On the other hand, whatever faint hope we had of Skype becoming interoperable with any other system -- SIP in particular -- has basically been dashed. Microsoft is not exactly known for a commitment to interoperability, and I doubt that things will be any different with Skype.
For me, freedom is choice. The right to make decisions without ideological pressure. The right to choose closed-source, non-free software if it suits me. The right to honestly evaluate non-free against free, without having to insist that free is always better. Freedom means you can choose Windows and install Flash without being some kind of traitor. Freedom means you can develop commercial software then sell it. Freedom has nothing whatsoever to do with the Free Software Foundation.
Yes, and that is a perfectly fine, perfectly legitimate interpretation of freedom -- the freedom to forfeit certain rights in exchange for software. However, the question was why we should feel sympathy for people who forfeit those rights, and then worry about "losing" them; the answer is that we should not. Unfortunately, most free software users are not coming from the, "I am using this software because I do not want to forfeit my rights just to be able to use a computer," nor are they coming from the, "This system is technically superior" point of view; they just want to be "hip" and use something that is "not mainstream."
Unfortunately, most GNU/Linux users are not interested in freedom, they just want a system that is not Windows. I see plenty of GNU/Linux users running Adobe Flash, Skype, Chrome, Matlab, and various other proprietary software. I have also seen plenty of GNU/Linux users switching to Mac OS X, and still thinking they are part of some elite "doesn't use Windows" club. There are also a lot of GNU/Linux users who say I am being unreasonable by refusing to install the Flash plugin, or who give me a weird look when I say, "I read the license and there is no way I am going to agree to that" -- these same people have not actually read the GPL or BSD license.
Notice that nobody took her domain from her, and her complaint is about a system that she does not control and which is not obligated to maintain her username. Tumblr is not a utility or a vital service, and treating a Tumblr user name like it is your property is just silly.
To put it another way: my username on my high school's servers was recently deactivated, probably since it has been several years since I was a student there. Would it be reasonable to complain about having lost that username?
how does one link one's own services to the services that people actually use?
With RSS? Or perhaps by sending people a link (that is, the kind that the web itself was built on)? Really, this is a problem that was solved a long time ago (perhaps everyone has forgotten the solution).
...and? Either it is time to write a program that does that, or to move to a system that is more open and more easily interoperates with other systems.
what if the service operator simply shuts down their business?
Which, as it turns out, has happened numerous times so far. AOL home pages, Geocities, and countless smaller systems have just vanished.
If having your online name be under your control is that important to you, then your online name needs to actually be under your control: buy your own domain, and manage your own services.
So what is the complaint, exactly? If it is about Tumblr...then so what? She has her own domain, and she could run her own microblogging system on her own domain if she wanted to.
Uh, if keeping your online identity is that important to you, then why not just buy your own domain?
What, did you think that Facebook or Twitter were obligated to keep your username intact? If you were on my system, would I be obligated to keep your username and account intact (politeness aside)?
There are still discussions on technical topics, and trolls are relatively tame in those newsgroups. Usenet nodes almost universally use spam filters now, which helps a lot. Usenet is not dead and there is no reason to refer to it in the past tense.
what are you doing that you do not want law enforcement to know?
Living my life. I do not want law enforcement agencies knowing what I do over the course of a day. Who knows what sort of surprise laws, bizarre readings of the law, or overzealous cops and prosecutors one can wind up facing? Better safe than sorry; the point of the 4th amendment, like the rest of the bill of rights, is to protect us from tyranny, and we need that sort of protection these days.
You don't have to go to a foreign country to hear police officers saying those sorts of things. I have heard law enforcement officials at various levels of government here in the United States complaining about people knowing and exercising their rights, and demanding more power to undermine and counter those rights.
Back when I was playing video games, TA was without a doubt one of my favorites, and I liked Spring when that came out (explosions that deform the terrain? Awesome). I was also a fan of Earth: 2150 for the simple reason that you could have units that dug trenches and built bridges, and you could bomb out the bridges, which was something that more popular RTS games did not have (at least as far as I was aware).
Now that Osama bin Laden is dead, we are left...defending our rights from exactly the same threat we faced before. Glad that killing the guy accomplished so much.
Can someone explain to me why someone who is monitoring sufficient backbones and running sufficient Tor nodes himself can't just watch a packet stream being bounced between Tor nodes?
This is one of many known attacks on Tor, and is the reason why as many people as possible should be running Tor relays, entry nodes, and exit nodes. This is also why Tor circuits are periodically changed by the client. In general, though, it is possible for someone who can monitor a large enough fraction of the Tor network to break the anonymity of the system, even if they cannot control the nodes themselves.
Printers? Video surveillance? HVAC? Electric meters? Why are these things using WiFi, when they rarely move and are always plugged into an external power source?
I wish more schools would take risks like this to encourage students to do create businesses.
I wish schools would remember that the point is to educate students, and that unless these apps were "CS 101 Homework Assignment #1" they were a waste of academic resources. Imagine what would happen if students were encouraged to create actual innovations, to do ground-breaking research, or to write programs that actually solve real-life problems. Or perhaps giving those students a better background in the theory of computation, so they can work on deep mathematics problems that have broad implications. Or even just teaching them other techniques of programming, programming language design, etc.
There are plenty things we would really benefit from having our computers do, and I assure you that sending hotness points between Facebook users is not one of them.
Spending 12 months working on a ground-breaking intelligent system that can improve the energy efficiency of buildings, then spending your time convincing people to pay you boatloads of money for it.
Spending 3 weeks writing a Facebook app, then 3 hours telling a few college students about it, and watching as millions of people use it and money starts coming your way.
If what you want to do is make quick and easy money, and you do not really care about learning much in the process, your choice is pretty clear. On the other hand, if you think that taking on a challenging problem that will require you to spend late nights reading research papers is more "pure" and is a better use of your time, then you should be in graduate school. If you desperately crave to sell your technology but cannot stomach the idea of working on idiotic apps that require no real effort, then you belong at a startup, assuming you can deal with venture capitalists and legal minefields.
Slashdot Mirror
I would be more comfortable using Skype if it came with a libre license and could interoperate with other systems (SIP anyone?).
On the other hand, whatever faint hope we had of Skype becoming interoperable with any other system -- SIP in particular -- has basically been dashed. Microsoft is not exactly known for a commitment to interoperability, and I doubt that things will be any different with Skype.
For me, freedom is choice. The right to make decisions without ideological pressure. The right to choose closed-source, non-free software if it suits me. The right to honestly evaluate non-free against free, without having to insist that free is always better. Freedom means you can choose Windows and install Flash without being some kind of traitor. Freedom means you can develop commercial software then sell it. Freedom has nothing whatsoever to do with the Free Software Foundation.
Yes, and that is a perfectly fine, perfectly legitimate interpretation of freedom -- the freedom to forfeit certain rights in exchange for software. However, the question was why we should feel sympathy for people who forfeit those rights, and then worry about "losing" them; the answer is that we should not. Unfortunately, most free software users are not coming from the, "I am using this software because I do not want to forfeit my rights just to be able to use a computer," nor are they coming from the, "This system is technically superior" point of view; they just want to be "hip" and use something that is "not mainstream."
Unfortunately, most GNU/Linux users are not interested in freedom, they just want a system that is not Windows. I see plenty of GNU/Linux users running Adobe Flash, Skype, Chrome, Matlab, and various other proprietary software. I have also seen plenty of GNU/Linux users switching to Mac OS X, and still thinking they are part of some elite "doesn't use Windows" club. There are also a lot of GNU/Linux users who say I am being unreasonable by refusing to install the Flash plugin, or who give me a weird look when I say, "I read the license and there is no way I am going to agree to that" -- these same people have not actually read the GPL or BSD license.
Notice that nobody took her domain from her, and her complaint is about a system that she does not control and which is not obligated to maintain her username. Tumblr is not a utility or a vital service, and treating a Tumblr user name like it is your property is just silly.
To put it another way: my username on my high school's servers was recently deactivated, probably since it has been several years since I was a student there. Would it be reasonable to complain about having lost that username?
how does one link one's own services to the services that people actually use?
With RSS? Or perhaps by sending people a link (that is, the kind that the web itself was built on)? Really, this is a problem that was solved a long time ago (perhaps everyone has forgotten the solution).
...and? Either it is time to write a program that does that, or to move to a system that is more open and more easily interoperates with other systems.
what if the service operator simply shuts down their business?
Which, as it turns out, has happened numerous times so far. AOL home pages, Geocities, and countless smaller systems have just vanished.
If having your online name be under your control is that important to you, then your online name needs to actually be under your control: buy your own domain, and manage your own services.
So what is the complaint, exactly? If it is about Tumblr...then so what? She has her own domain, and she could run her own microblogging system on her own domain if she wanted to.
Best to buy a domain name for yourself.
Exactly: if you need an online identity that you control, buy your own domain. It is not terribly hard to do, and it is not terribly expensive.
Sounds like identity theft to me...
Uh, if keeping your online identity is that important to you, then why not just buy your own domain?
What, did you think that Facebook or Twitter were obligated to keep your username intact? If you were on my system, would I be obligated to keep your username and account intact (politeness aside)?
There are still discussions on technical topics, and trolls are relatively tame in those newsgroups. Usenet nodes almost universally use spam filters now, which helps a lot. Usenet is not dead and there is no reason to refer to it in the past tense.
what are you doing that you do not want law enforcement to know?
Living my life. I do not want law enforcement agencies knowing what I do over the course of a day. Who knows what sort of surprise laws, bizarre readings of the law, or overzealous cops and prosecutors one can wind up facing? Better safe than sorry; the point of the 4th amendment, like the rest of the bill of rights, is to protect us from tyranny, and we need that sort of protection these days.
You don't have to go to a foreign country to hear police officers saying those sorts of things. I have heard law enforcement officials at various levels of government here in the United States complaining about people knowing and exercising their rights, and demanding more power to undermine and counter those rights.
Back when I was playing video games, TA was without a doubt one of my favorites, and I liked Spring when that came out (explosions that deform the terrain? Awesome). I was also a fan of Earth: 2150 for the simple reason that you could have units that dug trenches and built bridges, and you could bomb out the bridges, which was something that more popular RTS games did not have (at least as far as I was aware).
Now that Osama bin Laden is dead, we are left...defending our rights from exactly the same threat we faced before. Glad that killing the guy accomplished so much.
People still talk about that game? Now this brings back memories...
Anonymous is a bunch of script kiddies, not "hackers" and certainly not hackers.
To date, not a single case has been bought against anyone running a tor exit node.
Can someone explain to me why someone who is monitoring sufficient backbones and running sufficient Tor nodes himself can't just watch a packet stream being bounced between Tor nodes?
This is one of many known attacks on Tor, and is the reason why as many people as possible should be running Tor relays, entry nodes, and exit nodes. This is also why Tor circuits are periodically changed by the client. In general, though, it is possible for someone who can monitor a large enough fraction of the Tor network to break the anonymity of the system, even if they cannot control the nodes themselves.
Marijuana makes my brain bigger.
Printers? Video surveillance? HVAC? Electric meters? Why are these things using WiFi, when they rarely move and are always plugged into an external power source?
I wish more schools would take risks like this to encourage students to do create businesses.
I wish schools would remember that the point is to educate students, and that unless these apps were "CS 101 Homework Assignment #1" they were a waste of academic resources. Imagine what would happen if students were encouraged to create actual innovations, to do ground-breaking research, or to write programs that actually solve real-life problems. Or perhaps giving those students a better background in the theory of computation, so they can work on deep mathematics problems that have broad implications. Or even just teaching them other techniques of programming, programming language design, etc.
There are plenty things we would really benefit from having our computers do, and I assure you that sending hotness points between Facebook users is not one of them.
If what you want to do is make quick and easy money, and you do not really care about learning much in the process, your choice is pretty clear. On the other hand, if you think that taking on a challenging problem that will require you to spend late nights reading research papers is more "pure" and is a better use of your time, then you should be in graduate school. If you desperately crave to sell your technology but cannot stomach the idea of working on idiotic apps that require no real effort, then you belong at a startup, assuming you can deal with venture capitalists and legal minefields.