the way it is


April 8th, 2008

Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not.

George Bernard Shaw

As children, all of us passed through a “why?” stage. In the brain’s pursuit of adjusting to the world, our parents were bombarded with inquiries into the most mundane of things, so that we would learn and understand. They might have hated our incessant questioning, but we grew, listening intensely to their answers, and the world started to make sense.

«Continue Reading»


CRTC to be ordered to get involved in the Bell BitTorrent throttling case


April 4th, 2008

Inside scoop: News later on today will reveal that the CRTC has been asked to intervene in the affair of Bell’s throttling of BitTorrent traffic. It will be interesting to see if they do it, but it’s a step in the right direction.

Thanks to Dr. Geist for the scoop yesterday1. I have not posted it when originally heard2 as per his request, though I don’t know who else respected that.

UPDATE: Michael Geist’s story on the topic is here.

  1. Directed at the about 100 people attending the event I was at []
  2. Check the time-stamp on the post []

the brief


March 19th, 2008

A few interesting titbits from today’s news - Apple, GPL, JP Morgan controversies, beer is the secret to success.

«Continue Reading»


anonymous control


February 7th, 2008

HPR ran a segment on Project Chanology, give it a listen if the subject is of interest to you. It also got me thinking that, while Anon might be a decentralized group, getting some control over their actions could be a huge asset.
«Continue Reading»


truecrypt 5


February 5th, 2008

Well, as it is fitting, I’ve spent dinner eating and playing with TrueCrypt 5… coding theory can wait a few minutes longer =) So here’s my first 30 minutes with TC for Mac1

«Continue Reading»

  1. I’m focused on the Mac version because the others have been around for some time now []

truecrypt for mac os x released


February 5th, 2008

One day later than originally mentioned, the TrueCrypt Mac OS X port has been released, as well as updates for all the other versions. This is TrueCrypt v5, long awaited by terrorists, hacktivists, human rights’ activists, the opressed and the paranoid for about 8 months or so. Since I’m currently wrestling my way through coding theory problems, I will get back to you with some thoughts on the port later on. But if you’re adventurous yourself, check it out at http://www.truecrypt.org/downloads.php


first round of scientology documents leaked


January 27th, 2008

The Church of Scientology and an Internet group going by the name of Anonymous have been going at ‘war’ in the past few days, with CoS being on the receiving end of quite a few electronic blows.

First round of documents that were retrieved from the CoS are here. I didn’t yet check to see how many of these documents have been previously available and whatnot, but briefly skimming over them, they definitely seem to be internal, ‘for-pay’ material. So if you find this genuine and have off-shore mirrors, you know what to do.

UPDATE: Obviously most of these documents and a whole bunch of other related materials are available at the Bay.


technology has failed us


January 2nd, 2008

This should be a mile-long essay, but in turn it’ll be a quick braindump of sorts.

We research and improve technology to make our lives easier. To save ourselves from retyping entire documents when we make one mistake. To enable faster communications and easier business. And many, many other aspects of life should benefit from technology.

Instead, the direction we took involves a lot more sweating, but this time under the leash of the cellphone-and-laptop day. «Continue Reading»


zuckerberg wants all of your info, gives you none of his


December 5th, 2007

What some lawyers and some companies learned a long time ago is that if you want to keep something private in the age of the Internet, you shouldn’t be coming up with ridiculous legal threats to protect its privacy. It will just blow over and get in the mainstream, generating crazy page hits. Push hard to get some documents kept out of a magazine, and you will get a lot of attention. Try hard to hide code you’ve leaked, and it will multiply.

Take your customers and their friends for idiots and you will get buried. Wow, I hope Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg is not what Harvard hopes all of its students turn out to be like. «Continue Reading»


we are all criminals


December 3rd, 2007

Zune maker Microsoft pays royalties to the RIAA for every unit sold in the idea that all these devices may be used for copyright infringement.The RIAA, in turn, has continued to sue its customers under the pretext of bringing criminals to justice, although so far it managed only to alienate people. They are also generally assuming that because they don’t make as much money as they want to, somebody must be stealing from them. So who else but their own customers are the criminals. Screw evidence.Entering the US means you have to prove, somehow, you are not a criminal. Apparently, at some point it was decided that only terrorists and thieves1 want to visit the US to do bad things to its people and/or its economy. So even if you are not being interrogated by customs officers, you are treated like a common criminal: fingerprints, possibly retina scans, background checks and data retention and mining to asses your danger levels. But of course, why should it be different? A country must protect its assets. Security and economy. Freedom. Freedom for corporations to strengthen their share prices and get a better grasp on their target demographics. Unfortunately, there are signs that the US is not a democracy anymore. It is not a free country. Certainly, there aren’t many “free” and “brave” people making house here. The foolishly brave fight wars to serve the puppet government of multinational corporate conglomerates. Those that want to be free quickly become terrorists, radical and dangerous activists, nuts, crazies, freaks. I sound like a broken record because I don’t have the strength or the indifference to change the track.

  1. Of music and movies, I am sure []

Next Page »