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Give an Internet Freedom Disk

Posted by kdawson on Sun Dec 17, 2006 06:45 PM
from the real-holiday-cheer dept.
Software Education Linux
An anonymous reader, perhaps the blogger himself, writes to tell us about a new blog aimed at getting non-techies excited over the idea of running from a Live CD. The blogger doesn't call it that, preferring instead "Internet Freedom Disk"; Linux is never mentioned. The submitter adds: "This is just a great gift to drop on your non-geek friends and potentially wake up a sleeping giant." Cheap, last-minute, and you can make them yourself. The blogger isn't selling anything; he provides links to Ubuntu and Knoppix Live CDs. Or pick your favorite.
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  • We must all use the internet freedom disk (Score:5, Funny)

    by LordEd (840443) on Sunday December 17 2006, @06:47PM (#17280976)
    If we don't support freedom, the terrorists have already won!

      • Re:Give Bibles (Score:4, Funny)

        by QuantumG (50515) * <qg@biodome.org> on Sunday December 17 2006, @09:00PM (#17281882) Homepage Journal
        Meh. I have relatives that have done this to me. Specifically, they show me the part of the bible that they think is relevant to some recent woe in my life that I shared with them. When it is relevant I thank them for sharing their wisdom with me. When it isn't, I have a nice conversation with them about how they thought it was relevant and how it wasn't. Of course, what I never mention to them is that I'd love to read the bible more often, but it is just such poor writing that my brain won't tolerate it. It would be great if Neal Stephenson or Peter F. Hamilton or some equally great modern writer could rewrite the bible so it isn't so boring, tedious, cryptic, and, well, preachy. Then I could read about the coolest jew who ever lived without having to remember the difference between "shall" and "shant".

            • Re:Give Bibles (Score:5, Funny)

              by nacturation (646836) <nacturation@@@gmail...com> on Sunday December 17 2006, @09:52PM (#17282230) Journal

              Plain english is a start but, as I understand it, these are all translations right? They're not rewrites by people with actual literary skill, are they?
              I suppose in a way it's like making Shakespeare more accessible by having it rewritten in modern language.

              "I think this chick bitches too much."

                    --Macbeth, Act III, Scene II
               

            • Translation Agendas, Literary Skill vary a lot (Score:4, Interesting)

              by billstewart (78916) on Sunday December 17 2006, @10:23PM (#17282414) Journal
              Different groups who've translated the Bible into English have had different priorities and skill sets, written for different subsets of the English language, and done so at different times and therefore their dialects have different levels of readability today. (Sorry to pick on English here; I know a little about the Latin Vulgate, Luther's German translation and the Frency Douay translation, but basically nothing about post-1610 translations except into English :-)


              Most modern translations are trying to strike some balance between readability, preservation of the nuances in the original languages, continuity with familiar readings from earlier well-known translations, introduction of better copies of original texts that weren't available to previous translators, better availability of other original-language material that helps us understand the way the language was used at the time the original documents were written, and of course there's the problem of dealing with poetry.


              The King James translation was fairly conservative for its time (finished 1611), trying to retain much of the familiarity of the popular Geneva translation (which was politically awkward, because that had a lot of Puritan notes and commentary printed with it, and the King wanted stuff that was politically Anglican), and the Geneva translation retained a lot of continuity with Tyndale's and other translations, so even though the English language had been changing radically during the 1500s, and almost all of the "thee" and "thou" and "ye" and "hast" had gone out of popular usage by 1600, a lot of late-1400s grammar was in the translation. On the other hand, the KJV is still very accessible today, partly because it gradually became influential, partly because Shakespeare remains influential, and partly because the translators, while they were trying for broad readability, were a bunch of Southerners (that's London, Oxford, Cambridge, not Alabama :-), so you don't have the diversity of UK dialects such as Scots or Geordie or Cornwall English or Welsh-Border, so the last 400 years of linguistic evolution haven't hit it as hard as if he'd hired a bunch of his fellow Scots to translate it.

      • so why should you force yours on others?


        RETALIATION.

      • Re:Give Bibles (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Pantero Blanco (792776) on Sunday December 17 2006, @10:12PM (#17282356)
        Offering someone a Bible isn't forcing anything down their throat, and neither is giving them a LiveCD. Do you seriously feel oppressed when a Jehovah's Witness/Mormon/PETA member tries to hand you a pamphlet?
        • Of course not, and even if someone does feel that way that doesn't mean they are being oppressed.

          But many who post to websites like this (Digg, /., and others) have been fed a steady diet of business-first thinking -- the notion that we should view every issue chiefly in terms of business interests. The posters are usually young, they haven't read much, but they aren't stupid, merely ignorant of the long struggle many people make to ensure freedoms for themselves and others. They've also been taught to not give any mind to the condition of others, so speaking and thinking in narrow economic ways is de rigeur. For them, business-first thinking is never seen as pushing something down someone's throat, that ideology has the privilege of being viewed as the norm. So when someone talks in terms of freedom (or, perhaps, ethics and social solidarity), that talk must immediately be reframed as inappropriate. One easy way to do this is to mock them for being "religious" which gives others readers a cue that such talk isn't tolerated. After all, businesses greatest achievement is convincing people to divorce their work from ethical examination; we musn't have people asking questions like what kind of society they want to live in.
      • I'll bite.

        Odds are, if I slapped together a Windows-based "Live CD" (BartPE, most likely), it wouldn't have the drivers for your scanner or your printer, either. There's a lot of printers out there... and quite a few of them have sizeable drivers (*cough* HP *cough*).

        Besides, I thought the point of the "Internet Freedom Disk" was so that you could browse the web while being relatively carefree? Exactly where does a scanner fit into that usage? I can understand the need for a scanner, but mostly concerning editing/duplicating photographs or saving important paperwork, etc. Needing a scanner to browse the web? That's stretching it a bit.

        Point #4 is a little inflammatory, but I'll address it anyway with a few counter arguments. First, odds are that your "commonly used applications" have a license that precludes them from being distributed on a LiveCD. It might be fine for you to slap it onto a LiveCD for your own personal use (realistically, who's gonna find out if it's not?), but if you post the ISO up on the web, somebody's probably going to start hollering. Especially if your "commonly used application" involves certain Microsoft products. For that matter, it's safe to say that you can't build your Windows LiveCD, then toss the ISO up on the web, due to those same licensing concerns. Second, once again this is a "Internet Freedom Disk." Nobody said anything about a "Productivity Freedom Disk" or a "Media Creation/Editing Freedom Disk."

        The only argument I can see in your favor is that not all web content is able to be viewed from this LiveCD, most notably certain streaming video (pretty much any site that requires Windows Media Player). I have to assume this, since I can't view this content on my own Linux desktop (CNN anyone?)

  • You lost me at (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Timesprout (579035) on Sunday December 17 2006, @06:50PM (#17280994)
    getting non-techies excited over the idea of running from a Live CD

    Normal people dont get excited about operating systems. PC's are either tools or toys to them. Getting another operating systems is about as exciting as changing the wash cycle in their dishwasher for most people.

    • Re:You lost me at (Score:5, Funny)

      by Who235 (959706) <`secretagentx9' `at' `cia.com'> on Sunday December 17 2006, @07:08PM (#17281148)
      I like to use the "pots and pans" cycle even when there are no pots or pans in the load. I think it's more secure aginst streaks, spots, and other malcleaning. It also protects against the trojan spaghetti sauce that tends to stick after a "normal" cycle.

      I know the detergent makers usually only support "normal" wash, but I've found that to be typical Cascade FUD - most of the time I can use exactly the same detergent, or in a pinch I can make my own.

      I've tried and tried to get my aunts and uncles to switch over to "pots and pans" so they'll stop calling me when food remains stuck to their dishes, but they always forget and just set the dial to "normal" as soon as I leave. I never should have let on that I know anything about dishwashers.

      Oh well.

       

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Antony-Kyre (807195)
        Doesn't the pots and pans cycle use up more energy/water? Doesn't it end up costing you more money each year?

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by jrockway (229604)
          Well, it would probably be cheaper to just eat off of dirty dishes, right, so why bother with the dishwasher at all?

          (Same thing with heating / cooling your house. It's just going to get hot after your turn off your air conditioning, so why bother using it all?)
          • it would probably be cheaper to just eat off of dirty dishes, right, so why bother with the dishwasher at all?

                  Isn't that what the dog is for? Here boy...
      • I just want to know if it's going to be compatible with my cups.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by BlowChunx (168122)
      Tell this to my neighbor who put out a Pentium 2.4 machine on the curb because it gave her a BSOD.

      Show her a live CD, and it's all kittens after that.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by supremebob (574732)
      Not only that, but most "normal" people aren't really interested in changing their operating system. I got sick of hearing my Dad complain about how much Windows XP sucked, so I gave him a Red Hat Linux distribution for Christmas along with the other gifts that he asked for a few years ago. Even though I offered to help him with the installation, I doubt that he even cracked open the jewel case on those CD's. Some people are just more comfortable with the devil they know, I guess.

  • hmm great! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane (209368) on Sunday December 17 2006, @06:50PM (#17281004)
    Retake your Internet! Once again browse any page! Click any item! Surf with impunity!

    1 - I've failed to "take my internet" so far, how will I retake it?
    2 - I can already browse any page
    3 - I can already click any item
    4 - Does this mean I can download kiddie porn without fearing the police?

    Seriously though, as soon as I read that first line, I stopped perusing this blog. It sounds very silly and useless...

  • Brill (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Rexz (724700) on Sunday December 17 2006, @06:53PM (#17281032)
    A blogger linked to Ubuntu? Great story guys. Very worthy of the front page.
  • There are a few different IFD's out there. The geeks call them Live-CD's. They don't look to alive to me, but the geeks have a habit of choosing bad names for things, sad but true. You will have to know what an .iso file is and how to burn it. If that just scared you then just buy a large pizza with extra cheese and a six-pack of beer. Then invite your geek friend over to do it for you. This way is much easier and more fun.

    So basically, once non-tech folks are excited about live-CDs and have downloaded the iso, they're freed and... need to con a geek into coming to their home to do the job because n00bs can't figure it out. Great, I'm sure countless people needed that advice.

  • Security? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by delirium of disorder (701392) on Sunday December 17 2006, @06:59PM (#17281064) Homepage Journal
    It looks like the purpose of this CD is to protect users from Trojans, spyware, and other malware. The author of this page encourages users to click on anything they want on the web and not worry about the source of the executables that they are running. Encouraging users to continue to be ignorant and reckless sounds like a horrible idea. Sure, right now there doesn't happen to be much malware for Linux, but if more dumb people start running Linux, it will be produced. Even though Linux is more resistant than Windoze to being broken into by traditional exploits, if the user deliberately runs some malicious program, the system cannot protect itself. No system that allows the user to administer their own machine can protect from these kinds of attacks. We need to educate users AND give them Linux. Doing either one without the other will leave the our public Internet in worse shape and our fellow users just as bewildered and dangerous.

  • Why? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by hikerhat (678157) on Sunday December 17 2006, @07:00PM (#17281076)
    Why would my non-technical friend want to transform his computer from a fully function system, with all his documents, programs, music, etc into a semi functional linux system running off a cdrom? Removing the word 'linux' from the name of the cd doesn't make it more appealing. And what does 'internet freedom' mean to my non-technical friend? Will he be able to get to more web sites? No. Maybe less given that linux web browsers can only render a subset of the pages windows browsers can. Can he save new files or music to his live cd? No. All your work goes away when you shut the computer down.

    Exactly what freedoms are available to you when you run a linux live system off a cdrom that are unavailable to you on your fully functional windows system?

  • Getting non-techies excited (Score:5, Funny)

    by Simon Garlick (104721) on Sunday December 17 2006, @07:02PM (#17281094)
    Repeat after me.

    Non-techies don't care about this shit.
    Non-techies don't care about this shit.
    Non-techies don't care about this shit.

  • And the best is... (Score:5, Informative)

    by bogaboga (793279) on Sunday December 17 2006, @07:08PM (#17281140)
    I have tested a number of "Internet Freedom Disks" (Live CDs), if I may call them that and have found that the best "Internet Freedom Disk" is Freespire version 1.0.13.This disk comes with everything needed to be productive on the internet nowadays.

    It is the only disk that enables me watch CNN video, Yahoo! video, and videos on http://www.youtube.com/ [youtube.com] and http://www.video.google.com/ [google.com] and http://http//www.grouper.com [http] with no tweaking whatsoever.

    This disk also enabled me play Yahoo! games which means Java was [properly] installed. Sound and video worked great and the fonts for the first time, looked better, though more work was still needed on this front.

    One thing I did not like was the CnR warehouse for it complained about my email address being invalid and complained again that the same email address had already been used!

    The other complaint I have with Freespire is the fact that I could not customize my KDE to my liking. But overall, this Freespire distro is the best I have seen for the desktop in the Linux world.

  • This has success written all over it (Score:3, Funny)

    by MrNonchalant (767683) on Sunday December 17 2006, @07:09PM (#17281162)
    "Woohoo! Yay! Uncle Bobby got me an Internet Freedom Disk!"

    I can just the happy children smiling now.

  • Not this again... (Score:5, Funny)

    by UbuntuDupe (970646) * on Sunday December 17 2006, @07:10PM (#17281174) Journal
    Please, cut it with the fads. Just call it by its normal name -- an Internet French Disk.

  • "Linux Is Never Mentioned" (Score:3, Insightful)

    by emjoi_gently (812227) on Sunday December 17 2006, @07:11PM (#17281176)
    Sorry, but this reminds of of Scientologists offering "A Free Personality Test".
    Omitting to mention, oh by the way, we're a Weird Religious Cult.

  • "Freedom"??? (Score:3, Funny)

    by thib_gc (730259) on Sunday December 17 2006, @07:30PM (#17281312)
    It's called an Internet *French* Disk, you insensitive clod... oh wait... never mind, it is an Internet Freedom Disk.

  • jargonizing is fun (Score:4, Funny)

    by SaidinUnleashed (797936) on Sunday December 17 2006, @07:42PM (#17281404)
    Live CD is to "Internet Freedom Disk" as shovel is to "hand-held low-pollution manual excavation utility"

  • Won't work. Here's why. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Aphrika (756248) on Sunday December 17 2006, @07:45PM (#17281418)
    Friends I have that don't use Linux can't seem to comprehend the idea of a free OS. If I dropped copy of Ubuntu on their lap at Christmas, they'd immediately be suspicious of it. On booting, they'd complain that it wasn't Windows and that'd be that.

    Reminds me of giving out mince pies in front of church on Saturday - most people couldn't understand why we would possibly give away mince pies. It was just a nice idea for shoppers walking past. Same with OSes - people expect to be charged, if they're not, they instantly assume that it's of low quality and crap, or there's some kind of benefit in it for you. Linux has more chance of being taken up if it was a $500 OS. Then it'd be a status symbol and everyone under the Sun would want it, or aspire to own it.

  • Uh... (Score:3, Funny)

    by rindeee (530084) on Sunday December 17 2006, @08:36PM (#17281718)
    wait, what? Is it just me, or is this really stupid? I get the idea and all, but I can just picture this guy and his 'friends' sitting in mom's basement donned in their Che Guevara t-shirts and giggling with glee as they talk about how this is going to bring down the capitalists that have taken over 'their' Internet. Of course, none of them know who the hell Che Guevara is nor do they understand the fundamental precepts of capitalism, but 'man this is gonna be cool'! Thank goodness Slashdot's helping get the word out. Viva la revolution! Who ate my Spaghetti-O's!

  • Guess who's retarded? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by morboIV (1040044) on Sunday December 17 2006, @08:36PM (#17281720)
    I think this is the most pathetic thing I've ever seen on Slashdot.

    Why would anyone want to routinely run from a LiveCD. Ubuntu from a LiveCD runs like shit, and what about downloading stuff? The moron suggests you just put it flash drive. Yeah, and then I'm going to take out the LiveCD and run the file I just downloaded on my normal OS. So I'm still going to need virus protection, and I'm still going to need to be sane about where I get files from on the internet, but I'll just add ages of fucking around with a LiveCD. And how about bookmarks? You going to explain to people how that's going to work? Or how about in the time it takes to download a LiveCD, tweak it to your liking, and burn it, you just install a free anti-virus program, a free firewall and firefox?

    A LiveCD will be about as useful as a coaster as it will be as an 'IFD'. If some moron gave me one of these things I would have absolutely no choice but to beat some sense into them.

  • vmware player (Score:3, Insightful)

    by pikine (771084) on Sunday December 17 2006, @08:37PM (#17281736) Journal
    One advantage of running off a live CD is that it doesn't, under normal circumstances, touch your hard drive. This is why the author claims that you don't have to worry about trojan, viruses, spyware, etc. It's not that you don't get infected, but these malware programs are erased from main memory everytime you turn off the computer. However, the author assumes that a malware doesn't scan your computer and mount existing physical hard drives to infect. This could conceivably happen.

    There is a better way. Get VMware player and an Ubuntu virtual machine appliance, and run Firefox off it. That also protects your host computer, and you can always revert your disk image to a pristine stage if you were infected. At least with great likelihood, malware from a guest OS does not penetrate virtual machine.

  • I tried it. (Score:5, Informative)

    by bcrowell (177657) on Sunday December 17 2006, @09:22PM (#17282014) Homepage

    I tried giving away The Open CD [theopencd.org] (or something similar) to my students. This was a class of biology majors at a community college, so the geek quotient was higher than the general population, but a lot lower than slashdot. I got zero response. Zero interest. Not a single student ever even tried it. I think OpenOffice is a particularly lackluster thing to try to get ordinary people excited about, because they already have word. If they have a good income, they have a legal copy of Word; if they're starving students, they have a pirated copy. They already have tons of Word files on their computer, and no motivation to mess around seeing if OpenOffice will mangle the formatting or not. This is one of the realities we have to deal with: OSS is not an option for most people, for most tasks, because they're locked into proprietary formats.

    OSS games also don't seem to impress people, for several possible reasons: (1) they're crude compared to commercial games, (2) in many cases, they don't work well with the video card, so you get poor performance, and (3) people are used to being able to play flash games for free. I hate to say it, but clubpenguin.com is a lot slicker than most Linux games. Similarly, people are used to getting all those Google AJAX apps for free, and they don't lie up at night worrying about whether Gmail is open-source.

    Here [libertytextbooks.org] is a similar project I've been working on to do a promotional CD of free textbooks. I haven't had much time to work on it since the semester started, however. (Yes, I know the link to theassayer.org is down -- DNS troubles, which should be fixed soon.)

  • Yeah (Score:5, Insightful)

    by goldcd (587052) on Sunday December 17 2006, @09:35PM (#17282142) Homepage
    What a great idea. Give your parents a CD to shove in their working computer.
    I can feel the love already coming from my Mum: Why does it take an age to start? Why does it say it can't install my wifi driver? Now I've managed to install a Linux Wifi driver, what's my Hex key? Where's IE? Where've all my bookmarks gone? What exactly have I gained by this gift?

  • Who's Gonna Suppport Them? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DavidD_CA (750156) on Monday December 18 2006, @01:50AM (#17283412) Homepage
    I learned recently (it took me a while to really learn this lesson) to stop recommending computer systems to friends and family.

    I used to go as far as helping them pick out peripherals, specs, and even order it with them on the web. Now I say "Go to dell.com and get at least a gig of RAM." The conversation stops there.

    Why? Because the more I help influence their decision, the more they expect me to support that decision afterward. They're not being mean, they're just naturally extending the help I initally offered them.

    Why would I want to give a non-geek a Linux disk? They're going to come back to me with all sorts of questions about software compatibility, drivers, printing, etc. No one else they know will support them, even paid companies like their OEM or their ISP. And if they're running a business off this computer, then now I'm liable for what may happen to it.

    When will the geek world realize that Linux is not the answer to everything?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by karnal (22275)
      I don't think I was ever allowed to put the "cheese" on the wonderful macaroni art I used to make as a kid.

      I probably would have just eaten the cheese powder anyways.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by wakejagr (781977)

      Yeah, Damn Small Linux [damnsmalllinux.org] is good, but I prefer Puppy Linux [puppylinux.org] because I've found it to be more easily customizable. Using Puppy Unleashed [puppyos.com], I've made a custom version that includes the software I consider essential (vim, screen, sshfs, mplayer, mp3blaster, ratpoison, etc). Each of those is not available on the standard live-cd, but I added them to my custom version - and got them working the way I like - with a few hours of work. Most of that time was spent burning test CD-RW's to make sure that everything int

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