www.okean.com/antispam/iptables/rc.firewall.china
thank-you. Your thoughtful post sheds an enlightened note as to why one can never trust what the State or its military has to say about anything. As has been proven over the last 50 years: They lie in the name of preserving an Institution that has little concern over the well-being of it's rank-n-file or the constituency they presumably serve. They lie, period; for whatever reason, well-intentined or otherwise, in the name of an Establishment corrupted by greed for money and power to take what rightfully does not belong to them.
War is a racket and its prosecution and privatization has bankrupted our society to the point of extinction through generational terrorism
"There is no way to peace. Peace is the way."
Mahatma Gandhi
fortunately for us all, our government, for all its resources and powers, have proven itself repeatedly to be incompetent both in using what it has and in its efforts to keep it secret.
Can we stop calling it wiretapping and recognize it for the datamining it is; the resurection of TIA,Carnivore, and every other insidious State monitoring program birthed in the last 10years?
This is way beyond a communication between two endpoints (as we all are aware) and the phrase 'tapping' just softens the perception.
As others have suggested, having the govt filter and screen all domestic data/voice communication in some orwellian scheme that gives it control over its citizens is today a fact.
It is something most conservatives and corporations have endorsed since it's inception; so they have the backlash of their constituents and shareholders to fear while they wait for their reserved seats to take them to some fantasy land of golf courses and boat drinks.
The unprecedented seizure of private land by eminent domain and subsequent transfer of wealth into corporate hands; the plunging of its taxpayers into massive debt while forever bailing out Wall Street has destroyed the american monetary system.
This is Regan's legacy. La La Land for a few, sweatshops for the rest.
They know that 'We the People' wont remain asleep forever. If the full extent comes out there's going to be all hell to pay; and when that day comes those in whom we've blindly put our trust are going to need some 'crowd control' while they head for the exit doors.
Personally, I was steered to GNU as a cs student in 1990/1991 trying to do classwork from home .098 and my flavor of choice became
and looking for an alt to coherent. Linux was at
softlanding (SLS).
At that time, IFRC, the GNU plan was to replicate unix from the outside in and linus got
impatient bec they were still too far away from a kernel. He kicked the ball in gear and
by the time i got involved, there were about a few dozen ppl world-wide trying to get decent network
and device drivers built. Then came slack and linux was on it's role. But it linus never
laid a line, someone else would have, cuz it was an idea whose time had come.
And stallman made that possible bec w/out GNU the kernel would never have had a running start.
Until roughly 9/11, the Internet had been able to remain a content-neutral place, until capitalists could find a way to harness this new-fangled thing. With the likes of AOL and Yahoo opening their portal doors, everyone could pretty much find what they're looking for; now they can just as easily publish same. Right-wing and Left, porn, god, cooking recipes, doesn't matter. It's out there by the bucketful. Information, dis-information, noble deed-doers and everyone's strange uncle; all hanging around, sitting in your computer, just a click or two away. Do you and your cohorts ascribe to complete freedom or believe that censorship plays an important societal function; and if so, who do you feel is qualified for that role? If so, would it start with self, the Imam or the politician, and in any case, is it possible that you are being decieved? I think the original hopes and promise of the Net, getting beyond DARPA and military applications, was that it would become a tool to make people more tolerant of differences as they became exposed to greater diversity. A grass-roots' agent of change. Maybe that's happening here in the U.S., in the West, in the Industrialized nations. And maybe it's possible that the WWW IS helping people recognize they're not so different after all. I'd like to believe that, as much as I'd like to hit a few net denizens with a clue stick. But the blow-back is that if true, then the machine that tries to keep people at each others' throats, that finds ever-better ways to distract them from the real issues, is at risk of losing its power. As such, the mantle of neutrality vanishes as role of the Net becomes either a vehicle of subversion or subjugation. What signs of radicalism do you see in your neck of the woods that looks beyond extremism, either from the State Autocrats or fundamentalist Wahabism as the only viable alternative able to challenge the status quo? Or is cyberspace still little more than a cool place to hang out. Use of the Internet as an Information device can often separate users from non-users by class and education. The "silent majorities", the common-man, remain largely unaware and could possibly care less. I'm sure this applies equally to the farmer in Appalachia or to the Bedouin trader. Have you found that to be the case in the Mid-East? Does Internet usage help to put aside sectarian and tribal differences and find a common ground? If so, how? Do websites and IM and SMS and P2P sharing help people bridge the internal divide? Does it bring a Shia closer to a Sunni, a fundamentalist closer to a Secularist? Do wealthy children of your Establishments get down to the Oldies or the Rap tunes with their working-class neighbors? How is the Arab (cyber)world different from the Arab street? Are people generally more pro-western, or less iconoclastic in their beliefs? I'd imagine many arab youth are into the games, GTA? WOW? Does this put them at odds with the rest of your society? Here in the U.S. at least, Pandora's box has been opened and now people are confronted with the fact that its harder to keep secrets; that your normal-looking neighbors are into {pick your poison/compulsion}. That most everybody deviates to some degree. One likes to be spanked, another likes golden showers and a third likes to watch. That normal as you know it is a construct that doesn't actually exist. Search enough and you'll find a forum in any neck of the woods. (here's one in mine: www.anonymousconfession.com) that reveals everybodys' private lives and tastes sliping out in all their droll and inoccous glory. Normal is only an illusion re-inforced by the system. So, is the web and the Net breaking its' users perception of normalacy in your neighborhood? Are you some finding any chauvanists into wearing panties? Is it safe to say that life in Jordan( a representative monarchy?) is any different from Syria, or Egypt, Saudi Arabia, or any UAE member states? You are in Amman? Cosmopolitan? Up with current trends? Sure, educated arabs from Beruit to Bagdad may be tuning in, blogging, rel
Hey Dude:
My apologies, just saw the sig and felt the urge to rave a bit.
R