Posts by thecakeis(not)alie

Ban the US from the internet

Pretty Please?

@AC

Oh, it's amusing alright. I have at least one anti-fan. Truly died-in-the-wool hates-my-guts type. I suppose it's that part where I try to apply reason and logic to everything, worship at the alters of science, impartiality and objectivity and believe in the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few. It pretty much makes me the socio-political inverse of a Tea Party member, some of which have taken a severe dislike.

So they aren’t downvoting a chemical reaction, they are downvoting me personally. There are all sorts of fairly innocuous comments which aren’t politically, religiously or socially charged which get downvoted simply because it’s me making them. Apparently I logiced so hard I grew a downvoting troll.

I simply cannot tell you how proud that makes me. It’s like wining at the Internet every single time I post a comment! The best part about the whole thing is that I don’t have to post lies, misinformation, slander, instinctualist/emotionalist nonsense or otherwise troll the readers and denizens of the various fora I take part in. Simply taking the time to research the subjects that interest me, developing a complex and nuanced belief system based on multiple sources of information and then posting my thoughts and insights is enough apparently to earn a cyber-downvote-stalker.

Every single time something like that occurs, I let out a deep laugh. People who do silly things like downvote a post that simply contains a chemical reaction do all the hard work of proving my points for me. I can only shake my head in wonder at the kinds of ignorance people in this world cling so passionately to.

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH is the rallying cry of these people. Down with governments, intellectualism, science, reason and logic! They vote and they scream, riot and parade with their instincts, their emotions and the sense of morality handed down to them by their pastor. They don’t question the world around them, they don’t reason beyond the overwhelming belief system prevalent in the hive-mind with which they associate. It’s spectacular. It’s mind boggling. It’s more than a little bit terrifying.

It’s also amazing fodder for one of the books I am writing; one that is going quite well, actually. My editor loves it; the internet is a fantastic place to fundamentalism in all of its various forms – whether religious or not.

@The elephant in the room:

The release of CO2 – while a greenhouse gas – is actually a remarkably good thing in this case. Methane is hugely more powerful as a greenhouse gas than CO2. It can do a lot of damage in a very short time and is something we have no method of actually coping with. For all the hubbub made by eco-fundamentalists about CO2, it really isn’t “the end of the world.”

When we as a society do actually start caring about climate change there are some fairly easy ways to deal with CO2. You plant an absolute ****load of trees, grow them largeish and then bury them. CO2 is the one greenhouse gas we actually can cope with, should we ever choose to.

Methane, OTOH, is completely outside our technological capability to cope with. It doesn’t stick around quite as long as CO2, but it does a lot more harm in the time it is present in the atmosphere. There are far worse things yet than methane, and frankly it is these that we should be concerned about curbing…not CO2. CO2 is a battle the eco-fundamentalists should have saved until much later.

Curbing our CO2 footprint impinges far too much on the lifestyles of certain people who simply are too self-focused to ever be concerned about it until the effects are right in front of them. Given that we can actually reverse CO2 damage, it would have been a far better choice to save that particular gem until much, much later. In the meantime, we could have focused our efforts on curbing the release of far more dangerous gasses into the atmosphere, and delayed global warming another 50 or so years. Enough time to pretty much run out of most of our easily-obtainable fossil fuels anyways, making the CO2 issue something we’d have to cope with out of necessity anyways.

Alas, we’re now too far down the rabbit hole to climb back out of it, and so we have a huge socio-political war on our hands: people who understand science and who choose to apply it to the world around them versus people who are terrified of either paying more for their creature comforts or being forced to give them up. All of which are helpfully exacerbated by the ever more fanatical (and ludicrously violent) political imagery used by all sides of pretty much any and every debate going.

So, long rant short…the CO2 thing, not such a big deal in the long run. Far worse if the methane had escaped. The consumption of all the oxygen in the Gulf of Mexico, OTOH, has proven to be catastrophic.

@AC

You must be a Tea Party member.

Personal liberty is balanced against the needs of the many. Let me clarify this for you:

1) The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few (or the one).

2) The needs of the few (or the one) outweigh the desires of the many.

Germany does an absolutely fantastic job of balancing individual liberties against the needs of society as a whole. Now, I wouldn't expect a Tea Party member to understand that. Their viewpoints are so unbelievably pro-corporatists anti-government they border on anarchists wanting to actually volunteer for indentured servitude. (Some Tea Party members actually would be just fine with selling people into slavery!)

I don’t know how much you know about Germany, but I know quite a lot. I’ve been spending a lot of time researching it and talking to numerous people there as I prepare to apply for a visa and hopefully obtain citizenship. Germany is not a country that “represses” anyone or restricts their freedoms of speech or movement without a damned good reason and a absolutely enormous amount of furious debate.

The society has moved quite a bit past “trying to distance themselves from a Nazi past.” The concept of personal liberties is burned into the very soul of this country. So is the concept of challenging the rise of dangerous cults, organisations (Like the Tea Party) which seek to sell your personal liberties to businesses with a sly wink about “freedom,” or any other organisation that threatens to do serious harm to the fabric of a functional, economically powerful social democracy.

Germans don’t have the mentally strangled concept that “the government is automatically an evil boogyman in all things.” The German government can probably be trusted with most things more than any other government on Earth. Not only that, if they do get uppity, Germans have more power over their government than do Americans, Canadians or the British. You see, lobbying – while impossible to eliminate entirely – is heavily restricted in Germany. Germany votes actually count for something! They also have procedures in place to remove their sitting members of parliament in the middle of a term if they happen to prove to be working against the best interests of the people.

Germany have strong FOIP laws that ensure most of what their government does occurs under an extremely powerful microscope. More importantly, they have programms in place to actively encourage voter participation in the political process that results in a country without nearly as much voter apathy as you find in the rest of the western world. Folks in Germany know what their government is up to, they have the power to affect that government directly and they /care/ enough to get off the sofa and hold a damned protest or five when the time is right.

All in all, Germans don’t need to be afraid of their government. Their government is rightly and properly afraid of the Germans.

Overall, the banning of organisations like Scientology and neo-nazi groups isn’t “the government boogyman” restricting the liberties of individuals. It is /the people/ making a decision that these groups are a direct threat to the needs of the many. There aren’t many reasons why one should ever condone the restriction of any individuals freedoms…but the kind of threat these groups represent to the bulk of society is indeed one.

You may not agree – hell, if you’re Tea Party then you’re likely so indoctrinated that you can’t actually grasp the concepts laid forth through the haze of misinformation and fear. Still, I believe it to be the right, true and proper way to run a society. Mind you, I believe in something greater than myself. I believe that /the people/ are more important than my personal self.

That isn’t a belief in religion, sonny. It’s a belief in a fundamental right and wrong that transcends religion, transcends politics and should transcend the haze of personal selfishness and entitlement that clouds certain societies. I can’t explain it to you – I am not a philosopher – but those of us who believe in this set of ethics would give our lives for it. Our ancestors fought in world wars because they too believed it. Your ancestors fought in those same wars for the same reasons. The difference is that in some countries – the US and Australia predominantly – this message has gotten horribly corrupted over time by the selfish interests of greedy corporates.

It isn't "the government boogyman" I fear. It isn't even Nazis. (I know for a fact this world would rise up against them once more.) What I fear is the insidious corporate anarchists slowly gaining hold in western countries. I refuse to be beholden to a corporation. I refuse to give up on my fellow man simply because a corporation wants to make profits selling insurance, education and dozen other products that are far more efficiently handled as public social programs. I refuse to believe that my fellow men are “moochers” and “Trying to cheat the system – and me out of my tax dollars.”

Instead, I will flee to a country where this isn’t true. One that will stand against the tide. The country that will defend what is right and good about this world and stand up against that which is wrong. That country sir is most definitively and resoundingly not the United States of America. That country is Germany. She and her sister countries in the EU are in my personal opinion the last true hope of preserving the concepts of personal liberty and far more importantly those of /social responsibility/ left in this world.

If you can’t understand that, then I pity you, for the chances are that you never will.

Prosecute and imprison

Prosecute evey /corrupt politcian/ and imprison them. Get these dirtbags off the streets now.

T,FTFY

@Ian michael Gumby

Define "centrist." The American definition of "center on the political spectrum" is still deep into the right wing byt he definition of a lot of the rest of the world. By your definition, I probably qualify as a total left-wing headcase.

A quote from Bill Maher (not that I am exactly a fan) still sticks out as relevant:

"The Democrats of today are essentially the Republicans you'd find in the '50s and '60s while the Republicans have moved into the nut house."

Besides which, I don't think where you are on the political spectrum has /anything/ to do with your support (or lack thereof) for Assange. I think he's a putz, and yet I am likely far more "left" than 99%+ of USians. (Heck, I'm probably still more left than 60% of Canadians.) Doesn't change that the message is right while the man is wrong.

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

The 50-foot-high blinking neon motto of the Tea Party.

America, you have my condolances.

"Review that's not epic fail."

Can anyone point me to a reviewer that isn't biased? Name a website or reviewer anywhere in the world that isn't biased in some way. I am not just talking about being bought off with free gear, trips to conferences and the like...but personal biases as well. I worship at the alter of objectivity, but even I could not claim to be so perfectly objective as to be guaranteed to write a completely unbiased review every time.

Overall, El Reg does good reviews. Ignore any reviews about that are about a product that Apple also makes and you’ll be fine. The primary reviewer has a soft spot for Apple and a real “thing” for aesthetic design that frankly a great many geeks just don’t have. Then again, if you are someone who has a “thing’ for aesthetic design and like the way that Apple ties everything into a locked-down bow, you’ll look at El Reg reviews and see nothing but pure unbiased excellence.

In other words…

…there is no such thing as an unbiased review because each and every one of us have different personal biases! We actually value different things in our equipment, and thus we would all rate different equipment differently, given the chance. Berating the reviewer for being in love with Apple’s design philosophy is pointless: it won’t change the reviewer and it won’t change the fact that a goodly chunk of the population actually prefer form over function.

If you want “unbiased,” then maybe you should write the editor and ask them to consider doing “duelling reviews.” One from a lover of aesthetics and one from a lover of “open” functionality and pure pragmatism. Or whatever two angles of life you feel make for an unbiased opinion.

So until you – or anyone else – can properly define exactly how one goes about giving a 100% unbiased review, I don’t think heckling the author is worthwhile. For what it’s worth, in my personal opinion, I’d lay the Smartphones I have used out like this;

Desire HD: 95%

iPhone 3GS: 92%

Desire: 90%

Galaxy S: 83%

iPhone 4: 75%

Torch: 70%

Bold: 68%

Curve: 55%

But then again, that is the biased opinion of myself. I may worship at the alter of impartiality and objectivity…but it doesn’t mean I always achieve it.

Really?

Have you read what some of the commenters here on The Register say about eachother? Or about the authors? Would comments on here be worthy of a defamation suit as well? What about reprinting those comments in a "stupidest comments of the year" article? What about pointing out someone's comment in an article and laughing at it?

If these are not opinions which are immune from defamation, then you've just ENDED THE INTERNET.

Obligatory XKCD: http://xkcd.com/810/

Peace to the middle east

I have the solution to peace in the middle east. Israel is 22,000 some odd kilometre square. We have islands bigger than that. Israel could ask Canada nicely, and I am perfectly certain we could carve out a chunk of Saskatchewan for their entire population. I am sure they could either become another province within the Canadian confederation, or perhaps they could even buy the land and retain statehood as their own country.

The land currently called "Israel" in the middle east becomes Palestine and bob's yer uncle.

I know, I know...many people would not like the idea of "giving up their homes," but let's be honest here...the Israeli are culturally closer to North Americans than any of their neighbours...and Israel surely has enough money to functionally build themselves a brand new country's worth of infrastructure if they were provided suitable land. I don't think North Americans would mind sharing...especially if it means the Middle East would simmer down a little.

I honestly don’t understand why this hasn’t been proposed before. I am pretty sure that it would pass muster in a referendum here in Canada…especially if we were getting paid in some form for the land. (Either by their retaining a province or buying it outright.) The US has gobs of land too…they might consider it since Israel is their “special friend.” Maybe the solution to tensions in the Middle East is simply to relocate the cause of the tensions?

Might result in fewer lives lost.

25 Years.

The issue of copyrights is more than "paying the creator." It also functionally prevents derivative works from being created until the copyright expires. Copyright needs to exist for a brief period to ensure that a creator gets reimbursed for their efforts, but I simply do not agree that any creator should be able to create a work and not only live off that one work for their lifetime, but their estate retain control of and royalties for the next 70 years. Assuming of course the creator gets *anything,* usually they sell their works for a pittance to a copyright holding company so that they can do things like actually pay rent at the end of the month. The copyright holding company then screws everyone for the next hundred plus years.

No, 25 years – NON TRANSFERRABLE – is the proper way to deal with copyright. Copyright should remain with the individual(s) who created the work, or the company that commissioned it. It should not last a human lifetime, but be made available for creative revisions and reimagining within the lifespan of the original “fans” of that work.

You may not agree with me – many people who believe (falsely) that they have a natural right to their efforts don’t – but you will not dissuade me of my opinion.

A blacksmith made for me a lovely knife this summer. It was a labour of days on his part…a true work of art. He sold this knife to me and at that moment he lost all control over that knife. I could use it for any number of things. I could destroy it. I could build a small shrine to it. It was a work of art and a physical object both…but at the point of sale he lost “creative control” over what happened to the physical item.

When it comes to intellectual property, this is a harder concept. Some would argue that George Lucas has the natural right to say what can and cannot happen to the Star Wars franchise for all of eternity. His estate should retain creative control for eternity and his descendants should be allowed to profit from his idea for the rest of time.

I very deeply disagree. In my view – as a paid and published writer who hopes one day to become a successful novelist and who is engaged to an actor – creative works /do not belong to the creator/!!! They belong to society at large. We (society) allow the creator a monopoly upon (and creative control over) those works for a (brief) time in order to encourage creators to continue to create. After a time however, (one I firmly believe should be 25 years from date of publication,) that work should be released into the public domain. Star Wars should be public domain by now; we should be allowed a fresh crack at the concept whilst people who watched the original are still alive to appreciate the comparison.

Public domain is very important. No creative work occurs in a vacuum. If you were a creator, you would know this; all creative works build upon those that have gone before them. Without that ability to do this, we isolate ourselves from valuable creative resources and we lose large pieces of culture at the same time.

If you want to know what I am talking about, then do not reply to this comment. Get up from this computer and go find a series of books called “Otherland” by an author named Tad Williams. Read them. The man is an absolute genius, and he has taken a great many public domain works and rolled them together with his own ideas to create an absolutely amazing unique and novel creative work. It is one of my favourite creative works of all time and it quite frankly would not have been possible had the concept of the public domain not existed.

Perpetual copyright is a very negative thing. No copyright is similarly a very negative thing. The balance point then is limit copyright to within a human lifespan. 25 years seems a great compromise; one that allows a creator the chance to reap some rewards from their works, but does not bind the hands of future creators.

Bite your tongue.

It's a perfectly harmless bit of fun. More to the point, it's one I rather enjoy. I am curious to see how many PARIS articles they can get out of this event. The more, the better!

Re: re: only the beginning.

4TB SSDs below £100 means nothing if you can get 16TB spinning disks for the same price. SSDs won't wreck spinning disks until:

A) They solve the write limit issue.

B) Cost for SSDs gets within 1.25 of spinning disks.

Until then, the ever increasing demand for bulk storage will keep disks living on for decades. They may not be the primary disk in your next PC, but they will be the data disk. Corporations will maintian RAIDs and MAIDs in order to keep data easily accesible.

And decades form now, they'll still be backing up to tape. (At least they will until somone funds InPhase properly.)

Google TV

Google TV got nommed by the MAFIAA. They have to go back and remove everything that makes it worthwhile in order for the MAFIAA & Cablecos to allow it to be used.

Same as it ever was...

@AC

I think you are falling into the same trap as the hive minders. They viciously attack anyone who does not appear to be lauding Assange as a hero. You appear to attack anyone who does not attack him.

Let me make myself and my positions crystal clear to all:

I believe that Assange has handled this entire situation unbelievably poorly. Whilst I have never met the man face-to-face, his actions, sound bites and the few interviews he has participated in leave me to believe his strongly egotistical and possibly incapable of empathy with another. I could go on in detail - and back it up with references - but in all likelihood it would get moderated by Sarah. El Reg rightly doesn't want a sueball lobbed their way because some commenter badmouthed the Almost Man Of The Year.

On the other hand, I believe that the art and practice of whiltleblowing to be critical to the proper functioning of a modern social democracy. I believe that the United States is rushing headlong into true fascism – a very small “elite” of individuals continuously shifting places within the elected hierarchy backed by and enormously favouring corporate interests. Strict corporate libertarianism - to the point that corporations are very nearly more rightly considered “citizens” than individual human beings are. Similarly, it is pursuing a gradual but steady erosion of civil liberties and the concept of “guilty unless innocent.” As the United States is the standard-bearer for western society, this descent into madness is dragging other countries along with it.

Without whilstleblowers, the populace will never know what is going on. We will be the proverbial frogs in a pot of boiling water: by the time we choose to act, it will be too late. It is thusly that I hold up Cryptome as the epitome of who is “should” be done. They have been doing this for a lot longer than wikileaks, and without the Drama Llama excrement being lobbed at any rotating air circulation devices.

Some might argue that the wikileaks drama has brought this whole issue to the front-of-mind for many citizens, but I would argue differently. What it has done is made governments aware of how dangerous whilstleblowers are. At the same time, nothing shocking enough was ever revealed. That means that the entire thing is already rapidly fading from the public consciousness. People care about it in the same way they “care” about a tsunami hitting the coast of India: vaguely interesting, but it doesn’t affect them directly and there’s Christmas shopping to be done. Maybe they’ll donate something to the cause if it is made as easy for them as texting “to lazy to care” to *667 on their cell phones.

The timing was bad. The public relations was handled poorly. Worst of all, the entire thing degenerated to be about Assange instead of the concept of whistleblowing in the first place. We are now right back where we started: a few nerds and anoraks truly care about the cause, but Joe Blow American has gone back to watching “Oprah” and really couldn’t care.

So don’t confuse my belief that whilsteblowing is a critical element of a modern social democracy with a belief that Assange is right, good, pure or has handled this situation with anything like a sense of professionalism or “needs of the many” ethical toolkit.

Whether rightly or wrongly, I view Assange almost identically to how I view Zuckerberg. One runs a social networking site, the other a whilstleblowing site…but for all intents and purposes I view the personalities of the two individuals as cognate. I also don’t particularly like what I have observed in either of them.

No.

This is why governments of various flavours should be posting all non-classified information on government-sponsored, well maintained and well indexed versions of wikileaks. They should also have huge restrictions placed on what can be classified or placed out of the public domain.

This sort of information should be regularly filed in a publicly accessible database for full review. There shouldn't have to /be/ a FOI request. This should simply be available online as soon as the many and varied levels of paperwork are accomplished to get the job done and the information data-entered into the system.

That this sort of stuff even needs a FOI request – let alone that your councils are actually allowed to deny these sorts of requests – isn’t a call for “sites like wikileaks.” It’s a call for your entire nation to get off your arses and start a damned revolution.

Still, apathy wins the day as always. “Oh, it’s just some expenses, who cares if we don’t get told.” The tune changes rather suddenly when the total cumulative amount of waste starts to be enough to cut the national unemployment rate in half….

How many times to I have to tell you numtpys?

It's not "doidboi."

It's "fandroid." Get it right.

Not just the gate...

"Thousands of bright yellow - I don't know - They're coming from the surface! I don't know what they are are! They're cutting the enemy fleet to shreds! My God, it's beautiful."

:o I got a thumbsdown!

I don't understand! I said Assange is my hero and I wanted him to have my babies! What do I have to say to be part of the hivemind? Please, please, please let me into the hivemind club!

Pretty please? I'll make Assange plushies!

"A puff of hadrons."

Well done.

Personally, I tend to think of egos sort of like the magnetic field of an inductor. Ever charged up a powerful inductor and then severed the connection on both ends? The magnetic field collapses with nowhere to go but the inductor itself and the inductor rather suddenly isn't very happy. I personally wish that all four of the entities mentioned would very suddenly and abruptly have everyone ignore them. The lack of attention would cause their egos to collapse suddenly and abruptly, hopefully converting the lot of them into a pink mist.

Graham, is that you?

Stay away from the booze, man!

You can't stop the signal.

There are already several Wifi Meshnets where I live. Some folk are even working on an information-scattering approach. Establishing multiple meshnets at different frequencies, and then requiring an "intelligent" network stack behind it. Packet 1 goes on to meshnet 1, packet 2 goes onto meshnet 2, etc.

It's all early days for this stuff, but should the excrement hit the rotating air circulation device, I fully expect interconnected meshnets to spring up like weeds to replace the now-defunct government controlled, monitored and censored internet.