From: "cwright" <cwright-AT-21stcentury.net>
Subject: AUT: Re: Politically useful software. Was: Security on the web and in e-mail
Date: Mon, 14 Oct 2002 20:56:01 -0500


Hm, well it was not my intent to spawn a category of software :0

I think that software which promotes the Open Source movement (which is
anti-copyright and anti-secrecy) is 'politically useful software'.  That
means everything from the OS to the applications.  For example, OpenOffice
will read MS Office files from Word and Excel almost perfectly and it is a
nice apps suite.

There are web scanners which automatically update your links and report
changes to your favorite web sites.  You can find some stuff like that on
www.tucows.com, a pretty good site for free software for Windows, Linux and
Mac, among others.

Aside from security software, I also promote using software which blocks
ads, cookies, etc.  My browser, Opera, does this by itself but other 3rd
party programs also do this if you must use browsers which do not do that
effectively.

On a larger level, there are various kinds of collaboration software,
database software and web server software that is useful for us to do things
like a run a web site from home or manage a small discussion list (which
involves other matters of concern, such as trying to handle the amount of
traffic without having to purchase a commercial line rate from your ISP.)
Tom Messmer is doing some of that stuff and he would be a better person to
talk to than me.

For those who do or want to get more into programming, you can support Open
Source languages by using stuff like Python instead of Visual Basic or Java,
where applicable.  Perl is a pain and very limited, but what it does it does
well and very fast and is Open Source too.

I don't know any anarchist or communist IT sites, and the alt.linux.activist
has been quiet for a while from what I can tell.  On the other hand,
slashdot and a lot of the linux newsgroups not only have techies, but Lefty
techies too.  At the same time, talk to the Indymedia techs.  They are
usually a fair combination of tech and activist.  Also, see if there are
local hacktivist groups.  Autonomedia publishes a few good books by and
about hacktivists.

A personal favorite for personal purposes is Kazaa-lite.  It is software
that uses an HTML port to share files in a massive peer-to-peer network, and
lite has no spyware on it.  Why pay for what you can get and redistribute
for free?  There is an intersting article about this kind of thing on
Inter-activist Exchange right now and Harry Cleaver has some good stuff
about Open Source and computers on his web site.

Cheers,
Chris

----- Original Message -----
From: "Good Soldier Svejk" <goodsoldiersvejk-AT-hotmail.com>
To: <aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
Sent: Monday, October 14, 2002 7:24 PM
Subject: AUT: Politically useful software. Was: Security on the web and in
e-mail


> Chris wrote:
>
> Apple is also an alternative, though I sure as hell can't afford a Mac.
> Still, OS X is very nice and very powerful and has a wide range of popular
> politically useful software available for it, such as the Adobe and Quark
> multi-media and desktop publishing software.  If you can't switch to Linux
> for some reason, go Apple if you can afford to (only worth it, IMO, if you
> go OS X.)
>
> Question for everyone: what do you think is politically useful software?
> Obviously, any text editor is politically useful in that you can write
> tracts and screeds, and anything that cracks copyrights is political, but
do
> people think there's anything that is useful for *explicitly* political
> reasons?
>
> Off the top of my head, something that scans political websites for
updates
> would be useful (tho' really those websites should be producing an RDF
> feed); perhaps something that pulls the interesting stories off indymedia
(I
> don't know about elsewhere, but uk.indymedia gets clogged up with all
sorts
> of nazi / conspiracy theory shit).
>
> Of course, something that can pull stock market prices off dowjones or
ftse,
> and show the inevitability of the declining rate of surplus value, would
> also
> be handy. (Joke! Joke!)
>
> And if anyone knows any good anarcho-commie-tech sites, I'd be very
> interested.
>
> John
>
>
>
>
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