January 17, 2012
FreedomBox is a community project to develop, design and promote personal servers running free software for distributed social networking, email and audio/video communications. The project was announced by Columbia Law professor Eben Moglen at an ISOC (Internet Society) meeting in 2010.
The project currently describes a FreedomBox as, ‘a personal server running a free software operating system, with free applications designed to create and preserve personal privacy.’ The project aims to develop a software stack that can run on plug computers (small computers the size of a wall wart) that can easily be located in individual residences or offices. By promoting a decentralized deployment of hardware, the project hopes that FreedomBoxes will ‘provide privacy in normal life, and safe communications for people seeking to preserve their freedom in oppressive regimes.’
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January 16, 2012
In cryptography, a brute-force attack, or exhaustive key search, is a strategy that can, in theory, be used against any encrypted data. Such an attack might be utilized when it is not possible to take advantage of other weaknesses in an encryption system that would make the task easier. It involves systematically checking all possible keys until the correct key is found. In the worst case, this would involve traversing the entire search space.
The key length used in the encryption determines the practical feasibility of performing a brute-force attack, with longer keys exponentially more difficult to crack than shorter ones. Brute-force attacks can be made less effective by obfuscating the data to be encoded, something that makes it harder for an attacker to recognize when he/she has cracked the code. One of the measures of the strength of an encryption system is how long it would theoretically take an attacker to mount a successful brute-force attack against it.
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January 16, 2012
The Happy Human is a secular icon and the official symbol of the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU), a world body for Humanism, and has been adopted by many Humanist organisations and individuals worldwide. Its origin was a competition organized in 1965 by the British Humanist Association to find a symbol for itself.
The winning design was created by Denis Barrington. The trademark is still held by the British Humanist Association, which freely licenses use of the symbol by bona fide Humanist organizations worldwide. A great many Humanist organizations use the symbol or an adapted version of it.
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January 16, 2012
Paragraph 175 was a provision of the German Criminal Code from 1871 to 1994 that criminalizing homosexuality Around 140,000 men were convicted under the law. The statute was amended several times. The Nazis broadened the law in 1935; in the prosecutions that followed, thousands died in concentration camps. East Germany reverted to the old version of the law in 1950, limited its scope to sex with youths under 18 in 1968, and abolished it entirely in 1988. West Germany retained the Nazi-era statute until 1969, when it was limited to ‘qualified cases’; it was further attenuated in 1973, and finally revoked entirely in 1994 after German reunification.
Under the Third Reich, 5,000 and 15,000 homosexual men were forced into concentration camps, where they were identified by the pink triangle. The majority of them died there. While the Nazi persecution of homosexuals is reasonably well-known today, far less attention had been given to the continuation of this persecution in post-war Germany. In 1945, when camps were being liberated, some homosexual prisoners were forced to serve out their sentence under Paragraph 175. About 100,000 men were implicated in legal proceedings from 1945 to 1969, and about 50,000 were convicted (if they had not committed suicide before, as many did).
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January 15, 2012
Ester Hernandez (b. 1944) is a Chicana visual artist known for her pastels, paintings and prints primarily depicting Chicanas/Latinas. Her artwork captures time, and makes sense of the complex world we live in. She aspires to create a visual dialogue for women’s role in this new multi-cultural millennium. Her work reflects the political, social, ecological, and spiritual themes born from community pride, a commitment to political action, and an abiding sense of humor.
As a solo artist and member of Las Mujeres Muralistas, an influential San Francisco Mission district Latina women mural group in the early seventies, her career has marked her as a pioneer in the Chicana/Chicano civil rights art movement.
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January 15, 2012
Plutocracy [ploo-tok-ruh-see] is rule by the wealthy, or power provided by wealth. The combination of both plutocracy and oligarchy is called plutarchy. The word ‘plutocracy’ is derived from the Ancient Greek root ‘ploutos,’ meaning ‘wealth’ and ‘kratos,’ meaning ‘to rule’ or ‘to govern.’
The term is generally used to describe these two distinct concepts: one of a historical nature and one of a modern political nature. The former indicates the political control of the state by an oligarchy of the wealthy. Examples of such plutocracies include the Roman Republic, some city-states in Ancient Greece, the civilization of Carthage, the Italian city-states/merchant republics of Venice, Florence, Genoa, and pre-WWII Empire of Japan zaibatsus.
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January 15, 2012
A hoodie is a sweatshirt with a hood. They often include a muff sewn onto the lower front, and a drawstring to adjust the hood opening, and may have a vertical zipper down the center similar to a windbreaker style jacket.
The garment’s style and form can be traced back to Medieval Europe when the formal wear for monks included a long, decorative hood called cowl worn a tunic or robes. The modern clothing style was first produced by Champion in the 1930s and marketed to laborers who endured freezing temperatures in upstate New York.
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January 12, 2012
Generation X, commonly abbreviated to Gen X, is the generation born after the baby boom ended. While there is no universally agreed upon time frame, the term generally includes people born from the early 1960s through the early 1980s, usually no later than 1981 or 1982. The term had also been used in different times and places for various subcultures or countercultures since the 1950s.
The term Generation X was coined by the Magnum photographer Robert Capa in the early 1950s. He would use it later as a title for a photo-essay about young men and women growing up immediately after the Second World War. The project first appeared in ‘Picture Post’ (UK) and ‘Holiday’ (US) in 1953. Describing his intention, Capa said ‘We named this unknown generation, The Generation X, and even in our first enthusiasm we realized that we had something far bigger than our talents and pockets could cope with.’
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January 12, 2012
Generation Y, also known as Millennials, describes the demographic cohort following Generation X. While there is no universally agreed upon time frame, the term generally includes people born in the late 1980s, early to middle 1990s, or as late as the early 2000s. One segment of this age-group is often called the ‘eighties babies’ generation. Members of this generation are called Echo Boomers because many of them are children of baby boomers. The 20th century trend toward smaller families in developed countries continued, so the relative impact of the ‘baby boom echo’ was generally less pronounced than the original boom.
Characteristics of the generation vary by region, depending on social and economic conditions. However, it is generally marked by an increased use and familiarity with communications, media, and digital technologies. In most parts of the world its upbringing was marked by an increase in a neoliberal approach to politics and economics; the effects of this environment are disputed. Today, there are approximately 80 million Echo Boomers.
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January 12, 2012
‘This Machine Kills Fascists‘ is a sticker on Woody Guthrie’s guitar, that has inspired many artists. It is based on inscriptions painted on the sides of airplanes used in the Spanish Civil War.
Guitar manufacturer Gibson has replicated Guthrie’s 1945 Southern Jumbo complete with sticker.
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January 12, 2012
Gold collar worker is a neologism which has been used to describe either young, low-wage workers who invest in conspicuous luxury, or highly-skilled knowledge workers, traditionally classified as white collar, but who have recently become essential enough to business operations as to warrant a new classification.
The term was coined by management consultant Robert Earl Kelley in 1985.
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January 12, 2012
‘The End of The Line: How Overfishing Is Changing the World And What We Eat is a 2004 book by journalist Charles Clover about overfishing. Clover, an environment editor of the ‘Daily Telegraph,’ describes how modern fishing is destroying ocean ecosystems. He concludes that current worldwide fish consumption is unsustainable. The book provides details about overfishing in many of the world’s critical ocean habitats, such as the New England fishing grounds, west African coastlines, the European North Atlantic fishing grounds, and the ocean around Japan.
The book was made into a documentary film of the same name in 2009, featuring Clover, along with tuna farmer turned whistle blower Roberto Mielgo, top scientists from around the world, indigenous fishermen and fisheries enforcement officials, who predict that seafood could potentially extinct in 2048. The film also challenges the notion that farmed fish is a solution. Furthermore, it advocates consumer responsibility to purchase sustainable seafood and for no-take zones in the sea to protect marine life.
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