09 f9 11 02 9d 74 e3 5b d8 41 56 c5 63 56 88 c0
just one more data point, perhaps the most popular 16 digit number on the internet
:-)
irrepressible
Showing posts with label human rights. Show all posts
Showing posts with label human rights. Show all posts
Thursday, May 03, 2007
Thursday, April 26, 2007
It seems our nation crumbles
It seems our nation crumbles
the rock on which we stand
slowly chipped away
by those who should protect it.
Screaming in frustration
as another rock falls
from a wall build over ages
built with bones
and sealed with blood.
And broken by fools
with little pieces of paper
by cameras in dark corners
by whispers in the street
for in the dark halls of power
fools are undoing
what took wise men years.
clinging to power
by destroying democracy,
with a war on terror
not seeing
that if you know no fear
you are not afraid
if you are not terrified
you are not terrorised
if you stand for truth
you cannot tell lies
If you stand for justice
you cannot see injustice done
if you come in peace
you cannot leave in war
If you live for greed
you will die with nothing
and your legacy
Tony Blair
FALIURE.
the rock on which we stand
slowly chipped away
by those who should protect it.
Screaming in frustration
as another rock falls
from a wall build over ages
built with bones
and sealed with blood.
And broken by fools
with little pieces of paper
by cameras in dark corners
by whispers in the street
for in the dark halls of power
fools are undoing
what took wise men years.
clinging to power
by destroying democracy,
with a war on terror
not seeing
that if you know no fear
you are not afraid
if you are not terrified
you are not terrorised
if you stand for truth
you cannot tell lies
If you stand for justice
you cannot see injustice done
if you come in peace
you cannot leave in war
If you live for greed
you will die with nothing
and your legacy
Tony Blair
FALIURE.
I fear the coming of the night
I fear the coming of the night
Who will light the sun when morning comes?
I fear the coming of the night
fear the last flames will die
who then will light the sun when
the morning comes?
I fear the flickering of the flames
as the fire dies, the embers
grow cold.
Fear the cold and icy water,
eroding the rocks on which it stands.
Fear it slipping sliding downwards.
For, from flames like these
the sun is lit
when morning comes.
Who will bear the fire
in their heart
through the darkness of the night.
Who will hold it deep inside
never let it go out.
Who will let their bones be the rocks
from which to build
another stronghold of the light.
Who will use their blood as mortar
to bind the bones tight.
And who will fight
to hold this rock
to save this place.
Built from the bones of so many
sealed with the blood of ages
who will feed the fire with
their words.
Who will fight the cold
fast waters.
Who will warm themselves
by this fire,
built so long ago
and carry the torch onwards
building new fires
on distant shores
hold the day and save us from
the night.
One life
one chance to change the world
one chance to hold the fire
and pass it on
don't let it falter
don't let it go out.
Hold back the water
stop breaking the ground
You have not yet passed
the fire to me.
And yet you let the
ground crumble
the fire die
and my hands cannot hold it alone.
You must give it to others also
and carry it yourselves
until it falls
from your old dying hands
into the hands of those
who will come after me.
Only together can we
hold back the night
the cold dark waters
hold the fort
we have not yet truly arrived.
We are ready to take our place
to bear the fire
to man the walls
to give of ourselves
to hold this place.
For the sake of those
who went before
and those who will come after
and for ourselves.
We have yet to receive our sword.
But we are ready
we will fight for our lives
but you must hold back the night
we must hold back the waters.
Maintain the fire
even thought the night falls elsewhere
here it must be day
or who will light the sun
when the morning comes?
But you must give us our sword
and teach us to use it
to use our vote
to save our democracy
words are not enough.
Who will light the sun when morning comes?
I fear the coming of the night
fear the last flames will die
who then will light the sun when
the morning comes?
I fear the flickering of the flames
as the fire dies, the embers
grow cold.
Fear the cold and icy water,
eroding the rocks on which it stands.
Fear it slipping sliding downwards.
For, from flames like these
the sun is lit
when morning comes.
Who will bear the fire
in their heart
through the darkness of the night.
Who will hold it deep inside
never let it go out.
Who will let their bones be the rocks
from which to build
another stronghold of the light.
Who will use their blood as mortar
to bind the bones tight.
And who will fight
to hold this rock
to save this place.
Built from the bones of so many
sealed with the blood of ages
who will feed the fire with
their words.
Who will fight the cold
fast waters.
Who will warm themselves
by this fire,
built so long ago
and carry the torch onwards
building new fires
on distant shores
hold the day and save us from
the night.
One life
one chance to change the world
one chance to hold the fire
and pass it on
don't let it falter
don't let it go out.
Hold back the water
stop breaking the ground
You have not yet passed
the fire to me.
And yet you let the
ground crumble
the fire die
and my hands cannot hold it alone.
You must give it to others also
and carry it yourselves
until it falls
from your old dying hands
into the hands of those
who will come after me.
Only together can we
hold back the night
the cold dark waters
hold the fort
we have not yet truly arrived.
We are ready to take our place
to bear the fire
to man the walls
to give of ourselves
to hold this place.
For the sake of those
who went before
and those who will come after
and for ourselves.
We have yet to receive our sword.
But we are ready
we will fight for our lives
but you must hold back the night
we must hold back the waters.
Maintain the fire
even thought the night falls elsewhere
here it must be day
or who will light the sun
when the morning comes?
But you must give us our sword
and teach us to use it
to use our vote
to save our democracy
words are not enough.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Fascist America, in 10 easy steps
This is a very good article.
Long live Democracy. Let its fire burn through the darkest night. For a fear on this evening as darkness falls that this may indeed be a dark night and it may be a long time until the dawn, and if the fire does not burn all the night through who will light the sun in the morning?
The eternal darkness of a broken world...
:-(
"From Hitler to Pinochet and beyond, history shows there are certain steps that any would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutional freedoms. And, argues Naomi Wolf, George Bush and his administration seem to be taking them all"It made me very sad to see how a once great nation has fallen so low, and made me fear as I see my own country follow on behind.
Long live Democracy. Let its fire burn through the darkest night. For a fear on this evening as darkness falls that this may indeed be a dark night and it may be a long time until the dawn, and if the fire does not burn all the night through who will light the sun in the morning?
The eternal darkness of a broken world...
:-(
Monday, March 26, 2007
Bug #1 in Ubuntu "Microsoft has a majority market share"
Status: Confirmed, In progress
Importance: Critical
Ubuntu is a great Linux distribution, which I use, it is a amazing, and this is so funny :-)
Importance: Critical
he he he he he :-)Microsoft has a majority market share in the new desktop PC marketplace. This is a bug, which Ubuntu is designed to fix.
Non-free software is holding back innovation in the IT industry, restricting access to IT to a small part of the world's population and limiting the ability of software developers to reach their full potential, globally. This bug is widely evident in the PC industry.
Steps to repeat:
1. Visit a local PC store.
What happens:
2. Observe that a majority of PCs for sale have non-free software pre-installed.
3. Observe very few PCs with Ubuntu and free software pre-installed.
What should happen:
1. A majority of the PCs for sale should include only free software like Ubuntu.
2. Ubuntu should be marketed in a way such that its amazing features and benefits would be apparent and known by all.
3. The system shall become more and more user friendly as time passes.
Ubuntu is a great Linux distribution, which I use, it is a amazing, and this is so funny :-)
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
My best advice: Don’t Touch Vista
(There is a glossary at the bottom)“The Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the longest suicide note in history” Peter Gutmann (IT security expert)
Vista is the new Windows operating system. It is not worth getting, ever. It is like running a large video game rather than an operating system (without being fun). 95% of computers are incapable of running it because they don’t have enough RAM to fit it in (requires 1GB RAM just for itself). It uses 15GB of hard disk space (more than half my hard drive) ten times more than XP and more than 15 times more than (at least) one Linux distribution. It takes a whole minute just to get to the login screen – because of the speed at which data can be moved from the hard drive to the RAM. Have you ever had a large (new) video game running and then tried to browse the internet at the same time, while having several documents open and your emails? No? You don’t want to try, think of treacle (without the sweetness).
It will, like all windows systems before it, have many security holes that will be found over time, but since it is new and much of the code in it has been written from scratch there will be many more especially at the start. It has 9 different ways of being turned off! So you have to relearn how to turn off a computer. It produces security warnings much too often so you are likely to automatically approve them without thinking (according to a security company) it does not tell you how dangerous it thinks the alerts are. It is not built to be secure, it is built to let other computers do stuff that you don’t want them to do to your computer against your consent (such as stop everything except Internet explorer working), so that they can manage your digital restrictions (DRM). “DRM causes too much pain for legitimate buyers [...] There are huge problems with DRM” — Bill Gates. (Yet Microsoft still spent millions integrating it into Vista)
There are 6 different versions, costing from £180 – £370. All of which are about twice as expensive as their
The Licence agreement (EULA) says that you are not allowed to fix the problems with Vista, because they might be deliberate.
Many even new expensive and top of the market sound and graphics cards do not support the DRM and so are disabled by vista causing them to not work. “No-one has been able to identify any Windows system that will actually play HD content in HD quality”(1) If Vista does not like your computer your graphics will be “slightly fuzzy” and your audio “fuzzy with less detail”.
No one will be able to write programs to run hardware (drivers) for free anymore, preventing it from working with anything other than Vista (unless you pay money separately), because all the details have to be secret to stop people avoiding the downgraded quality on Vista.
Vista will disable worldwide any devices anyone manages to make produce the ‘premium content’ without DRM. So if one hacker breaks in anywhere, it stops working for everyone everywhere. And fixing this problem could cause the anti-piracy measures to be implemented, killing your entire computer.
Oh and the hackers got round the whole thing on the day it was released Microsoft spent millions the hackers? Pennies (5).
3
A small jolt or slight inconsistency could cause the entire graphics system to reboot (freezing or turning off the screen for a few seconds) and probably crashing programs such as computer games. (This does not happen on any other OS.
Companies are not allowed to include Debugging (problem finding) abilities in their drivers, because this might tell people about the system.
SSL type encryption (used to connect to online banks etc (https)) is used to connect to different pieces of software, this is weird, and slows the computer down e.g. out of 11 different bits of data 9 are just for the DRM and 2 are for the audio and video, 550% more work for no reason.
Every driver has to wake up every 30 microseconds and tell Vista that nothing is happening, just to make sure nothing is.
Vista will release PIN numbers, credit card details etc. but it carefully encrypts video, they care more about Hollywood than the user.
If your hardrive crashes, you have to re-buy all your CDs, DVDs and online music, if they have DRM.
“The sheer obnoxiousness of Vista's content protection may end up being the biggest incentive to piracy yet created.”(1)
Microsoft could have put all the effort it put into encrypting all video and sound into making Vista secure instead, encrypting content that the user wants encrypting and stopping malware programs from doing nasty things, so much effort wasted on making things worse for the user.
Any other OS will run faster than Vista. Stick with XP (if you use windows) until 2011 when support for it runs out (Vista support runs out in 2012) then move to Linux. Linux is better than windows, it is inherently more secure, it is sane, it does cool stuff, (almost) anything Windows can do Linux can do better, free updates forever, free upgrades forever, thousands of free programs. There is even a version designed specifically for education: Edubuntu. Oh and did I mention it’s free. I now have both Ubuntu and XP on my laptop, as soon as I get the schools (Linux based) proxy server to let me out I’m leaving Windows.
References
- http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html (readable despite being sometimes technical, very informative)
- http://badvista.fsf.org/ (provided picture)
- http://www.greenparty.org.uk/news/2851 (this really is very good)
- Paraphrasing boingboing.net “AACS took years to develop, and it has been broken in weeks. The developers spent billions, the hackers spent pennies.” (this site is good, but not always in the best taste)
Glossary
Hard disk space = the amount of space to save files into.
DRM = Digital Restrictions management
Graphics card = the piece of electronics that turns electrical signals into pictures on your screen. HD = High definition, you will probably have seen lots of TVs saying they are HD Ready (not that there is any HD telly or will be for another 3 years)
Driver = a driver is a program that runs a bit of hardware, e.g. you have a graphics card that is run by a graphics driver.
Malware programs = evil programs e.g. spyware, adware, viruses, worms, Trojans…
OS = Operating System e.g. Linux, Mac OSX, oh and Windows.
See also:
Edit: fixed formatting problems... again.
Monday, February 05, 2007
Newsbites
(this is slightly old now, I wrote it for something else but will post it here now)
This is a section of lots of short news items (on this occasion on data protection) that I though warranted a brief mention.
The taxman now has the power to listen to your phone calls, read your mail, place bugs in your house and car. Apparently this is something to do with fighting serious organised crime, something that apparently the Serious Organised crime Agency SOCA cannot do – it has these powers and more.
If you fly to the USA your plane company has to give them your credit card details. I know the US has a lot of debt but I don’t think many people would be happy if they started paying for it using peoples credit cards.
If you get a passport/ID card with a RFID chip in it the only way to stop people walking off with your personal details just because you walked within 25cm of their scanner is to hit the chip with a hammer (this will break it) and they will no longer be able to steal it. It is illegal to do this with US passports and although the passport would still be valid, the UK Passport agency would probably not be too happy either).
Some people want to use the NHS national database to get accurate results on obesity, apparently people are not telling the truth about how much they weigh when responding to surveys so instead the people want to take the data without your consent. It is of course vital for your health that the national obesity level can be reported.
The police have the DNA of over 1 million innocent people on record just because they can.
CCTV cameras may have microphones installed so that the security people can listen to your conversation as well as watch it.
This is a section of lots of short news items (on this occasion on data protection) that I though warranted a brief mention.
The taxman now has the power to listen to your phone calls, read your mail, place bugs in your house and car. Apparently this is something to do with fighting serious organised crime, something that apparently the Serious Organised crime Agency SOCA cannot do – it has these powers and more.
If you fly to the USA your plane company has to give them your credit card details. I know the US has a lot of debt but I don’t think many people would be happy if they started paying for it using peoples credit cards.
If you get a passport/ID card with a RFID chip in it the only way to stop people walking off with your personal details just because you walked within 25cm of their scanner is to hit the chip with a hammer (this will break it) and they will no longer be able to steal it. It is illegal to do this with US passports and although the passport would still be valid, the UK Passport agency would probably not be too happy either).
Some people want to use the NHS national database to get accurate results on obesity, apparently people are not telling the truth about how much they weigh when responding to surveys so instead the people want to take the data without your consent. It is of course vital for your health that the national obesity level can be reported.
The police have the DNA of over 1 million innocent people on record just because they can.
CCTV cameras may have microphones installed so that the security people can listen to your conversation as well as watch it.
Friday, October 27, 2006
Most ridiculus things blocked
- Negative numbers
- Resources for explaining the complexety of helicopters not crashing (e.g. helicopters crashing) www.boreme.com
- Chatzilla instalation link - firefox extension
- Foxyproxy instalation link - firefox extension
- Switchproxy instalation link - firefox extension
- Downloading realplayer by normal methods - e.g. following links on main site.
- A picture of an undead squirrel - and all other pictures on the svn worldforge media depositary. (includes pictures of acorns)
- Uranus
- Science quiz questions - physics class was doing an online quiz on the interactive white board - one of the questions was blocked. learning is dangerous :)
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Australian Asylum seeking policy
This from an Australian
"We have pleanty of space for asylum seekers - we just don't like foreigners - especialy if they are illegal and cannot do anything for our country. like asylum seekers."(note quoted from memory)
leaning slightly to the right?
comes of being decended from a bunch of convicts :-)
Australias policy on asylum seekers and illegal immigrants is not particulary nice.
Oh well.
at least they don't go round hunting tribes into extinction any more.
"We have pleanty of space for asylum seekers - we just don't like foreigners - especialy if they are illegal and cannot do anything for our country. like asylum seekers."(note quoted from memory)
leaning slightly to the right?
comes of being decended from a bunch of convicts :-)
Australias policy on asylum seekers and illegal immigrants is not particulary nice.
Oh well.
at least they don't go round hunting tribes into extinction any more.
Friday, October 06, 2006
Teaching teachers Ipods are evil
UPDATED:
Recently I helped (or rather explained that DRM, Ipods, Itunes and Apple were evil while someone else who knew what they were doing helped) a physics teacher get music from one computer onto her laptop without deleting all the music she already had on it. This was done by plugging the ipod in, choosing not to let itunes synchronise it (and delete everything that the computer did not have) and then going onto options and secleting manage things manualy. This means that all the music you want to transfer accross has to be dragged and dropped (in the larger selections the better) rather than happening automaticaly. but it does beat the DRM.
In a recent survey reported by the BBC (cannot be bothered to find the link) it showed that people who use the internet lots were significantly less likely to have an ipod than the rest of the population - the reason given was that there is a limited choice of stores for online music for ipods. No the real reason is that people on the internet are more likely to know that ipods (and DRM) are evil.
In a recent survey reported by the BBC (cannot be bothered to find the link) it showed that people who use the internet lots were significantly less likely to have an ipod than the rest of the population - the reason given was that there is a limited choice of stores for online music for ipods. No the real reason is that people on the internet are more likely to know that ipods (and DRM) are evil.
There is a whole campaign - called Defective by design (ipods are defective by design) (ooky picture.
Glossary
DRM means DynamicDigital Rights Management and is where evil companies prevent you from being able to copy music onto devices etc and impose limitations on it through their evil software.(thank you Zzorn for the correction - others see comment)
Thursday, October 05, 2006
annoying IT
(from the worldforge IRC channel)
On the plus side iansyst say they have my laptop back and want a couple of days to 'thoroughly test it' I hope for the best
Saturday, September 16, 2006
I HATE FILTERING
The IT department is preventing me from saving changes to the layout of my blog!
So I am stuck with stuff in the wrong place and looking stupid.
It does show off the new link list I have made but that is supposed to go right down the list below archives - bah.
curses on filtering by IT departments and on DRM because that is evil to.
And They block BoingBoing which I think could tell me how to get round the filtering - they were right they said they were being filtered by filter companies and they are - evil filteres.
haha I managed to add boing boing to my google homepage - so if they tell me how in a new post then I can use that.
They also block a page that tells you how to instal a program to get around filtering called circumventor.
so this is the page to get around stuff.
I have found the list of things you can be blocked from or for
Inappropriate software – password crackers, credit card fraud utilities etc.
Time wasting
Denial of service
Explicit material
Bandwidth consumption
Spamming
Hacking
Software piracy
Unauthorised use of confidential documents
Representatives of the BPI Anti-Piracy carry out surveillance of Internet sites and traffic, looking for instances of illegal music use, with a view to possible prosecutions.
For your information, the following activities are illegal, if done without the express permission of the copyright owners, and could lead to prosecutions and disciplinary action:
· Making a copy of a CD that you own, (done)
· Copying songs from a CD that you own on to your hard drive or any other storage device,(done)
· Making a cassette tape from a CD that you own, (I have copied music from a casset to my computer does that count?)
· Copying a CD belonging to a friend,
· Sharing music files across a network,
· Engaging in file trading of music,
· Downloading music from the internet to your hard drive or any other storage device (done but legaly)
All music is owned by someone. A company or an individual owns copyright to the music. There is copyright in the composition, the lyrics, the arrangement and the sound recording. The term of copyright protection lasts for 70 years after the composer dies, so all the music you are likely to download or copy will be protected by copyright. Under the law, only the copyright owners have the right to reproduce their music or sound recording.
WHAT ABOUT FAIR USE?
For example: it is a violation
to misuse Internet Relay Chat (IRC) software to allow users to hide their identity, or to interfere with other systems or users (the purpose of IRC is to allow conversation between people without them having to know each other or be sure of the others identity)
to send chain letters (oops I have done in the past - but only good ones)
to leave your computer logged on and unattended (I have certainly done that - not that it is connected to the internet or passworded or anything)
Oh and the stupid IT department has managed to write protect the folder we are supposed to put stuff in we want to share with other people at school. silly people.
So I am stuck with stuff in the wrong place and looking stupid.
It does show off the new link list I have made but that is supposed to go right down the list below archives - bah.
curses on filtering by IT departments and on DRM because that is evil to.
And They block BoingBoing which I think could tell me how to get round the filtering - they were right they said they were being filtered by filter companies and they are - evil filteres.
haha I managed to add boing boing to my google homepage - so if they tell me how in a new post then I can use that.
They also block a page that tells you how to instal a program to get around filtering called circumventor.
so this is the page to get around stuff.
I have found the list of things you can be blocked from or for
Inappropriate software – password crackers, credit card fraud utilities etc.
Time wasting
Denial of service
Explicit material
Bandwidth consumption
Spamming
Hacking
Software piracy
Unauthorised use of confidential documents
Representatives of the BPI Anti-Piracy carry out surveillance of Internet sites and traffic, looking for instances of illegal music use, with a view to possible prosecutions.
For your information, the following activities are illegal, if done without the express permission of the copyright owners, and could lead to prosecutions and disciplinary action:
· Making a copy of a CD that you own, (done)
· Copying songs from a CD that you own on to your hard drive or any other storage device,(done)
· Making a cassette tape from a CD that you own, (I have copied music from a casset to my computer does that count?)
· Copying a CD belonging to a friend,
· Sharing music files across a network,
· Engaging in file trading of music,
· Downloading music from the internet to your hard drive or any other storage device (done but legaly)
All music is owned by someone. A company or an individual owns copyright to the music. There is copyright in the composition, the lyrics, the arrangement and the sound recording. The term of copyright protection lasts for 70 years after the composer dies, so all the music you are likely to download or copy will be protected by copyright. Under the law, only the copyright owners have the right to reproduce their music or sound recording.
WHAT ABOUT FAIR USE?
For example: it is a violation
to misuse Internet Relay Chat (IRC) software to allow users to hide their identity, or to interfere with other systems or users (the purpose of IRC is to allow conversation between people without them having to know each other or be sure of the others identity)
to send chain letters (oops I have done in the past - but only good ones)
to leave your computer logged on and unattended (I have certainly done that - not that it is connected to the internet or passworded or anything)
Oh and the stupid IT department has managed to write protect the folder we are supposed to put stuff in we want to share with other people at school. silly people.
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
China
Just in case anyone liked the Chinese government.They operate on prisoners while they are still alive to remove organs to sell for transport - they do not use anesthetic. - this is not nice to say the least. - the prisoners frequently die during the operation - their crime - what they believe.
(source Epoch times reliable?(enough data was shown for me to believe it))
They also lock people up because of what they believe (not just Christians)
All they care about is money - the doctors who cut people up without anesthetic do not know what they are doing is wrong.
Oh and they use the dead bodies to make products for sale - for some reason this reminds me of the human skin lampshades of the Third Reich.
I would not recommend China as a holiday destination - nice country - nice people - extremely bad government.
And the guardian today (20/4/06) had an article about this - you heard it from me first.
guardian article here
Oh and they use dead prisoners skin to test cosmetics - not that I would ever buy cosmetics - but maybe they should be labeled - tested on dead people and then all the animal rights extremists can go over to China and defeat communism - LOL. Oh the Chinese also operate on living animals - they skin them alive.
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