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Comment Re:goal to make things suck? (Score 1) 164

> But opening up a new window for each PDF you display really sucks as a user experience.

My browser can show PDF in tabs.
But I almost always want PDF-s to open in a new window, full-screen.
Why would I want to read a 200 page report inside a browser?

The same goes for video, I usually want to view it full-screen not embedded in some page in a browser.

Comment Re:Android for the masses (Score 1) 229

That is a good point. I have been playing with the AC-100.

The Android is not impressive on the AC-100.

But you can install Ubuntu on it; which is slow.

But it you use LXDE and trim Ubuntu a bit, it is actually good, much faster than Android.

I do like how the Android browsers make excellent use of the screen.

The Ubuntu/Debian package system is so much better than the silly app markets. More usefull applications and much easier to install.
(i didn't even manage to install Emacs on Android).

Image

Julian Assange's Online Dating Profile Leaked 334

Ponca City writes "The Telegraph reports that an online dating profile created by Julian Assange in 2006 has been unearthed from OKCupid disclosing that the WikiLeaks editor sought 'spirited, erotic' women 'from countries that have sustained political turmoil.' Writing under the pseudonym of British science fiction author Harry Harrison, Assange described himself as a 'passionate, and often pig headed activist intellectual.' Assange said he was seeking a 'siren for [a] love affair, children and occasional criminal conspiracy' adding that he was 'directing a consuming, dangerous human rights project which is, as you might expect, male dominated' and added enigmatically: 'I am DANGER, ACHTUNG.' Among Assange's listed interests were the 'structure of reality' and 'chopping up human brains' – although he added the caveat '(neuroscience background)' lest the latter put off potential admirers. 'I like women from countries that have sustained political turmoil,' Assange wrote. 'Western culture seems to forge women that are valueless and inane. OK. Not only women!'"

Comment Re:stating the obvious... (Score 1) 440

>Then you're a better man than I am. I've barely scratched the surface on the source to programs on my Linux server.

I do not check all source code, of course. But I do occasionally check code that behaves oddly.
If I found out that an application was trying to do evil, there is no way I would keep the application just because I had a firewall.

> I'd make an application that could enforce my rules.

But such applications do not exist, unless you rules are very formal and useless.

> I wonder what catchy name I could call this application that builds a wall between those apps and the network.

I would call it a firesieve.

If you do not trust your own applications, you have lost anyway.

Comment Re:stating the obvious... (Score 1) 440

> If you don't have a firewall to enforce the rules, how do you keep applications from opening ports?

By running well-behaved applications.

> How do you know the latest and greatest app you just installed doesn't send usage data to the developer or open a port for 'remote support'?

I check the source code.
Besides such an application would probably use HTTP-requests.

Comment Re:link (Score 1) 89

Well it is not that hard to translate normal wiki markup to Latex. Parsewiki is old but does the trick.
http://paginas.fe.up.pt/~villate/parsewiki/README.html

The problem is that Mediawiki has a lot of templates, tables, tags, special pages, permitted HTML, etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Wiki_markup
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML_in_wikitext

I once tried to do it for Wikitravel but end up going via HTML.

Comment Re:Legal, but dubious (Score 1) 151

In 2008 a photo on the front page of a local paper in Denmark was censored. It showed some children playing in a garden, one of them a naked two year old boy. The photo was taken by the mother of some of the children and she was annoyed because she felt that the censors had turned an innocent family photo into something sexual.

It was part of the papers photo competition.

Apparently it was the the people operating the physical printing press that demanded that the photo should be censored!.

http://www.fyn.dk/article/95462
http://www.pressefotografforbundet.dk/news/fotografi/9707/avis-bortcensurerer-noegen-to-aarig
http://politiken.dk/indland/article471168.ece

Comment Re:Prior restraint? (Score 1) 205

That is exactly the point. It do in fact override prior restraint.

McCain could have published his campaign ads on his own webpage (and maybe he did).
But it just does not have the same impact as Youtube.

Google could have chosen to keep McCains videos on Youtube. But then they would loose the DCMA safe harbour proctection because they did fnot ollow the DCMA provisions.
Which could be really expensive for a big company like Google, and why would they risk that for McCain.

So in principle there is not prior restraint. In practice the provisions works just like a prior restraint.

Now DCMA is USA and for hosting and searches.

ACTA and other new initiatives expand this principle to the rest of the world and includes also ISP's and all kinds of services on the internet. I.e., the common carrier status is undermined.

Instead of introducing prior restraint you make everyone liable for every single bit that passer thought their servers, routers, software of cables. They you make exemptions based on certain criteria.

In Denmark they just proposed a new law regulating gambling. They just make ISP's, DNS-servers, etc liable for letting Danes gamble on sites, that are not registered with the danish government (and thereby paying taxes). But you are exempt from the liablity if you block access to sites when requested by the government.

It is just a loop-hole to introduce prior restraint.

Comment Re:When they're right, they're right (Score 1) 386

Yes, certainly guardians might have completely different interests.
Which was something was used to be understood

From James Boyle, Puclic Domain on Macaulay 150 more than years ago.
http://itpol.dk/files/the-public-domain.pdf

==
The intellectual property skeptics had other concerns. Macaulay was partic-
ularly worried about the power that went with a transferable and inheritable
monopoly. It is not only that the effect of monopoly is "to make articles
scarce, to make them dear, and to make them bad." Macaulay also pointed
out that those who controlled the monopoly, particularly after the death of the
original author, might be given too great a control over our collective culture.
Censorious heirs or purchasers of the copyright might prevent the reprinting
of a great work because they disagreed with its morals.32 We might lose the
works of Fielding or Gibbon, because a legatee found them distasteful and
used the power of the copyright to suppress them. This is no mere fantasy,
Macaulay tells us. After praising the novels of Samuel Richardson in terms
that, to modern eyes, seem a little fervid ("No writings, those of Shakespeare
excepted, show more profound knowledge of the human heart"), Macaulay
recounts the story of Richardson's grandson, "a clergyman in the city of
London." Though a "most upright and excellent man," the grandson "had con-
ceived a strong prejudice against works of ction," "thought all novel-reading
not only frivolous but sinful," and "had never thought it right to read one of
his grandfather's books."33 Extended copyright terms might hand over the
copyright to such a man. The public would lose, not because they had to pay
exorbitant prices that denied some access to the work, but because the work
would be altogether suppressed.
==

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