On Hacktivism 246
z84976 writes "Oxblood Ruffin, of cDc fame, has produced a nice article discussing various aspects of hactivism and some of the approaches used by their own Hacktivismo group in supporting freedom (of thought, mainly) on the internet. Check it out over at The Register when you get a chance."
Re:"Online Privacy" (Score:0, Interesting)
Nothing New (Score:2, Interesting)
This article tells us of some of the horrible things going on in the world and all, but it is nothing we didn't know was going on.
Hackers collaborate over the web to fight oppression and close mindedness!
Sound at all like a certain upstart OS?
I really did like this article, don't get me wrong but it is very lite on the important information like what they are actually doing about it. I doubt making it easier for a Chinese person to rip music off of the internet is going to bring them to the enlightened western thinking necessary to invoke social change.
What apps are you creating to further this change, where can I get the source (since you sited open source as being the obvious choice among hacktivist coders)? What can I do to help? This article, while being interesting, served no real purpose.
Re:Ummm... (Score:2, Interesting)
Just because a nation adopts communism as their economic model does not make them an enemy of the US, of the world, or of any person or ideology. Communism is an interesting economic structure which has good points and bad points. Capitalism is another interesting economic structure which also has good points and bad points. Together a lot of their good points will overshadow the others bad points . . . like maybe there is some optimal mix of the two.
Of course I'm an AC, what with McCarthy still very much alive in some powerful people . . .
Does anyone think that the Chineese really want to continue to annex land? If so, then we need to bring some diplomatic efforts to try to resolve the situation. Sharing of technology should be viewed as a Good Thing, as we are increasingly a global society. Otherwise we should be bringing diplomatic efforts to them in the areas of space exploration, global resource management (they are a huge chunk of land), and environmentally sound industrial practices. Anyone who thinks that we can't learn from each other is simply ignorant, or truly stupid.
This is probably Offtopic -1; Flaimbait -1; Troll -1; Treasonous -10
Live free or die
Open source Food (Score:4, Interesting)
I have two things to say about this article.
1) It was VERY VERY long2) I really liked the analogy of OSS to Resturants.
Think about it. The majority of people never think twice about never seeing the ingrediants, but there are some who feel "I'm putting this stuff in my system, I have the right to know what's in it!". Some even have good reasons like peanut reactions and so forth.
The resturant will say "If we tell you how we made it, we will lose business". I think that's nonscence personally. Ten to one, I'm not going to be able to cook that by myself anyway, and I'm just going to come back to the restaurant to get it donecorrectly. Plus if I do make it and feed it to all my friends and they say "where did you get that recipie?" and I tell them, don't you think they are going to go check out the menu for themselfs?
And finally, what if the majority of the people eating at your restaurant wanted the food cooked a different way, but didn't have any other choice on the menu? They are going to take those ingrediants and make the food better. If the cook was smart enough, he might be able to learn from what the other cook did, and make his own product better!
Am I making my analogy clear here, or is this just gibberish?
Free Information (Score:3, Interesting)
I've heard enough of both sides on the P2P debate over music trading to understand the premise behind both sides and can even see their respective points. This only means to me, that eventually, using my thoughts above that music will be changed forever and "profit" from "selling" your music will be something totally different than we have now and probably something we will not see coming. In the same way, enough people want free information, that I believe that everyone will eventually have access due to the efforts of a small number who fight to make the holes in the walls larger.
Re:Article read better with special hat (Score:3, Interesting)
Rather, it's more like the oft-spoken-of boiling frog - if privacy is taken away in tiny little increments, then before long it will be compromised in a big way without any substantial opposition.
I'm not saying that we should all wear tinfoil hats - but constantly recognizing (and opposing, where necessary) the gradual erosion of our right to privacy and governmental abuse of information is our only defense against being... boiled alive.
The government wants to know more and more about us these days - the excuse du jour is homeland security and counter-terrorism. Throw in stopping child-porn and just about any legislator will support any bill that enables more monitoring of citizens.
Better to be watchful and vocal - without screaming that the sky is falling - than to sit quietly, watching the privacy we enjoy now disappear for our children.
Re:Ummm... (Score:3, Interesting)
I spoke to a friend who spent some time travelling around Laos. Apparently the system's worked pretty well for them. They've got better education and nutrition now, access to healthcare, and at least some hope of sending their children on to something beyond a subsistence-level existence in a small village. And when you're operating on that scale, I really can't see how capitalism could be argued to be that much better.
Empirical evidence would suggest, however, that communism hasn't worked out terribly well for the long term in larger implementations.
back in 1995 (Score:5, Interesting)
My argument was that the Chinese and other repressive governments would be sure to set up national proxies with filtering that blocked out sites the government didn't want people to see and kept track of what people were accessing.
Both Negroponte and Barlow told me that was impossible and would never happen. They also pointed out that the TCP/IP is designed to route around obstacles.
Well, I've been proven right (so why am I not running Media Lab or flying around the world giving speeches?). China and other countries (Singapore, etc.) have in fact put in national proxies and are blocking thousands of sites, tracking people's usage, and putting people in jail.
On the other hand, I think that there is a hope that Barlow and Negroponte will eventually turn out to be right in the end, as hackers and other renegades put in alternative links via satellite and other means, which bypass these government blockades.
If enough of that happens, the blockades will come down, since they won't be useful any longer.
But I think there will be a long hard struggle befoe that happens.
Re:Open source Food (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Open source Food (Score:2, Interesting)
Can somebody explain this? (Score:3, Interesting)
Now let's get a piece of that article linked above...
What's this about? Are they friend of foe??? And lastly, the thread was modded -1, offtopic. Evidently somebody didn't want us to see that....
josh crawley
Thoreau on Activism vs. Civil Disobedience (Score:5, Interesting)
So, in my mind, hacking a web page can never really be justified--no matter what the cause is. On the other hand, refusing to obey government censorship (in places like China) by hacking through their censors is, in my mind, is a very noble thing.
Wrong (Score:2, Interesting)
So yes, if you were being monitored by the police and suspected of a crime, and you were sent an encrypted message, you might forgive the police for trying to decode it.
That said, there is a lot about the RIP bill that is controversial. But compared to the Patriot Bill over in the US, it's pretty tame; warrants are still needed here for surveilence.