luv-talk April 2015

luv-talk@luv.asn.au

26 participants
15 discussions

by Rohan McLeod

Andrew McGlashan wrote: > On 8/04/2015 12:08 AM, Russell Coker wrote: >> At the meeting there was a mention of the fact that we now have a legal >> precedent for film companies to force ISPs to divulge the names of customers >> who might have torrented movies. > This was bound to catch up with iiNet [and other] users.... > >> Is there any good anonymous peer to peer software? Something that uses tor >> hidden services for all communications? > Much better to just keep to legal and proper downloads, don't you think? Well of course that goes without saying ! the very idea of owning movies which I haven't paid for; or even converting DVD's so they are playable outside of brain-dead DVD players, (which mostly also seem incapable of playing them); is abhorrent to my higher moral self.! I even believe there are some who have copies of that other OS what was it called .....; anyway they have not paid for it apparently. There seems to exist a whole category of software ..shareware ? where such behaviour is rife. This software philosophy, what's it called 'open-source' ?; why it's just encourages such an attitude ! Oh Andrew; how I concur with you regarding the wickedness of the world ! regards Rohan McLeod

6 years, 11 months

East West Link - contacting the government

by Peter Ross

Hi all, Labor opposing East West Link - good news, at least for me. There is no contract signed yet - so all uncertainty claims are quite strange. It is up to the government in power to create certainty - by waiting with the contracts until after the election. The process is before the courts because the link did not go through a proper planning, assessment and consultation process yet. The lack of process created the uncertainty. So the government can correct it by honouring process. This would make it a decision made by a government which asked for a mandate from the electorate. Below my letter to Terry Mulder (terence.mulder(a)parliament.vic.gov.au). Maybe you would like to contact him too? Thanks Peter Dear Terry, the Labor decision to dump the East West Link is a good one for us in Melbourne. Please cancel the project if you care for Victoria. It may save hundred of millions or billions of dollars of claims when the project finally ends in the bin, as it should. The East West Link is not a properly planned project. I contacted you before about my concerns. Some of the events and claims are truly bizarre if you are familiar with the area as I am. I work in Kensington. I frequently use the bike track along the Mooney Ponds Creek you want to overshadow with another bunch of lanes. I also spend a lot of time waiting for and in trains from and to Craigieburn and Upfield which never go on time. It is not a surprise that the whole case is before the courts. The rush to lock it in resulted in a shoddy process which defies logic and did never satisfy requirements of proper consulting with the public. Even now, the design is still work in progress, and some of the "corrections" over time looked as professional as me designing a model train with my son. How can this being assessed? How can the community have a sufficient input in this process? How can you sign contracts with this uncertainty? It will be a liability for any future government and all Victorians. A tender process where you continue with one bidder only is another detail not making sense. I never do that if I want a good deal. You were elected with the Liberals claiming support for the Metro Rail Link. You did not advance the project. Instead it became another train wreck of "planning on the run". Please bring that back into action instead of tinkering with the East West Link if you want to do something for Victoria. Thank you Peter [contact details]

7 years, 5 months

How feasible are secure drop-boxes for "IT naive whistleblowers" ?

by Rohan McLeod

Assembled cogniscenti: I am not a huge fan of the Melbourne Herald-Sun and I believe the somewhat similar English Sun, is one of the Murdoch's papers which seemed to have little regard for privacy. So I found the following link which a friend sent; somewhat curious. But it did prompt the question suppose an ombudsman wanted to set up a secure drop box for "IT-naive whistleblowers", is it feasible ? and how could the whistleblower be certain of that anonymity ? http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/6429126/The-Sun-Whistleblower-Cha… regards Rohan McLeod

7 years, 9 months

Core developer of F-Droid free software app store - 6pm 3rd Thurs, 110 Victoria st, Carlton South

by David E Payne

Sorry this is less than 4 hours notice but I might as well still mention it since Peter Selwyo's name doesn't appear in a search of my Yahoo email, The "Free Software Melbourne (Melbourne)" [yes, redundancy in name name] meetup is at 6pm on the third Thursday at VPAC Head Office Training Room, 110 Victoria st, Carlton South. (VERY SOUTH!) Tonight it features Peter Serwylo, core developer of F-Droid free software app store "+ much Gnews." (I don't know if "Gnews" is a Stallman-esq pun re GNU, related to GODgle or what.) http://www.meetup.com/Free-Software-Melbourne/events/221722267/?a=cr1_grp&r… Dav* BTW it's 11:20pm? on April 15th in San Francisco now, so still the 38th anniversary of the first day of the first "West Coast Computer Faire" April 15-17th 1977.

7 years, 9 months

straight white guys getting emotional

by Russell Coker

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2014/12/26/concern-for-equality-linked- to-logic-not-emotion/ The URL says it all. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

7 years, 9 months

Re: [luv-talk] readability (was Re: torrent software)

by Rohan McLeod

Mark Trickett wrote: > Hello Rohan, > > On Sun, 2015-04-12 at 20:51 +1000, Rohan McLeod wrote: >> Craig Sanders wrote: >>> Rohan, just a request but would you mind formatting your paragraphs >>> in a readable manner? >>> Craig ;I will give some thought to your suggestion, >>> but somehow I doubt things will change much. > .............snip > > I see similar "issues" with your postings as does Craig. I suspect that > the effects we see are related to the "editor" component settings. I do > not use "Seamonkey", and do not know whether there is an internal > editor, or whether you have set up an external editor. I suspect that > changing the "window" width while replying may have something to do with > what we see. There may also be a setting for where to set word wrap to > happen,..............snip SeaMonkey-email (the editor) is integral to the browser. There seem to be two separate issues here 1/ the email is not appearing as I intended it to appear 2/ possibly the way I intend it to appear; is not as some might wish it. An explanation for 2/; might go as follows: I notice that I often have battles with my word processor; which used to be Libre-write but now is mostly Abiword. I suspect that my ' paragraph formatting ' style is somewhat eccentric; and at odds with convention and what the developer had in mind. In particular: - it breaks sentences where I don't want them broken - it stops me starting sentences on a new line How can I put it ?; unconventional layout others unhappy; conventional layout me unhappy; better others unhappy ! Regarding 1/ which is also happening; I am going to try to stick to full screen editing and will try sending it to myself first; to see what scrambling is occuring ........................................................................... Well I have just recieved back this email; it seems pretty much as I intended except the quoted stuff is now blue; and the delimiter symbol has changed from | to > regards Rohan McLeod

7 years, 9 months

Re: [luv-talk] readability (was Re: torrent software)

by Rick Moen

Craig Sanders wrote: > Rohan, just a request but would you mind formatting your paragraphs > in a readable manner? I'm a pedant and an extremely evil, very annoying person who probably twists his waxed moustache, and in general wishes to emulate Doctor Evil. That background fact having been established, I would like to offer for public benefit a useful English-language distinction: Readable: Easy, interesting and enjoyable to read Legible: Presented in a written physical format that facilitates reading. Text suffering from poor legibility can be fixed through better typography, or in some cases turning on a reading lamp. Text suffering from poor readability can be fixed by rewriting it to make the semantic content more easy to discern. Yr. welcome.

7 years, 9 months

Re: [luv-talk] readability (was Re: torrent software)

by Peter Ross

Hi all, From: "Craig Sanders" <cas(a)taz.net.au> > now, you're entitled to your opinion - everyone is entitled to be wrong > if they please. Recently I read an article about "Why Do Many Reasonable People Doubt Science?" in the National Geographic. I just found it online: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2015/03/science-doubters/achenbach-text Have fun while reading Peter

7 years, 9 months

Re: [luv-talk] readability (was Re: torrent software)

by Craig Sanders

On Sun, Apr 12, 2015 at 08:51:12PM +1000, Rohan McLeod wrote: > Craig ;I will give some thought to your suggestion, > but somehow I doubt things will change much. fair enough. they're your words, you can write them however you like....but you might find that more people will bother to read them (and thus be worth the bother of writing in the first place) if you format them for readability. > Your email above is very clear and well formatted; that's because i make the small effort to edit my messages and reformat them with par until they're readable. > but often discussions rapidly become, quite visually scrambled; only if nobody bothers to edit their replies. > But if there is something you particularly want to read; perhaps I > could attach it as a pdf ? PDF? now there's no need to be rude, just tell me to FOAD if you feel that strongly about it :) craig -- craig sanders <cas(a)taz.net.au>

7 years, 9 months

Libertarianism (was Re: torrent software)

by Lev Lafayette

Whoops. In error I responded to Michael alone rather than the list.. ---------------------------- Original Message ---------------------------- Subject: Libertarianism (was Re: [luv-talk] torrent software) From: "Lev Lafayette" <lev(a)levlafayette.com> Date: Fri, April 10, 2015 9:56 am To: "Michael Verrenkamp" <jabjabs(a)fastmail.com.au> -------------------------------------------------------------------------- On Thu, April 9, 2015 8:43 pm, Michael Verrenkamp wrote: > " Not sure you can be "a bit" of a libertarian. Either you are, or you >> aren't. If you support some regulation, then you're probably not a >> libertarian. Essentially, what you're saying is that you only like the >> laws that you like. " >> > > Sounds like me :P I like the broad concept of libertarians but I don't > actually think it would be a great overall system. We should limit > governments powers but libertarians can go a little too far at times. I > also could be talking total crap right now. Of course one of the big political changes from the 1970s was the ability of neoliberals to co-opt the word 'libertarian' which historically, and on a continuing basis, was associated with anarcho-socialists. a) The first person to identify as a libertarian in the political sense was Joseph Dejacque, an anarcho-communist and signatory to the First International. b) The first periodical to identify with libertarian politics was "Le Libertaire, Journal du Mouvement social" which was a hot-bed of anarchist, socialist and communist thought. c) To this day even in the United States, the first political organisation to use the named is the Libertarian Book Club, which distributes anarcho-syndalist and council communist texts. d) In the UK, the avowedly socialist Common Wealth Party had the journal; "The Libertarian" and so it goes on. The Anarchist FAQ provides an interesting combination. http://www.infoshop.org/AnarchistFAQ-PDF >From the FAQ While the Greek words anarchos and anarchia are often taken to mean "having no government" or "being without a government," as can be seen, the strict, original meaning of anarchism was not simply "no government." "An-archy" means "without a ruler," or more generally, "without authority," and it is in this sense that anarchists have continually used the word. For example, we find Kropotkin arguing that anarchism "attacks not only capital, but also the main sources of the power of capitalism: law, authority, and the State." [Op. Cit., p. 150] For anarchists, anarchy means "not necessarily absence of order, as is generally supposed, but an absence of rule." ... In such a [anarchist] society the whole conception of government would change. The economic structure would come to replace the traditional government apparatus. The need for government in the tradition sense would disappear, to be replaced by the planning and administration of trade and industry. The government of people would be replaced by the administration of things. There would be no need for democracy. The administrators would be appointed on the basis of their professional competence. Considering definitions from the American Heritage Dictionary, we find: LIBERTARIAN: one who believes in freedom of action and thought; one who believes in free will. SOCIALISM: a social system in which the producers possess both political power and the means of producing and distributing goods. Just taking those two first definitions and fusing them yields: LIBERTARIAN SOCIALISM: a social system which believes in freedom of action and thought and free will, in which the producers possess both political power and the means of producing and distributing goods. However, due to the creation of the Libertarian Party in the USA, many people now consider the idea of "libertarian socialism" to be a contradiction in terms. Indeed, many "Libertarians" think anarchists are just attempting to associate the "anti-libertarian" ideas of "socialism" (as Libertarians conceive it) with Libertarian ideology in order to make those "socialist" ideas more "acceptable" -- in other words, trying to steal the "libertarian" label from its rightful possessors. Nothing could be further from the truth. Anarchists have been using the term "libertarian" to describe themselves and their ideas since the 1850's. According to anarchist historian Max Nettlau, the revolutionary anarchist Joseph Dejacque published Le Libertaire, Journal du Mouvement Social in New York between 1858 and 1861 while the use of the term "libertarian communism" dates from November, 1880 when a French anarchist congress adopted it. [Max Nettlau, A Short History of Anarchism, p. 75 and p. 145] The use of the term "Libertarian" by anarchists became more popular from the 1890s onward after it was used in France in an attempt to get round anti-anarchist laws and to avoid the negative associations of the word "anarchy" in the popular mind (Sebastien Faure and Louise Michel published the paper Le Libertaire -- The Libertarian -- in France in 1895, for example). Since then, particularly outside America, it has always been associated with anarchist ideas and movements. Taking a more recent example, in the USA, anarchists organised "The Libertarian League" in July 1954, which had staunch anarcho-syndicalist principles and lasted until 1965. The US-based "Libertarian" Party, on the other hand has only existed since the early 1970's, well over 100 years after anarchists first used the term to describe their political ideas (and 90 years after the expression "libertarian communism" was first adopted). It is that party, not the anarchists, who have "stolen" the word. Later, in Section B, we will discuss why the idea of a "libertarian" capitalism (as desired by the Libertarian Party) is a contradiction in terms. Hope this helps, -- Lev Lafayette, BA (Hons), GradCertTerAdEd (Murdoch), GradCertPM, MBA (Tech Mngmnt) (Chifley) mobile: 0432 255 208 RFC 1855 Netiquette Guidelines http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1855.txt -- Lev Lafayette, BA (Hons), GradCertTerAdEd (Murdoch), GradCertPM, MBA (Tech Mngmnt) (Chifley) mobile: 0432 255 208 RFC 1855 Netiquette Guidelines http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1855.txt

7 years, 9 months

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luv-talk April 2015