MESSAGE
| DATE | 2006-10-25 |
| FROM | rc
|
| SUBJECT | Re: [NYLXS - HANGOUT] Free Software Magazine
|
Well, it hides all that techie stuff... it a LaTeX GUI word processor
that professes not WYSIWYG but WYSIWYM - What You See Is What You Mean
Just type and the templates spit out whatever you want all completely
typeset and professionally formatted ready for print: book, ebook,
screenplay, business letter, etc.
For a writer it's perfect since you don't have to worry about layout,
pagation, index, TOC, footers, footnotes, etc... all produced on the
fly. It takes just a few minutes to get used to and there is a great
built in tutorial. The hardest thing to get used to is the fact that
you just type, no formating borders, spacing, or some insane "auto
format" garbage.
Just write. Very nice indeed.
R
Ruben Safir wrote:
> Not another TeX analogue?
>
> Ruben
>
> On Wed, Oct 25, 2006 at 04:50:28PM -0400, rc wrote:
>> Yeah, its great, awesome monetary split compared to traditional
>> publishing. I have been playing with LyX for a couple of weeks. It
>> rocks, period. Plus, I believe it will spit out a final format ready
>> for lulu if it doesn't hook right into over the net.
>>
>> http://www.lyx.org/
>>
>> R
>>
>> Ruben Safir wrote:
>>> On Wed, Oct 25, 2006 at 11:21:01AM -0400, rc wrote:
>>>> BTW - Lulu.com was founded by Red Hat founder Bob Young
>>>>
>>>> http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/blogs/secure_voip_calling_free_software_right_to_privacy
>>>>
>>> Say - I didn't know that. LULU looks like it might be a seriously useful
>>> tool
>>> when we publish out text book.
>>>
>>> Ruben
>>>
>>>> Secure VoIP calling, free software, and the right to privacy
>>>>
>>>> By David Sugar
>>>>
>>>> Online on: 24/10/2006
>>>>
>>>> All free nations in the world today recognize certain basic principles,
>>>> such as freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and the freedom of
>>>> privacy. These values that we all share were articulated by and fought
>>>> for by people such as Voltaire, Jefferson, and Bolivar. This common
>>>> heritage of freedom is today under attack by those who wish to turn the
>>>> clock back on human progress. We all know that a government that lives
>>>> in such fear of its own citizens that it must spy on them and claims the
>>>> authority to do so en-mass and unchallengeable is not a legitimate
>>>> government of the people it claims to serve.
>>>>
>>>> There is an interesting story about George Washington during the
>>>> American Revolutionary War. At one point some of Washington's officers
>>>> were plotting rebellion against him, and he accidentally received a
>>>> dispatch that was meant for one of the conspirators. Having opened it,
>>>> and read it, he realized what had happened, and then asked the courier
>>>> to please apologize because the letter was not meant for him. He choose
>>>> to act as best he could in a manner as if he had not read the letter.
>>>> For Washington understood that even at a time of war, there are certain
>>>> ideals that must never be sacrificed, otherwise even if victory was
>>>> achieved, it is not worth the price of a nation nobody would wish to
>>>> live in.
>>>>
>>>> With these thoughts, we chose, on the first Monday of this October, to
>>>> release a stack for secure VOIP calling, as free software developed
>>>> through GNU Telephony, a loose organization of developers who specialize
>>>> in free software for telecommunications. We accomplished this by
>>>> creating a free software stack that implements Phil Zimmerman's ZRTP, as
>>>> well as the Secure RTP spec. This is now part of the GNU RTP Stack,
>>>> ccrtp. We chose to make this available for immediate use in the most
>>>> compelling way, by having available at the same time, a complete secure
>>>> softphone client anyone can also download and use and which implements
>>>> the secure calling features in an easy to use manner. This client was
>>>> the Twinkle Softphone client, developed by Michel De Boer, and modified
>>>> with his help to meet this goal in time with our initial release.
>>>>
>>>> Secure calling VOIP using ZRTP operates much like ssh in concept. The
>>>> keys for communication are generated locally, rather than using an
>>>> external certificate authority, hence preventing weak or poisoned
>>>> certificates which SRTP potentially allows. Fingerprint session
>>>> signatures are shown and cached much like the ssh host fingerprints, so
>>>> that one can determine if there is a man in the middle decrypting at one
>>>> end and encrypting to another.
>>>>
>>>> What we have developed does not interfere with lawful police
>>>> investigations, since the end point can still be compromised with
>>>> physical access, presumably executed as part of a lawful and judicially
>>>> supervised court order. But it does prevent arbitrary and mass spying on
>>>> what people say, which must come to an end before all other freedoms are
>>>> lost. With additional technologies including tls secured SIP and
>>>> anonymizing connection proxies, it is possible to also reduce
>>>> associative information signal that intelligence so desperately wishes
>>>> to mine, and that is a goal of later phases of this project.
>>>>
>>>> Since it is free software, anyone can download and use it. Since it is
>>>> offered as a library, it can be used to produce applications, like
>>>> Twinkle, that can perform secure communications by design, rather than
>>>> as an afterthought. This technology is here to stay. There are enough
>>>> people who have set it up now around the world, including some I
>>>> personally showed. The source is available and mirrored worldwide.
>>>> Binaries have been build and now distributed in Debian. Much of that was
>>>> all done very rapidly and early on at the start of the month, the rest
>>>> while I was in Maturin speaking at the IVth International Free Knowledge
>>>> Conference, which I will write about next week, to deliberately make
>>>> sure it was immediately usable and widely disseminated.
>>>>
>>>> This technology we are bringing to free VOIP software was of course
>>>> first proposed, in a proprietary form, and as an external proxy known as
>>>> zfone, by Phil Zimmerman. Much of the work in developing secure calling
>>>> in the GNU RTP Stack was done by people like Werner Dittman and Federico
>>>> Pouzols, and with lots of Michel De Boer from Twinkle. Whether you are a
>>>> head of state wishing to communicate in private, a union organizer
>>>> within a company, or simply talking to your family and friends, you have
>>>> a basic right and expectation of privacy. We intend to do everything in
>>>> our power to help further that goal.
>>>>
>>>> Further information can be found at GNU Telephony
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Ruben Safir wrote:
>>>>> On Mon, Oct 23, 2006 at 10:32:43PM -0400, einker wrote:
>>>>>> I' ve been reading this since issue #5. I thought you knew about it ....
>>>>>>
>>>>> I discovered it last month and posted a note about it to the list.
>>>>> Since I got no responses, I thought I'd mention it again./ It would be
>>>>> nice to make
>>>>> a contribution to their rag. They did a much better job than we did
>>>>> trying to promote the same thing.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Ruben
>>>>>
>>>>>> On 10/23/06, Ruben Safir wrote:
>>>>>>> Has anyone seen this Free Software Magazine at
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> This site is one of the best examples of Free Software in action I've
>>>>>>> ever
>>>>>>> seen.
>>>>>>> Its content is awesome, the commentaries just wonderful and in depth.
>>>>>>> The
>>>>>>> Magazine is everything I had hoped for with the NYLXS Quarterly
>>>>>>> Journal as
>>>>>>> a
>>>>>>> serious review journal that doesn't completely lose the new user or
>>>>>>> program
>>>>>>> user of computers.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> And David Sugar is a regular writer in it.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> And then they discovered this every cool social enginering tool.....
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> http://www.lulu.com/
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Ruben
>>>>>>> --
>>>>>>> __________________________
>>>>>>> Brooklyn Linux Solutions
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> So many immigrant groups have swept through our town
>>>>>>> that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological
>>>>>>> proportions in the mind of the world - RI Safir 1998
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS - RI Safir 2002
>>>>>>> http://fairuse.nylxs.com
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> "Yeah - I write Free Software...so SUE ME"
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> "The tremendous problem we face is that we are becoming
>>>>>>> sharecroppers to our own cultural heritage -- we need
>>>>>>> the ability to participate in our own society."
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> http://www.mrbrklyn.com - Consulting
>>>>>>> http://www.nylxs.com - Leadership Development in Free Software
>>>>>>> http://www2.mrbrklyn.com/resources - Unpublished Archive or stories and
>>>>>>> articles from around the net
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> Regards,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Evan M. Inker
>
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