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<H1><A NAME="answer">
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<img src="../gx/dennis/qbubble.gif" alt="(?)"
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border="0" align="middle">
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<font color="#B03060">The Answer Gang</font>
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<img src="../gx/dennis/bbubble.gif" alt="(!)"
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border="0" align="middle">
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</A></H1>
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<BR>
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<H4>By Jim Dennis, Ben Okopnik, Dan Wilder, Breen, Chris, and the Gang,
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the Editors of Linux Gazette...
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and You!
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<br>Send questions (or interesting answers) to
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<a href="mailto:linux-questions-only@ssc.com">linux-questions-only@ssc.com</a>
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</H4>
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<p><em><font color="#990000">There is no guarantee that your questions
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here will <b>ever</b> be answered. Readers at confidential sites
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must provide permission to publish. However, you can be published
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anonymously - just let us know!
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</font></em></p>
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<p><hr><p>
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<!-- endcut ======================================================= -->
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<H3>Contents:</H3>
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<dl>
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<dt><a href="#tag/greeting"
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><strong>¶: Greetings From Heather Stern</strong></A></dl>
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<DL>
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<!-- index_text begins -->
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<dt><A HREF="tag/1.html"
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><img src="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" height="28" width="50"
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alt="(?)" border="0"
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><strong>Q: avoid getting answers from apropos in the man sections 3 and 3x</strong></a>
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<dt><A HREF="tag/2.html"
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><img src="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" height="28" width="50"
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alt="(?)" border="0"
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><strong>"crypt" function in Linux</strong></a>
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<dt><A HREF="tag/3.html"
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><img src="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" height="28" width="50"
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alt="(?)" border="0"
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></a>I think this would be a common problem at least is has been for me
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--or--
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<dd><A HREF="tag/3.html"
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><strong>Dependency Hell</strong></a>
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<dt><A HREF="tag/4.html"
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><img src="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" height="28" width="50"
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alt="(?)" border="0"
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><strong>Is This a Good Book for Linux Programming?</strong></a>
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<dt><A HREF="tag/5.html"
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><img src="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" height="28" width="50"
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alt="(?)" border="0"
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><strong>What ISPs Do We Use for Linux</strong></a>
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<dt><A HREF="tag/6.html"
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><img src="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" height="28" width="50"
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alt="(?)" border="0"
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><strong>How to let the world find your Linux Server when using DHCP</strong></a>
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<dt><A HREF="tag/7.html"
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><img src="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" height="28" width="50"
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alt="(?)" border="0"
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><strong>trouble w/ dual boot</strong></a>
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<dt><A HREF="tag/8.html"
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><img src="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" height="28" width="50"
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alt="(?)" border="0"
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></a>Any good resources on laptop hardware support? --or--
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<dd><A HREF="tag/8.html"
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><strong>HOWTO find a good laptop</strong></a>
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<!-- index_text ends -->
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</DL>
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<!-- .~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~. -->
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<A NAME="tag/greeting"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A>
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<H3 align="left"><img src="../gx/dennis/hbubble.gif"
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height="50" width="60" alt="(¶) " border="0"
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>Greetings from Heather Stern</H3>
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<!-- begin hgreeting -->
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<p> Ouch.
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<p>
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The world trade center in shambles. The financial community is still
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mostly in shock. The airline industry is rightfully quite horrified.
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I know <em>I'm</em> horrified...
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<p>
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What can we, members of the free software community, do?
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<p>
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I know a lot of sites have put up banners linking to various helpful
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organizations, the Red Cross, funds for the families of all the
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emergency personnel killed, and so on. So much in fact, that I wonder
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how many charities will go short shrift of donations, clothes, and
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other things, simply because this one presently has everyone's attention.
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<p>
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But that's what we do <em>as people</em>. As a <em>community</em> we
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can do a lot more. <a href="http://www.slashdot.org/">Slashdot</a>
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did great on keeping us all in tune with the news, when the routers
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in front of almost every major news service were going into meltdown.
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People used IRC and websites to find out if friends were alive and well,
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I saw wikis, I saw email lists briefly stop talking about the topic
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of the moment and reserve the day for traffic about who was okay. Now
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this didn't just mean wondering whether anybody died in New York. For
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instance, a friendly soul from the GNOME Usability Project was trapped
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in China for 6 days longer than he expected... making it to our user
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group meeting just in time, I might add, but I think it probably
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dampened his enthusiasm for our chinese food.
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<p>
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We're an international community, and now an international problem that
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has existed for a long time has been made more obvious. These people
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that took these planes used little that was unavailable to Cro Magnon
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Man. I'll update them to the Bronze Age because they found a cheat
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sheet for how to not be followed - but we're still talking tribal
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hunters, not 21st century "agents" from The Matrix.
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<p>Yet there are these pushes to "wiretap" email. (See the Crypto-Gram
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Newsletter, <a href="http://www.counterpane.com/crypto-gram-109a.html"
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>http://www.counterpane.com/crypto-gram-109a.html</a>
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for some details.) The ultra-protectionism
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of Big Corporate copyrights continues (you think the
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<a href="http://www.educause.edu/issues/dmca.html"
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>Digital Millenium Copyright Act</a>, already passed
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and being enforced, is bad? Look at the bill
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"<a href="http://216.110.42.179/docs/hollings.090701.html"
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>SSSCA</a>" up for attention. According to the EFF's Cindy Cohn
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it makes the DMCA "look like the Bill Of Rights".) while frankly,
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my ability as a real individual who writes about one tune every 2 years,
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lyrics a little more often, and at least one article a month, to
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continue to enforce my OWN copyrights and fair use rights under the
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US Code, Title 17
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(<a href="http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/index.html"
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>http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/index.html</a>)
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continues straight into the gutter.
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My expectation of safety when I visit a foreign country obviously won't
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be based on the idea that I was an invited speaker -- as far as I know,
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anybody who was trapped in another city because all flights were grounded
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has gotten home now, even the ones who took a taxi From Chicago to Los
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Angeles -- but Dmitry Sklyarov, a Russian citizen, continues to live
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trapped in the USA because eBooks can't be sold in Russia unless you
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can make a backup of them, and he agreed to TALK about how the encryption
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works on US soil.
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<p>
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<strong>NOW</strong> I'm terrified.
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<p>Of course most of my email lives a very public life already. But let's
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face it, a translucent dime store postcard written on in big black marker
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has more privacy than the average internet Joe. It's not a federal
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felony to hassle a small town ISP because they don't want to let you
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wiretap all of their customers just because you have a warrant on one of
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them. (We'll leave out whether the "up to something" they might
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be up to is about real life-and-death matters or merely about someone
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wanting to play Mom for us.) It's not a federal crime to impersonate
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being someone important so that your spam gets into a victim's box.
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Hey, I may dislike spam a great deal, but it's just a delete button,
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okay? He's said his piece and I ignore it. We paint over graffiti
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on the walls of small towns, no attention, no fanfare, and eventually
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the spams die. End of story.
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<p>
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Soon, however, it may be a federal crime -- penalty, to lose most of
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your rights of US citizenship forever -- to deface a website. HELLO
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real world! This is about equivalent to "joyriding". Give 'em some
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community service and get on with life. Goodness knows what level of
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punishment they have in mind for someone who
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believes that mail containing things about money matters really ought
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to be in an envelope that can't be steamed open, even in the figurative
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sense of cyberspace. (If you don't use PGP or
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<a href="http://www.gnupg.org/">GnuPG</a> already, establish
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the habit now. Free interoperable clients for MSwin and Mac:
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<a href="http://www.pgp.com/products/freeware/default.asp"
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>http://www.pgp.com/products/freeware/default.asp</a>)
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Or that we have a reasonable expectation of privacy and freedom to
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assemble as a group for any other reason. Or that the business
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transactions of any US company are none of any other company's or
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country's direct business,
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unless some sort of model of trust exists between them.
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Join the <a href="http://www.eff.org/">Electronic Frontier Foundation</a>
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and keep up on other resources about what is going on. As a group we
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have a better chance. (There are other privacy related groups out there
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too. <a href="http://www.cato.org/">Cato.org</a>, the
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<a href="http://www.aclu.org/">American Civil Liberties Union</a>,
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and Europeans might consider checking out the Justis database,
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<a href="http://www.justis.com/database/european_law.html"
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>http://www.justis.com/database/european_law.html</a>. I'm sorry
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I can't read other languages or surely I'd have more pointers...)
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<p>
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The electronic 'zines I'm subscribed to were singing the praises of the
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IT staff who arranged for businesses to go onward regardless of the
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chaos. They're only just starting to notice the drastic legislation
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that's trying to come down the pipe on a wave of patriotism, duty, and
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budget-grubbing. I work with and know a lot of sysadmins. I can tell
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you that a lot of sysadmins right now don't like the idea of being
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put in a tight spot: as a cop, with none of the legal defenses a cop
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has for doing his job; as a carrier of bits, with none of the legal
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defenses of a telphony Common Carrier for the fact that we are not the
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origin of any of this information; as an implementor of company policy,
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and a professional with special skills, but without the defense of
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"client privilege" that other professions enjoy.
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<p>A number of legislators are quite up in arms over the idea that they
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are being asked to vote on these matters without enough time to read
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all the horrid little details. However, some seem to want this extra
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time so they have a chance to draft their own pet departments, see
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<a href="http://dailynews.yahoo.com/htx/ap/20010920/us/attacks_terrorism_laws_3.html">http://dailynews.yahoo.com/htx/ap/20010920/us/attacks_terrorism_laws_3.html</a>. Call your reps now and make sure that whatever does finally get
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drafted actually defends and supports <em>you</em>. I'm sad to say that
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email probably isn't enough -- you can try it, but they get a ton, and it
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carries little emotional power. Use a phone and <strong>talk</strong>
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to these people.
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<p>
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While a proposed bill isn't exactly
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"closed source" it is pretty much what something huge like OpenOffice
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or the linux kernel is to someone uninitiated to the wizardry of C and
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perhaps even deeply experienced in the same. Of course in <em>our</em>
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scope we have all sorts of utilities to help us manage large projects
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and sort through things. So what I'd love to see is some sort of
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"pretty print" style parser that goes over proposed bills and exposes
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the described crimes, regulations, penalties and so on to a bit of
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serious debugging. The "sources" are readable by anyone on THOMAS,
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<a href="http://thomas.loc.gov/">http://thomas.loc.gov/</a>;
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although goodness knows if those are up to date with what is being
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argued on the Congress floor, it's a start. I'm sure somebody out
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there can give it a shot!
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<p><em>On a somewhat more local note, we had many more threads than this,
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in fact I am amazed at the percentage of incoming questions that we
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answered. But I just got all boiled up and had to let off the
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above rant. On the plus side my scripts are doing better by
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far than last month. So I have picked some highly juicy ones
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and hope you'll forgive me the short list. We have new
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<a href="tag/bios.html">Biographies</a>
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for the Answer Gang, too, so you can get a sense of who answers
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your questions here.</em></p>
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<!-- end hgreeting -->
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<!--startcut ======================================================= -->
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<P> <hr> </p>
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<!-- *** BEGIN copyright *** -->
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<H5 align="center">This page edited and maintained by the Editors
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of <I>Linux Gazette</I>
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<a href="http://www.linuxgazette.com/copying.html"
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>Copyright ©</a> 2001
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<BR>Published in issue 71 of <I>Linux Gazette</I> October 2001</H5>
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<H6 ALIGN="center">HTML script maintained by
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<A HREF="mailto:star@starshine.org">Heather Stern</a> of
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Starshine Technical Services,
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<A HREF="http://www.starshine.org/">http://www.starshine.org/</A>
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</H6>
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