This story really rubs me the wrong way. They make it sound like Spamhaus has their fingers on the Internet's routing tables and at any whim can block or unblock networks that they don't like. This is simply not the case.

Spamhaus is no different from an op ed journalist or a food critic: All offer opinions about varying matters of public interest. Spamhaus, in this case, publishes an opinion in the form of a list of IP network ranges. In their opinion these networks can or may be responsible for transmitting spam or malware on the Internet.

PEOPLE ARE FREE TO USE OR NOT USE THIS INFORMATION AT THEIR DISCRETION.

But why is it that when the nutters at the Westboro Baptist church want to prance up and down the street and hold viotriolic hateful signs that all of a sudden we're so quick to point out that free speech is so vital for our society? Instead of bikeshedding over whether someone has a right to form an opinion about some Dutch ISP, how about instead we talk about how the spammers are themselves infringing on the propery rights of others by crapping on the internet? Lets stop pretending that the Internet is a public resource, it's a collection of private networks.

In any case, I have been a Spamhaus subscriber for scoring mail on my network and I appreciate the work that they do. I'd hate to imagine what the spam fighting landscape might look like today without Steve Linford and Spamhaus' efforts.

I expect any day now for Anonymous to launch a DDoS attack against itself.

Their DAR.fm thing is also neat.

I hope this means they'll be able to ramp up the service now, as their support sucks.

At least they didn't compare it to the cost of a monster HDMI cable.

He used proprietary software to get the GNU project up and running. First thing he wrote was an editor, then a compiler using that editor, then tools using that compiler and editor, then more tools using the existing tools, compiler, editor, etc.

> Another thing that bothers me is that the FSF stuff almost comes across as negative, so 3DS is evil, iPad is evil, Kindle is evil, etc. Great, but what hardware is actually ok to buy? Why is there still no hardware database of the good stuff that doesn't limit my rights?

http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw

by value.

when passing ruffians can say "Ni" at will to old ladies.

There is a pestilence upon this land.

Even those who arrange, design and sell software are at a considerable economic stress in this period of history.

But Google is distributing proprietary software!

Like all proprietary software distributors, we want them to stop and release free software instead. That's why we take up the argument with them.

You know that Free Software is about freedom and not price, right?

But this is Google's code that its running on MY computer. I should be able to control it.

The code is already in your browser and you can already look at it. That's not the issue.

The issue is that without the essential freedoms to study, modify and distribute copies of the software, users are at a disadvantage to the developer and that's unjust.

Because users aren't able to legally modify, study and distribute it? Plus, it's not in a suitable form for modification.