Pirates, Web 2.0, and Hundred Dollar Laptop 339
Update on the One Laptop per Child Project. dominique_cimafranca writes "Ethan Zuckerman gives a report on his visit to the headquarters of the One Laptop per Child project. Some details on practical design considerations such as the hinge, the rabbit ears, and why the hand crank was ultimately left out (apparently, Kofi Annan broke the crank on a prototype). Several pictures, and a look at the motherboard of the OLPC laptop."
TOR Calls Out Torvalds, Stallman on Web 2.0. theodp writes "In an unusual defense of partner CMP's trademarking of Web 2.0, Tim O'Reilly points a finger at Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman in his rebuttal posts. TOR also says the blogger who posted the O'Reilly-approved cease-and-desist letter from CMP 'owes us an apology for the way he responded' (he got one)."
Fallout from The Pirate Bay Raid. Tyler Too writes "The Swedish national police website has been taken offline by a denial of service attack which started Thursday night. That's not the only fallout from the raid on The Pirate Bay: there's a demonstration planned in Stockholm on Saturday."
U.S. Government Ordered The Pirate Bay Shutdown? mkro writes "According to the Swedish government sponsored tv channel SVT, U.S. government officials -- after being approached by the MPAA -- requested the Swedish justice department to take down The Pirate Bay. According to the story, the Swedish justice department asked police and prosecution to act, but when they explained the laws are too vague, they turned directly to the state attorney and the chief of the national police force."
tpb (Score:5, Interesting)
the $100 laptop is really coming along... (Score:2, Interesting)
Sorry Tim, but - PISS OFF! (Score:1, Interesting)
Wow.
"Gee, buddy, sorry my butler let the dogs chew you a new one, but no hard feelings, right? Hey, here's a twenty for ostomy bags - Let's call it even, 'kay?"
Once you set the lawyers on someone, an "apology" doesn't cut it, Tim.
You AT LEAST owe him a beer. Quite possibly a hooker.
And requesting an apology in return? Poor form indeed!
"So, perhaps now that I've graciously extended a plastic olive branch, you should apologize for trespassing on my carefully manicured lawn in the first place, dontchathink?"
No, Tim, we don't. Rafferty drew attention to some asshole (ie, you) TRADEMARKING yet another already-ubiquitous term. And you find that a tad inconvenient? Not even remotely cool.
And then, trying to shift the blame for your arrogance to Linus and RMS? You have GOT to mean that as a joke, man! Would you also try to blame Mother Theresa for the spread of AIDS in Africa?
Un-frickin'-believable.
Re:My Government is POISON to the rest of the worl (Score:5, Interesting)
So instead of cutting out on us, why don't you just elect a president that doesn't suck next time, 'kay?
US interest acting abroad: Scientology (Score:5, Interesting)
From the article
In September 1996, an anonymous user posted the confidential writings of the Church of Scientology through the Penet remailer. The Church once again demanded that Julf turn over the identity of one of its users, claiming that the poster had infringed the Church's copyright on the confidential material. The Church was successful in finding the originating e-mail address of the posting before Penet remailed it, but it turned out to be another anonymous remailer: the alpha.c2.org nymserver, a more advanced and more secure remailer which didn't keep a mapping of e-mail addresses that could be subpoenad.
Facing multiple criticism and attacks, and unable to guarantee the anonymity of Penet users, Julf shut down the remailer in September of 1996.
Truly a chilling possibility.
Re:My Government is POISON to the rest of the worl (Score:4, Interesting)
Let me requote from another thread (Thomas Jefferson):
"It has been pretended by some, (and in England especially,) that inventors have a natural and exclusive right to their inventions, and not merely for their own lives, but inheritable to their heirs. But while it is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from nature at all, it would be singular to admit a natural and even an hereditary right to inventors. It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance."
Moving Country Moving but onto Anonymous P2P (Score:3, Interesting)
Warez sites are moving about to other countries, and some are even popping up on Freenet now [digg.com]. I think anonymous p2p will be the next main phase.
The first phase was napster (centralized in many respects), then second generation p2p was gnutella and emule, and now the third generation has Freenet [sourceforge.net], I2P [i2p.net], GNUnet [gnunet.org], Rodi [sourceforge.net], AntsP2P [sourceforge.net], Mute [sourceforge.net], etc. Even if you're not interested in the issue the back and forth conflict between the media companies and programmers is interesting - I wonder who'll win out in the end.
The US people don't elect the President (Score:4, Interesting)
You're making the wild assumption that the American people actually elected Bush in 2000 and 2004. (How soon we forget!)
For simplicity's sake (!) we'll ignore US laws which bias our elections to favor only Republicans and Democrats. We'll also ignore that under the US Constitution the antiquated and undemocratic Electoral College selects the president and not the American people ('cause the American people clearly chose Gore in 2000). And, of course, we'll ignore that Corporate America funds our elections and politicians so effectively that corporations sometimes -- literally -- write laws that they then have their politicians enact.
As a Brit I don't expect you to be familiar with such dirty details like that.
But it was the BBC's own Greg Palast [gregpalast.com] whose investigations proved that the 2000 and 2004 elections were blatantly rigged using a wide variety of techniques -- ground-breaking journalism confirmed by others much later.
100$ laptop = hype city (Score:3, Interesting)
Apparently, of all the millions of wealthy people in the world, including all those in China and India and OPEC, not one cares enuf to step up to the plate, but has to have some publicty hound from MIT do it.
I say if hte poor people of hte world are so ill served by their own leaders, screw em - better to buy rifles for the revolution
MY side of the story (Score:1, Interesting)
http://www.jastusa.com
Close Borders, Call em Home & Clean House (Score:1, Interesting)
Hell while we're at it, cut off all foreign aid and use the money right here at home and then rethink our entire foreign policy and if we completely closed the borders and I do mean completely, cut everyone out of the American Markets and pulled all of our troops home, how long do you think it would take the entire worlds economy to collapse? How long do you think it would take before the rest of the world demanded America get involved? Earthquakes,Typhoons and other natural disasters?
So what could we do in a single Presidential Term of 4 years? How about starting to clean up much of the political corruption and problems with FEMA and other agencies. How about getting our educational system back on track and passing universal health care? Why not straighten out the IRS and getting out Tax Burden back down to a real 20% instead of the 50-75% the middle class now pays? I think many of these issues could be resolved and a start made on fixing them in a single 4 year term and that once we've straightened our house up, we can then invite guests over to visit.
Re:Giving orders to police illegal (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:MY side of the story (Score:5, Interesting)
You're implicitly assuming that most of the pirated copies are a forgone sale. Most of them are likely to be teenagers who never would've bought from you anyway. Most people downloading are time rich, money poor.
You're also assuming that all those copies provided you with no exposure. For all you know that piracy may've been encouraging, not depressing, your sales.
Bottom line is you have no idea. So don't get all uptight about it.
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New game: Spot the lying astroturfer on /.!
Re:SciFi Vs OSS, oh noes! (Score:3, Interesting)
Nope, you're not. I assume that you (like me) have a lot more TOR books on your shelves than you do O'Reilly books? (Though I admit I have plenty of both.)