infosoldier.com

by Eric S. Raymond

Excerpt:

Linux is subversive. Who would have thought even five years ago (1991) that a world-class operating system could coalesce as if by magic out of part-time hacking by several thousand developers scattered all over the planet, connected only by the tenuous strands of the Internet?

Certainly not I. By the time Linux swam onto my radar screen in early 1993, I had already been involved in Unix and open-source development for ten years. I was one of the first GNU contributors in the mid-1980s. I had released a good deal of open-source software onto the net, developing or co-developing several programs (nethack, Emacs's VC and GUD modes, xlife, and others) that are still in wide use today. I thought I knew how it was done.

Linux overturned much of what I thought I knew. I had been preaching the Unix gospel of small tools, rapid prototyping and evolutionary programming for years. But I also believed there was a certain critical complexity above which a more centralized, a priori approach was required. I believed that the most important software (operating systems and really large tools like the Emacs programming editor) needed to be built like cathedrals, carefully crafted by individual wizards or small bands of mages working in splendid isolation, with no beta to be released before its time.

Linus Torvalds's style of development—release early and often, delegate everything you can, be open to the point of promiscuity—came as a surprise. No quiet, reverent cathedral-building here—rather, the Linux community seemed to resemble a great babbling bazaar of differing agendas and approaches (aptly symbolized by the Linux archive sites, who'd take submissions from anyone) out of which a coherent and stable system could seemingly emerge only by a succession of miracles.

by JOEL SALATIN

Everything I want to do is illegal. As if a highly bureaucratic regulatory system was not already in place, 9/11 fueled renewed acceleration to eliminate freedom from the countryside. Every time a letter arrives in the mail from a federal or state agriculture department my heart jumps like I just got sent to the principal’s office.

And it doesn’t stop with agriculture bureaucrats. It includes all sorts of government agencies, from zoning, to taxing, to food inspectors. These agencies are the ultimate extension of a disconnected, Greco-Roman, Western, egocentric, compartmentalized, reductionist, fragmented, linear thought process.

Por Carlos Sánchez Almeida

Del mismo modo, las libertades formales que reivindicamos en el mundo real y en Internet, en la calle real y en la calle virtual, se quedan en nada al cruzar los muros de las empresas. La situación que he explicado con respecto a la expoliación del patrimonio intelectual de los obreros informáticos, se repite en todos los restantes derechos que pomposamente reconoce nuestra Constitución.

La libertad de expresión y el derecho a la intimidad se ponen permanentemente en cuestión. Intenten criticar a su empresa, con nombre y apellidos, desde un blog. Intenten decir lo que verdaderamente piensan de sus jefes a través de un correo electrónico. Intenten utilizar un programa de cifrado en el ordenador de su empresa.

Como en tantas otras ocasiones, olvidar la historia nos condena a repetirla. Para ver cuales serán las luchas del futuro hay que mirar hacia el pasado: los derechos sociales no se consiguen agachando la cabeza, ni refugiándonos en paraísos artificiales. Sólo se consiguen tomando conciencia de la situación de alienación.

En las luchas sociales de los dos últimos siglos, la difusión de las ideas a pie de calle no fue obra de intelectuales, abogados, escritores ni periodistas. Fueron obreros industriales, linotipistas, tipógrafos, los que se mancharon los dedos con la tinta revolucionaria. Ellos fueron la infantería de choque, el ejército de las ideas que cambiaron el mundo.

Hoy como ayer. Los programadores son los tipógrafos del siglo XXI. En ellos está la clave: pueden decidir ser simples siervos, o tomar conciencia de su papel creador. Porque en sus manos, en el código que programen sus manos, puede residir un día la libertad de todos nosotros.

Y la libertad es de aquel que posee su propio código.

WASHINGTON, Aug. 24 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The U.S. Department of Labor today announced grants to 22 states and Puerto Rico totaling $6,008,840 to improve their unemployment insurance (UI) information technology security.

"Unemployment insurance plays a critical role in helping workers persevere through tough times," said Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao. "This funding will boost states' efforts to secure UI systems against fraud and ensure that those in need receive assistance."

Today's awards will promote states' use of the National Institute of Standards and Technology's guidelines to identify security weaknesses in UI systems and achieve security certification and accreditation. Funding also will be used to correct specific security concerns identified through Federal Information Security Management Act audits conducted by the Office of Inspector General in several states.

By Bobbie Johnson, technology correspondent, Guardian Unlimited, Saturday August 25 2007

Operating under the sign of a Jolly Roger, The Pirate Bay website hopes to evoke a buccaneer spirit: swashbuckling swordsmen, or perhaps the pirate radio stations of the 1960s. But as the internet's number one destination for illegal downloads, it has raised the ­hackles of the entertainment industry and elevated its founders to the top of Hollywood's most wanted list.

With more than two million visitors every day, The Pirate Bay has become one of the sharpest thorns in the side of the media business. Its controversial success has caused havoc in the music, TV and film industries.

Current top downloads include The Bourne Ultimatum, Die Hard 4.0 and Knocked Up — all showing in British cinemas, but available to watch on a computer screen for those willing to take the risk.

The three-year campaign to bring down the website is almost an epic of Hollywood proportions, sprinkled with high-flying lawyers and accusations of political extremism. And yet, so far, the chase has failed to bring the pirates down.

Despite their high profile, however, the men behind The Pirate Bay are not part of an organised crime syndicate. Instead, they are an unlikely trio of Swedish computer geeks who began their war with the media from a small room in Stockholm.

The group, who spoke exclusively to the Guardian...

By PAM BELLUCK - Published: November 14, 2004

BOSTON — If blue states care less about moral values, why are divorce rates so low in the bluest of the blue states? It's a question that intrigues conservatives, as much as it emboldens liberals.

As researchers have noted, the areas of the country where divorce rates are highest are also frequently the areas where many conservative Christians live.

Kentucky, Mississippi and Arkansas, for example, voted overwhelmingly for constitutional amendments to ban gay marriage. But they had three of the highest divorce rates in 2003, based on figures from the Census Bureau and the National Center for Health Statistics.

The lowest divorce rates are largely in the blue states: the Northeast and the upper Midwest. And the state with the lowest divorce rate was Massachusetts, home to John Kerry, the Kennedys and same-sex marriage.

A company that tracked thousands of users sharing anime via BitTorrent has lost its legal battle to force an ISP to reveal its customer’s details. The company would’ve used the information to demand $3,500 in compensation from each person they tracked - a plan which now lies in ruins.

Written by enigmax on August 25, 2007