slowpoke
Fuck, people, don't you get this already? There is no n-th result on Google. Don't act like there is.
I don't get you people. I really don't get you.
Again, Flash Proxy is not an exit node, it's a bridge. It merely helps people to access the Tor network, and does not relay traffic back out (which, as far as I know, is not even technically possible). There's zero risks involved. Also, why are you not running at least a relay, anyways?
>2. People concerned about limiting criminal behavior
Limiting criminal behavior is fine, but never at the cost of essential liberties and rights. This is inarguable. People rallying against Tor for "criminal behavior" are the very same people we need Tor to protect ourselves against.
>3. People who want to stop free speech
I you[1] are such a person, I hate you and you more than deserve to have your browser turned into a powerful weapon of the very thing you want to stop.
[1] This is the general you, I'm not talking to the parent poster specifically.
Anyways, my answer wasn't about Flash-Proxy at all (which is, polemics aside, indeed debatable). I was pissed about the attitude that Tor == CP, which is a dishonest fallacy thrown around by supporters of surveillance and spying.
The fact that some individuals use Tor for accessing child pornography is sad, but that constitutes a miniscule amount of its entire traffic. Stop looking at the few bad apples and look at the big picture.
Oh, and if you're at it, watch Jacob and Roger's talk at the 29c3 as soon as it is available. They explained this awesome piece of software a bit more in detail there, amongst all the other amazing projects related to the Tor Project.
You keep using that word, I don't think it means what you think it means.
Piracy is not a crime, much less a serious one. Murder, for example, is a serious crime. Please don't spout nonsense. Copyright infringement is a civil offense, not even a felony.
That is not to say that what Canonical did - if the accusations are justified - is ethically sound. But please don't spread the bullshit propaganda of certain industry representatives.
- Cardinal Richelieu
I don't think so. It's very valid to criticize someone who works for a morally corrupt, unneeded and socially harmful agency, no matter the reason. Your argument is basically a sophisticated "but think of the children!!11oneone" appeal to emotion, ie not a valid argument.
If there aren't any better job options (which I highly doubt), then it's another gigantic fucking failure of the government that needs to be fixed ASAP.
I do have a legal name - my birth name. It's but one of many. Why is my legal name important? It isn't. I don't even consider it my primary name. The concept of one single "real" name is severely retarded and flies in the face of reality. We need to get rid of this concept, along with the illusion of a single identity. I simply am not the same person when I am with my parents, when I'm with my meatspace friends, or if I'm hanging out on IRC with people I know pretty well, but have never seen or met. I'm someone different here on HN than I am on 4chan, or any other message board. That's perfectly human, and no company or law will ever change that.
That's demonstrably false.
Um, no. A lot of people don't even know there is competition to Google. They don't "opt-in" to Google just as much as they don't "opt-in" to using Windows, they've just always used it because it comes with their browser/PC. There's a reason Google pays Mozilla a few million every year to be the default search engine.
That's not only "slightly different", that's the crucial difference. So no, they aren't "effectively the same", they are two completely unrelated cases. Would people please stop trying to use this dishonest and flat out false argument to support entirely wrong chains of argumentation?
Besides which, the work an artist/programmer has done is unrelated to the distribution of the result. If one expects to be paid for the actual work done, they have to seek other models. One that often comes up here is Kickstarter, where a form of contract is made - money for work done. Perfectly fine. Musicians have and always had concerts and merchandise as their source of income. Comissioned works are also possible, and are a very valid source of income. Additionally, there's patronage - which is, for example, basically the way Linus Torvalds makes his money.
I'm positive this list is by far not exhaustive.
So no, pirating something is not taking someone's work time, since their time and money spend for distribution is effectively zero.
"We have always felt entitled to do what we please with the fruit of our labors, and we feel no differently when that fruit is information."
Except that fruit of your labor is not "information", it's a "copy of information". And of course you are entitled to do whatever you want with it. As am I, if I have gained access to it by any means that did not violate your privacy (eg., breaking into your house or hacking into your computer) or other fundamental rights (copy"right" is not a right, it's a privilege - very, very important difference, as rights cannot be granted by law). In other words, I cannot force you to share something with me. But neither can you forbid me from sharing things I have - including pieces of information - unless they violate one of your fundamental rights (for example, your dignity).
And people actually wonder why more and more (German) people have absolutely no qualms about piracy. I'm actually not sure whether or not I should thank the GEMA for that.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesellschaft_f%C3%BCr_musikali...
As for the IM protocols, maybe this will prompt people to migrate to better protocols like XMPP. ICQ, MSN, AIM and all those other proprietary protocols with their ad-laden, bloated clients (which I classify as nothing short of malware) should have died years ago.
Wat.
Linux programs like Pidgin have support for almost all IM protocols known to man, it can handle any Portable Media Player with sane behavior (read: identifies as removable storage, which pretty much all players except the shitty Apple ones do) and last time I checked, Linux is capable of multitasking, too.
First of all, every damn time someone brings up the "you just have to double click the installer on Windows" argument, they leave out the steps before that (most prominently, locate and download a safe copy of said installer).
Second, I don't know what FUD you have been told about Linux on the desktop, but contrary to what you assert about it, no, installing applications on almost all widespread Linux distributions I can spontaneously think of - except Gentoo - requires neither compiling nor messing around with dependencies.
Third, no, not everything on Ubuntu comes from the "Ubuntu store" or "Apitude store" - in fact, neither of those exists. If you are talking about the Ubuntu Software Center, that's basically just a fancy front-end for APT - as is Aptitude. If I remember correctly, the UCS also allows purchasing of some commercial software as of recently (I don't use Ubuntu).
In addition, Ubuntu (and derived distributions) have a thing called Personal Package Archives, whose very concept is to make it possible to easily add your own package sources to complement the official repositories. The UCS can handle those, too.
Also, there's a very important distinction between a package repository as used in many Linux distributions and a closed app store: the former is, at least to an extent, managed by the community and the users. You cannot say that of the latter.
I don't agree especially with the latter. It's ridiculous to assert the Holocaust didn't happen - I've visited the remains of the Dachau Concentration Camp, and I won't ever forget that place in my life - but it's equally ridiculous to disallow questioning it. I just pity the people who do it.
But again, it's not exactly right to say that Free Speech doesn't exist here in Europe. I'd say it's mostly the same situation as in the US - it's under attack and we, as the united inhabitants of this planet, need to stand up and fight back where-ever possible. Stop thinking in countries. Start thinking as a part of humanity as a whole.