renaissance poisson

so yesterday i was prompted by an email to check where the 3D printed gun project had gotten too. very timely, since apparently they just managed to print the entire gun (not just the lower receiver, which had been done previously). and shoot it. once. short report from the BBC which is not terribly alarmist. i guess the heat ruins the plastic barrel; i am surprised it actually fired successfully (but then i don't actually know how much heat gets released). cody wilson, the crypto-anarchist, techno-libertarian law student (not sure what he considers himself) helming the project shared the CAD files[*] on the net.

this is all there is to it. simple, eh?

so, predictably, hysteria ensued. US legislators rush to make the technology illegal, the state department demands the site take the files down. which it has; not like there's a lot of choice if your organization is in the US.

but no matter how firmly the barn door is being slammed shut, more than 100,000 people had already downloaded the files. last i checked they were also hosted on mega, kim dotcom's new venture. and however much i think he is a prick, he does enjoy sticking it to the US government, so those files will remain available somehow. also, knowing that it can be done will spur other people on to replicate and improve on the design. and the US government being its usual ham-fisted self, that alone will make some people want to help distribute the files far and wide. i sympathize with that notion; these days it doesn't take much huffing from the feds for me to cheer anyone who defies them.

it's a good time to reflect on how my views have changed from the idea that guns should only be legal for hunting (and that reluctantly). i don't like the US's gun culture; it's full of testosterone-poisoned posturing. i think rabid 2nd amendment fans live in a fantasy world, because if you actually want firepower to protect yourself from the government, go for anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons. hand guns are not what wins wars against governments gone bad (cf libya). well-regulated militias? militias in the US seem to be populated by racist, neo-nazi morons; pretty much the last people i'd want to rely on to save me from the government.

i've never owned a gun. i've never really felt the need for one, though living with US gun culture got me close to wondering whether i should get one -- not to protect myself from the government, but to protect myself from the gun-wielding nut cases. i came to north america with lofty ideas about gun control. i've pretty much given up on those. it seems that in every country that's not brutally controlled by its government, the number of unregistered handguns vastly outnumbers the registered ones. ergo, these are laws people don't obey, even if they might not agitate against them. laws people don't obey are worthless. and really, laws are not the best answer to a cultural problem anyway.

so it feels weird to be on what feels like the opposite side from where i used to be, and very firmly so. i am not worried about 3D printed guns. i know now how very easy it is to make your own gun with rudimentary metalworking skills, materials and tools one can get from any hardware store. and that gun will be cheaper, safer, and much more durable. sure, plastic guns can't be detected by metal detectors, but neither can ceramics. personally i have no need to evade a metal detector. and terrorists are not gonna be falling over each other 3D printing weapons that can only get off one shot, for heavens' sakes.

i am hoping cody wilson stays out of jail. if anything, his initiative is showing all of us how dangerous a government with too damn much power is to personal liberty.

no, i'm not worried about 3D printed guns. i am worried about drones, and chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. i am not terribly worried about terrorists. i am much more worried about governments in cahoots with big business curtailing democracy and my own choices.

[*] not only that link, but the entire server was down when i checked just now.

for anyone else who lives under a rock, apparently a couple of australian shock-jock DJs prank-called a nurse who had been caring for the duchess of cambridge in hospital, pretending to be family members, and faked their way into getting information about her condition. they then put the recorded call on the air (with consent of their management). ha ha ha, funny, right?

the nurse committed suicide. nobody knows for sure why, but common reasoning is that she was so humiliated that she couldn't handle it.

the backlash from the public has been pretty decisive; the two shock-jocks appear to have been in for a shock of their own at the reaction. they deleted their twitter accounts, and their facebook walls are full of hate mail. some of the world media seem to be doing renewed soul searching about their ethics. but the radio network in question, not so much. "Southern Cross Austereo Chief Executive Rhys Holleran told a news conference in Melbourne on Saturday that the company would work with authorities in any investigation. He said he was 'very confident' that the radio station had done nothing illegal."

"The media fallout from the tragedy could extend beyond Australia’s shores, said British radio presenter Steve Penk, who has made a career out of prank calls. 'I think it will probably be the death of the wind-up phone call. I think (British media regulator) Ofcom will wrap it in so much red tape that it will make it almost impossible to get these things on the air,' he told Sky News."

and now there is backlash to the backlash, all about how some people can't take a joke, and how you'd have to be "unstable" if you didn't just laugh it off.

this just points out once again how out of touch my own ethics are with the mainstream. yeah, it may not have been illegal, but IMO most pranks done to embarrass or humiliate people -- whether or not they result in tragedy -- are unethical, because they are done without the person's consent. they are unethical even if the person laughs it off. (we all know how often such laughter is just a way to not let them see you sweat, to cover up how you really feel). nobody in my circles does pranks. and i am... not exactly surprised, but non-plussed that this is apparently still an uncommon attitude. because most people are upset that the nurse committed suicide; if she hadn't, they'd probably not be anywhere as het up, and they'd laugh at the prank.

steve penk up there sounds upset that he might not be able to continue with his career, a career that is built on using other people to make fun of. "Austereo’s Holleran said that the company was concerned for the welfare of the radio hosts. 'These people aren’t machines; they’re human beings. We’re all affected by this.'" -- no shit sherlock? HIS people are human beings? what about the nurse? what about the duchess of cambridge? they're also human beings. they were fair game for public humiliation -- and hey, it's not illegal, that's all that matters? the total media frenzy about the royals is a constant violation of their rights to privacy IMO. it's disgraceful. the public may be interested, but it is NOT in the public's interest to know every detail of their lives.

the *poing* wrote a good post about this, titled "do you speak consent". and i am reminded of this guy craig in ssm, who many years ago claimed that "all humour is cruel". then, my response was that cruel humour is just a failure of imagination. but it goes deeper than that.

if i don't laugh at such pranks, at racist or sexist jokes, and jokes that are made at other people's expense, it's not my sense of humour that's lacking -- that's actually quite well developed, and delights especially in puns, weird allusions, and lateral thinking. it's the joker's sense of ethics, zir empathy, and zir respect for the other person's humanity that's lacking.

If you want to use someone else, you have to ask first. It's not a hard concept. indeed. your fun does not trump another person's dignity. this should be in the code of ethics for every radio station. time to grow up.

---

(quotes are from reuters.)

and the way republicans deal with the fact that even polls generally friendly to their candidate now trend obama is to blame -- not themselves, never themselves -- hurricane sandy! (i am so NOT linking to any of the douchebags saying so.)

but wait -- nature doesn't just happen, does it? something is driving it, and the something isn't global climate change, because that doesn't exist.

and since nature doesn't just happen, sandy must be an act of ghod. and ghod usually punishes good people for the transgressions of... gays. are gays to blame for obama's reelection? those few gays outdo all that hard republican voter suppression work? you can see why gays need to be feared.

aging infrastructure can't keep up with this level of storm -- alas they "didn't build that", because government shouldn't be so spendy domestically. that money should go to destroying infrastructure in the middle east.

real americans don't need government help, only losers do -- republicans in storm-stricken areas surely won't sacrifice their principles to make nice with the president now. or will they? damned RINOs.

private enterprise is better and faster at dealing with... well, anything socialists liberals might consider the job of government. that's why there are power problems, gasoline shortages, and price gouging evident in the stricken areas.

yup, republicans are right, hurricane sandy is to blame. it might've been ripping the blinders off the eyes of more people to allow them to finally see that so much republican propaganda is pure narrow-minded, egotistical bullshit.


p.s. it is almost over. in a couple of weeks i might actually be able to open a newspaper again without being bombarded by the circus and its clown posse that bangs through town every 4 years. then the question shall be whether i want to subscribe to the NYT to reward them for nate silver or Rolling Stone to rewards them for matt taibbi. oh, i can feel another post coming on about paywalls.

These popular resources are almost gone forever!

From must-have magazines to favorite books - get them before they disappear!

so claims today's email from interweave press (a crafting magazine publisher).

dear interweave.

i actually like a lot of your offerings. ok, so you still haven't realized that some of us are fat, which limits the usefulness of your patterns for me, but that's besides the point here.

the point is that you're sending me email pushing your offerings. EVERY.SINGLE.DAY. yes, i subscribed originally, but i am about to unsubscribe. i am not actually paying attention anymore because email every single day about something that is not urgent news is too damn much. i bin most of it. which means i almost didn't see this. ironically, that would have been better for you.

what the hell, interweave? we live in the digital age, and you actually caught on fairly quickly, and i can now get a lot of crafting information, whether written or video, by downloading it from you. all very painless, and you might have noticed that this inclines me to purchase more.

but not when you throw pretend-scarcity in my face. these popular resources are almost gone forever? really? in the past, if a resource was popular, the publisher would eventually do another print run. now that is a whole lot less effort -- scan the thing if you haven't already (hey, google might do it for you! would you prefer that?), and format it nicely into a pdf/epub, and you're done. if indeed the resource is so very popular, and some people want to hold it in their lanolin-softened hands, you can do a print-on-demand offer just for them. so don't give me this bull to hasten me into purchasing something because it might be gone otherwise.

my urge to buy pretty knitting candy is all gone for today because i hate being manipulated. funny how that works.

i'm mostly staying away from it, but if the alternative is kate middleton's bared breasts...

so the mass media is in an uproar over romney's "47%" bit. (if you live under the same comfy rock where i am normally curled up, he was secretly taped at a closed, wealthy donor fundraiser, where he spouted a lot of really lovely crap, see [*] for verbatim quote about this particular bit).

and i gotta say, i see why the uproar is handy, of course (and a nice present for the obama campaign), but it's not like this is news. isn't this what the right wing has been flogging for more than a year already? hasn't there been some anti-"occupy" reference like "we're the 53%" from them? ok, so it's news that the candidate for the presidency said it, with the addendum that he doesn't worry about these people (which will be taken out of context, but he clearly meant it in regards to his election strategy)(well, "out of context" -- i think romney does in actuality not care about most people, but he wouldn't ever say that out loud as president, or act overtly as if he believes it. heck, maybe he doesn't even realize it.).

so some people say "stick a fork in him, he's done". and i say "alas, no".

because his base will gobble it up. seriously. they think it's poor people driving the US to the brink (nothing could be further from the truth, but truth was a victim of republican talking points long ago). they're dead set against helping poor people, because they think they're lazy freeloaders. they have become a lot less compassionate than they were even under reagan (who started the whole "welfare queen" malarkey). they don't recognize who these 47% are. since i know how to, uh, quack (using duckduckgo as my search engine), i looked it up, to be sure i had actual data instead of gut feelings: most of the 47% pay other taxes, just not federal income tax -- they simply don't make enough for the latter. but they pay sales taxes, payroll taxes, state income taxes, etc. most of them are not lazy, shiftless bums lying on their couches eating government bonbons, they're working in menial jobs where they barely make ends meet because they also have children. or they are retired, after a working life of, well, not being a corporate raider; the 47% includes many seniors. the idea that they're not taking responsibility for their lives is preposterous.

and a huge part of his base don't even realize that they are quite possibly part of these 47%. they just don't think of themselves as lazy victims, dependent on government handouts, unlike those obama voters.

so no, romney's not gonna lose those voters. not a chance. in fact he might fire them up some, which he badly needs, since they're not that excited about him. well, maybe a few seniors will stay at home, the ones who're already worried about medicare and medicaid.

he's just not gonna win any undecideds. but i doubt there are many of those left. how can anyone still be undecided? it's not like the republicans are actually fiscally conservative; they just prefer to direct their welfare at the corporate sector. of all the people to rail about debt, romney is their champion? romney, who made his fortune off pushing companies into debt? romney, who has never created anything, and who got his own personal bailout for bain? why paul ryan isn't throwing up every time he looks at him, is a mystery. or hell, not so much. he's a republican; hypocrisy comes with the territory these days.

i mean, for me obama has been a crushing disappointment, but if i could vote, i'd vote for him 10 times over romney. people are supposed to become more conservative as they grow older, but so far it looks like the opposite is true for me. i used to have respect for some republicans, but that group is tiny now, and most of them have already left the party.

last but not least, romney saying anything at all about people not paying taxes? the irony, it slays me.

[*] “There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right? There are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what. …. These are people who pay no income tax. Forty-seven percent of Americans pay no income tax. So our message of lower taxes doesn’t connect. So he’ll be out there talking about tax cuts for the rich. I mean, that’s what they sell every four years.

And so my job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

since neither the paramour nor brother wanted the ipod touch the paramour won, and i'm kinda the mac person in this family, i've inherited it. which seemed convenient at the time, since my android phone has bricked itself (no, really, it wasn't me rooting it; i had in fact not rooted it if you can believe that). anyway, the phone is dead, and i've not bothered to get a new one because i don't actually use it much.

so, i figured i can use the ipod for some of the things i do like, such as listening to music when out and about among noisy people (it works great for that), and keeping my shopping list.

oy. now, that is rather more complicated than it should be. first of all there is the app store. for which one needs an apple ID. ok. the apple ID enforces a certain degree of password security, which i am all in favour of - it wants a mix of capital and lower case letters, and at least a number. fine by me; add some punctuation and i am all set.

except such a password is a royal PAIN IN THE BUTTOCKS to type on an ipod. the virtual keyboard needs me to switch from alpha to numeric for every number or punctuation symbol. and it's not the easiest thing to type on this, unless you have dainty, pointy fingers. i don't.

so i type and switch and type and switch and type, and then it tries to load the app i had searched for and chosen (a free app in this case -- why in the world does it need my password anyway?). and once it's done loading, it tells me that my password was incorrect, and i get to try again. after mistyping it twice, it asks me innocently whether i might have forgotten it and offers me a choice to cancel or reset it. NO, i've not forgotten anything, I JUST WANT TO USE A BETTER KEYBOARD! and if i cancel, then i get to start over.

this, needless to say, is not winning me over to apple's app store model. it's easier to print my shopping list. which i will proceed to do now. i refuse to change my password to something easier to type, you bastards.

Dear XXX,

Did you know your current contact settings have cancelled all Microsoft communications to your inbox?

obviously not ALL. silly me. why did i think clicking several opt-out checkboxes would mean youd actually live up to the promise of no longer contacting me?

In case you accidentally unsubscribed, I want to encourage you to re-subscribe so you won’t miss out on any of the great content, tools and resources to help you further your coding career.

my coding career is fortunately no longer concerned with supporting microsoft dreck at all. yay!

All it takes is one click to return to our contact list.

are you gonna send me email then asking whether i really meant to opt in, since i can clearly not be trusted to mean it when i opted out?

yeah, didn't think so.

first my new iomega external 2T drive conked. that's the second iomega drive that died way too soon, and i am not using these drives a lot; just for backups. needless to say, i won't be buying iomega anymore.

then my mac pro lost its video output. since we have high-end graphics cards just laying around the house, that didn't seem like a big problem. but with the new card (which is confirmed to be working) the mac didn't even boot. put the old card back in, nope, not booting either. i swtched everything to the mac mini, but that would'nt even turn on -- i had originally started using the mac pro because the mini was flakey. so the mac pro went to the shop. last time we used the shop, maybe 2 years ago, we got the machine back the next day. now we were told it could be as long as 10 days. macs are either getting very popular, or are breaking more. this is the only mac shop in town, so there's no alternative either.

not only are we lucky that we have high end graphics cards laying around, but we also have spare computers. no spare mac, no, but a spare PC dual-booting into win2000 and fedora. i don't care for fedora, and especially not v11, which screwed up the sound. debian is my favourite, but i figured this was a good time to try out ubuntu, which has been praised far and wide.

downloaded ubuntu, burnt it to CD, and tried it. looked clean and simple if a bit too kawaii with its large, colourful icons and all. it offered an install while leaving previous installations intact, so i started that process. during which it needed to resize the partitions on the drive so it could add itself on a new partition.

i usually repartition with partition magic, a reliable work horse which never once screwed anything up for me. but since symantec (bastards) killed it after buying the developer, powerquest, that option is running out now; it can't handle ext4 filesystems nor newer windows systems. so i let ubuntu handle the repartitioning.

bad idea. somewhere during the process the screen went a sickly bright green and ubuntu hung. and of course when i finally shut the machine off and tried to reboot fedora from disk, that wasn't possible (just into windows, which is on its own drive). the monitor remained green (i knew the monitor wasn't the problem since it still displayed normal colours when turned off and then on again).

rebooted ubuntu off the CD, but the monitor was still green and ubuntu hung.

i cursed a little.

then shut the machine off again, unplugged the power, unplugged the video cable and restarted, fortunately that reset everything and ubuntu came up in full colour. allright. finally i could get on with it.

it's ... i can see why a lot of people would praise it; it's quite simple, pretty, and user-friendly -- for people used to windows or to no computers at all. to somebody who knows linux, it's kinda "linux for dummies". i'm pretty much gonna change everything in the GUI because i find the unity desktop insipid; it stands in my way more than it facilitates what i want to do. and the file manager isn't much to write home about -- what is that, nautilus? anyone know of a GOOD file manager?

but first to see whether it can read hfs filesystems without too many gyrations.

but i am feeling good about not losing all my mojo during the obstacles, and keeping at it instead of retreating to my room to read escapist novels. and minecraft runs on it. ;)

from avaaz.org:

As the world mounts a desperate effort to stop catastrophic global warming in Copenhagen, Canada should be leading the way. Instead, we're receiving global "fossil awards" for wrecking this crucial summit! And new leaked documents show that while the entire world is increasing cuts to carbon emissions, the government is secretly planning roll back ours.

At the Bali climate summit in 07, a massive national outcry forced Harper to stop blocking the talks. But the oil companies that PM Harper works for know that Copenhagen is the make or break moment for climate. It will not be easy to win this time, but to save the planet and our country we have to.

Let's mount a tidal wave of pressure on Harper with the largest petition in Canadian history - click below to sign:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/harper_enough_is_enough/98.php?CLICK_TF_TRACK

if you're not a member of avaaz yet, and you care about global issues such as climate change, poverty, human rights, you might want to sign up for their alerts. they keep track of what's going on better than i could, and they've never spammed me with unrelated stuff.

Todd Stern, the Obama administration's chief climate negotiator, said Thursday that he "categorically reject[s]" the suggestion that rich industrial countries owe compensation to the victims of climate change. Stern acknowledged that the emissions of rich nations over the past two hundred years of industrialization had caused global warming, telling a press conference, "We absolutely recognize our historic role in putting emissions in the atmosphere." But, Stern added, "the sense of guilt or culpability or reparations--I just categorically reject that."

more at alternet.

responsibility? we don't haz it.

i'm looking at you too, stephen harper.