FWIW, this is exactly what we do to cue a blind choir member.
It's not a geeky solution, and it involves people touching each other, but it's very reliable.
I can't imagine any sighted choir member refusing to do this.

The linked page on businessweek.com contains no less than 13 trackers:

ChartBeat
Disqus
DoubleClick
Dynamic Logic
Facebook Connect
ForeSee
Google Adsense
Google Analytics
Krux Digital
New Relic
ScoreCard Research Beacon
Taboola
Twitter Button

And MaxDB is a former MySQL AB product (together with SAP AG).

The domain maxdb.org is now owned by Oracle. maxsql.org is still up for grabs :)

Maybe, ...but he loves you!

Pointed sticks? Ho, ho, ho. We want to learn how to defend ourselves against pointed sticks, do we? Getting all high and mighty, eh? Fresh fruit not good enough for you, eh? Well I'll tell you something my lad. When you're walking home tonight and some great homicidal maniac comes after you with a bunch of Apple products, don't come crying to me!
Now, the passion fruit.

I feel your pain. I can't stand info either. Maybe if I had to use it more frequently, I would finally memorize the keybindings, but even then I find it awkward to use. I'm not ashamed to admit that I tend to fall back to an easier, more masses-compatible way of reading info pages: KDE's KIO slaves. I just hit Alt-F2 and type "info:gettext", which displays the info contents for GNU gettext in a browser as a set of nicely formatted HTML pages. All manpages and info pages are also browsable and listed alphabetically in the KDE help center. (Of course, that wouldn't work if the info pages are only available on a remote server, but I can't remember that ever coming up.) Not sure about Gnome and other desktop environments, but they probably have something similar.

In short, if there's a hard way and an easy way to do it, and they both give the same result... I'm a geek, not a masochist.

CJ

I registered seven new domains and sent each domain to one seventh of the list; the list contains about 420,000 addresses, so each one went to about 60,000 people. (Each new site is only sent to a random subset of the list, so that a blocking company can't just subscribe one address to the list and block all new sites as soon as they're mailed out.)

So somebody who wants to block all the proxies would have to subscribe several times in order to get the full list (it's not like multiple subscriptions would be noticed on a list with 420k recipients). I was wondering how effective this method was. Here are my results, in case anybody else was wondering:

With 20 subscribed addresses, the chance of getting the full list is 70%.
With 30 subscribed addresses, the chance of getting the full list is 93%.
With 40 subscribed addresses, the chance of getting the full list is 98.5%.
With 50 subscribed addresses, the chance of getting the full list is 99.7%.
With 100 subscribed addresses, the chance of getting the full list is 99.9999%.

Seems like this method of evading the censors is only effective if they're not smart enough to write a couple of simple scripts.

CJ

CJ

IMHO, if they don't like Unity, it should have been an "exodus" to Kubuntu...
If you haven't tried it, please do. It's beautiful.

CJ

No, that was Ubuntu, too. Ubuntu vs Banshee

I'm only providing the link. Please don't interpret this as me siding with RMS against Ubuntu, or the other way around.

CJ

That's a horribly outdated definition. Or would you call Sweden, Switzerland, Austria, and other highly developed nations third world countries?

I understand that, and I agree with you in principle. But as I said, this is a special case. This isn't about being offended, it's about fearing for your life. The typical arrests for violations of this law are Neo-Nazis running around with their right hands raised and shouting "Heil Hitler". This isn't a big deal in most of the world, but it's taken very seriously here. The Third Reich and the war were the single most important and terrifying episode in our country's recent history. You can't take two steps in Vienna without seeing a monument or a plaque commemorating the victims of that time. And there are still survivors around. As a consequence, people can be arrested for standing outside a synagogue and shouting Heil Hitler. You could see it as a voluntary surrender of part of our right to Free Speech, as a special courtesy and insurance for the former victims.

Like you, I disagree about the "denying the Holocaust" part; this should be legal. But at the present time, it's not possible to have a rational political discussion about it. No serious politician wants to be perceived as agreeing with the extreme right parties. Politicians without backbones are a global phenomenon...

CJ

As an Austrian; thank you for bringing this up. People from other countries are often confused or concerned about this law, so I'd like to clear a few things up. The situation is very similar in Germany, but since I'm an Austrian, and you specifically mentioned the Irving trial, I'll concentrate on that.

The Verbotsgesetz is indeed an intentional limitation on free speech. As far as I know, this is the only major difference to what is considered free speech in the US, although we may be a bit stricter concerning incitement of popular hatred against ethnic groups. Both the Verbotsgesetz and the right to free speech are part of the Austrian constitution. To understand why we have this law, and why such an obvious limitation on what we can say or publish is tolerated by the people, you need to take a look at when and why the law was instated.

The first version became law on May 8, 1945 - the very day that WWII ended in Europe with the capitulation of the Wehrmacht. Its main and largest part deals with the process of "denazification," which was an acute necessity in order to resume normal life after the war. It was also mandated by the allied forces, who continued to occupy Austria for the next ten years. This part is now dead law, because the denazification is as complete as it's ever going to be, and also because there was an amnesty for former members of the NSDAP in 1957.

The second part of the law forbids the reformation of the NSDAP and certain organizations associated with it (like the SS, SA, etc). It also - and here's where the interesting part comes in - made national-socialist activities illegal. This includes any action which "denies, belittles, condones or tries to justify the Nazi genocide or other Nazi crimes against humanity".

I'm sure you will understand why such a law was considered necessary immediately after the war. So why didn't we repeal it later? The main reason for that was to send a strong public signal that this era is once and for all over. During the time of the Third Reich, there was a significant brain drain in Germany and Austria. Many of the most important scientific minds, as well as writers, artists, lawyers, doctors, etc, were Jewish and were forced to emigrate. It was of great importance to prove to those people that it was safe to return.

Which leaves the question: how long should this law, as a special case due to historic necessity, remain in force? This point is actually debated regularly, but unfortunately the only people who are publicly advocating to repeal it are from the extreme right. They're not at all concerned about freedom of speech in general, they just want to avoid fines and prison terms after their typical antisemitic tirades. As a result, they are consistently voted down. As for me.. as long as there are Holocaust survivors living in this country, I wouldn't want the law repealed. At some point in the future, it would probably be best to put it behind us and let the normal laws handle these cases.

By the way, this Innocence of Muslims video (idiotic as it is) would not have violated any Austrian law. There's no need to be afraid about speaking your mind in Austria, as long as you don't publicly deny or condone the Nazi war crimes. Irving knew that perfectly well. He knowingly violated the Verbotsgesetz multiple times, and as a result he had to spend 13 months in prison. It was a stupid thing to do, and it appears he has learned his lesson.

CJ