Why Homosexuality Should Be Banned ...

... NOT! :)

A Global Poll

It is said that at one point, the UN decided they would do a world-wide poll, using the question According to your personal opinion, is there a lack of food in the rest of the world?

Apparently the poll failed, because:

• In Africa nobody understood the word food
• In China, nobody understood the phrase your personal opinion
• In Germany nobody understoon the meaning of the word lack
• In the USA nobody understood the meaning of the words the rest of the world

Please Rephrase

Removing the hostiles
collateral damage
remove the target
hit a target
remove the threat
... and I'm tired of the bullshit.

If you happen to channel-surf over Discovery Channel (and some others) while documentaries on weapons are playing, you are bound to hear one or more of the expressions above.

These shows try to show you how cool new weapons are, how advanced their technology, and how they are superior, while glossing over a simple truth: they are perfected for killing people.

All of the euphemisms above mean the exact same thing: killing people. The problem we have here is "killing people" doesn't sound cool, and it's more difficult to have a show on how cool the weapons are, if we actually put on the table that they are better tools for killing people. Instead, it's "we protect our country" [that usually means the US, since the guys in the shows I've seen are American].

I'm not arguing here that these weapons are not helping in the protection of your country (whatever that may be). I'm sure they help, but cut the bullshit! They are killing instruments.

It's not cool that you have them, it's sad that you may need them.

An Interesting Drugs Report

It seems that a while ago, the World Health Organization performed a study on cocaine use (the source said it was the largest ever indepth study). Then, the results got dimissed and the report was never published, as it didn't conform with the myths propagated by the US anti-drug campaigns and political interests.

The report touched on unjustified stigmatization/vilification of cocaine users, exaggerations of the health damages cocaine produces and the fact that current approaches to stopping the use of cocaine are naive at best (among other things).

The US apparently threatened to withdraw funding from the WHO if the report was published (in the end it seems it was leaked[PDF], not published).

Disclaimer: This post is in no way an endorsement for the use of cocaine (or any other drugs for that matter). I am more interested in writing about the conclusions and the supression of the report, than drugs in general. Besides, IANAD.

Daniel Hannan MEP: The devalued Prime Minister of a devalued Government

I have nothing against the British Prime Minister. Still, this is an eloquent discourse/accusation with powerful arguments*.

The again, who am I kidding?

Yeah! Bring him to task!



M., thanks for the link. I hope it gets a wider distribution.

* - And the British accent thing is cool also.

The US Elections Are Over a.k.a. Pedros

In a bar in Mexico, there was a Mexican drinking Tequila (of course!). All of a sudden, he heard someone yelling from outside:

Pedros, Pedros, somebody is stealing your horse!

He dashed outside, then suddenly stopped and realized:
Hey, I don't have a horse! He went back inside and got a new glass of Tequila.

Ten minutes later, he heard another voice yelling outside:

Pedros, Pedros, somebody is robing your house!

He dashed outside again, then suddenly stopped and realized:
Hey, I don't have a house! He went back inside and got a new glass of Tequila.

Ten minutes later, he heard another voice yelling outside:

Pedros, Pedros, somebody is kidnapping your wife!

He dashed outside again, then suddenly stopped and realized:
Hey, I'm not Pedros!

So ... what does that have to do with the US elections? Nothing much ...

... except that I knew very strongly who I was going to vote for ... and I'm not American.

Damn media! :-(

Good thing it's over though.

Utnapistim for President

So ... it seems there's a surprise move in the campaign for the president of the US.

Watch the news here.

US Democracy is ... Not a Democracy

Papa Stalin said it doesn't matter who votes, it matters who counts the votes (or something like that).

This guy gives court testimony under oath that the US voting machines are rigged.

How comes this is not front page news?

Paranoid Scenario (a.k.a. nineteeneightyfour)

It seems to me that in UK, it's enough to have an electronic storage device (like a cellphone, camera, USB flash-drive or computer) for the police to be able to arrest you and throw you in jail, for two to five years.

Let me explain that in detail:

First, the UK appeal court decided that if the police ask you for your encryption key, you have to provide it (That is, not having it is not an excuse).

Second, they could always ask for the key to decrypt your TrueCrypt partition. (TrueCrypt allows you to hide information in seemingly unoccupied data of the storage device, in such a way that no traces remain that data was ever there).

Third, good luck explaining that nothing is actually hidden there (that the seemingly random data in unoccupied space is actually random data in the unoccupied space); remember, not providing the (non-existent) key doesn't get you off the hook.

I hope I can ascribe this scenario to incompetence; the alternative (malice) makes me shiver.

Later edit: I can also ascribe this scenario to paranoia methinks ... :-\

TED: Jonathan Haidt: The real difference between liberals and conservatives

This is one of the most insightful speeches on politics and spirituality I've ever seen.

on drm aka spore failed

I've read all kinds of rants online about Digital Rights Management, or DRM for short. Two things I got impressed about regarding this, were a slashdot signature (that said DRM is managing your digital rights in the same way a jail manages your freedom) and the idea that DRM is basically an anti-feature (concept best explained here).
More than that, vendors endorsing it risk burning themselves by quietly selling DRM-embedded products, as potential customers automatically vote against it, with their wallets. You can bet your customers will not make an informed decision, but that only works for short-term gains, as customers have a long memory.

Today it's the first time I've seen an expression of the second part of that, in the amazon comments page for the game Spore; Spore was a much awaited game, promising the kind of game-play change brought forth by Black & White or Doom. Unfortunately, it comes with a DRM saying the game is not yours; you pay 50$ for it, then are allowed to reinstall it three times, before they pull the plug on you.

In short, you RENT it for up to three uses, for 50$. to give a comparison term, I bought The Orange Box online, through Steam, for less. That comprised three games, all of them excellent, that I'm still enjoying. More than that, I've reinstalled my system a few times, and whenever I reinstall Steam, the games are available to me (and already payed for).

On Amazon's page for the game, all comments I've read state clearly that paying 50$ for basically renting the game is not worth it, especially when you have no control over the renting agreement.

There may be comments I haven't read on the site, but still, the message is pretty clear:

EA, stop treating potential customers as pirates!

First, you will loose sales.

Second, locks are there to keep honest people out. Using the DRM conditions you use, is just bringing pain to potential customers.

If you really want to use an online distribution platform, for heaven's sake, use Steam (or something similar).

Third, if you're hell-bent on renting the game instead of selling it, state so clearly on the box.

I'm tired ranting ... back to work :)

100 years forecast

I found this linked on reddit and thought it humorous (if maybe plausible). If someone wants credit for it, drop a comment.

Windows doesn't suck; it lies!

So, yesterday I got myself a new HDD, for extra storage space, at home. I installed it with no problems, then booted Vista (for the more familiar interface) and attempted to format it using FAT32.

Apparently though, 150Gb is way too much for a FAT32 partition and Vista only allowed me to format using NTFS.

I would respect that it didn't allow me to perform an invalid formatting, that would have ruined my new hard-drive, except it isn't so: I booted under Linux and was able to format the partitions with no problems whatsoever.

It turns out that windows is simply lying to you, so that you'd be forced to use a proprietary partition format (leading to platform lock-in) :(
At least, that's the only conclusion I could come up with.

In this case however, all they managed was make me give another vote to Linux.

We Must Act Now! ... or must we?

Michael Crichton is a writer. He wrote Jurassic Park and Twister (among lots of others). He's not an ecologist, and nor is he an environmentalist. Still, he brings one of the sanest counter-arguments I've ever seen to the "Save the Planet" attitudes (in short, "stop thinking we understand what we're doing").

If you believe that the fact he's not working in these fields is the most important issue here, feel free to look up argumentum ad hominem.

newest episode: it's the actions of "some soldiers"

Until now, it wasn't there;

It seems it was there, just ... it was the actions of "some soldiers" ...

Sad ... sad ...

no comment

sad and sadder

The fact that racism still exists is sad; The fact that censoriship exists (self-censorship is still censorship) is sadder, for the US (this was published by AlJazeera).

censoring the internet / wikileaks.org

There's been a scandal over the last few days, as wikileaks.org actually did more of its purpose: they published some confidential documents on the money-laundering ways (apparently - I haven't read the documents myself) of a Cayman Islands Bank.

Then, the website was DoSed and the State of California ordered their internet provider (called Dynadot - and located in California - the only one they had jurisdiction over) to take down the domain, keep it reserved so that the site's anonymous creators wouldn't be able to register it somewhere else, and requested all the IP addresses of people who accessed the site.
(as a result, the wikileaks.org site can now be found at either wikileaks.be, or http://88.80.13.160/wiki)

How could I put this? CAYMAN ISLANDS BANK, you're on the verge of creating a new internet phenomenon (see references to 09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0).

Attempting to censor information on the net (if you don't benefit from China's resources - that is) is practically impossible. It's a clear case when creating resistance to something actually gives it more power.

In fact, the only chance you'd have had to get over this is pretend you didn't see it, and hope others won't either (like the declaration of Francesco Cossiga).

From a Former President no Less

Francesco Cossiga is a former Italian president, having ruled Italy from 1985, until 2002.

He's also one of the few politicians considered to be more-or-less correct, as in his last two years as president, he started unmasking all kinds of overt moves made by politically-powerful people, in the Italian government. Those two years made him very popular with the Italian people, and very unpopular with the Italian parliament - which seems to be the reason he lost his presidency - I'm not sure, I haven't had much time to look into that.

That's not interesting in itself, unless you're into European history.

What IS interesting however, is the interview he gave in Corriere della Sera, where he stated (translated to English):

Palazzo Chigi [headquarters of the Italian government] circles, nerve centre of Italian intelligence, note that the video's falsity is proven by the fact that Osama Bin Laden reportedly confesses that Al Qaeda made the September 11 attacks against the twin towers in New York, while all democratic circles in Europe and America, above all those of the Italian left-wing, know that the disastrous attack has been planned and executed by the CIA and Mossad, with the help of the Zionist world, in order to accuse Arab countries and force western powers to intervene both in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is why there has been no word of solidarity to Berlusconi from the Quirinale [home of the Italian president of the republic], from Palazzo Chigi nor from members of the left wing coalition.

All this, is coming from a widely-respected former-president of Italy.

What is the most interesting of it all though, is that none of the mainstream media outlets (BBC/CNN/etc.) seem to see this as newsworthy (let me give you a hint: it's huge!).

Please do not port software to Windows!

I found a small plea on the net for not porting GNU software to Windows. At first sight, the arguments sounded convincing, but I find them to be mainly colour-blind arguments.

They sounded to me close to believer-fervour (and that should, I believe, always be closely examined, lest it degrades to fanaticism).

The writer says (among other things):

Many people using Windows don't care about their freedom. They do care about quality software and for that reason try to replace all the user space software from Microsoft with better free alternatives. This is the sole reason for the existance of cygwin.

which is a gross generalization. The "sole reason" for the existence of cygwin is more than one (so to speak). Among these reasons, is providing a compatibility layer.

It is the same purpose that is provided by the wine on *NIX, by the way.

Is cygwin more powerful than Windows' default software?
Arguably, it is.
Still, the reason I had it installed at my old job, was because I needed to run some shell scripts that needed it. For a Windows shell, I now use Windows PS (easier to install, though not as powerful or complete in features, as cygwin, but it's enough).

More of the arguments, made me remember the how-to that I commented on, a few days ago: instead of having an open mind, they start from "Windows is evil, how do we get about replacing it?"

Do I think windows is evil?
Not in purpose.

Are they trying to make (more) money?
Yes.

Does that make them evil?
Not as such, no.

Does it make them unethical?
Sometimes (OK, most of the time), but still, not "evil", not "bend on sabotage/destruction" which "evil" would mean.

The writer of the plea is ignoring completely Microsoft's purpose here: they don't care for "making software", but for "making money". Once you keep this in mind, they're just another corporation.

Does that make them unfit for any purpose?
No.

It is (arguably) easier for a company to get up a Windows network, than a *NIX one (if for no other reasons, then for the number of Windows administrators available in the workforce, compared to *NIX administrators).

It is also easier for a commercial development team to use a suite of products that integrate together than five or ten separate ones.

When, as a team leader, you know you have to deliver in six months, you'd rather go for the software package with the smaller learning curve, not for "yes, but after we learn vi, we'll write code really fast" (especially if the month spent customizing vi and fighting the vi learning curve, is a month the team could be writing software in).

That said, I use Kubuntu Linux at home. It is fit for my purpose at home (playing with it's settings, adding lots of things and trying them out, browsing and a bit of development), and it's free (yes, freedom in software matters, both in price and in choice).

I feel having more of the world switching to free operating systems would generally be a good idea (if for no other reasons, then for encouraging competition), but using partial arguments and trying to limit choice ("please don't port my software to windows" so windows users might be forced to switch) is the same kind of play that Microsoft does, but on a smaller scale:

It is limiting freedom, all over again.