Calling the American Revolution terrorism, in the modern sense, is a stretch. It was a war waged primarily between soldiers and materiel with the goal of ending the enemy's ability to wage war.
Systematic use of terror as a policy to induce fear in the general public to push them to coerce their government's policy was not widely used.
I’m pretty patriotic but even I can recognize some parallels. There are examples of targeting civilians (tarring and feathering loyalists, or destroying their property). If you consider the attacks against Tesla to be terrorism [1] then the Boston Tea Party would probably fit that bill as well. I’d probably consider it irregular warfare, but I wouldn’t call it a stretch for someone to disagree.
This is massively disingenuous. If you showed up in public in the US today with a bunch of men in uniform and announced your intention of using military force to secure some perceived political rights, you'd be denounced as a terrorist by the authorities while you were still reading out your carefully drafted rules of engagement.
Likewise, the proponent of a huge data center project in Utah and the Secretary of the Interior are both arguing that opposition to data centers is the result of Chinese communist propaganda: https://fortune.com/2026/06/10/kevin-oleary-trump-administra...
As far as I'm aware there have been zero acts of violence related to data center construction, or even threats of same.
I will be happy to steer you to work by philosophers and legal researchers on the construction of 'terrorism' as a political concept and the difficulty of cleanly differentiating it from 'legitimate' forms of violent political action.
The french revolution was terrible and made every single person in france worse off. It is the exact evidence that shows that even in a revolution restraint is still needed.
I still have well over a dozen of those IBM modules together with their paperwork and circuit diagrams (somewhere in my miles of files).
They've been getting in the way and I've been meaning to chuck them away on many an occasion but something inside me has stopped me doing so because of their possible historical value.
Shirriff's blog has reinforced my thinking, they'll just have to clutter up my place for a little longer methinks.
I've not scanned them, I'd have to find them first and that's not easy at moment because they're among tens of thousands of docs that need sorting (I rarely chuck out docs like that).
How I came by them was by accident when I was helping a guy who was a worse (indiscriminate) hoarder than I am move his tooling and machining factory. He hoarded anything technical, especially electronics stuff.
He didn't know what the circuits were but I did. Despite having little interest in either the modules or circuits instinct made me rescue them (it's a fluke they weren't scrapped). Reason: I once recall hundreds of these modules flooding onto the auction market and no one wanting them except for the tubes so I assumed everyone who'd be interested was already in the know.
The circuits (if I recall correctly—the factory move was in 2012) were together in a big folder a bit too big to scan on a quarto/A4 scanner.
Incidentally, there were stacks of old IBM computer racks that IBM historical people had rescued earlier (presumably the modules were from the same computer) but the modules and circuits surfaced later and never ended up with the rest of the hardware.
I'd be very surprised if others don't possess copies of those folders of circuits (computer historical societies etc.) as at one time those modules were so ubiquitous.
Seeing there's interest I'll hone in on them as I sort through the files (I know roughly what room they're in). The moment I find them I'll put them on line.
In the meantime I'd urge you to seek out copies of those circuit folders. IBM documented everything so well, their manuals were masterpieces of documentation in their own right (unlike the terrible situation of today where tech info on products is as scarce as hen's teeth).
Re museum, I'm in Australia so I'll seek out the mob who took the racks and try to mate the modules with the rest of the H/W. Thanks for the offer.
Microsoft is effectively a monopoly, to say it's anything else and that other browsers are available is a nonsense for reasons that everyone knows.
Appealing to reason is a waste of time as no big monopolistic corporation will willingly forfeit money. The only realistic (effective) solution is legislative. I don't see that happening anytime soon in the US but perhaps it's possible in other jurisdictions (more likely now that the US is no longer the flavor of the month with many).
For the cognoscenti it is—like Linux, but for the vast majority it's not. If you've ever run an IT department in a large operation (which I have) then you'd never say that.
People insist on Windows at work because it's so ubiquitous, when they go home their modus operandi doesn't have to change.
Forcing workers to change OSes against their will only puts one's job on the line (management will side with workers as it's the path of least resistance). QED.
Increasing taxes on exploitive mining multinationals that get minerals, coal and gas for a fraction of its worth and make a financial killing at the expense of the Australian public would have been much more popular but the timid Government wouldn't have dared fearing the backlash.
Simply, this shows who's actually in charge of the Country and it's not the Government.
I'm left-handed too and frankly a left-handed mouse is a nuisance and awkward to use (I never use one), same with other peripherals.
Still I prefer to use scissors with the left hand and most are right-handed. It's a damn nuisance as the loop handles are the wrong way around/wrong size for a leftie.
It's interesting that the piano is essentially a right handed instrument in that melody/the main theme is mostly played by the right hand.
As a left-hander, it's very obvious to me. That said—because of the above point—my right hand is much stronger and more adept at playing. In short, I'm right handed when playing the piano.
No sarcastic comments please, I well know more practice and playing those damn Czerny scales ad nauseam would have restored proper balance. :-)
I can play Bach to some extent with practice. I'd qualify that though by saying a multi-part fugue from say The Musical Offering would be a tall order.
I've never had any pretense at being good enough to entertain people with those works as everyone knows them so well (from professional recordings). Even Mozart's a problem here. For example the Romance in the D Minor Concerto, K.466 looks deceptively simple (at least in parts) but it's anything but after hearing someone like Brendel play it. Everyone knows it so well it's not worth the embarrassment of even trying (except perhaps in secret).
(Mozart has a habit of looking simple until one tries to play it, Bach is none of that—one knows what one's in for at pretty much first glance.)
Seems to me we're going to have to let the anti-encryption mob have their way until things go wrong—bigtime. No amount of expert advice will convince them until they witness firsthand the negative consequences of weakening encryption.
It's only afterwards and as a consequence some highly
newsworthy disasters occur such as a child abduction or political sex scandal involving a high profile politician come to light that the lay public will get the message that weak encryption is effectively no encryption.
In the meantime criminals will be early adopters of more sophisticated messaging such as steganography.
Would be nice, but you know they'll carve out exceptions for themselves or use "unauthorized" messaging channels regardless with no consequences. It is _always_ "rules for thee, not for me" with politicians.
> until they witness firsthand the negative consequences of weakening encryption.
They won't be affected.
The hitherto invisible but very real wall between social classes is just going to become more visible for "First World" civilians the way it's been in "lesser" countries for decades already.
Actual "criminals" have always been able to get around all the restrictions ever put in place since the dawn of civilization, it's just the common folk that get trodded on and kept in their place.
I think there’s no turning back in this kind of laws. What has been lost is lost. In France a lot of public databases were leaked recently. It cannot be undone
In most cases I think the revelation of a scandal involving a high-profile politician would be a good thing. (That is, better than it remaining secret.)
The murdering of French lawmakers is something we frequently celebrate here in France.
Your profile suggests that you’re in Israel, where groups like the Irgun are celebrated as national heroes. Violent struggle against perceived oppressors shouldn’t be an unfamiliar concept.
You are correct, the Irgun are credited along with two other organisations as being the physical protectors of our people during a time when we were more typically known for being slaughtered. However, very few people here are extremists that celebrate the Irgun. Quite the opposite, the Irgun is famous internationally because they were the violent exception to the norm.
Israel was founded by leftists, only in the late 1970s did Israel turn to the right. The Irgun was certainly not representative of those values which are typically associated with our people.
To be fair, the EU governments led the way to an unencrypted future with TETRA and the broken TEA1 encryption scheme. They're just giving back freedom and openness to the people now. /s
"Security researcher Ross Anderson reported in 1994 that "there was a terrific row between the NATO signal intelligence agencies in the mid-1980s over whether GSM encryption should be strong or not. The Germans said it should be, as they shared a long border with the Warsaw Pact; but the other countries didn't feel this way, and the algorithm as now fielded is a French design."
The American War of Independence, French Revolution and English Civil War were acts of terrorism.
Were those acts justified? Not if you're the ones who were initially holding the power.
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