More background on the case from same source
on
Usenet Gag Order
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· Score: 2
Take a look at more of the case background, from the same source. Lots of accusations of harassment and retaliation. This part is particularly nasty:
At this point, I sent an e-mail to the Boeing Employees' Credit Union HR department. [name deleted for Slashdot post] was under contract to them for IT services. I pointed out [name deleted for Slashdot post] used their time and resources to make defamatory remarks that I sodomized my step-son, and to make a post comparing the size of [name deleted for Slashdot post] anal orifice before and after being sodomized by a priest. They terminated his contract.
Anthea Kerrison was more than just happening to read the newsgroup, she was a major factor in the start of the flamewars. Something about lift tickets, I haven't figured it out. (I wish someone would).
'Two Buddha' was a nickname, not anonymous
on
Usenet Gag Order
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· Score: 2
He wasn't anonymous. "Two Buddha" was just a nickname he used to sign the posts, his real name was always in the From: line. See Retiring the Buddha
Remember, EFF started TRUSTe, so it was coming from someone connected to TRUSTe's attorneys.
You can go read it all in the fight-censorship archives. It wasn't even close to libel, a REAL LAWYER (tm) spoke up and confirmed that. That wasn't e-mail, it was a public posting. The discussion said roughly what is going on right now. I didn't write a treatise, because it would be too long. Anything else?
Earlier this year, TRUSTe received a complaint about Microsoft (MSFT: news, msgs), another member, that the software company was collecting consumers' unique personal IDs over the Internet without disclosing it to consumers. TRUSTe requested an audit of Microsoft's privacy procedures, and Microsoft refused.
TRUSTe eventually took the position that it had no authority to enforce an audit, Larsen said -- an action that shook his company's faith in self-regulation and convinced him that such voluntary initiatives were self-serving to private industry.
"(TRUSTe) took no action whatsoever to protect and reassure consumers," he said. "That was a major sign to us." ... But according to Larsen, self-regulation may become self-defeating.
"The real goal of self-regulation has been to protect the industry from regulations," he said. But by continuing to fail consumers, he added, they have "increased the probability that regulation will happen."
Ah, how far Stanton has come! Two years ago, he was threatening me with TRUSTe's attorneys:
"You're stepping very close to defamation, Mr. Finkelstein, and may have even crossed the line.
EFF wouldn't do anything about it, but I cannot vouch for the patience of the TRUSTe organization's attorneys. Proceed with caution, eh?"...
"Again, please take this warning seriously. You are knowingly or negligently making provably false statements about TRUSTe with intent to harm their reputation. That's libel. You can get sued for that. Don't go there. TRUSTe's legal resources are better spent making sure participant compies adhere to their contracts, and I'm sure you have better things to do with your time & money."
Stanton McCandlish, Program Director, Electronic Frontier Foundation, on the fight-censorship list, Mon, 11 Aug 1997
I never did get a public apology, even after TRUSTe's failure.
038-097-34-64-242-335-51-377-183-168 Cryptonomicon This is a truly strange deception 038-097-34-64-380-330-115-289-273-189-56 Cryptonomicon funky protagonists are destined to want appendices 068-486-42-23-87-434-10-468-151-345-150-494-376-41 5-426 Between Silk and Cyanide : A Codemaker's War 1941-1945 He had great marks for the easiest execution of enemy explosions 038-549-53-15-1-193-121-29-109-66-28-160-106 The Code Book : The Evolution of Secrecy from Mary, Queen of Scots to Quantum Cryptography People need the bestselling conflict in the information age 047-111-70-99-24-21-25-12-53-22-56-8 Applied Cryptography : Protocols, Algorithms, and Source Code in C The suitable specialist offers steps for secure source
This phrase was the most telling to me. Why is he calling asking some people for their opinions "censorship"? Jane's was under no pressure to do anything, and it is to their credit that they listened to commentators who were far more informed than their original article. As a group, this might not have been the very best reviewers, but it was certainly far better than what they had at the start. Yet Cringely seems to find this practice very threatening. I must say, it's another proof to me that the standard journalist simply quotes others of the punditocracry, and finds any real fact-checkng an extremely scary thing.
I agree with what you write, but still I can't help thinking there existed a way to do more without sacrificing people to political demands. I'll admit I can't come up with much, but naively one would think that the vast blacklistings would generate some support structure somewhere. Maybe I'm wrong, since it doesn't seem to have gone that way, and so that's a very sad commentary.
Letters like that one are wonderful. But I can't help thinking that they'll just be pegged as organizations with scores to settle. I wish there was some public support and backing comparable to the widespread PR and propaganda done by the censorware companies.
A $20 million donation to the Laboratory of Computer Science made by Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates for the construction of a building in his name has been received by MIT students with mixed reactions.
... Joseph T. Foley G said that the donation was "the funniest damn thing," and that Microsoft products are laden with "creeping featurisms." Microsoft products contain too many unnecessary features that introduce bugs, Foley said. His largest complaint was that the software "is not worth the money." ... One individual suggested that the plaque bearing Bill Gates' name be changed to read `Linus Torvaldis.' Torvaldis is the developer of the Linux operating system , a free alternative to Windows.
Oh well, I started talking about this stuff in 1995, and much of what I said is coming true. Nowadays I just console myself about the cocktail-party way of doing things.
How many people, when confronted by the latest outrage from the supposed forces of blasphemy and decay, are going to take the time to search out a fairly obscure website and render an informed opinion?
- The Boston Lunatic
NEEDED to assign customer names to numbers?
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DSL & Privacy
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Fastpoint's Arnold said that the company wrote a script to assign names to the numbers to prove to ARIN that the company's addresses were in use by actual customers.
Maybe there is sense to this, but it seems very odd to me. If there are N addresses in use, there is no need to have each showing the customer's name to the world. And mapping any single address to a customer name doesn't establish how many are being used. It sounds like someone found a horribly kludged way to do a usage report
For some discussion of Microsoft's PR connection to these authors, see
Microsoft's questionable research papers
An excerpt:
Now, here's the rub. The McKenzie/Shugart white paper and forthcoming Liebowitz/Margolis book are both being published by the Oakland, Calif., public-policy group, The Independent Institute.
The Independent Institute, says its tag line is a "nonprofit, nonpoliticized, scholarly public policy research and education organization." But, wait: there's more. According to Liebowitz, professor of managerial economics for the University of Texas at Dallas, The Independent Institute's public relations agency is Edelman PR Worldwide. One of Edelman's biggest public affairs clients is Microsoft.
Earlier this year, Edelman was discovered to be at the heart of a public-image makeover campaign designed to improve Microsoft's reputation in the face of growing federal, state and private legal battles. According to The Los Angeles Times, which originally broke the story on the Edelman plan, Edelman had proposed making available to reporters "unbiased" users and industry experts, without identifying their connections to Microsoft or the agency. Microsoft officials claimed that these kind of misrepresentations were not part of the plan.
In spite of Liebowitz's claims that Edelman represents The Independent Institute, a spokesman for the group said he was "not sure" whether Edelman was representing the Institute.
You might hear comments from time to time about studies showing Dvorak is "no better than QWERTY," or words to that effect. All such comments that I've heard seem to echo an article, "The Fable of the Keys," by S. J. Liebowitz and Stephen E. Margolis, published in the Journal of Law & Economics, vol. XXXIII (April 1990).
Note the word "economics." Liebowitz and Margolis are economists opposed to an "excessive inertia" theory, for which OWERTY is often cited as an example. Rather than try to prove their point with a generally valid argument, they simply attack Dvorak as a dubious replacement for QWERTY. As the article's last footnote explains, there are a number of other possible reasons for Dvorak's failure to replace QWERTY, besides a perceived lack of value. The article ignores those reasons, however, and perpetrates that false perception in a nicely self-fulfilling way.
The argument involves perception in more ways than one. If you read the article carefully, you will find that it seems to claim more than it actually does claim, especially after its implications get paraphrased a few times in conversation. Because their effect is just as powerful, I will address its implications as if they were clearly stated claims
And then goes on to thoroughly examine and refute the cited points
The article doesn't consider a key aspect of the Linux success - all the people who are interested in tweeking and playing with modifying it, and so form a base of dedication and support. WHY are their such efforts at porting as he describes? Both because it's free (money sense) AND free (open source sense). Thus, there's no barrier for dedicated hobbyists to go wild, seeing if they can port Linux to everything from their wristwatches to their refrigerators,
Could Solaris have done this? Yes, perhaps, at the start. But I don't think it could catch up now because there isn't the same sort of "fan" base for it. (no offense meant to any Solaris fans in the audience)
If you can do it in a legitimate way, I highly recommend attaching a network sniffer to a LAN and just looking at the contents of packets as they go by. This is not an inducement to commit any crime, get permission or use your personal LAN. But if the links are not encrypted, it's an eye-opening experience.
And if your job is to worry about security or criminality, it'll be shocking to you.
- Seth Finkelstein
Banned Books Week should be an on-line issue
on
Banned Books Week
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· Score: 2
There are so many opportunities and ways to relate it to the Internet. So much could be done in terms of publicity and events. Oh well, too late for anything now, anyway I have a cocktail party to consider.
Slashdot Mirror
Anthea Kerrison was more than just happening to read the newsgroup, she was a major factor in the start of the flamewars. Something about lift tickets, I haven't figured it out. (I wish someone would).
He wasn't anonymous. "Two Buddha" was just a nickname he used to sign the posts, his real name was always in the From: line. See Retiring the Buddha
Agreed. It makes me wish I ran a mailing list, so I could forward it.
You can go read it all in the fight-censorship archives. It wasn't even close to libel, a REAL LAWYER (tm) spoke up and confirmed that. That wasn't e-mail, it was a public posting. The discussion said roughly what is going on right now. I didn't write a treatise, because it would be too long. Anything else?
038-097-34-64-242-335-51-377-183-1681 5-426
Cryptonomicon
This is a truly strange deception
038-097-34-64-380-330-115-289-273-189-56
Cryptonomicon
funky protagonists are destined to want appendices
068-486-42-23-87-434-10-468-151-345-150-494-376-4
Between Silk and Cyanide : A Codemaker's War 1941-1945
He had great marks for the easiest execution of enemy explosions
038-549-53-15-1-193-121-29-109-66-28-160-106
The Code Book : The Evolution of Secrecy from Mary, Queen of Scots to Quantum Cryptography
People need the bestselling conflict in the information age
047-111-70-99-24-21-25-12-53-22-56-8
Applied Cryptography : Protocols, Algorithms, and Source Code in C
The suitable specialist offers steps for secure source
242: this
335: is
51: (a
377: truly
183: strange
168: deception.
380: funky
330: protagonists
115: are
289: destined
273: to
189: want
56: appendices)
More in a few minutes!
- Seth Finkelstein
- The Boston Lunatic
Project I-Campus: MIT-Microsoft alliance
including the
MIT Press Release
- Seth Finkelstein
- The Boston Lunatic
Students Mixed on Prospect Of Building Named for Gates
- Seth Finkelstein
Another good article along these lines is the humor (so far) piece Esther Dyson announces ratings partnership with Vatican (collected as part of a page I had of Freedom of Expression Satire and Humor)
Oh well, I started talking about this stuff in 1995 , and much of what I said is coming true. Nowadays I just console myself about the cocktail-party way of doing things.
- The Boston Lunatic
- The Boston Lunatic
- The Boston Lunatic
- The Boston Lunatic
Microsoft's questionable research papers
An excerpt:
-- Seth Finkelstein
It starts out:
And then goes on to thoroughly examine and refute the cited points- Seth Finkelstein
Could Solaris have done this? Yes, perhaps, at the start. But I don't think it could catch up now because there isn't the same sort of "fan" base for it. (no offense meant to any Solaris fans in the audience)
- Seth Finkelstein
And if your job is to worry about security or criminality, it'll be shocking to you.
- Seth Finkelstein
Oh well, too late for anything now, anyway I have a cocktail party to consider.
- The Boston Lunatic