You could always use LibreJS's whitelist feature on irs.gov (or whatever the site is).
Zealots would claim: "If you've whitelisted one site, you've failed."
And you are still allowed to petition your government for redress of grievances by snail mail, email and twitter which I believe still has a JS-free interface.
During some calls for public comment, the US government has outright stated that it will refuse to consider any comment submitted through snail mail or email. In one case, the US Copyright Office stated, and I quote, that it "cannot allow submission of comments outside the regulations.gov system on the basis of your objection to the use of proprietary software."
I'm interested in adopting something like this for my own free software projects. Have the projects to which you refer made the software behind their pledge forms available as free software?
Good luck with that. Native applications built with Electron, such as Discord, Slack, Skype, Atom, and Visual Studio Code, all bundle a copy of Chromium. This is Google Chrome with a handful of non-free parts cut out, mostly related to video DRM and Adobe Flash Player. The use of Chromium in Electron encourages development of web applications that work only with Chromium. For example, the owner of a Discord server can upload images to that server for use as emoji, but clicking the upload button does absolutely nothing in Firefox. This encourages Firefox users to switch to Google Chrome (on Windows or macOS) or Chromium (on X11/Linux) to make web applications work again.
In addition, on a phone or tablet running Android 4 or later, Google Chrome has a RAM use advantage over Firefox because its HTML engine is always loaded. This is analogous to IE's advantage on Windows 98 through 8.1.
The song is indeed about inserting a banana-shaped device into one's intimate parts. According to the article you linked, an "electrical banana" was a banana-shaped vibrator popular at the time.
Allow a users to create an account, accepting an email and encrypted password. Keeping all that encrypted.
Doable with HTTPS and no client-side script. You usually want a hashed password, not an encrypted one, except when integrating with third-party web services that give out a user token.
To ensure the CoC was displayed and some way having the CoC accepted.
Doable without client-side script.
To accept an image uploaded for the user computer.
Doable without client-side script.
To size, rotate and crop.
Doable without client-side script, albeit clunky. Most users will prefer client-side script for this.
To allow the user to see their account and enter data about their interests eg if they like Ada, Lisp, Assembler, C, Python, Forth, html, LabVIEW?
Doable without client-side script, though navigating through large lists and real-time completion are more convenient with client-side script.
To then search for users with the same interests.
Doable without client-side script.
Chat rooms under a list of interests?
Chat is possible without client-side script albeit very inconvenient, relying on complicated and laggy iframe refresh scenarios. As with cropping a photo, most users will prefer either a client-side script or a downloadable native application distributed as free software.
To send an encrypted message to people with the same interests.
Webmail's been doable without client-side script since HoTMaiL still had that odd capitalization.
To support text, mic and webcam chat? Fully encrypted.
Doable with a downloadable native application distributed as free software.
What computer power, OS and code would be needed to do all that?
Everything you mention was possible on a 1999 PC with an 0.33 GHz Pentium II CPU so long as its Internet connection was faster than dial-up. Even entry-level cable nowadays is faster than the quad T1 that a whole 1,500-student college used back then.
Code that works well with slow networks global and that can support different OS, web browsers?
A downloadable native application distributed as free software can be compiled for Windows, macOS, X11/Linux, X11/FreeBSD, or Android/Linux.
Samsung Group is a business conglomerate, called in Korean a chaebol. In addition to Samsung Electronics and Samsung SDI (battery maker), Samsung has its fingers in other pies. Among them:
Samsung Engineering builds energy (oil, natural gas, electricity) processing facilities and water treatment facilities.
Samsung C&T builds skyscrapers, roads, bridges, nuclear power plants, and resorts, and has a clothing line.
These completely free operating systems might not run on computer hardware sold in stores near you because they lack the "blobs" (proprietary drivers or firmware) required to get the hardware to run. It's possible to buy a PC that respects your freedom by establishing a bank account and shopping online, but online shopping carts and payment largely rely on proprietary software and service as a software substitute (SaaSS). So how does one break free from proprietary software without giving up computing?
Choosing to not do something doesn't mean you're not free any more because you haven't done it.
Failure to run proprietary JavaScript leads to failure to complete a web-based application to prepare and file an individual income tax return. Failing to file your individual income tax return leads to loss of freedom when the feds incarcerate you.
Failure to run proprietary JavaScript leads to failure to complete "I'm not a robot" checks, which leads to failure to submit comments on proposed regulation, which leads to failure "to petition the government for a redress of grievances" (U.S. Const., Amendment I).
What is the legal definition of obfuscated source code? I mean something that can be used in court against a vendor providing obfuscated (and unexaminable) GPL source code?
GPL versions 2 and 3 define a work's "source code" as the preferred form of a work of authorship for making modifications to it.
Recursive code filled the memory and caused unintended acceleration.
Yet Emacs, GIMP, and numerous other GNU applications use Lisp languages for user scripting. Lisp languages are based on recursion as a core control structure. Emacs uses Elisp, and GIMP ships with Script-Fu, an implementation of Scheme. A bunch of applications are scriptable in Guile, an implementation of Scheme.
Games differ from tools for one big reason: They're typically not used for profit. One common pattern to fund development of free software is "eating one's own dogfood," in which a company improves the software that it uses in its line of business through which it realizes a profit. This doesn't apply nearly as cleanly to games, which are made for use in recreation by individuals.
A car company may develop software "to design complex parts for a car". An electronics company may develop software "for complex PCB design". A record label, a production music library, etc. may develop software "to create music". Even Disney, widely hated for its lobbying attacks on the public domain, has released the OpenSubdiv code library for CGI animation in order to interoperate with CGI tools made by and for other studios. Involving the public in improving these processes helps each such company turn a profit.
Games, not so much. The only companies that make profitable use of games are esports leagues, and as I understand it, one of the big draws of esports is use (under license) of proprietary games with which viewers are already familiar.
If they hadn't put DRM malware on CDs I wouldn't have boycotted them (still do).
The Sony Music DRM malware incident was not only with a different part of Sony but also in 2005, which is fourteen years ago. When should a boycott end? For example, should a boycott end once the people responsible for a bad decision are no longer with the company? Or should people, say, boycott Red Hat in 2019 because of parent company IBM's actions in the 1930s?
That might work with Amazon, iTunes, Google Play, Netflix, and certain other household-name online merchants. It's a bit harder with independent online merchants not quite big enough to have a nationwide gift card distribution infrastructure, unless you're willing to pay 10 percent extra for (say) a Visa gift card that you can use anywhere.
I too use Alt+Tab to switch keyboard focus between applications, be they maximized or not. But at least for me, keeping the unfocused application at least partly visible provides a visuospatial cue that improves my thought process, reducing the possibility of doorway amnesia.
Longer posts are what Pastebin, TwitLonger, GitHub Gist, and your own blog are made for. Post the whole thing elsewhere, and summarize to Twitter with a link.
What bank do you use that doesn't offer protection against fraudulent charges to its debit card customers? Last I checked, the Electronic Funds Transfer Act (EFTA) required banks in the United States to limit the cardholder's liability for fraud to $50 or so.
Except in a lot of cases, you can't. If the local grocery store stops carrying or hides your favorite brand of sandwich cookies, for instance, you'll probably have to resort to buying them from Amazon. Likewise with unlocked phones or other electronic products that no brick and mortar store within cycling distance carries. Would you find it practical to routinely pay cash for Amazon gift cards?
In the USA, a debit card used with a PIN goes through the EFT network (Maestro for MasterCard or Interlink for Visa), not the credit card network. The ACH fee for an EFT payment is close to the 30 cent transaction fee for a credit card payment, but EFT generally imposes no percentage of the total. This is why many brick and mortar merchants automatically select EFT when a debit card is inserted, and some offer cash back because there's no fee to increase the total.
If an act is prohibited by all existing providers' contracts, and regulations make it impractical to start a new provider, then it's de facto illegal because of said regulations.
Slashdot Mirror
You could always use LibreJS's whitelist feature on irs.gov (or whatever the site is).
Zealots would claim: "If you've whitelisted one site, you've failed."
And you are still allowed to petition your government for redress of grievances by snail mail, email and twitter which I believe still has a JS-free interface.
During some calls for public comment, the US government has outright stated that it will refuse to consider any comment submitted through snail mail or email. In one case, the US Copyright Office stated, and I quote, that it "cannot allow submission of comments outside the regulations.gov system on the basis of your objection to the use of proprietary software."
I'm interested in adopting something like this for my own free software projects. Have the projects to which you refer made the software behind their pledge forms available as free software?
So don't use Chrome. Problem solved.
Good luck with that. Native applications built with Electron, such as Discord, Slack, Skype, Atom, and Visual Studio Code, all bundle a copy of Chromium. This is Google Chrome with a handful of non-free parts cut out, mostly related to video DRM and Adobe Flash Player. The use of Chromium in Electron encourages development of web applications that work only with Chromium. For example, the owner of a Discord server can upload images to that server for use as emoji, but clicking the upload button does absolutely nothing in Firefox. This encourages Firefox users to switch to Google Chrome (on Windows or macOS) or Chromium (on X11/Linux) to make web applications work again.
In addition, on a phone or tablet running Android 4 or later, Google Chrome has a RAM use advantage over Firefox because its HTML engine is always loaded. This is analogous to IE's advantage on Windows 98 through 8.1.
The song is indeed about inserting a banana-shaped device into one's intimate parts. According to the article you linked, an "electrical banana" was a banana-shaped vibrator popular at the time.
Allow a users to create an account, accepting an email and encrypted password. Keeping all that encrypted.
Doable with HTTPS and no client-side script. You usually want a hashed password, not an encrypted one, except when integrating with third-party web services that give out a user token.
To ensure the CoC was displayed and some way having the CoC accepted.
Doable without client-side script.
To accept an image uploaded for the user computer.
Doable without client-side script.
To size, rotate and crop.
Doable without client-side script, albeit clunky. Most users will prefer client-side script for this.
To allow the user to see their account and enter data about their interests eg if they like Ada, Lisp, Assembler, C, Python, Forth, html, LabVIEW?
Doable without client-side script, though navigating through large lists and real-time completion are more convenient with client-side script.
To then search for users with the same interests.
Doable without client-side script.
Chat rooms under a list of interests?
Chat is possible without client-side script albeit very inconvenient, relying on complicated and laggy iframe refresh scenarios. As with cropping a photo, most users will prefer either a client-side script or a downloadable native application distributed as free software.
To send an encrypted message to people with the same interests.
Webmail's been doable without client-side script since HoTMaiL still had that odd capitalization.
To support text, mic and webcam chat? Fully encrypted.
Doable with a downloadable native application distributed as free software.
What computer power, OS and code would be needed to do all that?
Everything you mention was possible on a 1999 PC with an 0.33 GHz Pentium II CPU so long as its Internet connection was faster than dial-up. Even entry-level cable nowadays is faster than the quad T1 that a whole 1,500-student college used back then.
Code that works well with slow networks global and that can support different OS, web browsers?
A downloadable native application distributed as free software can be compiled for Windows, macOS, X11/Linux, X11/FreeBSD, or Android/Linux.
Javascript runs in the browser and the browser prohibits certain activities.
The copyright license of the JavaScript code downloaded by the browser usually prohibits the user from certain activities.
Samsung Group is a business conglomerate, called in Korean a chaebol. In addition to Samsung Electronics and Samsung SDI (battery maker), Samsung has its fingers in other pies. Among them:
These completely free operating systems might not run on computer hardware sold in stores near you because they lack the "blobs" (proprietary drivers or firmware) required to get the hardware to run. It's possible to buy a PC that respects your freedom by establishing a bank account and shopping online, but online shopping carts and payment largely rely on proprietary software and service as a software substitute (SaaSS). So how does one break free from proprietary software without giving up computing?
Choosing to not do something doesn't mean you're not free any more because you haven't done it.
Failure to run proprietary JavaScript leads to failure to complete a web-based application to prepare and file an individual income tax return. Failing to file your individual income tax return leads to loss of freedom when the feds incarcerate you.
Failure to run proprietary JavaScript leads to failure to complete "I'm not a robot" checks, which leads to failure to submit comments on proposed regulation, which leads to failure "to petition the government for a redress of grievances" (U.S. Const., Amendment I).
The only (known) drug in Mello Yello is caffeine. It's the same drug that's in Mountain Dew, which also has a song named after it.
The Donovan song is about an intimate massage device.
What is the legal definition of obfuscated source code? I mean something that can be used in court against a vendor providing obfuscated (and unexaminable) GPL source code?
GPL versions 2 and 3 define a work's "source code" as the preferred form of a work of authorship for making modifications to it.
Recursive code filled the memory and caused unintended acceleration.
Yet Emacs, GIMP, and numerous other GNU applications use Lisp languages for user scripting. Lisp languages are based on recursion as a core control structure. Emacs uses Elisp, and GIMP ships with Script-Fu, an implementation of Scheme. A bunch of applications are scriptable in Guile, an implementation of Scheme.
Games differ from tools for one big reason: They're typically not used for profit. One common pattern to fund development of free software is "eating one's own dogfood," in which a company improves the software that it uses in its line of business through which it realizes a profit. This doesn't apply nearly as cleanly to games, which are made for use in recreation by individuals.
A car company may develop software "to design complex parts for a car". An electronics company may develop software "for complex PCB design". A record label, a production music library, etc. may develop software "to create music". Even Disney, widely hated for its lobbying attacks on the public domain, has released the OpenSubdiv code library for CGI animation in order to interoperate with CGI tools made by and for other studios. Involving the public in improving these processes helps each such company turn a profit.
Games, not so much. The only companies that make profitable use of games are esports leagues, and as I understand it, one of the big draws of esports is use (under license) of proprietary games with which viewers are already familiar.
If they hadn't put DRM malware on CDs I wouldn't have boycotted them (still do).
The Sony Music DRM malware incident was not only with a different part of Sony but also in 2005, which is fourteen years ago. When should a boycott end? For example, should a boycott end once the people responsible for a bad decision are no longer with the company? Or should people, say, boycott Red Hat in 2019 because of parent company IBM's actions in the 1930s?
Picking up gift cards for cash isn't that hard.
That might work with Amazon, iTunes, Google Play, Netflix, and certain other household-name online merchants. It's a bit harder with independent online merchants not quite big enough to have a nationwide gift card distribution infrastructure, unless you're willing to pay 10 percent extra for (say) a Visa gift card that you can use anywhere.
I too use Alt+Tab to switch keyboard focus between applications, be they maximized or not. But at least for me, keeping the unfocused application at least partly visible provides a visuospatial cue that improves my thought process, reducing the possibility of doorway amnesia.
Longer posts are what Pastebin, TwitLonger, GitHub Gist, and your own blog are made for. Post the whole thing elsewhere, and summarize to Twitter with a link.
What bank do you use that doesn't offer protection against fraudulent charges to its debit card customers? Last I checked, the Electronic Funds Transfer Act (EFTA) required banks in the United States to limit the cardholder's liability for fraud to $50 or so.
Walmart often has a six pack of 500 mL bottles of Pepsi products for $3.00. Sometimes they go on sale for $2.50. Or you can buy the 2 L bottles.
For a while, the transaction fee on Bitcoin was even higher than what Visa and Mastercard are planning on charging.
Reject cashless business as much as you can.
Except in a lot of cases, you can't. If the local grocery store stops carrying or hides your favorite brand of sandwich cookies, for instance, you'll probably have to resort to buying them from Amazon. Likewise with unlocked phones or other electronic products that no brick and mortar store within cycling distance carries. Would you find it practical to routinely pay cash for Amazon gift cards?
Let me know when gasoline pumps add bank note acceptors to allow payment outside.
In the USA, a debit card used with a PIN goes through the EFT network (Maestro for MasterCard or Interlink for Visa), not the credit card network. The ACH fee for an EFT payment is close to the 30 cent transaction fee for a credit card payment, but EFT generally imposes no percentage of the total. This is why many brick and mortar merchants automatically select EFT when a debit card is inserted, and some offer cash back because there's no fee to increase the total.
If an act is prohibited by all existing providers' contracts, and regulations make it impractical to start a new provider, then it's de facto illegal because of said regulations.
Why caffeinate yourself with a $5 Starbucks coffee when you can buy a 500 mL bottle of Mtn Dew for 50 cents?