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Last post Author Topic: Why George Orwell wrote 1984  (Read 17084 times)

IainB

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Re: Why George Orwell wrote 1984
« Reply #25 on: January 14, 2014, 09:58 PM »
^wow. That kind of deserves a thread of it's own.
Is that true, all that? I mean, I dont suspect him of lying - but is it a realistic analysis?
Is it likely that it is game over? Very good question.
I suspect that it very likely is true/realistic, given that he is apparently expressing his qualified opinion and interpretation of facts regarding the construction of the consortium W3C. I recall that, a few years ago, Microsoft ably demonstrated how to force through the adoption/enforcement of their proprietary standards in W3C, in their method of promulgation of the XML standard (e.g., which was in train as far back as 1999 in "the XML wars"). IBM were similarly pushing their preferred/proprietary standards counter to that.

I recall reading a technical paper in about 2003/4 by the author of Speak Freely (John Walker). He described that he was handing over SF to the public domain and abandoning it as-is/was, as he reckoned that the introduction of NAT (Network Address Translation) in routers had effectively defeated the longer-term possibility of a free, anonymous Internet (OWTTE).

Notwithstanding, SF seems to be able to offer - in its crypto form, at any rate - something that probably did not exist before in the public domain, namely secure P2P encrypted voice communication - and it works.
Post SnowdenGate, we could presume that The NSA would probably hate the thing.

Useful, but probably a bit off-topic:
Spoiler
I just now looked at the Sourceforge links for this. The file versions of the different options don't seem to be any different/changed to the ones I have (same date/version), but there seems to be some confusing duplication of the project in Sourceforge (or circular linking) and it is difficult to establish whether the available downloads are the same thing or whether they are crypto and non-crypto versions, or just the latter.
I wondered whether there might have been some tampering of downloadable installation files to deliberately confuse/defeat/remove the crypto capability. Fortunately the source is available.

These are the files I had: (downloadable here - SpeakFreely v7.6a.zip):

Speak-Freely - Archived files.jpg

For whatever motivation, it seems that with unique IDs in the CPU, unique IDs in the ubiquitous Windows OS, MAC addresses, NAT, the use of HTTP headers, the use of NSA-prescribed "randomly generated numbers" (refer How did the NSA hack our emails?), **RA lobbying, DMR and copyright laws, the Internet has been ring-fenced and secured with the apparent objective of zero control, freedom, anonymity and privacy for the individual (or corporate) person. We will all be increasingly taxed for using this "free" service. The golden days/potential of the WWW of yore are probably well and truly over. The tax could arguably be in the form of our loss of freedom/privacy/anonymity and the selling of our demographic data, so that we can be targetted for advertising/marketing purposes.

In 1997, I had a large assignment (as an independent consultant) for a client, the objective being to establish the potential marketing benefits of e-commerce for the client organisation and how that could be usefully fitted into their strategic marketing plan. It was a big and important project, and our MD peer-reviewed my work every inch of the way, as he could not afford any mistakes.
I recall thinking that the indications were that the WWW was heading towards becoming one huge near-perfect world market (economic) infrastructure for goods and services (which was a good thing), but that it could tend to obliterate or subsume the use of the thing for personal/confidential purposes or free distribution/access of knowledge (which latter was its originally intended design purpose).
That seems to have become increasingly the reality, and the unpredicted advent of 9/11 seems to have moved that future into reality with the speed and momentum of a runaway express train.
One cannot predict the future for the WWW/Internet, but one can only suppose. I think it looks hopeful, and at the same time pretty grim.
One potential hope seems to be bitcoinage. A market needs a universally stable and acceptable currency as "money" (medium of exchange) for trade in fungible and other commodities, and services. Currently the market has a multitude of establishment artificially-controlled currencies, with the US$ being dominant. My hope is that bitcoinage will eventually settle into the dominant role of de facto international trade currency, thus reducing government power/control over our currencies and money and trade. However, I don't think they will take the potential existential threat of bitcoinage lying down and I wonder whether the speculation in bitcoinage will not be its own undoing. Historically, speculation has helped to stabilise some currencies and wreck others, but bitcoinage is not so simple.
We shall see.
« Last Edit: January 14, 2014, 10:21 PM by IainB »

J-Mac

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Re: Why George Orwell wrote 1984
« Reply #26 on: January 14, 2014, 11:17 PM »
Kinda hard to tell exactly what W3C is including since the studios' requirements are being kept confidential. So the studios have indicated their "secret" requirements to the DRM vendors and W3C and W3C is providing an API that allows the DRM vendors the ability to include the solutions that meet those requirements. Whatever they end up with I fear that nothing will be quite the same. And with DRM being ingrained in the browsers methods for defeating it will be tough to come by.

Jim

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Re: Why George Orwell wrote 1984
« Reply #27 on: January 15, 2014, 06:22 AM »
Relevant to the Orwellian nightmare:

http://sourceforge.n....php?msg_id=31813471

I posted it in the basement and the Bitcoin thread.
Slow Down Music - Where I commit thought crimes...

Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong. - John Diefenbaker

wraith808

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Re: Why George Orwell wrote 1984
« Reply #28 on: January 20, 2014, 11:58 PM »
Let America Be America Again

  by Langston Hughes   
Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean—
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home—
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free?  Not me?
Surely not me?  The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay—
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine—the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME—
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again!

Some people have always known... Orwell falls into that perceptive group, but is not alone.

Stoic Joker

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Re: Why George Orwell wrote 1984
« Reply #29 on: January 21, 2014, 06:51 AM »
Let America Be America Again

  by Langston Hughes   
Let America be America again.

...

We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again!

Some people have always known... Orwell falls into that perceptive group, but is not alone.

Now I would say that this guy 'Totally Gets It'. And is even more accurate today as the America we all grew up in sinks into the sea.