Wikispin

 Internet, Politics  No Responses »
Dec 082010
 

Conspiracy theorists, rejoice: Paypal apparently admitted that the decision to freeze the Paypal account of Wikileaks was due to US government pressure. Long live freedom and democracy. No wonder some folks are comparing our treatment of Assange to China’s treatment of Nobel laureate Xiaobo. We are, after all, doing the same thing China is doing: we are trying to suppress information, and we threaten and intimidate those who release it. I find myself in strong agreement with the writer of an article that appeared in the Vancouver Sun: we are forced to ask questions (about torture, detentions, intimidation, death threats and worse) that ten years ago none of us thought we’d be asking.

There is, though, a silver lining. Perhaps all this evil has always been part of our “civilized” society, and it’s only now, in the era of the Internet, that we can so easily find out.

 Posted by at 3:52 pm

There, I’ve done it

 Internet, Politics  No Responses »
Dec 072010
 

I’ve done it: I donated to Wikileaks. While I still could, at least using a credit card, now that the Paypal option is gone.

Does this mean that I am now on somebody’s list as a supporter of Mr. “rapist, worse than a terrorist” Assange and that I can expect to be sexually assaulted, er, I mean, strip searched when I next go through an airport?

And isn’t this something that only denizens of evil police states should have to be worrying about?

 Posted by at 1:23 pm

Hipocrisy

 Internet, Politics  No Responses »
Dec 042010
 

News flash: Paypal blocks Wikileaks.

But no, we’re not like the evil Chinese. We don’t do censorship. It’s strictly for legal reasons, you see.

I wanted to send money to Wikileaks yesterday. Perhaps it’s better that I didn’t, because for all I know, monies in Wikileaks’ account may be frozen by Paypal. I’m sure there will be other ways. Hopefully I won’t be charged one day as a supporter of terrorism because of a $20 contribution.

Yes, I’ll continue to use Paypal and buy books from Amazon. I just have a worse opinion than ever about our commitment to our cherished Western values.

 Posted by at 2:22 pm

Censorship

 Internet, Politics  No Responses »
Dec 032010
 

No, we don’t do censorship. This is the West, after all. We are civilized, democratic, and we deplore evil regimes that prevent their citizens from prying into the secrets of the almighty State.

Except…

Except when said secrets are a little too inconvenient. We then stop pretending and issue an international arrest warrant against the founder of a Web site for a crime that, even if it was really committed, was likely little more than an unwarranted sexual advance; we “convince” a large hosting provider to stop hosting the unpleasant content; and we convince the DNS provider to stop servicing the name of the domain in question. This is so much more civilized than running a state censorship establishment!

My arse.

For the record, Wikileaks mirrors can be located by looking them up at http://wikileaks.info/. As of this morning, the following information was provided there:

Wikileaks Mirrors

Find all the current Wikileaks Mirrors here. Helpful, if the main site – wikileaks.org – is down.

Real mirrors on different IP Addresses

  • wikileaks.info – Mirror hosted in Switzerland [62.2.16.94]
  • wikileaks.se – Mirror hosted in Sweden [88.80.6.179]
  • nyud.net – Mirror hosted in the United States [129.170.214.192]

Important Wikileaks Links

Contrary to what is being said above, the wikileaks.de domain name works this morning; it points to 213.251.145.96, which seems up to date, including the “cablegate” releases.

Bleeping hypocrisy. At least the Chinese are honest about what they are doing.

 Posted by at 1:25 pm

Roundabout

 Transportation  No Responses »
Nov 302010
 

I’ve been driving in Ottawa for 23 years, and I’ve been annoyed for these 23 years by what used to be until recently the city’s only roundabout: a roundabout with the wrong traffic rules.

Well, apparently if you wish for something long enough, your wish sometimes does come true. According the a news report I just heard on CBC Ottawa, this odd roundabout will be fixed in the spring and will conform to the rules for traffic circles.

Wow.

 Posted by at 4:12 am

Deep space

 Space  No Responses »
Nov 262010
 

Now here’s an interesting concept for a realistic mission that combines a lunar project with deep space goals: why not send humans on a medium duration manned mission to the Lagrange point on the far side of the Moon?

I like it. I wish I could believe that it would actually happen.

 Posted by at 8:14 pm

Downgrade

 Computers  No Responses »
Nov 242010
 

Adobe Corporation recently introduced the latest version of their PDF reader application, Adobe Reader X.

So I promptly downgraded my Adobe Reader 9 installation to Adobe Reader 8.

I use PDF documents very often. Apparently, the good folks at Adobe do not. Why else would they remove one of the most important productivity features, namely the ability to view several PDF files in the same application window?

Yes, I get it: for new users, it makes sense to move away from the “applications open documents” paradigm towards the “documents appear in windows” paradigm. In an ideal world, the application would be invisible; each document would exist in its own window; and we wouldn’t even care that some documents are Word files, others are PDFs, etc.

But we don’t live in an ideal world, and there are reasons to suspect that this ideal world may never come to pass. Perhaps it will. But it’s not here at present, and the fact that every PDF opens in a new window is a huge annoyance.

An annoyance that was first introduced in version 9, and is apparently being kept alive in version X. However, my patience ran out. It’s back to version 8 for me.

Oh, and I also have a license of Acrobat Pro, to produce and edit PDF files. But, it’s a license for version 6. Why? Because version 6 was the last version without DRM/Activation.

If folks from Adobe read this, well, please let me know when you have a version of Acrobat that is DRM-free and can do MDI. Then, I’ll buy. Until then, I’ll just stick to my obsolete versions.

 Posted by at 9:55 pm

Home

 Personal, Physics  No Responses »
Nov 212010
 

This sunset above an eerie landscape of orange-lit clouds looked much nicer to the naked eye than it looks in a picture:

Yes, it means that I am back home. As a matter of fact, I arrived back home some 2.5 hours early. My flight from Mexico City landed 15 minutes early in Toronto, and after dashing through the airport like crazy, I managed to make it to an earlier Ottawa flight… which had ONE (!) seat left. Talk about luck.

It was an interesting conference. Useful discussions, good people to meet. I had a chance to talk about MOG cosmology to a not altogether unfriendly audience.

Still, it’s good to be home. Sleep in my own bed and all that.

 Posted by at 6:16 am

Washing Machine

 Personal  No Responses »
Nov 172010
 

Here is a fine view of Ciudad de Mexico from my hotel window:

The building up front, housing the corporate headquarters of several multinational companies, is aptly named by the locals: they call it the “washing machine”.

I am used to seeing architecture like this in vintage futuristic shooter games, like Duke Nukem.

 Posted by at 1:16 pm

X10

 Computers, Personal  No Responses »
Nov 142010
 

This, really, is just a test, to see if WordPress works on my freshly updated Xperia X10 phone, letting me post to my blog.

OK, it works. Android 2.1 is nice, well, much nicer than 1.6. At least now I can Skype or use Acrobat to view PDFs.

One thing I need to figure out is how to stop this blessed thing from replacing every word it doesn’t recognize with a silly guess (WordPress=Sorceress?)

 Posted by at 9:22 pm

ISS

 Space  1 Response »
Nov 122010
 

Earlier tonight, we saw this in the sky:

I know, it’s not that impressive. But considering that I took the picture with a camera phone, it’s remarkable that the rectangular shape of this thing is almost discernible:

It is, of course, the International Space Station, which flew over Ottawa not long after sunset tonight. It was visible for about a minute or so, then it rapidly faded into darkness halfway across the sky, as it entered the Earth’s shadow.

 Posted by at 5:41 am

!#$@, it’s snowing!

 Weather and Climate  2 Responses »
Oct 312010
 

I’d not resort to choice four letter words were it late November already, but it’s not even Halloween yet!

No, this winter wonderland is not what I wanted to see from my window today. Or for that matter, through my windshield, as I was driving back home from a visit to Home Depot and Loblaws earlier tonight.

At least it gave me an opportunity to start this winter as a good Samaritan. When I was trying to back out of my spot at the Loblaws parking spot, I couldn’t see where I was going, so I had to get out and brush the snow off my rear window. While I was at it, I offered my services with the brush to the owner of the car in the next spot, which he gladly accepted.

 Posted by at 1:55 am

Buffet

 Food, Personal  No Responses »
Oct 312010
 

The other day, my wife and I visited a restaurant in Gatineau. We were not disappointed; the quality and selection of “Le Buffet des Continents” was quite excellent.

But then, there was this fine piece of socialist realist art greeting us upon entering the establishment:

It won’t prevent us from going back, though.

 Posted by at 1:53 am

Handyman

 Handyman, Personal  No Responses »
Oct 302010
 

I am 47 years old, but up until last week, I never ever painted a room. I knew more about how paints behave on spacecraft surfaces than on drywall.

Well, this is no longer true. I just finished the walls, window, door, and floor in our small bedroom:

Yes, I am proud of my handiwork. Our cats appear to be satisfied, too:

But no, I am not planning to give up my day job.

 Posted by at 5:51 pm

The rule of law in Hungary

 Hungary, Politics  No Responses »
Oct 282010
 

For many years, I felt that despite their “anti-communist” political rhetoric and right-of-center stand on many issues, it is Hungary’s Fidesz party that carries the true legacy of the communist era. The party’s leader, Prime Minister Viktor Orban, seems hell-bent on governing in the style of one-party regimes, and now that he enjoys a two thirds parliamentary majority, he has the mandate to do so.

Even so, I did not expect that they will show their true nature this boldly and this rapidly, causing concern even among international investors, as they expressed their intent to curb the jurisdiction of the country’s constitutional court, which happened to declare one of their recent measures unconstitutional.

 Posted by at 3:52 am

“If East Germany could do it…”

 History, Politics  No Responses »
Oct 192010
 

Is this really the new Republican vision for America? A country surrounded by barbed wire, attack dogs, and border guards with machine guns? Apparently so, according to Alaska Senate candidate Joe Miller. And they wonder why some conservative-leaning people, like myself, root for the Democrats these days.

Oh, and one more thing about East Germany… they could NOT do it. The Wall eventually failed, and the country itself went down the drain with it.

 Posted by at 8:22 pm
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