Libraries, Liberty, and The Onion Router

I like libraries. The idea of a place where anyone can read anything is a fantastic innovation in human history.

I've written about libraries before.

Since Hypatia, and possibly before, libraries were not about just books, they are places where both learning and teaching occur. Young or old, rich or poor, the idea of welcoming everyone is inherently revolutionary.

Librarians are cool, too. If you think Google is good, go talk to a librarian. They know how to find stuff!

Copyright and the Great Library at Alexandria

Updated 20180819! See bottom!

The Duke University Center for the Study of the Public Domain has published their annual list of "What Would Have Entered The Public Domain" for 2015. TechDirt has a good digest of the list as well.

Edit: Here is the list for Jan 1, 2016.

None of that is going to happen.

When considering the government granted monopoly that is Copyright, it is important to keep in mind that the original reasoning and justification used for legislating Copyright in these United States, was to create a modern Library of Alexandria.

Real Net Neutrality

Vint Cerf

Vint Cerf:

"The Internet is based on a layered, end-to-end model that allows people at each level of the network to innovate free of any central control. By placing intelligence at the edges rather than control in the middle of the network, the Internet has created a platform for innovation."

The 'Net is made up of independent providers with private peering contracts between them. This is one of the details in the "debate" about "Net Neutrality" that tends to get lost.

Update: Wired Magazine agrees with me.
Update: The bureaucrats have finally gotten their way, and put the 'Net back under their chains. February 26, 2015
Update: One more, from the Mises Institute.

NeoCash Radio and The First Crypto War

NeoCash Radio has put up the short talk we had concerning the "First Crypto War", being, in my opinion, the time period from when Phil Zimmerman wrote PGP, to when the International Trafficking In Arms Regulations on the export of strong encryption were repealed.

I recommend my earlier post, "When The Net Was Young", if you haven't read it.

Spoiler: Geeks vs. NSA, Geeks won the battle, the war continues.

But there are elements to the story that I was not able to get into on the air, so I will spend a little while creating this blog post with links and additional materials concerning my comments in the radio show

The guys over at NeoCash Radio had me on for their show #77, talking about Bitcoin and all the rest of it.

Thank you, Daren and JJ, for the opportunity, and I look forward to our talk on the First Crypto War when that comes out.

Curt-

Installing the Trinity Desktop Environment on Debian

A recent discussion on LXer concerning the greatness that was Kmail reminded me that I never did a good write-up on installing the KDE3 fork, Trinity-DE.

One of the more interesting aspects of this particular discussion is that I wasn't the one to bring up Trinity-DE. Usually, it's me who points out that the wondrous fantasticness that was KDE3 has not left the world, that Trinity-DE is alive and well.

So it's time for a screenshot tutorial on installing Trinity-DE. For my base, I chose Debian Wheezy, using the Xfce-AMD64 install CD. You can choose any of the Debian Netinstall, CD#1, or DVD#1 disks and simply install whichever default desktop it comes with.

If you do choose to install KDE4 by default, then put Trinity-DE on with it, let me know how that goes. It's the one thing I haven't tried yet, since I do not prefer KDE4.

Doug Engelbart

I just learned that Doug Engelbart died yesterday.

So few people know that the way they work with their computers came to him in a flurry of creation while driving to work one day.