This has got to stop!

Every day I see the same damn thing. It comes in the mail,
group invitations on facebook and not least, people actually
joining and LIKING things of this nature. What am I talking
about? Well, all these “Join this or that group because
if you dont, facebook will be a “pay” site”

Here is a newsflash for you. IT’S BOGUS! Facebook generally
makes their funding on advertising and seeing the amount
of users that actually has a facebook account and that frequently
logs in to see those adds, well, im guessing they are making quite
a bit of mint on it.

So, why does these groups come to be? Well, for the exact same reason that
you receive those “Microsoft is tracking this mail, you will get xxx dollars to send
it on.” Well, as long as the mail is within microsofts network, I am guessing they
could see the server logs, but as soon as it’s outside, they cant track the mail.

Neither will your fridge walk out of the door to hop repeatedly on your car’s hood
if you dont send that chain mail letter.

This is the exact same thing and I am fed up with it. Stop spamming me with
messages that facebook will be a pay site, stop joining those frigging groups
because they are only A: A sham to get members (im pretty sure that the names
of the groups will,
in a very short period of time, be renamed to “We who like to have sex with kitchen
utensils or similar) and B: You are also spamming your friends with messages that
they either dont understand and follow, or just dislike it cluttering their wall.

You happy now? Just you wait til the day that facebook finally DOES become a pay site.
THEN you can tell me that im wrong. Not before.

View through my glasses

Yesterday, while on a train ride home I got asked on my political views since I am wearing a pirate party keychain.
Well, I explained to him that yes, my vote will go to the pirate party. And the person more or less exploded in my
face demanding to know how I could vote for a “one-issue party”. Well, then came a nice little diatribe about stealing
artists material, freeloader, etc etc etc.

I let him ramble on for a while and simply stated that I couldnt care less
about filesharing. Filesharing is not the reason for me to leave the more
established parties, the issue that I want to adress is the personal integrity
breaches that now occurs daily, that foreign monetary interrests are more
or less able to dictate domestic laws and that the swedish government actually
bends for those demands.

He then pretty much looked like I had hit the back of his head with a board,
completely stunned. It was as if he did not understand what I was saying.
A “pirate” sympathizer who did not want the free, albeit questionable, “right”
to download whatever he wanted from the web.

I gave it a few seconds of thought and formulated the answer like this:

Would you mind if I stopped the mailman before he reached your mailbox,
took your mail, opened it, copied it for future reference and then put it back
in the envelope and slid it inside his mailbox. Of course he was outraged, Noone has the right to read his mail of course. My thoughts around here was “he is taking it, hook line and sinker” so I pressed on.

If you where talking to your wife on the phone, would it be OK for me to have a hidden device and
sit somewhere else just to listen, and to be able to file the entire conversation, no matter what
it was about so it will be stored in some archive just incase you will do something later on?
He started to get confused again, so he told me: Of course not, but what does that have to do
with the pirate party?

I then explained the FRA law, IPRED and ACTA agreements. And of course, he dragged out the 2
arguments that seems to be the last saviour for those defending these idiocies: But what if I dont have
anything to hide? Well.. You wouldnt mind someone videofilming you and your wife then?
My point is, what someone think is private varies, but you have to have a common limit on what
is OK to look at. We have just given the government to treat the entire swedish population as
potential terrorists and now, any communication that is not face to face can be monitored,
dont you see a problem with that.

I could see uncertainty slowly creeping up on this poor man but I had my steamengine puffing now
so I pressed on.

Your kid probably uses facebook, MSN and a wide variety of other social tools, are you OK
with someone knowing all about your daughters/sons conversations online, no matter on how an
embarrasing subject? You know, if I followed you around constantly for a few weeks, always noting
down what you did, you could call me into court and slap a restraining order in my face with ease
and the court would approve, and I am pretty sure that you would, however you have just told
the government that “Hey, its ok, follow me and my family” in the same way, albeit online, and whats
worse, is that its leaning more and more towards that uncontrolled, (or should i say overcontrolled?)
profit organizations will  have the exact same permission.

On top of that, BOTH government has promised, word for word, that these new laws will not be used
to persecute young people and alienate the entire youth population, yet, this is exactly what has happened.
They havent “caught” anyone that makes money on filesharing (There still isn’t anything that shows that the
founders of The Pirate Bay” earned their money on filesharing.) And those that HAVE been fined for it
has mostly been students and we all know that students are the same as the rich people… or maybe not.

At this point, I could actually see this man squirming in his seat and then came the surveillance supporters
try at “Ace” card. “Well, it can stop potential terrorists”

Now, I will use a technique that I actually despise myself, one of the ruling techniques so used by Göran Persson,
But do you honestly think that either Blondinbella, Agda at the nursing home, or for that matter will plant a
bomb somewhere and do you seriously think that IF terrorists use the internet for communication, that
will happen through MSN? I dont think so, we are probably talking about 256 bit AES encrypted VPN
tunnels, wich pretty much are impossible to break, and then on top of that, some other type of encryption
just to be on the safe side, and by the time the government has FINALLY cracked the encryptions, the
victims will be buried and the survivors have all recovered as fully as possible, so what good is it?

Ever seen a fish on land? I did yesterday.

It appears that I was talking to a pretty high placed politician in Örebro Län. I wont tell you whom,
but now atleast, I know the ignorance that is displayed by politicians firsthand. Good to know.

Sheesh

Ipred is here again……

Again, several newspaper reports that the movie companies are trying to get access to someones
Ipnumber using the IPRED law. Well, I for one think that the law really is something that shouldnt
have been passed at all, but thats just my highly personal conviction, but hey, I am entitled to
an opinion, or… pherhaps not anymore. I dislike the fact that people can request information about
me as a person. Anyhoo, these are the newspaper articles:

Aftonbladet, Svenska Dagbladet and Expressen
This time its regarding the site “Swetorrents” that apparently are using Telia as an ISP and as the
article states, this has been up before, and Telia then rejected the claim and filed an appeal. I am
guessing that Telia, as a company know that IF they hand over the IP numbers, they will also
have an exodus of customers that will be switching to other ISPs and sending their money elsewhere.
I am not surprised that the movie and music companies are still pursuing this old line because frankly,
they noticed loooong ago that the business model was slowly dying, but still they are beating the stick
at the dead horse and now try to make money by claiming that filesharing is costing them millions.

What they fail to realize tho is that one downloaded song isn’t the same as a sold single. I use spotify
for my music these days, so I am gratefully excerpt from these idiocies, but what people need to
realize is that I wouldnt pay money to hear a song that I might not like, because when I have listened
to that song once, I have broken the seal and I cant return the disc, and renting music, whoever heard
of that concept? The companies point their fingers to the younger generations and manages to push law
after law through that seriously jeopardizes the freedom of the web as we know it. Are we to be
censored soon too? Well, it sure as hell seems to be going that way. For all you swedish people out there,
let me give you a little scare with a possible vision of the future.

We now have the FRA law, wich pretty much stores whatever we send abroad for later analyzing.
Ok, all well, I can see that there is no escaping it, but, we also have nationalist and racist political
parties advancing pretty rapidly, and some of the larger political parties are OPENLY COURTING
these parties. Lets assume that a few years from now, one of these parties will gain control. It isn’t
unthinkable, and that in itself is  a scary thought, but now, suddenly, they have the possibility to
push a change on laws out, and voila, they already have the perfect tool ready to track down dissidents
and other unwanted persons, such as immigrants and similar that simply expresses their right of
communication. Oh my.

Lets take it one step further.
The common man doesnt know how to protect their privacy online, that is a fact, and since the
messages have already been stored on some server, they also contain IP number, email adress,
possibly even MAC adresses and hostnames and now, its a very slim thing to actually locate this
individual and something goes bang in the night, and this party now has one less dissident.

Does this ring a bell? It should. It has already happened before in several nations, altho THOSE
NATIONS HAVE ABOLISHED THE BLOODY THING! But ooooh, not sweden. We want to control
everything our citizens do and lord help us if we step a toe out of line. When we do, we will be labeled
as terrorists, taken by CIA agents to Egypt, who has no laws against torture, and tortured til we admit
to being both reincarnation of Buddha aswell as guilty of both world wars and that the Titanic went to
its watery grave.

The more we let private actors claim the web, the more we leave the door open to misuse, and yes
I am taking this to extremes, but thats where you HAVE to go, because if someone can think about
it, then someone can make it happen and frankly, I think that Sweden is going to hell in a handbasket
and who’s fault is that? Well, I dont want to point any fingers towards any special political side. Do you
want to know why? Thats easy. They are both guilty of these atrocities.

Tomas Bodström from the left block put the idea forward, and when they lost mandate, the
right block claimed “We wont use this to hunt down the young population of today” and pushed
the laws through. Well, you kept your word. However, you didn’t think that others would break
it for you, did you? Bloody Morons.

Sights on google usage part II

Google has now released the lists of the most common search words on its search engine.

Fastests growing (Sweden)
1. spotify
2. translate
3. facebook
4. eniro
5. blocket
6. blogg
7. bdb (billddagboken)
8. hotmail
9. hitta
10. google

Most popular search terms Sweden
1. facebook
2. youtube
3. blocket
4. google
5. eniro
6. aftonbladet
7. lexikon
8. bdb (bilddagboken)
9. tradera
10. hotmail

And from what I can see it’s nothing really there that surprises me. However, on the list of  fastest growing, overall,
you see something funny.
Fastest growing globally
1. michael jackson
2. facebook
3. tuenti
4. twitter
5. sanalika
6. new moon
7. lady gaga
8. windows 7
9. dantri.com.vn
10. torpedo gratis

Look at number 9 .. someone googled a URL. Now, I can see someone google a URL if you want to know more
about the URL, but seriously, fastest growing on place number 9 ? Why not just go to the URL instead and
save you some time sifting through the sponsored links?

Anarchy on the internet, APBstyle

Here we go. You, yes you there, who said those who told stories of how
anti piracy firms would go haywire and throw threats to left and right
were all doomsday profets. Have you eaten your crow for today?
If not, get your salt and pepper ready because here comes some more
for you to put on your plate, together with your integrity, hopes and freedom.

The swedish Anti Piracy Bureu(sic?) has sued the site swetorrents.org
and that in itself, might not be such a strange thing. Now, heres the deal.
The site is a CLOSED torrent site. Means that you have to have an invitation
to get inside. The owner of swetorrents.org received the standard “Hey you, shut down
or we will sue you so hard that your great grandkids will have debts” letter
stating that he/she should cease and desist due to the fact that he/she
is sharing copywrighted material. Ok, said the owner, sure, but what
copyrighted material are we talking about here. Wich files?

To that, the APB responded: “It is an obligation of the one who handles the service
to make sure that this service is not participating in copywright infringement. We
have no intention of submitting a list of the files in question as that is not our
responsability.”

This is however an excerpt, but all in all, heres the meaning of it all.

We think you are filesharing, and since we do, we now threaten you with
very high fines and possible and most likely jail time so that you close down
your site. You wont know wich files we are talking about, because we dont have
to tell you that. So, come out and face the firing squad with your hands up
so we can get this over with.

Does anyone else but me see this as a little strange?
Now the swedish phonecompany and ISP, Telia is battling to not have to leave
the holder of the IPnumber and I REALLY hope that they succeed.

Swedens politicians have forever lost my confidence. They handed away
police business to profit hungry organisations that seem to have null and void
respect for how to handle errands, and who thinks that since they have
money on their side, they can do whatever they want.

Is this how we want it to be? That people have to constantly feel monitored
and watched whereever we go, even if it’s within the walls of what is supposed
to be your private home? We aren’t really there yet, but with the way things are
going, it wont be far now. People in black S.W.A.T. TEAM outfits will kick your
door down and you will see the APB logo on their backs, they will raid your
computer desk, and if there is a single home burned CD there, they will take
it, call it evidence and rummage through it in the safety of their new billion
dollar HQ.

Never mind that the CD is  your vacation photos, and of course, if you and
your spouse had a little quality adult time together with a camera, they will
sue you for damaging A: The porn industry, since it needs people to consume
porn to survive, and B: the manufacturer of the CD-rom since they get a really
really damaged reputation by having that kind of material shown on their
product.

Geez Louise!

How to anger your employee’s (step 1)

Now, I would like to think this wasn’t made on purpose, but for angry-puppy_21050908
some nagging reason, I think it might be. The company I worked
for has done a new  all time low this time. Let me tell you a little story.

My former schedule ended this friday, and due to meetings and stuff
I didn’t receive any new one. Ok, I thought. No worries, I’ll go to work
early and pick one up. So, we set the alarmclocks, we took David to
kindergarten and off to work I went. Its about a 15-20 kilometer drive to
work, not far, but far enough that it takes some time getting there
but at least I was on time, I was there at ten minutes to eight.

Walked up, grabbed my headset and started to log in and I spotted
one of the bosses. I told him that I hadn’t received a schedule for
the coming period. Ok he said, he would get me one.

He sat down at his computer and suddenly looked at me and said
“Hey, Matt, you know that you have a month vacation, starting
today, right?”

What the HELL!!!

No, I was not informed that I had a vacation at all this year to be honest.
Last year you had to fill out a vacation form, fit in the weeks with your
coworkers request and Pete knows what! It was a bloody mess without peer
but hey, at least you could get a vacation. Since I have been away from work
a lot, I havent even heard of any changes, and I sure as hell didn’t fill
in a request for a vacation. They just went straight over my head and
filled in a vacation slot, and didn’t even bother informing me WHEN I
was supposed to have a vacation. To pour salt in the wounds. Today
is the day Linda started working. So… No vacation together this year
either.

I managed to cut down the vacation to 2 weeks at least, but I am still
not happy with them not informing me earlier so Linda and I could
have planned something. But oh no. We wont let families of employee
use any recreational time with the employee. That is bad for morale
or something. I am so pissed off right now I could strangle someone
but what good would that do? Only thing that would accomplish
is a longer vacation spent entirely without the family.

PFAH!