Terrirism

11 September. Ah, what a great day. The whole USA is butt-hurt. They all try so hard to show that they remember, oh they remember! They always keep the thought about 9/11 in their thoughts, yeah. Somewhere between... OK, no Carlin quotes here.

But let's look at the legacy of the 9/11. The whole country is cowering in fear of terrirists. Security check here, frisk search there, X-ray scan here, pat down there. The terrorists (if there ever were any, of which i'm still not entirely convinced) have stated that their goal was to destroy the american way of life and their freedom - and from where i'm standing it looks like they have succeeded. I'm not going to go into great detail about how USA is totally different today, but let's look at another interesting thing that's happening these days.

The innocence of Islam. Oh yeah, that fucking movie. Let me get this out of the way - it sucks. It really does. As much as i love good troll, this just doesn't cut it even as a beginner troll. This is atrocious. In fact, it's so cheaply made the actors didn't even know they were in the movie about islam, they thought it was just a movie about that general period. But who cares, anyway.

The fact is, it sparked an outrage in a number of towelhead countries. So much, in fact, that some idiots even attacked a US embassy over this. Really? You protest a movie that portrays you as stupid violent crowd, and you prove its point by doing the exact same thing the movie is depicting? I mean, how stupid can you be, Allah worshippers?!

And not only that, but what the embassy has to do with any of this in the first place? You gotta pick your targets, you know. There was a guy who was killed over another movie about islam, but hey, at least he was killed because he fucking created that movie! At least those idiots who killed him have got to the right guy, who actually had everything to do with the damn movie! They didn't kill a Joe Sixpack from Alabama, they didn't attack a random US citizen and they certainly didn't attack the fucking embassy of USA! You gotta pick your targets.

Facebook is the new Big Brother

I don't even know if i have to mention this. Some time ago, facebook had changed all email addresses to be @facebook.com by default. Then they screwed up with API which basically erased everyone's emails from phone contacts and replaced it with that new @facebook email. Now facebook is beta-testing its automagic crime detector that basically scans all communication on facebook (including private messages and, apparently, email) and looks for "suspicious activity". I rest my case. I left facebook long ago. You want to trust your private life to a private corporation - go for it.

Keeping up with times

While i wasn't writing too much for a while, don't think for a moment that i was living under the rock. Since my last post (well, excluding Linux one) a lot of interesting stuff happened. Suffice to say that the world today is not the world it was six months ago. Yes, i'm referring to SOPA/PIPA/ACTA/TPP/CISPA/etc.etc.etc.

I am happy and cheering for the people who fought SOPA/PIPA. No, really, as much as i hate people, i can say that they've done mostly good job showing RIAA/MPAA who's the boss here. I'd like to think that they have learned their lesson, but that would be too much to ask, and the fact that they haven't changed their ways for ACTA and TPP shows that. ACTA is in a funny situation because USA has written and signed this document, but now that no one else has signed up for this, USA is pretty much the only country who signed ACTA.

Now we've got this TPP thing going. It's even more secretive than ACTA, and between countries questioning their participation in TPP, and US public figures' outright lies and corruption surrounding this international agreement, i think it's safe to say that this cancer must be eradicated the same way SOPA/PIPA/ACTA was. Recent events and news suggest that there may have been a change of heart in TPP negotiations, but i don't trust neither USTR (MPAA's bitch) nor other countries' discretion (USA's bitches). It will be interesting to see how this pans out though.

Cybermeanwhile, cybersecurity cyberis cybersorta cyberbig cybertoo. Cyberthere cyberwas cyberthis cyberanother cyberbill cybercalled cyberCISPA, cyberwhich cyberfocuses cyberon cyberhow cybermuch cyberwe cyberneed cybersecurity. Cyberin cyberorder cyberto cyberbend cyberpublic cyberopinion, cyberthere cyberhas cyberbeen cybera cyberlot cyberof cyberfear cybermongering cybergoing cyberon cyberabout cyberplanes cyberfalling cyberfrom cyberthe cybersky cyberand cyberall cybersorts cyberof cyber9/11'ish cyberstuff. Cyberi cybermust cybersay cyberthat cyberUS cyberpublic cyberis cyberso cyberdumb cyberthat cyberit cyberactually cyberbought cyberit, cyberand cybernow cyberpublic cyberpolls cybershow cyberthat cyberthey cyberfear cyberattacks cybermore cyberthan cyberterrorism. Cybercan cyberyou cyberfucking cyberbelieve cyberthat?! Meanwhile, cybersecurity is sorta big too. There was this another bill called CISPA, which focuses on how much we need cybersecurity. In order to bend public opinion, there has been a lot of fear mongering going on about planes falling from the sky and all sorts of 9/11'ish stuff. I must say that US public is so dumb that it actually bought it, and now public polls show that they fear cyberattacks more than terrorism. Can you fucking believe that?!

By the way, the previous paragraph is pretty much how US politicians talk about "cybersecurity". Throw in "cyber" here and there, and you're got yourself a new "threat" (not that terrorism ever was a threat!). They even went as far as offered a new role, someone-something-blah-blah on cyber-issues. Cyber-fucking-issues?! Any one with half a brain cell would understand that to not have power grids hacked you have to disconnect the fucking power grids from the Internet, but there's no money in that. Anonymous hacking power grids (lolwut?), scary Iranian Chinese Russian North Korean hackers (i am surprised they didn't invent cyber-Al Qaeda yet), what else? Oh yes, imaginary threats warrant surveilance society. Great. Anyways, i sincerely hope that nothing too bad comes out of it. I don't even expect them to make something good (for a nice change), just please, for God's sakes, at least don't break anything!

USA looks especially ironic in this particular case, because there has been two very high profile malware attacks on the Middle East - the Stuxnet and the Flame malware. If you don't know what that is - Google it, don't be a lazy ass. These malware attacks were actually carried out by USA. And now we fear that maybe - just maybe! - someone would perhaps strike back? How can you even justify these sorts of things? Whether the target is evil or not is irrelevant - malware attacks are illegal. Or is it only illegal and immoral whenever someone beside USA does it?

On a bright side, there's been a few booming Kickstarter projects - Wasteland 2, Double Fine, a few others... It's great to see this thing gaining traction. There were also some high profile lawsuits towards major music labels which further expose sleazy tactics the labels are using to avoid paying out artists they so proudly claim to "support". Fresh from the harvest is Def Leppard making covers on their own songs and basically recreating their entire discography so that they can get royalties out of the label.

And don't forget this whole Carreon/Oatmeal saga. It's so fucking retarded it's not even funny. FunnyJunk and Carreon, bravo, you are the worst morons i've ever seen. I mean, how can you be so fucking stupid to sue a guy who's raising money for charity?!

So, the world has changed. But at the same time, it largely stays the same.

Linux sucks!

First of all, sorry for not annoying you with much posts lately, been a little busy moving to a different place and settling in. I hate moving, i hate all this anxiety, i hate when a steady rhythm of my life is anally raped like this, but i guess that's life.

Now, Linux sucks. Yes, this is going to be a yet another post on how Linux sucks, with me bringing arguments about Linux while still assuring that i'm a fucking Linux zealot, advocate and whatnot. Yep, just like that, let's get it out of the way. I love Linux. I use it as my everyday OS, i occasionally do some development on Linux, i happen to feel comfortable in the command-line, et cetera, et cetera. That's all great.

But there's a big butt! For starters, i'm tired of and frustrated with Kubuntu. I've been using Kubuntu since, well, practically the day it showed up on the radar. I used it through 7.x series, through 8.x, through 9.x series, through 10.x series, through 11.x series, but i will not use 12.04. At least not as my main system. I'm moving to Chakra Linux. Why? Because Kubuntu is so god damn sluggish it's unbelievable. It literally crawls like a snail. Plus, i'm a bit of an adventure guy, i like adding PPA's and testing semi-stable packages. The problem with that of course is that every once in a while everything breaks. Yes, it's my own fault, but i don't care. Chakra manages to run testing branches of KDE4 without depriving me of graphical desktop every so often, so it's not like it's impossible.

The only successful upgrade to a new release i've had ever was from 10.10 to 11.04. This was Kubuntu at its best - not only it didn't break anything, it actually made things better! Not a single upgrade before or since was clean and easy - every time i had to shoot adrenaline into the kernel to bring the system up again. During big updates package manager often hangs and does nothing. Lately it's been hanging on the very last step of updates (processing triggers or something). Whether it's Muon or KPackageKit it doesn't matter - it still sucks.

Fonts. Fonts fucking suck. After - what, twenty? thirty? - years of this phrase first appearing on a public internet, it's still true. Fonts suck in Linux. I don't care that i can make them not suck, that i can edit zillion config files and install some shit just to display fonts properly - i don't give a fuck. When i install Windows, i don't fiddle with fonts. Why should i do so here?

Open Source projects. Some of them are pretty awesome, most of them suck. LibreOffice? Big fat sluggish piece of shit. Firefox? Don't get me started. The GNOME software camp? Fucking abomination. GNOME is a disease, a cancer on a free software movement. GCC? If this is the best compiler the community is capable of producing... Well, i rest my case. KDE software and KDE-related stuff (e.g. ownCloud) is probably the only worthwhile FLOSS software around, and it's not without its problems either.

Sound. SOUND!!!! How many god damn sound frameworks is enough?! OK, things have been slowly moving towards PulseAudio lately, and with version 4 my Skype is finally able to work properly without taking over my sound hardware or closing YouTube just to make a fucking call. But no pro sound so far. JACK is great as a framework but the drivers for anything remotely professional suck big time. Yes, i know it's not the fault of Linux community, but who the fuck cares? I still can't use neither FFADO nor any of the USB drivers. I keep a Windows installation just so i can record stuff properly.

Graphics. Yep, nouveau is making progress (dunno what's up with ATI, i haven't used a single Radeon in years), but gaming and GPU acceleration on Linux still sucks balls. You know what? I've decided to stick with Intel integrated graphics for the foreseeable future. Yes, i got myself the newest ballsiest Ivy Bridge Core i7, an equally ballsy Z77 motherboard, and that's it. No discrete graphics, fuck em all.

Pro software. Suffice to say, the ones that are worth something either are/were commercial (think Blender), ugly, messy and useless (yo GIMP, how's your CMYK support?), or simply crashy or amateurish (pretty much everything else). And we still wonder why, oh why didn't Linux take over the world...

Rule 34

OMG Ubuntu reports on an Ubuntu Unity lens that allows searching for porn. Big deal, eh? Well, apparently, the world is in such a sad state that people have to post this stuff with a bunch of warnings and unnecessary remarks that are really stating the obvious (such as "whether it offends you or not", in bold), and people are still whining in the comments about how freedom somehow has to be magically equated to "not offending".

If porn offends you - it's your problem. Freedom is exactly that - freedom. Including freedom to do and say what others might not like or find offending.

Have your cake and eat it too?

Yes, bitchez, i'm back! Just had some changes in my life that required my full attention. This one will be a little short as i still have stuff to do, but who cares. Oh, and wow, a couple of weeks ago i kinda had this blog's one year anniversary! I missed it but again, who cares.

Anyway, this time, the bullshitting will be about having your cake and eating it too. For example, copyrights. Media and software companies now insist that piracy is theft. It is a very convenient way to equate analog world with digital world, but it's misleading. When you sell a physical CD, you can't sell it again later. With digital distribution this is not the case - you can make as many copies as you like and sell them.

In fact, in the simplest case, to "sell" digital copies you just need only one copy, means of receiving payments and some form of distribution, be it a rapidshare account or a personal website (both of which don't require any effort whatsoever). To sell analog copies, you need... Well, you know what you need - a distribution platform, a place to store all these CD's and loads of other expensive stuff. So selling digital copies is in no way analogous to selling analog copies, and thus downloading a song for free from elsewhere does not equate to stealing. If anything, it's more like getting it from another retailer, one that has a better price, more convenient delivery and DRM-free format.

You insist that it is stealing? OK, you want to equate digital copies to analog copies. Fine. Then give back our rights of first sale, rights to share it with a friend (like you would share a hammer for example), returns and refunds in case of bad product and loads of other things that are associated with physical goods. Oh, you're now insisting that selling digital copies is not actually selling, but "licensing", so those pesky consumer rights don't apply? OK then, if "selling" isn't actually selling, then stealing isn't actually stealing.

And no, rent analogy does not apply here. After all, you don't have to upload back (read - return) your song after some time passes, do you? So how is that renting? OK, not renting, licensing? Fine, but then piracy is not theft either, it's simply a license violation - kinda like driving without a license. While license violations could have serious consequences, it's still in no way similar to stealing. So shut up and fuck off.

Legalize!

I've been hanging around Slashdot (yes, i'm a nerd, fuck off), and i came across the story about Anonymous threatening Mexican drug cartels for kidnapping one of their members. Now, aside from the fact that this is a highly unlikely and unusual story in the first place, the comment section quickly descended to the whole "War on Drugs" thing. I admit i might be a little biased on this matter, but i always was pro marijuana legalization. Well, not always, but you get what i mean.

So, one of the commenters wrote a lengthy post that is so true that i will just quote the (almost) entire post here. Have a nice read, folks.

As for your "less incentives for the drugs to come here in the first place" plan, I agree wholeheartedly. Legalizing marijuana would be a phenomenal step in social management, as well as reducing the financial support we give to entities we can nearly all agree should not be profiting from us. I don't think it will "drop the value of all those illegal [drug] runs to zero", since we have pharmaceuticals crossing both the Mexican and the Canadian borders on a daily basis - apparently, it's orders of magnitude cheaper to ignore the patent-based monopolies in the US and acquire (supposedly) the exact same chemicals quasi-legally over the border; at least, that's what the spam in my inbox seems to indicate. Not just for "V1@GR@", but a wide array of prescription medications, everything from pain pills to antibiotics.

Marijuana has been clinically proven to be less physically damaging than either tobacco or alcohol (both of which are legal, albeit age-restricted), even with long-term usage. It keeps the (consuming) population docile, and it's incredibly cheap. Taxing it sounds like a great idea, but even just decriminalizing it would hit the drug cartels harder than sending 100,000 troops down to shoot at them, and it would hurt them where it matters: in the wallet. Why import it from Mexico, when it's so much less expensive to get it (literally, even) from your own back yard?

Marijuana grows in just about any conditions, that's part of the reason for the nickname "weed". Outlawing it is akin to outlawing carbon dioxide; how do you stop it? It has taken decades of strenuous effort to get rid of most of the "naturally occurring" cannabis growing alongside our nation's highways, never mind in a planter on someone's back porch. Criminalizing marijuana has simply given the cartels a (in effect, government-granted) monopoly on its production and distribution.

Patty Hearst and the paper industry were responsible for outlawing marijuana in the first place, because it was an economic threat - it's cheaper to make paper from marijuana than from trees. An acre of cannabis produces more paper than an acre of trees, because you can harvest every month instead of every few years. An acre of cannabis also produces more oxygen per year than an acre of trees - and it grows faster than the trees, with much less maintenance required, making it a much more renewable resource with a smaller carbon footprint. Add in the fact that you can grow hemp in a field with other plants, whereas trees pretty much exclude anything except grass, and the hemp seems (from an objective view) to become much more economically viable and environmentally friendly than many other products.

Hemp fiber is extremely versatile, and can be used to make all kinds of things that are currently made from less renewable resources - paper, clothing, rope, and even plastics and bio-fuels have been made from hemp. For example, replacing cotton with hemp would increase production by several orders of magnitude - cotton requires an entire growing season to become usable, whereas hemp is mature and ready for harvest in a much shorter time, allowing multiple "growing seasons" in the same amount of time; in addition, the cotton is confined to boles, whereas nearly the entire hemp plant is useful for its fibers.

As for its use in "self-medicating", it is interesting to note that "industrial" hemp has so little THC in it that it's barely measurable - you could smoke an entire industrial hemp plant and only receive a headache and burning lungs for your troubles. I don't recommend requiring that property in the legalization, mind you, because I believe that its medicinal properties far outweigh any negative arguments. While I have heard of people smoking too much and passing out, I have never read a news article claiming someone died from an overdose of marijuana. Ever. I have on my refrigerator a newspaper clipping where a man was arrested for walking into a convenience store to use their microwave to dry out his stash, but I have never heard of someone smoking marijuana and then robbing a liquor store. Alcohol leads to more domestic violence in this country than one would think possible, yet I have never heard of someone getting stoned and then beating their wife to death because "her" dog peed on the living room carpet. Again. Potheads do some really ridiculously stupid things, but I've never encountered one who could be said to be violent due to their use of marijuana. Poor judgement? Sure. "Obtain twinkies" rates higher than "pay electricity bill" sometimes, you know how it is.

Violent anti-social behavior? Not so much. Hitting people takes effort, man.
Voted "most likely to sit on the couch"? Absolutely. Hey, dude, you got any potato chips?

Better still, if we had a legal option for "getting high", one that doesn't come with an annoying and debilitating hangover the next day, then people might choose not to pursue the illegal options (read that as "the dangerous ones") such as cocaine, methamphetamines, heroin - you know, the ones that make people violent, or that kill the users outright. They might also choose marijuana as their "legal drug of choice", instead of (for example) alcohol, leading to comparatively healthier and less violent recreational drug usage (Go ahead, tell me alcohol isn't a recreational drug, or that it doesn't cause violence. I have a truckload of reading material for you; why don't you start with Googling "Correlation of Alcohol and Domestic Violence").

Why bother with the expensive stuff that can kill you and/or get you arrested, when you could use an inexpensive, legal, and relatively safe alternative? Why risk being being arrested for domestic violence, when you can toke up with your spouse, sit on the couch, and giggle while discussing deep philosophical issues such as whether anything would happen if you were driving your car at the speed of light and then turned on your headlights?

Speaking of driving, I'm not suggesting that we get rid of any of the safeguards we have in place - operating a motor vehicle should be done while clean and sober, full stop.

If it weren't for the legal issues, and the fact that pharmaceutical companies can't patent it, marijuana would be hailed as a wonder drug. Despite these perception issues, it is used in several states to combat cancer (or more accurately, the side effects of cancer treatments), AIDS, and mental illness.

So, with all of these positive things to say about this plant, and very few negative things associated with it, why has our government spent absurd amounts of money trying to not only criminalize, but actually demonize it? Perhaps it is a matter of being "too cheap (or too prevalent) to tax"? Or perhaps the government employees making all that money "fighting the war on drugs" just don't want to find new jobs. Despite this, this drug is still amazingly prevalent in our society; I defy you to name somewhere in the US that one cannot simply buy a bag from someone within a few miles of any given urban location.

Why criminalize something that pacifies its users, making them less likely to commit violent crimes? Why criminalize a substance whose users are more docile and easier to catch if they do break a law? Most importantly, from a capitalist viewpoint, why grant a monopoly to organizations outside our control, allowing them to amass power and wealth because of senseless and puritanical regulation on our parts?

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Gaddafi is dead

OK, guys, it's now official - Colonel Muammar Gaddafi is dead. Hillary Clinton screamed "wow!" and laughed out loud. I bet lots of people don't really have a clue about who's the real villain here.

You fought a good fight, Muammar. You weren't always right, but you are a warrior, and you died like one. Shame on your cowardly enemies. Shame on us all for allowing this to happen.

Why GPL doesn't suck

I have recently stumbled upon quite a few blogposts bashing GPL for being "less free" than BSD/MIT/whatever licenses.

The main argument is almost always the following: basically, GPL forces developers to release the source code. Whatever modifications they make, they must release the source "so the whole community benefits". This is somehow presented to be an argument against the "freeness" for GPL and GPL ends up being accused of hypocrisy. I see this as complete bullshit, and here's why.

In GPL, developers don't matter. It doesn't matter who wrote the code, and why did he/she wrote it. It doesn't matter whether they did or did not make money off it, it doesn't matter if they did it as a hobby or professionally, it doesn't matter if they existed at all. What matters is the code. It's not the work of developers that gets licensed, it's the code that gets licensed.

How does that possibly make sense and what implications does it have? The BSD/MIT/Apache/whatever license is aligned to the interests of developers. Ideally, a developer doesn't really care if his code gets seen, used, forked, relicensed, whatever, as long as he is attributed and given credit - in other words, developers often look at their work pragmatically. However, the GPL license is not aimed towards developers, it is aimed towards the code. The code itself, whatever the modifications, should exist and should be freely accessible, freely modified and freely used.

All the people that bash GPL for being "unnecessarily" restrictive, miss the point of freedom. There is no freedom to do whatever you want. There is only freedom to do anything you want as long as you don't infringe on other people's freedom. You have your rights, but you have no right to take away rights of others. Thus, when you close the source code - you take away my right to read, copy and modify the code. And while you as a developer might want to take away that right from me (or allow others to do that), that doesn't mean that you can have that kind of freedom.

If Steve Jobs was Michael Jackson

What if Steve Jobs was Michael Jackson? If Apple was his band, and iPods, iPads and other iDevices were his albums?

Would there be any "1st generation iPod reissues" and "remasters"? Would there be collector's editions of all the iPhones, conveniently packed in one box and costing hell of a lot more than they would normally cost? Would there be any "complete box set" of all things Apple?

Would the sales of Apple IIe boost because of Steve's untimely death? Would there be people who hunt down second-hand and "unauthorized" iPhone sales? Would there be people who prevent people from giving you iPhone to your friend?

And why do we allow this to happen to our music? Why are we allowing to collect royalties for something recorded 20, 30, 40 years ago instead of giving it away and sharing the beauty of the works of art? Why are we holding on to Beatles instead of moving the fuck on with our lives and embracing new stuff?

The land of intellectual property™

There's something going on with the world now. Everybody keeps suing each other. Oracle sues Google, Apple sues Samsung, Samsung sues Apple, Nokia sues Apple, Apple sues Amazon and sends a cease-and-desist letter to an open-source project, Microsoft (and bunch of other guys) sue Apple, Lodsys suing Google, Apple and small developers... And that's just the tip of the iceberg. It seems like there's no more innovation going on, only established forces trying to undermine competition.

The greatest hypocrisy of all this is that when those forces themselves are caught copying, or are on the receiving side of ridiculous lawsuits - they seem to behave differently. Take, for example, the recent Microsoft whining over Google's Nortel purchase. Google tries to monopolize the market, unfair competition, yada-yada - but wait, isn't that exactly what Microsoft was doing since, like, forever?

The earlier mentioned lawsuite involving Apple and Samsung - Apple sued Samsung claiming that Samsung blatantly copies iPhone. OK, fair enough, I have the Galaxy S, i admit it looks very much like iPhone, and Galaxy S II looks pretty much like iPhone 4, and Galaxy Tab looks like iPad 2. On the other hand, there aren't a lot of ways one can make a touch-enabled phone, or a tablet. They will end up looking awfully lot like each other in any case. The tablet concept isn't new, so isn't the iPhone form-factor - Apple didn't invent them.

Apple also claims that Samsung's TouchWiz looks and feels like iPhone's launchers. OK, so what? It's not like iPhone UI is entirely original either. And let's not forget a poor guy who's app got rejected and has later appeared as part of iOS. So no, everyone copies everyone, this is called competition. If someone makes a better use of someone else's idea - why the fuck not (the guy could even have a chance to screw Apple as there was something similar in the past)?

It seems like whenever a big corporation copies someone else's ideas that's OK, but whenever they see their stuff copied the same way - it's somehow bad. It's not, copying is essential to what we do. Copying is fundamental aspect of learning and creativity. You can't go anywhere without copying others. Of course, using someone else's effort isn't exactly ethical, but that's how open-source works. That's how innovation and competition works.

If you can't think of something entirely new - look around and make use of what is available. Android seems to grow just like that - it largely incorporates different ideas. They might not be all that original, but they do it right (mostly). If you can use someone else's idea and improve on it (or even just adapt to your situation) - why not?


However, the most funny things now happen in the field of copyrights and the whole shebang - DMCA, MPAA/RIAA, ICE and others. Really, you just have to look at the timeline of some libertarian website like Techdirt to see these guys in action:

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110622/11170114805/uk-rightsholders-want-web-censorship-dont-want-public-to-be-part-conversation.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110619/23422614744/ridiculous-assertion-righthaven-ruling-threatens-open-source.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110622/09371114804/mpaa-directly-lobbies-law-enforcement-to-be-its-own-private-police-force.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110621/17003314793/how-long-until-riaa-kills-best-music-service-around.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110620/04343514759/disney-when-we-copy-its-inspiration-when-you-copy-its-infringement.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110621/22414214796/collateral-damage-hunt-lulzsec-fbi-takes-down-bunch-websites.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110620/11130314767/prosecutors-vermont-dont-want-limits-computer-search-warrant.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110621/22280214795/mexican-congress-moves-forward-with-effort-to-refuse-to-sign-acta.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110619/22572414738/intellectual-property-infringement-thats-why-we-have-this-rice-to-eat-today.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110621/13015914790/new-filing-explains-how-domain-seizures-violate-first-amendment.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110620/16364214774/did-universal-music-declare-50-cents-own-website-is-pirate-site.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110620/11441714768/copyright-holders-claim-that-they-should-get-to-decide-any-copyright-exceptions.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110620/23383214779/righthaven-loses-big-yet-again-cementing-two-previous-issues.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110620/10505614766/microsoft-still-claiming-that-it-can-use-dmca-to-block-competing-xbox-accessories.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110619/23440114745/return-to-days-hoovers-enemy-list-fbi-raiding-activists-as-terrorists.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110619/23410614742/giant-breweries-get-laws-passed-wisconsin-to-make-life-hard-small-breweries.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110620/04351314760/bittorrent-sued-patent-infringement.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110620/13271614771/appeals-court-realizes-hot-news-makes-no-sense-dumps-injunction-theflyonthewall.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110620/02535014751/sony-continues-suing-people-who-help-others-modify-their-ps3s.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110619/22543014737/righthavens-biggest-fan-copies-content-as-part-his-argument-against-copying-content.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110620/01370314750/universal-music-goes-to-war-against-popular-hip-hop-sites-blogs.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110516/19214314291/many-killers-music-industry-digital-era.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110513/03043214263/many-killers-music-industry-analog-era.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110522/22211914385/john-lennon-copying-others-music-its-not-rip-off-its-love.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110617/03142314726/indie-label-opts-out-apple-icloud-music-match-says-its-insult-that-tramples-copyright.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110617/04014414727/why-is-justice-department-pretending-us-copyright-laws-apply-uk.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110616/16480114722/senators-unconcerned-about-massive-unintended-consequences-criminalizing-people-embedding-youtube-videos.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110616/03443314715/is-using-photo-without-credit-separate-violation-dmca.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110614/02375914684/summit-entertainment-may-learn-that-you-cant-file-copyright-takedown-over-trademark-issue.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110616/03555214716/us-porn-company-wins-default-judgment-against-file-sharer-canada-guy-told-to-pay-64k.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110612/16170614663/mystery-writers-america-real-writers-dont-self-publish.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110616/10303314718/kutiman-continues-to-make-amazing-new-music-via-musical-collage.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110616/04035014717/those-who-settled-with-righthaven-consider-taking-action-righthaven-threatens-them-with-more-suits.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110616/01431614712/french-government-looks-to-create-great-firewall-france.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110615/14240014708/us-trying-to-extradite-uk-tvshack-admin-over-questionable-copyright-charges.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110614/13195214690/wisconsin-kills-wiscnet-because-only-good-infrastructure-is-att-infrastructure.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110615/03055214706/denver-post-sued-over-righthaven-connection.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110622/02043814800/facebook-roger-ebert-pointlessness-jerk-patrol.shtml

These are just a few entries you would find in there - many more are likely to appear. There's just so much bullshit in there it's not even funny anymore. Everyone's fighting for freedom abroad while locking down their own country more and more.

Equal opportunities

Today i was helping a friend of mine with applying for a job using an online form. Apart from loads of stupid-ass questions, there was this ubiquitous politically correct bullshit about equal opportunities. Now, this "equality" policies are a major problem plaguing modern society.

While these policies pursue a noble goal of giving everyone an equal chance for a job, education or whatever, the truth is that it is complete bullshit and is actually all the same racism, sexism etc. only in different words.

A simple question - if people are equal, why would anyone ask for that kind of information in the first place? If they truly treated people equally, they just wouldn't care if it's man or woman, black or white, young or old, these things just wouldn't matter. But no, they do, and this is exactly why these "policies" are racist, sexist etc.

Now i'm not sure if it has its place in the Western world, but in some former USSR Asian countries there are policies on how many people of which race should be working for any given business. Again, the idea was to give everyone an opportunity to have a good job and try to eliminate racism or ethnic chauvinism. I assume a variant of these policies is more or less present everywhere - in Europe, in USA, in Australia etc.

Now, for the sake of argument, consider the following - imagine i have a private business. Let's say i am racist and i don't like certain race, for example, black. Let's say, i have a vacancy open, and i look at two candidates - one is a hard working black man, another is a white raging alcoholic and generally a dumb fuck. Who do i choose? Probably white man, because i don't want blacks working for me. No matter how dumb the white guy is, no matter how bright and hard working a black guy is, i would choose white. Is it right? Of course not. However, if i have reached my quota for white people, the policies of the government on equality wouldn't allow me to do that, and i will be forced to do the right thing and offer black man a job. So far so good.

Let's try it the other way around. Let's say i don't have all the racial prejudices. Let's say i have an open vacancy, and i look at two candidates - one is a hard-working white man, another is a black raging alcoholic and generally a dumb fuck. Who do i choose? Probably white man, because i don't want dumb fucks working for me, i want to succeed in my business. However, if i have reached my quota for white people, the policies of the government on equality wouldn't allow me to do that, and i will be forced to offer black man a job. And no matter how dumb is that black man, no matter how bright and hard working is the white man, i am forced to give a job to a dumb alcoholic just because the right guy for the job happens to be white. Which is - ta-da! - racism in its purest form.

The bottom line is - all these policies are just different kind of racism, sexism and all the other "-isms". Moreover, they deprive me of my freedom. How is that? Well, you see, it's my business, and i should decide who is working for me, and who isn't. It's up to me to decide who faces my customers and who represents my company, not some ass-clown in the government who thinks only white can be racist. However, right now government would make me differentiate between black, white, male, female, straight, gay, bisexual, transsexual, overweight, dyslexic - in other words, this policy actually forces me to be racist, sexist and all that. And it doesn't occur to people that i wouldn't care, and i wouldn't want to care about these things, i would just want people to do the job!

Privacy

A lot of talk has been around WikiLeaks concerning what should and what should not be kept secret, about privacy of Powers That Be, about perceived hypocrisy surrounding WikiLeaks (aaah, you ask for openness and you're all secret yourself!)...

Now, lemme tell ya somethin' bout the government. Well, not exactly about the government, but about all of these issues i've mentioned in the first sentence. You see, people keep confusing privacy with secrecy. Privacy is what i do in my backyard, what porn i jack off to, what music i like - this is privacy. If i killed somebody and didn't tell anyone and no-one found out - that's secrecy, not privacy. This is not my private matter, for fucks sake, i killed a man (or a woman)!

Now, does WikiLeaks need secrecy? Of course it does. It is a media outlet. It needs to protect its sources if they wish to remain anonymous, so that the government (or anyone else) couldn't take action against them. Does Julian Assange need privacy? Of course he does - just as i do, you do and everyone else does. But do not confuse privacy with secrecy.

When you are on duty, there's no such thing as privacy. You have your corporate email, CCTV's on site, strict code of conduct, timetable and everything is being monitored from up above - and that's how it's supposed to be. Because you are at work. You're not at home - home is a private place, work isn't.

When someone in the government is on duty - they fall exactly under the same category of "work". They are serving people, and they have to be held accountable for what they do. Everything needs to be transparent. They have no right for privacy while they are on duty. They have their right of privacy when they come back home after a long day and fuck their wives or jack off to horse porn - i have no problem with that, but why people keep confusing privacy and secrecy is beyond me.

The difference between corporations and government though is in case of corporations, there is management and all these people who run the show. They can be held accountable for what the corporation does, or can punish their employees for violating corporate rules or doing something illegal. In case of government, the "management" is me, you and any other voter who chose them. The government must be held accountable by us, and people doing shady stuff should be punished by government on our behalf. When corporations (or government) are doing shady stuff in a coordinated fashion - this is called conspiracy.

Diplomatic cables are like corporate email. It is sort of a private conversation, but when the need arises, it can be made public. No one should use corporate email for private stuff, that's why we have private email addresses. If your corporate email exposes some stuff you shouldn't have said or done - well, it's not my problem. You're supposed to do your job, not fucking little boys dressed in girl's clothes. If these cables revealed guys just doing their jobs - no one would ever say a word and i would be all for prosecuting Assange for sharing private information without the need for it.

Now, do we need secrecy? Of course we need some secrets. Some things are meant to be kept secret for a while. The primary point of secrecy is to gain strategic advantage, so your enemies are not aware of what you are up to. So when you did gain it, when all is said and done - why secrecy? No one would be afraid of declassifying secret or top secret information if there was nothing to hide.

The problem is that there is. The mechanism of secrecy is long since being abused to cover up fuck-ups and shady stuff the government does. That is why the government is so outraged at WikiLeaks - because it can expose something that shouldn't have been a secret but been under criminal investigation. Tortures, spying, bribing one government and putting pressure on another, covertly transporting prisoners - the list goes on and on. This has nothing to do with privacy and confidentiality, this is criminal activity hidden by the cloak of secrecy. Do we need that kind of secrecy? I doubt it.

Now, the curious case of WikiLeaks. Some may argue that WikiLeaks got the documents as a result of criminal activity (sharing confidential and top secret government information with third parties). What did WikiLeaks do? Buy this information? No. Sell it to someone? No. What they did was send the data to newspapers and let them do the job they are meant to do. There's certainly nothing criminal in WikiLeaks action.

Some may argue that sharing top secret information is still a crime. OK, valid point, but there must be common sense applied to that. First of all, WikiLeaks' cables and documents disclose information that shouldn't have been secret in the first place. Tell me one reason why people should not know when government is spying on them. Tell me one reason why people should not know that USA is pressuring Germany not to bring a criminal case against CIA agents. Tell me one reason why people should not know that their government killed 15'000 more civilians in Iraq. Are these legitimate secrets? You decide.

Second, whistle blowing is a noble activity. It is OK not to share corporate information with third parties, but what if your corporation (e.g. government) does something it shouldn't do and gets away with it? If you expose this information, who should be prosecuted - you or the government? For me, the answer is obvious.

This brings up a curious question - who is supposed to decide what is good and what isn't? Well, don't we have laws for that? Isn't murder illegal? Isn't bribery illegal? Isn't influencing justice system of a foreign country illegal? Not wrong, but illegal. So why exposing illegal activities is illegal?

Land of the free, home of the brave

...as well as astronomical amounts of bullshit and hypocrisy - USA blocks access to WikiLeaks-related content from within U.S. Air Force networks. Another U.S. "official" advocates for censorship of the press. How is that freedom of speech? How is that democracy? What the fuck is going on?!

Freedom fighters

I was wondering where are all those countless human rights campaigners? Where is Bono when we need him? Where is Rage Against the Machine? Where are all the rappers? Where is Matthew Bellamy? This is a great opportunity to make loads of money on support for WikiLeaks - come on, make a concert, raise funds, donate them to WikiLeaks, why don't they do that?! There won't be another chance to get publicity and public appeal as this one!

For now, only handful of folks expressed their support for Assange (compared to overwhelming negative reaction of politicians), and - expectedly - among them is Michael Moore. Finally, i was beginning to worry that fat bastard is afraid. Come on, guys! Fox news is broadcasting people that suggest to kill Assange, hello?! Turns out the great hypocrisy of USA is not only in their government, but also in their people and in their freedom fighters as well.

Jews did WTC

No, srsly. Some guy named Gordon Duff thinks that WikiLeaks and Julian Assange are Israeli agents.

Now, some of his points are valid in the way that WikiLeaks really didn't produce anything on certain selected topics. But come on, let's use some common sense. Imagine you are a whistle-blowing organization. Where do you get information from? Anonymous sources. Come on, it's not like Julian hacks US military servers himself (although, given his bio, he possibly could)! What do you do about the information you didn't recieve? Nothing. You can't publish anything on said topic because there is nothing to publish, you have no documents, no proof and no evidence. Nobody cared to provide this information. Strangely, the simple fact that WikiLeaks can't have all information in the world escapes that man.

Another simple point the guy is missing - yes, WikiLeaks published war logs in Iraq and Afghanistan. Of course these documents couldn't contain all the information there is (we have Wikipedia for that). WikiLeaks are now in the process of publishing 250'000 diplomatic cables. How many of them are there? 250'000. How many did they publish so far? IIRC, about a thousand. That's less than 1% of information. Can you make reasonable conclusions based on 1% of information you are about to receive? Gordon certainly doesn't have a problem with it.

USA to censor Internet

Here we go. Voila. The great hypocrisy of the great country. We are holding a World Press Freedom conference in 2011. We condemn Chinese firewall. We start campaigns for unrestricted Internet access. And yet we are censoring WikiLeaks, harrasing Julian Assange and investigate New York Times. Moreover, we are to censor not only WikiLeaks, but every website that is out there of similar nature! Now this is reeeeeeel bullshit, i tell you. What happened to the land of the free and the home of the brave? Come on, guys, don't be stupid! I can understand that you were scared when WTC was hit and traded your freedom for false sense of "security" (i will make a post on terrorism later), but this is different! Pull your head out of your asses, can't you see how fucked up is US government?!

More stuff to look up to

Something is Rotten: The Strange Case of Interpol's Red Alert on Assange, and the US Attack on WikiLeaks
Operation Leakspin
Avaaz.org - WikiLeaks: Stop the crackdown

The Julian Assange case

Past few posts were devoted to WikiLeaks and Julian Assange situation, and this will change in the future, just not now.

The diplomatic cables are continuing to be published, Julian is arrested without any charges, world's crimes are being exposed, Anonymous are still carrying out attacks - everything is pretty normal, considering the current state of things. Right now Julian is in the hands of UK.

Be mistaken not - i do not condone DDoS attacks Anonymous are carrying out. I do believe that some things are meant to be kept secret - such as a list of stategic objects and/or people that are of strategic importance. However, this whole situation is not about WikiLeaks. It is not about DDoS attacks (bear in mind that it wasn't Anonymous who were first to carry out a DDoS attack - WikiLeaks was DDoS'ed, cut out of funding and kicked out of hosting providers before any of those Anonymous attacks took place). It's not about whether Julian Assange has raped anyone.

This situation is about freedom of speech and transparency. While i do not believe that free speech should be limitless (Nazi propaganda is a fine example), i still believe that spreading lies and telling the truth are not the same thing. An aforementioned example of Nazi propaganda is built on lies - it is not honest and thus should not be in the "allowed" list simply because it is misleading and not doing any good. The revelations made by WikiLeaks, however, are true - no one ever denied that. No one ever said that these leaks were fabricated - this is a factual information we have here. And it deserves being there simply because it tells the real story, not some pretty lies.

Those things shouldn't have been done. There were many unnecessary killings in Iraq and Afghanistan wars. There were many unlawful orders from US government, such as the case with Hillary Clinton i keep mentioning over and over. There is an obvious corruption of country leaders ($52 mil in cash? Come on! It's not like Afghan Vice President earned it). The war in Yemen US government kept denying it was a part of. These are the real crimes. These should be known to public - not because it is a leftist, communist or any other -ist propaganda - but because these are facts. I could care less what US intelligence thinks of Berlusconi, but the fact that foreign contractors in Afghanistan hired "dancing boys" deserves to be known.

A common saying comes to mind - selective application of law is anarchy. How come MPAA (or RIAA, don't remember) are allowed to hire a private company to DDoS certain P2P sites, and it is illegal for anyone to strike back with the same kind of attacks? Don't get me wrong - there are legitimate DDoS attacks (stress-testing), but this was clearly not the case. These attacks weren't any more legitimate than attacks are being carried out by Anonymous right now.

P. S. an insightful comment on the Guardian website:

...As a Swede, I'm pretty worried about what the prosecution is doing as well. From here, it all looks like a mess. Not sure if it's incompetence or conspiracy, but it certainly does not look like anything else I've seen.
Letting Assange out of Sweden (with their blessing) without trying to talk with him, then suddenly involving Interpol? Before charges have been pressed? Demanding that he should be held in jail, denied bail and incommunicado?...

Anonymous Operations

A Symposium on Wikileaks and Internet Freedom
Anonops History: A Letter from Anonymous