FSF werkt aan keurmerk voor vrije hardware

Dit is goed nieuws. FSF, de Free Software Foundation, werkt aan het opstellen van een aantal criteria waaraan vrije hardware zal moeten voldoen. De bedoeling is te komen tot een keurmerk, waarmee vrije hardware te onderscheiden is van niet vrije.
Dit is een belangrijke stap omdat de grote keuzevrijheid op software gebied zich nog lang niet vertaald heeft in makkelijke en goede keuzemogelijkheden op hardware gebied.
Grote spelers als Dell en Asus hebben wel gelonkt naar de vrije consument , maar zijn onbetrouwbare partners gebleken.
Het is duidelijk dat een producent die kiest, voor wat vrije gebruikers willen, een groot marktaandeel zal kunnen verwerven, omdat die weliswaar kleine groep toch een soort culturele en politieke voorhoede vormen van een ongelooflijk grote markt.
De communities, die zulke producten zullen ondersteunen, zullen marketing hypes als rond de iPhone en iPad tot een achterhaalde zaak kunnen maken.

The FSF's criteria seek to cover all aspects of user interaction with and control of a device: they say the hardware must run free software on every layer that is user upgradeable, allow the user to modify that software, support free data formats, be fully usable with free tools, and more.

FSF license compliance engineer Brett Smith said, "Every software component needed to produce endorsable hardware is now available. We have several GNU/Linux distributions that only include free software, and are completely functional on the right hardware. We have the LinuxLibre kernel that does not include nonfree microcode. And we have cutting edge mobile platforms like Android and MeeGo that are based on free software. In the past we've spoken to manufacturers who were interested in making free software-friendly hardware, but they worried about connecting with customers. With our endorsement mark and the strong criteria that back it, we plan to bridge that gap and demonstrate to manufacturers that they stand to gain plenty by making hardware that respects people's freedom instead of curtailing it."


Een eerste ontwerp voor de cirteria is hier te vinden .
Iedereen wordt uitgenodigd zich hierin te verdiepen en inhoudelijk mee te denken.

bron: http://www.fsf.org/news/endorsement-criteria

Internet vrijheid bedreigt door nieuwe wet in de USA

Dit heeft geen direct verband met Gnu/Linux maar wel met openheid, zelfbeschikking van de internetgebruiker en de onderdrukkende machtsuitoefening van de lobby van grote firma's op het Amerikaanse parlement en regering:

Stop Internet Blacklist

When it really matters to them, Congressmembers can come together -- with a panache and wry wit you didn't know they had. As banned books week gets underway, and President Obama admonishes oppressive regimes for their censorship of the Internet, a group of powerful Senators -- Republicans and Democrats alike -- have signed onto a bill that would vastly expand the government's power to censor the Internet.

The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA) was introduced just one week ago, but it's greased and ready to move, with a hearing in front of the Judiciary Committee this Thursday. If people don't speak out, US citizens could soon find themselves joining Iranians and Chinese in being blocked from accessing broad chunks of the public Internet.

Help us stop this bill in its tracks! Click here to sign our petition.

COICA creates two blacklists of Internet domain names. Courts could add sites to the first list; the Attorney General would have control over the second. Internet service providers and others (everyone from Comcast to PayPal to Google AdSense) would be required to block any domains on the first list. They would also receive immunity (and presumably the good favor of the government) if they block domains on the second list.

The lists are for sites "dedicated to infringing activity," but that's defined very broadly -- any domain name where counterfeit goods or copyrighted material are "central to the activity of the Internet site" could be blocked.

One example of what this means in practice: sites like YouTube could be censored in the US. Copyright holders like Viacom often argue copyrighted material is central to the activity of YouTube, but under current US law, YouTube is perfectly legal as long as they take down copyrighted material when they're informed about it -- which is why Viacom lost to YouTube in court.

But if COICA passes, Viacom wouldn't even need to prove YouTube is doing anything illegal to get it shut down -- as long as they can persuade the courts that enough other people are using it for copyright infringement, the whole site could be censored.

Perhaps even more disturbing: Even if Viacom couldn't get a court to compel censorship of a YouTube or a similar site, the DOJ could put it on the second blacklist and encourage ISPs to block it even without a court order. (ISPs have ample reason to abide the will of the powerful DOJ, even if the law doesn't formally require them to do so.)

COICA's passage would be a tremendous blow to free speech on the Internet -- and likely a first step towards much broader online censorship.

bron: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-segal/stop-the-internet-blackli_b_739836.html

Hoe ga je het internet op? Handleiding uit 2025

Als je deze regels volgt zal je verblijf op het internet veilig en gladjes verlopen.
Zorg wel dat je je officiële identiteitskaart met biometrische gegevens bij de hand hebt om je identiteit voor 100% te kunnen borgen, wanneer je inlogt.
Volgens de internationale Stop Anonymity Act uit 2012 is dit immers verplicht, maar het is makkelijk: je computer is er immers hardware matig op ingesteld.
Lees verder.

Dystopie (=het tegengestelde van een utopie) of is dit al werkelijkheid aan the worden? Dit artikel verscheen 13 juli 2010:

Indonesia isn’t the only South-east Asian country to be rocked by such a scandal—there was a similar case in the Philippines last year, which paved the way for the passage of an anti-voyeurism law; lawmakers have also crafted a cybercrime bill. Today, posting of pictures depicting ‘sexual or other obscene or indecent acts’ on the Internet is now deemed a cybercrime offense.
.......
Thailand earned cyber notoriety for becoming the first country in the world to shut down 100,000 websites for containing ‘dangerous’ material, and it famously punishes bloggers and website administrators for violating its strict lese majeste law. Vietnam, meanwhile, has been accused by Google and McAfee among others of launching cyber attacks against selected websites, including those that advocate opposition to bauxite mining, a controversial issue there.
........

This aggressive drive to eliminate sex and sexual images from the online world could be a symptom of the rising tide of conservatism in many South-east Asian nations. But it could also be because of recognition by governments that the fig leaf of protecting young people from harm also allows the introduction of potentially useful, tough checks on online freedoms.

Indeed, the morality card is being played to produce ‘desirable’ behavior among populations even when the strategy undermines respect for some of the region’s diverse cultures. When Indonesia passed its anti-pornography law, for example, Bali’s governor protested that the law runs contrary to local traditions where nude statues and erotic dances are still sometimes popular. Cambodia, for its part, blocked websites supposedly showing sexual images, including reahu.net’s artistic illustrations of ancient bare-breasted Apsara dancers and a Khmer Rouge soldier.

The problem for the public (but perhaps an advantage to governments) is the vague definitions of what constitute pornographic, indecent, immoral and obscene acts. Activists here in the Philippines are worried that the cybercrime bill I mentioned earlier would leave it solely to the government to decide what should be banned as ‘improper.’ Today, displaying certain body parts is immoral under the law, but tomorrow the state could decide that immoral or dangerous activity includes participating in certain anti-government rallies.

.........

Now that governments have mastered the tools and techniques of censorship in the traditional media, they’re testing the limits of online regulation. And Indonesia’s efforts to enforce its blacklist will prove a useful test case: Indonesia has more than 40 million Internet users and is acknowledged as the Twitter capital of Asia. If it succeeds in filtering web content, other countries in the region are expected to follow its model.

The potential benefits for governments with an authoritarian bent are obvious. Censorship not only reduces access to information—it also weakens the power of Internet users to form online groups of like-minded people. Even if web censorship has noble intentions, therefore, it’s still an unwelcome distraction for governments who would be better served coming up with more creative, realistic and less potentially nefarious rules for responsible Internet use.

bron: http://the-diplomat.com/2010/07/13/sex-and-the-censors-in-asia/

Google is reuze handig

en als je er iets op tegen hebt, dan gebruik je het toch gewoon niet?

De wereld gaat aan onverschilligheid en vlijt te gronde.

kopieren is niet stelen maar delen

DuckDuckGo Alernatief voor Google

http://duckduckgo.com/
Het voordeel t.o.v. Google is
Anonymous searching — we do not track you. Google does.

Less spam & ads — we remove useless sites and don't put ads above results.

Er is een search engine add on voor Firefox beschikbaar (klik op Add to Browser).


De reultaten lijken beter als het Nederlandse alternatief Ixquick.
Voordat het er aanvaardbaar uitziet moet je wel even je settings aanpassen.
Dispaly settings Sidebar en Feedback off
Region Nederland of een ander als je wilt.

Je kunt dit ook doen via url parameters:

Bijvoorbeeld:
http://duckduckgo.com/?kl=nl-nl&ke=-1&kr=-1

Zou je de bijlage in je emailtje in een ODF formaat willen sturen?

Kies opslaan als naam.odt of download Open office for windows - zie beneden .
Bedankt!

Wijs gesloten formaten af: geen geheime documenten!

The files created by Microsoft Office and Apple's iWork are not created in OpenDocument format -- instead, Microsoft and Apple control the formats their software create -- leaving users worldwide at their mercy, and with a string of incompatible documents.

Maak het vershil

By rejecting all files created in Microsoft Office and Apple iWork and pledging to use OpenDocument, you can send a strong message to your friends, colleagues and businesses that you do not support the actions of these companies.

By rejecting these files, you can open a friendly dialog with the person, and ask them to support a free society by using a free format like OpenDocument.

Waarom ik dit bijgesloten bestand niet aanneem:

• Thanks for you're email unfortunately you've sent a me a Microsoft file format. To promote open standards on the web I'm only accepting documents in OpenDocument format. Please visit http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/opendocument to get started with OpenDocument today.

• I'm sorry, but you sent me an attachment in a format that I refuse to use. I use the OpenDocument format. Please visit http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/opendocument to get started with OpenDocument today.

• Can you please resend your attachment in OpenDocument format? I refuse to accept Microsoft Word documents or Microsoft Excel documents, because using proprietary formats is bad for freedom and bad for the web. Please visit http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/opendocument to get started with OpenDocument today.

Meer uitleg http://wiki.fsfe.org/ConvinceYourFriends/Attachments

Hoe maak ik een odf bestand?

The OpenDocument format (ODF) is a format for electronic office documents, such as spreadsheets, charts, presentations and word-processing documents.

OpenDocument is a free and open format, and an ISO standard. Anyone is free to write applications that support it, without fear of patent claims or licensing issues. For governments, businesses, archivists and others, it's critical that documents be stored in a way that can be read for years to come. This is not a problem with printed matter, but proprietary digital file formats have typically changed every few years. We are calling upon all computer users worldwide to reject proprietary formats from Microsoft Office and Apple's iWork, and asking them to support OpenDocument.

Download OpenDocument software

Because OpenDocument is a standard, software developers are free to create many different kinds of software which can create OpenDocuments.

If you've used Microsoft Office, Lotus SmartSuite or Apple iWork in the past, you will find much of the software here is instantly familiar to you. The developers of OpenOffice.org, the most popular OpenDocument suite, have worked hard to ensure it is familiar and easy to use.

Windows

• Download OpenOffice.org for Windows

Mac OS X

• Download OpenOffice.org for Mac OS X

GNU/Linux and others

• Download OpenOffice.org
• KOffice
• GNOME Office