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December 31, 2003 - 1:59am -- hydrarchist
Analysis & Polemic
Technology

hydrarchist writes:

"The Free Software Movement - Anarchism in Action"

by Asa Winstanley

* Introduction

The free software movement has been around in at least since 1984, but there is little awareness or debate about it in anarchist or general activist circles, beyond a vague awareness of "Linux". A theoretical anarchist analysis of the movement and the lessons we can learn from it seems to be conspicuous only by its absence. Yet this is a movement which is currently affecting a revolution in the way individuals, groups and companies use and create computer systems. I intend this piece to stimulate further debate, as there is currently little. Also, I am no expert in anarchist history or theory, so would be happy to receive criticism of the inevitable shortcomings in my comparisons.

December 10, 2003 - 4:20pm -- jim
News
Technology

Utah Students Set New Fi-Fi Record: 82 Miles

Weber State University

December 9, 2003 - 9:04pm -- hydrarchist
Analysis & Polemic
Technology

hydrarchist writes:


"This paper discusses the importance of the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) scheduled to take place in December 2003 in Geneva, as well as providing a critique of it, along with a discussion of the apparent advantages of organising a counter-summit like WE SEIZE!"


Which Information Society Are You Talking About?


On the Way to WSIS: We Seize!


George N. Dafermos

0. Doomed Agendas

The World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) is scheduled to take place in the next month (December 10-12, 2003) in Geneva. This much celebrated meeting will supposedly shed light upon the obstacles that the so-called information society faces, and wil discuss ways to deal with them in the most efficient manner for the greater good of all. In a nutshell, the WSIS is the place to be if you're interested in how we all together can widen authentic civic engagement in matters rooted in the epicentre of the information society.

December 5, 2003 - 4:23pm -- jim
Announcements
Technology

Anonymous Comrade writes:


On Thursday, Dec 4, 2003 the geneva03 collective wrote a press release explaining their "We Seize" project during the WSIS -- UN World Summit of the Information Society.

WSIS Press Release

Geneva03 Collective


The World Summit On Infomation Society (WSIS) takes place in Geneva from the 10th-12th December, 2003. While the official agenda of this UN/ITU Summit talks about free access to information, the digital divide and equality of opportunities, in reality its doors are closed, its discussions exclusive and the agendas of those who attend it concealed [dissimulé]. What is more, the right to demonstrate and protest has been suspended in Geneva at this time as the usual parade of despots and tyrants fly in to Switzerland to define policy for their own citizens, and the rest of the world, based on the agendas of corporate multinations, media conglomerates and infrastructure owners.

December 2, 2003 - 12:05pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Technology

"The End of Oil"

George Monbiot, London Guardian, Tuesday December 2, 2003

The oil industry is buzzing. On Thursday, the government approved the
development of the biggest deposit discovered in British territory for at
least 10 years. Everywhere we are told that this is a "huge" find, which
dispels the idea that North Sea oil is in terminal decline. You begin to
recognise how serious the human predicament has become when you discover
that this "huge" new field will supply the world with oil for five and a
quarter days.

November 20, 2003 - 2:47pm -- jim
News
Technology

Anonymous Comrade writes:

"Nigerian Email Con-men Fall into Their Targets' Net"
Tony Thompson, crime correspondent
Sunday November 16, 2003, The Observer


  It has been described as the internet's first blood sport and is fast becoming one of the web's favourite pastimes. Fed up with having their inboxes clogged with emails from Nigerian fraudsters promising untold riches, the victims are finally hitting back.

Scam-baiting -- replying to the emails and stringing the con artists along with a view to humiliating them as much as possible -- is becoming increasingly popular with more than 150 websites chronicling the often hilarious results.

November 9, 2003 - 7:40am -- hydrarchist
News
Technology

hydrarchist writes:

Is Capital taking over Linux?

byChris Croome

The latest version of Red Hat Linux will be out this week and it will be called Fedora 1 not Red Hat 10, also SuSE Linux has just been bought by Novell and this has been bankrolled by IBM. What is happening here and what does it mean for the world's most popular versions of the free GNU/Linux computer operating system?
@croome.net"

October 17, 2003 - 10:53am -- jim
News
Technology

"Why Doesn't Nike Want To Play with Me?"

0100101110101101.ORG


Nike starts legal action against the European art group
0100101110101101.ORG and cultural Internet platform Public Netbase.

In mid September this group started a surreal art project called Nike
Ground (www.nikeground.com), a performance built around a fake
guerrilla marketing campaign: Nike was supposedly buying streets and
squares in major world capitals, in order to rename them and insert
giant monuments of their famous logo. A hi-tech container was installed
in Vienna, supposedly the first city to host a "Nike Square", as part of
the action.

October 16, 2003 - 8:04pm -- jim
News
Technology

" 'Wider-Fi' Widens"

Leslie Brooks Suzukamo, St. Paul Pioneer Press


It could have been a disaster when Otter Tail Corp. moved one of its corporate offices out of downtown Fargo, N.D., in 1999 and suddenly found itself beyond the range of high-speed, data-carrying telephone lines so vital to its business.

The local telephone company's offer of a slowpoke dial-up connection didn't meet Otter Tail's need for fast Internet traffic. So Joy Fetting, Otter Tail's information technology director, took a radical step.

She chose a wireless carrier, connecting the utility company's 20-person office to the Internet through a small rooftop dish antenna and bypassing the phone company's buried lines.

Four years later, Otter Tail's connection is still wireless and now faster than a T-1 landline — at less than half the cost.

October 14, 2003 - 5:08am -- hydrarchist
Analysis & Polemic
Technology

hydrarchist writes:


"The dotCommunist Manifesto"

Eben Moglen

January 2003

A Spectre is haunting multinational capitalism -- the spectre
of free information. All the powers of "globalism'' have entered
into an unholy alliance to exorcize this spectre: Microsoft and
Disney, the World Trade Organization, the United States Congress and
the European Commission.

Where are the advocates of freedom in the new digital society who have
not been decried as pirates, anarchists, communists? Have we not seen
that many of those hurling the epithets were merely thieves in power,
whose talk of "intellectual property'' was nothing more than an
attempt to retain unjustifiable privileges in a society irrevocably
changing? But it is acknowledged by all the Powers of Globalism that
the movement for freedom is itself a Power, and it is high time that
we should publish our views in the face of the whole world, to meet
this nursery tale of the Spectre of Free Information with a Manifesto
of our own.

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