Fsf-friends May 2004

fsf-friends@gnu.org.in

23 participants
42 discussions

Spam problems
by Rakesh 'arky' Ambati 01 May '04

01 May '04

Hello List, I have a seen a considerable increase in spam and auto-remailing virus in my mailbox.Is it possible to prevent to mask email addresses on mailing list archives. TIA --arky __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Win a $20,000 Career Makeover at Yahoo! HotJobs http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/careermakeover

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Transcript of speech on Free Software by RMS
by Vijay Kumar 01 May '04

01 May '04

The transcript of RMS' speech at the National Institute of Technology, Trichy is available from http://glugt.linuxisle.com/projects.shtml A few quotes from the speech: * About a year ago, some developers... some researchers found out that, they figured out that, Windows XP when it asked for an upgrade, also reports to Microsoft, what's installed on your disk. And it does this secretly, it sends the list of files encrypted, so that it was impossible for people to tell easily that this was going on. * Even more bizarre, there is a malicious feature in the music sharing program, Kaza, where the company... the developers sell time on your computer. So, other people will pay Kaza, so that they can run their programs on your computer. * Paradoxically speaking, when you have a choice between several non-free programs to do the same job, which ever one you choose the support for it is going to be a monopoly afterwards, so at the beginning you get a choice, but afterwards you are stuck in a monopoly. * Well, there are lots of people in India who might be able to afford the computer, but couldn't possibly afford the software, because they can just barely afford a computer. So free software can make a big difference in terms of who in India can get a computer and run it. * But this is not what they are doing. And you can see easily if you look around easily, government organization in India are mostly using non-free software. And schools in India are using non-free software. This is a terrible mistake, it is a foolish and disastrous policy, governments of course deserves to use free software.... * And Microsoft did something really stupid. Well, really absurd. Supposedly, they offered various governments access to the source code. But they did it in a way that is fraudulent... * As far as I can tell, some people are born with the skill program, are born with their brains growing so that they will have the skill to program. They will be natural programmers. But writing clear understandable software is something you have to learn. That's judgment. The way you learn is by reading lots of source and by changing lots of programs. * So schools should use free software for the sake of education, but there is an even deeper reason, because schools are not supposed to teach just facts, just skills, but even more deep, they are supposed to teach the spirit of goodwill, the habit of cooperating with other people. * ...two weeks ago, when I met with Dr. Kalam and explained to him about why schools should use free software and about how non-free software is colonial system, I was really delighted, because he understood it instantly. * But sometimes, there is a different issue that does make sense for hardware. And that is the design spec, visible. You know, can the public get copies of design, to find out what the hardware does. Well, this is necessary in certain cases, so that you can check for malicious features... * There are portable phones in Europe which have this feature, that somebody can remotely tell the phone to listen to you. It really is a spy device, in the most classical sense. And if you have a portable phone, do you know who could be spying on you at any time? Vijay -- Free the Code. Free the User. ------------------------------------------------- This mail sent through IMP(http://www.nitt.edu)

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Fsf-friends May 2004