I just read this rant on Google by Whil, it's a bit true but something itches me.

What happened is that Whil surfed the Internet while not logged into his Gaccount and realised that normal people cannot "like" or vote on videos posted to Youtube without upgrading their accounts to G+. What an outrage ! He seemed really outraged.

Whil, I have news for you, but you should sit down before reading this: Some people don't even have any kind of Google account to begin with, they can see the thumbs up and down icons, but they can't action them... Imagine all the upvotes you are potentially losing on your show ! Because from what I got, it's mostly about how your show might lose ratings because your core audience are tech-savvy and may not want to "upgrade".. right ?

Then the interesting part, Whil's website, powered by Typekitpad or whatever, doesn't allow regular humans to post comments without signing up via Facebook or Twitter or at least an OpenID. Some brave person made a comment though: On a slightly related note, Typepad forced me to register or to use my Facebook login if I wanted to "Favorite" this post. Whil's reply is: If I don't require some kind of sign up for blog comments, I am overrun by spammers and anonymous asshat trolls. That is probably why Google is now forcing people to upgrade to G+ accounts, because of "asshat trolls". The reality is that Whil, just like Google are both part of the same problem, they both require users to go sign up somewhere in order to take part of the the interaction they offer.

You may have already heard about CISPA (or CISPA or CISPA at !wiki), if not the simple version is: It's another law/bill/treaty/crap designed to waste everyone's time.

The slightly longer version is that it is a bill designed to allow companies to share data with other companies or governments with less hassle, like the hassle of asking or even informing the person who's data is shared. The full title says it nicely: To provide for the sharing of certain cyber threat intelligence and cyber threat information between the intelligence community and cybersecurity entities, and for other purposes.

One interesting thing has popped up in the news, it's that Facebook supports CISPA. Here are some other letters from some brave companies who support CISPA. In Facebook's case I can totally understand their view, their whole business is based on user's data. How could they not support this ?

Now the expected thing to do, if you are interested in privacy and that sort of thing, is to spend hours reading boring legislative crap until your brain starts pouring out of your ears. However, I really don't care this time. This might sound selfish or just lame, but I don't feel very affected by this. I don't have personal data on third party services (or ones I can't trust).

The real reason I don't care is not because I feel covered, it's because many of those that aren't covered do not care. Seriously, so many people believe that the practicality of having an email provider that let's you "star and tag" emails and the convenience of keeping up with friends just by clicking on their name outweighs any reason for concern, since years.

So if you use such services, and again disagree with this sort of legislation then it's your problem to solve now.. You can delete your account(s), write to them or just hope it will go away magically.

Ubuntu requires visitors to create an account and log in to view certain threads. I've read this thread (not blocked yet) and now I understand their reasoning: Anything they may have archived is to be considered old and should no longer be readable unless you have a ubuntuforums account.... . Whatever, basically they are trying to protect visitors from accessing archived and potentially outdated information.

The other thing I dislike is their use of vBulletin, it just goes to show how much they really don't care much about Free Software.

Is Ubuntu the new Apple ?

Yes, I know.. . . .WTF is Firefox doing here, it's a browser not a resolver. If anyone from Firefox reads this, WHY ?? Let people who want this useless function enable it themselves and not the other way around.

Now to disable it, very simple is the procedure, and very very intuitive.. .aheum:

• Open a new tab and go to about:config
• Search for network.dnsCacheExpiration
• If you don't have it, add it (right click "new Integer)
• Set value to 0

Oh, and don't mess it up because if you create the wrong key or make a boolean rather than a string you can't delete the key or modify its properties, only the value.

Today I learned that on March 8 2012 the FBI will be shutting down some surrogate DNS resolvers and that could break the Internet for as much as 500 kilo Americans and many others in the world. These resolvers have been configured on computers that have been infected with some DNSChanger virus.

Wait, what ? Yeah so, this virus would replace the user's resolvers and point their DNS queries to malicious servers that would give whatever results they want, like point people to really fake banking sites and fake webmails etc etc with the difference to usual phishing being that they would have the correct URL in the address bar

So then I searched a bit and find out that the FBI has chased down the bad guys and replaced the malicious servers with one's that provide true DNS results so that no user's would be impacted, that was Operation Ghost Click.

The effect of this is that if you were infected, you probably still are. Indeed those infected had no idea because everything just continued functioning as usual. That was the goal it seems.

The obvious question is, why didn't they just redirect users to a page that explains that their systems have been infected, the FBI just saved the day, and eventually add a few links to help the user find a fix for their systems ? If I was a tiny bit paranoid I'd say it was a good opportunity to gather some user data.. . If I wasn't paranoid I would say that the "ruling class" is afraid of exposing their subjects to reality, fear of panic and all that stuff.

Vic Toews wants to spy on underage children, and all other Canadians. At least that is what I understood from what I read today.

A Twitter user created the account vikileaks30 to enable others to get to know Vic Toews a bit better. It's an interesting demonstration of how it can be disturbing to have your personal life available to people you don't know.

One of the things that if find interesting in this proposal is: Force internet providers and other makers of technology to provide a "back door" to make communications accessible to police. It reminds me of Symantec's dodgy unpatched and perhaps intentional backdoor they let lay around for a few years.

Anyway, it's been hard keeping up with the torrents of laws that are being thrown around these days, but most of them lately are focused on the dying entertainment industry. The other thing being again, that this law seems to want to actively gather information about the users themselves, read their emails and all that stuff. Every Canadian's emails that is, and every Canadian child of course, hence Vic Toews wants to spy on underage children.

Update: This very short clip tells a long story..

Yesterday (or still today in certain time zones) was Data Privacy Day.. I was made aware of this by a doodle on DuckDuckGo.

Of course I opened a new tab and rushed to see what the search engine that I used to use before they became evil had drawn for the event... And well, funny story, Google has totally avoided the subject and instead put up a doodle celebrating the 125th birthday of the biggest recorded snowflake.. p.s. please install Chrome.. Like WTF right ?

As you may know, if you have a Gaccount (Google account), Google has changed their terms of service so that now everything "G" is unified, and what you do in Youtube directly impacts the adverts in your emails, and things you search for.. . etc etc.. And all this with the magic wandish words like "simple", "easy" and "yada yada".

So why has Google omitted Data Privacy Day ? Maybe because data privacy is irrelevant in a system where your personal data lives across over 60 different services.. .. Perhaps I am wrong and it is just an innocent obsession with snowflakes..

BTW, this does not affect you if you do not have any account with Google, so for those rare people out there, bravo. : ]

Source code for Symantec's pcAnywhere has been borrowed.. . back in 2006, but they have finally had time to get around to that and now are advising their clients to disable the software.

Why ? What is the security problem with having your source code exposed ? There are many users, including myself, who use software for which the source code is published all over the Internet.

In this case it seems like Symantec had a security breach that they were aware of and only decided to address because they heard about a leak of their source code. Something obviously doesn't add up, either they don't bother to patch their products, even when they know it's insecure OR they have their reasons for making insecure products..

Moral of the story, using non-Free software is a very big security issue. You never know what it really does nor who it's intended to really serve.

It's no news that Fox News is mostly made up of real geniuses who always deliver properly researched, reliable and fair information. Today they published an article on how"savvy moron surfers circumvent Wikipedia blackout.

The article goes on about how people have found ways of getting access to knowledge by using alternative sources (other websites!!) but the most striking part was that they announced how to get actual content from the Wikipedia itself.. ORLY!

For the diehard Wiki-fan who simply cannot do without Wikipedia, there is even a way to circumvent the blackout, using a system that relies on Google's cache of online sites.

This is how: Enter a search item in Google's search box, click on the double gray arrow that will appear when you hover your mouse on the right side of the search results. When a snapshot shows up on the right, click on "cache" ... and voila! ... you will be directed to the last snapshot of your search item in Wikipedia.

Of course, you could also click on the "Learn more" link provided by the blacked out Wikipedia page and find a simpler solution like:

During the blackout, Wikipedia is accessible on mobile devices and smart phones. You can also view Wikipedia normally by disabling JavaScript in your browser, as explained on this Technical FAQ page. Our purpose here isn't to make it completely impossible for people to read Wikipedia, and it's okay for you to circumvent the blackout. We just want to make sure you see our message.

Of course, for Fox News it is much easier to relay the stupidest crap on earth then to go read 4 sentences.

The short version is: "Take the time to read the blog post from Mocality about how Google does evil.

In even shorter, a company based in Kenya called Mocality has created a Kenya based business directory, the entries are provided by locals who would call in and then be financially rewarded by Mocality for their efforts.

A few months ago Mocality noticed some strange web traffic which after investigation turns out to be coming from Google. The juicy part is that Google employees was scraping the website to get business numbers and then cold call these companies to sell them services. Even worse, they claimed to be working with Mocality !

You should read the Mocality's blog post as it explains in detail what, how, etc, and it's quite interesting.

One more thing about those who relentlessly defend Google with arguments such as "it was a separate team" and such (and we are not talking about a rogue employee here, this was coordinated work), please note that if Google is not responsible and it is only the fault of the groups of teams involved, should it also be the other way around when it comes to innovations ?

A couple of days ago Rick Santorum said:

The next day he said he didn't say "black people", instead he probably said "bla people"..

A friend pointed out this article on how Richard Stallman was right all along and of course, I agree and actually was not part of those who think/thought that RMS is too paranoid/crazy. I don't have a mobile phone and don't have a googlebookspace account, etc etc.. Like you too right ?

Anyway, lately pieces are being put together, SOPA (crap), ProtectIP (also crap), HADOPI (merde), Spain blocking websites, Belarus bans anything foreign, etc etc. . . Oh, and Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act which in short allows the U.S. (of North America) to detain anyone they suspect/want indefinitely..

It's all crap, and then you realise that half of the "cool Internet" has been using Godaddy as their registrar !!