Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Subject: GNU-Darwin Action: Twitter, MySpace, redirection and short URLS<

From: proclus@gnu-darwin.org

Subject: GNU-Darwin Action: Twitter, MySpace, redirection and short URLS

Date: Wed, 3 Mar 2010 23:53:55 -0500 (EST)

      To: gnu-darwin-distribution@lists.sourceforge.net  Cc: gnu-darwin-ports@lists.sourceforge.net  

I am deeply concerned about the potential for abuse in the short url scheme that is used in Twitter and MySpace. I have seen a case where one of these types of urls was misdirected contrary to the aim of the poster. Users may not realize that these types of urls can be redirected on the fly to make a link appear as if it were from you, when it was not. Once the message is posted, the target of the redirection is out of the user's control. Moreover, if these types of urls are used to point to volatile content, such as sites that are under DMCA take down threat, I do not doubt that the urls could be arbitrarily redirected, before due process has taken its course.

It should be noted that a similar threat exists in the redirection schemes that are used by Google and Facebook. At least, we would know in those cases who was doing any fraudulent redirection. MySpace on the other hand is crawling with the very types of vermin who lent great support to DMCA passage, and they have huge economic incentives to redirect clicks that you intended to go elsewhere.

In an ideal world, where all of the players had good notions of fairness, this technology would be good and useful. Sadly we must consider the possibility that such is not the case. Please be wary of such schemes.

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Regards,
proclus
http://www.gnu-darwin.org/

--

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Michael L. Love

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gnudarwin Molecules activism: Uncommon knowledge of commonplace things. http://ping.fm/woASw 22 hours ago reply

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gnudarwin Some newcomers might be interested in this little bit of GNU-Darwin pre-history. http://ping.fm/w1ckd 22 hours ago reply

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gnudarwin Google intelligence: user interests, and bias http://ping.fm/LZ7t1 22 hours ago reply

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gnudarwin はてなブックマーク - proclus のブックマークhttp://proclus.tumblr.co... yesterday reply

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gnudarwin Hatena is a great website. I can use it ok, even though I don't know Japanese. http://www.hatena.ne.jp/... yesterday reply

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gnudarwin はてなブックマーク - proclus のブックマーク http://ping.fm/XF0q2 @gnudarwin (some small effort) yesterday reply

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gnudarwin Howto: Getting started with The GNU-Darwin Distribution http://www.gnu-darwin.or... 2 days ago reply

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gnudarwin Handy links in Google profile. New blog. Love it! http://proclus.xanga.com/ 2 days ago reply

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gnudarwin Handy links in Google profile. http://post.ly/WAKO 2 days ago reply

Visit proclus realm! http://proclus.tripod.com/

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Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Molecules activism: Uncommon knowledge of commonplace things. http://ping.fm/woASw
Some newcomers might be interested in this little bit of GNU-Darwin pre-history. http://ping.fm/w1ckd
Google intelligence: user interests, and bias
http://ping.fm/LZ7t1

Monday, March 29, 2010

Howto: Getting started with The GNU-Darwin Distribution

GNU-Darwin User Guide and Cookbook:

Understanding The GNU-Darwin Distribution

Some informal notes about what GNU-Darwin is and how to use it

Our mission is coupled to political action, and it is necessary to know this before proceeding with GNU-Darwin. We have various help and faq information pages which should be consulted for technical and other assistance. In addition, we have many email lists and web forums for discussing issues related to GNU-Darwin. Moreover, all of the "Read More" links on the top page lead to web discussion forums. A survey of the topics reveals that we interpret the purview of free software activism very broadly, and discussion in these forums is expected to range broadly, not confined to issues that are obviously or directly related to the Distribution itself. A summary of our first three years of operations and the philosophical underpinnings of our activism is available at OSnews, Three Years of Free Software Activism: The Case of GNU-Darwin OS. The founding of the Distribution is rooted in science, and so we try to provide some information which may be mostly of interest to the scientific community. We were also founded in part upon technology from FreeBSD, which has demonstrated broad applicability in the FOSS community, and we try to encompass the implications of that fact, although our heritage is inspiring and challenging. We rely on user input to make this real, so we welcome messages from the community. E-mail us.

GNU-Darwin has no capital backing and no foundation endowment or other external support, so that our funds are limited to what we recieve from kind donations, contributions of our users and from disc sales and subscriptions. Subscriptions and discs are the best way to get started with GNU-Darwin as well. Instructions about how to get rolling with GNU-Darwin is provided below.

Subscriptions

Here is some information about our web services accounts. The accounts are not limited to email service. For example, if you wanted a new user name, webpage, gnu-darwin subdomain, or something special, we might be able to throw it in. Check out these examples...

http://user_name.gnu-darwin.org/

Various software services are available, including a full ports install.

     /usr/local/bin/fetchmail --ssl -c -p IMAP -u user_name localhost  /usr/local/bin/links https://localhost/src/login.php  
If you like Unix-style mail...
     /usr/local/bin/fetchmail --ssl -c -p IMAP -u user_name localhost  mail -f /var/mail/user_name  
SMTP access at localhost:25 has also been tentatively added for user convenience. The shell server should be very secure with firewalled, ssh-only access, and this resource will hopefully accelerate development on the Darwin platform.

Shell accounts should be considered beta and experimental for the present, due to their long and dubious history on the internet. Of course, we will not tolerate any cracking or spamming activities, which will certainly get the shell account deactivated. Having said that, I think that this will be beneficial to many users who may not have access to a Darwin-x86 machine. It will also be a great demonstration and resource for the Distro and the larger community, and a good way to get to know our users too.

GNU-Darwin internet services, now include shell access, total SSL encryption, SMTP-on-LAN, web hosting, web mail, IMAP, virtual domains and flexible subdomains as well. This seems like a killer deal to me for $15 per year with 1 month free trial. It is like a ".Mac for Nerds", but it is also a great example of the compelling work that can now be done with GNU-Darwin. Tell your friends about it.

Discs

It should be noted that free software means freedom for users. The Distribution by license is not obligated to support the software that we distribute in any way, or to guarantee any functionality. It is too much to ask of an organization which subsists on the efforts of volunteers and generous users, and given that caveat, we proceed. We are grateful to the Free Software Foundation for providing a part of our philosophical heritage, which makes our undertaking possible. In keeping with this principle, we always provide all of the source code for every piece of software that we offer, so that the user will be free to change and copy it for any purpose. Our licencing scheme assures that this freedom remains firmly in place.

Our disc offerings are described in our forums and on the ordering page, and many users take the opportunity to subscribe or make a donation when they order. Some start with the OS disc. It does no harm at all to try a test boot on your computer with the OS disc, in order to see if the OS will work with your hardware. You can plan how to proceed from there. After the OS is installed, you will be able to use our packaged software with your system. You will have the satisfaction of knowing that it is a bone fide free software system in total.

We offer not only an operating system, but various collections of packaged software. This software should be compatible with any Darwin based operating system, including Mac OS. Many Apple users may not be interested in trying our OS installer discs, but they are often interested in the packaged software, which they can use with Mac OS. We provide free software goodness to them in the hope that they will crave it more and more.

Some Final Notes

Disc sales make up the lions share of revenue for our distribution. If we had other sources of revenue, then we could possibly provide more of our offerings directly on the internet. It is something that we grapple with continually, and some of our offering is under a cloud of debt. For this reason we have decided to include our Google sidebar and a few other bits of advertising on our website. Moreover, although some of our discs are available from other sources, we do not typically link to them or publicize them, so that we can maintain our disc sales revenue. In the spirit of software freedom, we do not interfere or complain when our software is made available elsewhere.

It may be apparent that we would like to see equal public access to our offerings, regardless of nationality and other considerations. Moreover, shipping costs have skyrocketted as a result of the war, a situation which is likely only to worsen. For these reasons, we attempt to distribute shipping charges equally among our users, so that users in far away places will have equal access. As a result, users in the US might pay more than they are accustomed to for shipping of our discs. For those who find this burdensome, it may be alleviated by funding our project, so that we can offer reduced rate shipping to everyone like other internet projects.

More to come. Watch this space!

Posted via web from proclus-gnu-darwin's posterous

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Handy links in Google profile.

Google provided an improved link collection for the Michael L. Love/proclus/GNU-Darwin world.  Perhaps the ever-helpful Google will do the same for you! FYI, I found them in my Google profile settings.  If you post to your blog with Gmail, you can paste them right into the message, as I did for this post.  The main test is that they come through alright, so here they are  :-}.


As a self-respecting geek and nerd, I will certainly still be using the GNU-Darwin email services for regular messages, but Gmail is sometimes useful for posting to a blog.  When you look at something cool on the web, perhaps you should be seeing it in your blog.

Regards,
proclus
http://www.gnu-darwin.org/

Posted via email from proclus-gnu-darwin's posterous

Friday, March 26, 2010

Jack Goldsmith and Lawrence Lessig - Anti-counterfeiting agreement raises constitutional concerns

Anti-counterfeiting agreement raises constitutional concerns


By Jack Goldsmith and Lawrence Lessig
Friday, March 26, 2010
Thx @lessig
Regards,
proclus
http://www.gnu-darwin.org/

GNU-Darwin: nouveau Wiki - FrontPage

The nouveau project aims to build high-quality, open source drivers for nVidia cards. “Nouveau” [nuvo] is the French word for “new”.

This looks quite impressive!

Regards,
proclus
http://www.gnu-darwin.org/

Posted via web from proclus-gnu-darwin's posterous

proclus : Michael L. Love: parsley brownie

Some people may not realize that health and longevity are the reasons that I became a biochemist and protein crystallographer. If you are interested in biochemical insights from this perspective, you should probably be following my Vitacost blog. My main focus right now is parsley.

http://blogs.vitacost.com/Blogs/proclus/Default.aspx

Regards,
proclus
http://www.gnu-darwin.org/

Posted via web from proclus-gnu-darwin's posterous

GNU-Darwin Action: Afghanistan War Resister Travis Bishop Released From Fort Lewis Brig

Click here to download:
unknownname.out (0 KB)

I _LOVE_ Courage to Resist. Please support them any way you can. http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/

Regards,
proclus
http://www.gnu-darwin.org/

------ Forwarded message ------
From: Courage to Resist
Subject: Afghanistan War Resister Travis Bishop Released From Fort Lewis Brig
Date: Fri, 26 Mar 2010 17:16:42 +0100
To: proclus@gnu-darwin.org
Reply-To: courage@riseup.net

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 26, 2010

Media Contact: Seth Manzel, Director, Coffee Strong, 253-228-8912

A celebration of Bishop’s release with local supporters will take place at Coffee Strong in Lakewood, WA on Sunday, March 28.
Fort Lewis, Washington â€" War resister and conscientious objector Travis Bishop was released from the stockade at Fort Lewis Thursday morning. Iraq War veteran Bishop originally was sentenced to 12 months in prison during his court-martial at Fort Hood, Texas for refusing to deploy to Afghanistan for reasons of conscience. He later received a three-month reduction in sentence due to a successful clemency application to the Commanding General at Fort Hood, as well as receiving extra time off for good behavior. Bishop served a total of seven months and 12 days of confinement. He also received reduction of rank from Sergeant to Private and a pending Bad Conduct Discharge.

While under confinement, Travis Bishop was recognized by Amnesty International as a prisoner of conscience and updated his blog (www.freetravisbishop.wordpress.com) from the Northwest Joint Regional Correctional Facility. He also received support from hundreds of people from around the world who wrote letters of encouragement for him and also to military authorities calling for his release. “Travis really appreciated the support he received from Amnesty International and from many people throughout the U.S.,” said his lawyer, James Branum. “All those letters lifted his spirits and shortened his time in jail.”

Bishop spoke out about the inhumane conditions at the Fort Lewis stockade, which produced some reform in treatment of prisoners at the facility. Bishop was placed on the facility's "most difficult" prisoners list for these efforts. Local supporters of Bishop are planning a celebration to take place at Coffee Strong GI Coffeehouse, beginning at 3 p.m. on Sunday, March 28. Coffee Strong is located at 15109 Union Ave SW, Lakewood, SW, next to Subway. Staff will provide refreshments.

Bishop will speak at the Sunday afternoon celebration, and will be available for interviews on Sunday and early next week.. He will not be available prior to 3 p.m. on March 28.
Bishop, a Country-Music Singer-Songwriter, plans to resume his musical career.

For more information or to schedule an individual interview with either Bishop or his defense team, please contact Seth Manzel at 253-228-8912 or attorney James Branum at 405-476-5620.

Posted via email from proclus-gnu-darwin's posterous

Thursday, March 25, 2010

[GNU/FSF Press] FSF Advocates Free Software for U.S. IPEC Join t Strategic Plan

Click here to download:
unknownname.out (0 KB)

Loved this Regards,
proclus
http://www.gnu-darwin.org/

------ Forwarded message ------
From: Brett Smith
Subject: [GNU/FSF Press] FSF Advocates Free Software for U.S. IPEC Joint Strategic Plan
Date: Thu, 25 Mar 2010 13:10:12 -0400
To: info-press@gnu.org, info-fsf@gnu.org
Cc: Reply-To: info@fsf.org

BOSTON, Massachusetts, USA -- Thursday, March 25, 2010 -- The Free
Software Foundation (FSF) has responded to the United States executive
Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator (IPEC) Joint Strategic
Plan.

The FSF argues that the government should use free software to provide
more freedom and transparency to its constituents and reduce the need
to engage in costly copyright enforcement activities on behalf of
proprietary software companies. The FSF states that "the most
egregious harms to the public interest in the areas of copyright and
patents come not from a lack of enforcement, but from extraordinarily
excessive enforcement."

"For a government that's supposed to be accountable to its citizens,
it's clear that using free software should be a natural choice," said
Brett Smith, license compliance engineer at the FSF. "With free
software, government can be sure their computers work on behalf of the
people, instead of some proprietary software company. And it also
offers an opportunity for unparalleled transparency: agencies can
release the source code of software they use to help illustrate what
they're doing."

The creation of IPEC and the Joint Strategic Plan are mandated by the
"PRO-IP Act," which became law in 2008. The Joint Strategic Plan is
intended to provide broad policy recommendations to increase
enforcement of copyright, patent, trademark, and anti-counterfeiting
laws both at home and abroad.

"Everything about the PRO-IP Act, from the confused way it lumps
together various laws under the banner of 'intellectual property' in
its name, to its corrupted purpose of being another government
giveaway to the big incumbent copyright industries, is flawed" said
Peter Brown, executive director of the FSF. "It's unfair for
taxpayers to foot the bill for supporting the unethical business
models of a handful of companies. Our comment shows there's another
way: with relatively small steps, government can do the right thing
and use free software, make a better investment in our society, and
eliminate much of the need for enforcement of these laws."

The full text of the FSF's comment is available at
.

### About the Free Software Foundation

The Free Software Foundation, founded in 1985, is dedicated to
promoting computer users' right to use, study, copy, modify, and
redistribute computer programs. The FSF promotes the development and
use of free (as in freedom) software -- particularly the GNU operating
system and its GNU/Linux variants -- and free documentation for free
software. The FSF also helps to spread awareness of the ethical and
political issues of freedom in the use of software, and its Web sites,
located at fsf.org and gnu.org, are an important source of information
about GNU/Linux. Donations to support the FSF's work can be made at
. Its headquarters are in Boston, MA, USA.

### About Free Software and Open Source

The free software movement's goal is freedom for computer users. Some,
especially corporations, advocate a different viewpoint, known as
"open source," which cites only practical goals such as making
software powerful and reliable, focuses on development models, and
avoids discussion of ethics and freedom. These two viewpoints are
different at the deepest level. For more explanation, see
.

### Media Contacts

Brett Smith License Compliance Engineer Free Software Foundation +1 (617) 542 5942 x18 ###


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Facebook has auto-submit: DMCA Notice of Copyright Infringement Form

Apple internet anonymizers in danger: US in search of Apple, cell phone forensic tools as online crime morphs | NetworkWorld.com Community

The always evolving world of electronic crime is forcing law enforcement agencies  to look even harder for tools and digital evidence recovery technology to keep up.
This week the research, development, and evaluation agency of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), the  National Institute of Justice (NIJ) said it wants to fund development of a number of key digital crime technologies including Apple Macintosh forensic tools, cell phone analysis packages and software that can fight Internet anonymizers...
 Read more: networkworld.com