India Blocks Code Sharing Websites On Anti-Terror Advisory 78
darkstar019 writes The Indian government has banned websites under the pretext that ISIS is using them for anti-Indian purposes. The list includes code sharing websites like Pastebin, Github and Sourceforge. As of now, these websites are still up. From the article: "Officials from the department of Information Technology and the department of telecom were not available for comment. 'These are all providing very dangerous kind of cut and paste services..You can take code, cut it, paste it, remove it, delete it,' said one government official who requested anonymity."
Holy shit (Score:5, Insightful)
Copy, paste, remove, delete?
This is why we invented nukes, people.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
And that is why India invented nukes, too.
Re: (Score:2)
Theirs are all pointed at Pakistan... long story as to why.
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Actually, they are all pointed towards China. Your geopolitics is about 50 yrs outdated.
Re: Holy shit (Score:3)
Considering that Pakistan and India are currently fighting a war over the Siachen glacier, no, those geopolitics are not outdated.
Re:Holy shit (Score:4, Funny)
They're just trying to remove crud from the web. Is that so wrong?
Re: (Score:2)
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Depends on the crud. Sometimes a base is much better.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Holy shit (Score:5, Funny)
With Github and Sourceforge cut off, that's about what, 1/4 of their coding output right there?
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Now they just need to cut off access to websites where people ask coding questions, like StackOverflow.
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Well I guess the Indian developers will actually have to develop something instead of as the Indian governement put it copy and paste.
OMG, it's like reusing WORDS! (Score:2)
can't have that. they might be put in the wrong order against rules.
Criminals (Score:3)
When developing FOSS is a crime, only criminals will develop FOSS.
Re: (Score:2)
When developing FOSS is a crime, only criminals will develop FOSS.
I would argue that may be true, but the level of output would drop at rather obvious rate. Since most FOSS work is paid work, it wouldn't be advantageous for a company to run the risk of legal issues. So if a company A is only sourced from region B, they will not risk their income on goodwill alone.
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When developing FOSS is a crime, only criminals will develop FOSS.
Only a good guy with FOSS can stop a bad guy with a FOSS.
Re: Criminals (Score:1)
I would be overjoyed if we had a constitutional amendment that guaranteed our right to keep and bear FOSS.
very dangerous kind of cut and paste services? (Score:5, Insightful)
OH, the humanity!
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If you'd seen MY code, you wouldn't be mocking.
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If you'd seen MY code, you wouldn't be mocking.
Ok, then show us! You have thrown down the digital gauntlet, let us have at thee!
In related news (Score:3)
Amazon sells books [amazon.in]..
Is RoseIndia Safe? (Score:2)
Anonymously (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd request anonymity too, if I went around in public saying stupid crap like that.
India, tech savior of the world. (Score:2, Funny)
Yeah. These people think github is for terrorists. This is who you are outsourcing all your work to. Fucking brilliant.
Indian programmers (Score:5, Funny)
What a surprise; the best vector for attacking Indians is via copy & paste code snippets.
Slashdot is next (Score:3, Funny)
I'm going to use Slashdot for anti-Indian purposes and maybe get this site blocked as well.
Re: Anti-Indian ... (Score:1)
.head should be a TLD
Block Github? (Score:3, Insightful)
Clueless government machinery at work here. Someone needs to educate these idiots that "code" in this context means "sequence of instructions for the machine" and NOT "cipher instructions for the terrorists". Github is the last place in the world a terrorist would signup for. If terrorists thought logically, they wouldn't be terrorists in the first place.
Why should we move (Score:1)
at least not stackoverflow (Score:2)
Now THAT wold be serious.
Re: (Score:3)
Now THAT wold be serious.
True. Stackoverflow is the answer. Now what was the queston?
Re:at least not stackoverflow (Score:5, Funny)
Face meet palm (Score:2)
Facepalmingly incompetent ban, too (Score:2)
If the ISPs want to ignore the ban, they've got good ammunition. The ban lists a bunch of "URLs", including things like "http://vimeo.com/" and "https://archive.org". Does it ban URLs like "http://vimeo.com/some-movie-here" or "https://archive.org/whatever"? Nope, just the front pages of the websites :-). Then there's also the problem that most ISPs don't serve URLs, they transmit IP packets and maybe also serve domain names and email mailboxes, so technically the ISP is just connecting you to 107.16
Re:Facepalmingly incompetent ban, too (Score:4, Insightful)
This discussion itself is likely what the ban is all about. A test of the public's reaction to mass banning of a range of websites. What gets by, what gets resisted, who should they target first and, how should the list grow and expand. All about how they can regain control of public communications and put it back into the box of pay millions to play main stream media. Something that is being played out in every part of the globe from Australia to Russia, from India to the UK and, from China to the US. The strangling to death of net neutrality and the institution of censorship as the norm and you only have the right to express you opinion in the silence of the political wilderness and not in any publicly accessible forum.
Put Slashdot on the terror watchlist (Score:2)
10 print "pasting code on teh internets is dangerous"
20 goto 10
Yarg! (Score:2)
Yarg! It's time to outlaw opposable thumbs.
Why with opposable thumbs you could build something which flashes in big giant neon letters that the Indian government is stupid and reactionary, and meddling with things they can't even grasp.
Just like every other fucking moronic government in the world.
This is going to cripple their outsourcing (Score:3)
Usual outsourced programming involves finding chunks of vaguely related existing code, smashing them together, beating on them till they compile, calling it done.
If this includes StackExchange they'll be completely dead in the water.
Re:This is going to cripple their outsourcing (Score:4, Interesting)
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Why do you think there's such an emphasis on reusable code, formal proof and test driven development? Before too long you'll be literally able to get actual monkeys to more or less randomly hit keys and have a guaranteed working program out the other end. Well, working in terms of meeting some sort of spec, anyway; no guarantee that's correct.
The Internet is Terrorist (Score:2)
This is how they obtain the means to kill freedom
Through their unfettered access to text-sharing. This Internets must be stopped.
How is this a pretext? (Score:3)
The Indian government has banned websites under the pretext that ISIS is using them for anti-Indian purposes.
A pretext is a fake reason, not simply a reason you take issue with.
Also, from the article:
Websites like Pastebin don't host any content but are a platform for users to paste text.
How does Pastebin not host content? That's exactly what it exists to do, isn't it? In pretty much the purest possible form.
How is this a pretext? (Score:1)
How does Pastebin not host content? That's exactly what it exists to do, isn't it? In pretty much the purest possible form.
I guess parent wanted to say "Pastebin don't host any (of their) content".
Re: (Score:1)
this is possibly the best way to follow up (Score:1)
Baby thrown out with bathwater (Score:1)
If malicious code is being passed around well known public forums then deal with that code. Hey! Why not encourage the eyeballs and brain cells of visitors to report hacking code requests. It could be d
Yes, let's destroy our fastest growing industry. (Score:2)
Were this any other country, I'd give this about 48 hours to get reversed. Since this is the Indian bureaucracy we are talking about, in may be more like two weeks for this to trickle through the system. But when you the take the fastest growing industry in the nation, that pays the best wages, and is your only hope for keeping the best and brightest from emigrating to greener pastures, and basically torpedo it, somebody is going to notice.
Re:Yes, let's destroy our fastest growing industry (Score:4, Informative)
Hey, the block will take about a week to get enforced here! I can still access each one of those at my home, office and mobile. India is slow. And mark my words, nobody gives two shits about this block. Those who care about github, will still be able to access it. At least I will. We have had dailymotion blocked for months. I didn't even know until yesterday when everybody went up in arms about github. Because dailymotion never went down for me.
Incompetency pervades everything here. The ones ordering the block did it because they are incompetent. The ones supposed to enforce it are also incompetent.
they won't block stackoverflow though because... (Score:2)
Their out-sourcing industry would go under...
Legendary quote being born (Score:2)
"These are all providing very dangerous kind of cut and paste services..You can take code, cut it, paste it, remove it, delete it," said one government official who requested anonymity.
These sentences will live forever! Can't wait for the memes.
Honestly, my BS detector is beeping. This has to be a hoax, right?
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