Social Networks Share Information Without Permission

Facebook caught sharing secret data with advertisers (arstechnica.com)
Facebook, MySpace, others, sharing personal information w/o permission (wsj.com)
Major social networks (yes, Facebook) sending data about you to advertisers (mashable.com)

Are people actually surprised when shit like this happens? What could make you possibly think that the valuable information that you gave to these companies (facebook, myspace, etc) would not be used by them for profit? No matter what a company says in their policies or EULA or whatever the present you with before taking your personal information, these companies will use your information for profit if they find that the reward is larger than the risk. Either they lie to you and do it behind your back (greater risk) or they simply say "fuck you" and change the terms that you both agreed on (if there was ever any actual agreement. This could simply have been a statement on their website, in which case it's not exactly binding) and share it anyway.

In short, if you can't stand loosing your personal information, don't give it to somebody else!

They killed my laptop!

Yeah, this is totally a reasonable thing to do: http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/15/airport-security-guards-kill-literally-kill-a-macbook/

I realize that things might be a bit tense down in Israel, but wtf?! I don't know the whole story, but from what I can read in the article above, it seemed pretty unwarranted. Shoot the woman's laptop then let her go? If you shoot the laptop and take her in to custody, I could have imagined that something was wrong, but just shooting it and then telling her, essentially, to fuck off?

Firefox 3 revisited

I'm back to Firefox 2 again. Firefox 3 had such different behavior and look compared to Firefox 2, none of which was customizable, that I just couldn't stand it. Also, the fact that Firefox 3 was a HUGE memory hog didn't go over particularly well with me either. It's not unheard of to see FF3 use 2-3 times as much memory as FF2 for the same set of tabs. They also added their own custom widgets, because there were some behavior problems with Mac, that this is where the slippery slope to hell begins. it is VERY rare that you have to make your own widgets. The scrollbars and buttons that come with the OS are excellent, work great, and in the vast majority of cases do exactly what you want them to do. Apparently that wasn't good enough for the FF3 team, so decided to roll their own, to the detriment of all their users. While I did find a plug-in that would let me use Windows native scroll-bars, it just wasn't the same. It felt like they were fucking me over, simply because they could. FF2 is crisp, clear, fast, and doesn't cause my mouse to freeze up when I play wow. FF3 is none of these things.

All in all, FF3 is an absolute horror and a mess, and I really hope I see a 4.0 soon that takes care of all the fucking garbage they put in to FF3. I'd stick with FF2, but they stop support in mid-december 2008, which is mere months away. Most companies continue supporting their old products for a lot more than 6 months (Windows XP will be supported with security patches to 2014, if I'm not mistaken), but apparently not the Firefox team. What with the 8 million downloads on release day, maybe they don't give two shits about people still running older version. Then again, I did run Netscape 7.2 for ages until I finally switched. I think I can do the same thing with FF2.

Pornostar

While it's possible for me to write several posts with that delicious title, I'm giving it to this one (so far my titles are unique, I think).
I was listening to c.o.p project - pornostar and I decided I wanted the lyrics, for a quote or two, so I went to google.
Lyrics are normally a breeze to find, and they are generally correct. This time only the former was true. Google gives me about 3200 hits, but it's apparently been the parade of retards on the lyrics scene, or it's just been automatically transcribed by some bad voice recognition software.
After about 5 hits, it's painfully apparent that all the lyrics sites on the internet just blatantly copy each other, because the errors are exactly the same ones, and there are errors aplenty.
I know that lyrics don't always follow the grammatical norms, but this is ridiculus.
Listening to the lyrics it is painfully clear that the voice coming out of my speakers is not saying the same things that this epileptic monkey has scribbed on the webpage (nothing against epileptics, they fight a tough fight, but this looks like transcription in mid-seizure).
Whomever it was who said that an infinite amount of monkeys on typewriters would produce the complete works of Shakespere was only partially right. What they seem to have produces is the content on the internet.

Browser Wars

Another casualty.
I use Netscape 7.2 as my browser. It's great, it's fast, it's got a wonderful email client, and it uses an old gecko rendering engine (the same that was in firefox circa 2004) that does virtually anything you ask of it.
I say virtually, because one application (that I don't particularly like) has fallen off the wagon and now prohibits me from clicking buttons.
This application is facebook.com.
Whenever I go to respond to a message or accepting a friend request anything that involves any kind of submission, it just does not play ball. It doesn't give me an error message either, so I can't know it has actually failed. It just sits there as if the action I just took was lost somewhere between my mouse and my browser.
It used to work well up until a couple of weeks ago. Did my rendering engine deteriorate all of a sudden, or are the writers of facebook total asshats that will change a working solution to a non-working one without adding any other benefits?
I would have been more willing to accept it if they had some explanation like "as part of an upgrade, clicking a button will not dispense candy from your cd-rom drive, but as a result clicking buttons in Netscape 7.2 will not work".
I would have even settled for something less extravagant, but they have given me nothing, and yet taken a core feature away from me.
Now, I really hate to have an account on that glorified address book, but since "everybody is doing it", I figure I have to throw mine in with the rest.
At least until now.

From now on, please, those of you who read this. Don't contact me on facebook. I don't want to have to fire up another browser just to answer some message that could be sent to me via a plethora of other services (email being one).
People who don't have any other means of contacting me than via facebook, fine, you do that, but the rest of you. Please choose another proven means of communication where I don't have to suffer needlessly.
I would change browsers, if it wasn't for the fact that they all suck. I guess Opera is ok, but it still can't stand up to the awesome performance my Netscape 7.2.

Also, for hitherto unknown reasons, I get a "500 internal Server Error" when I try to use the blogger spell check.

Welcome to civilization

I just came across this little piece of news from Saudi Arabia.
According to CNN, some woman met with a guy, and as a result of her being at this meeting, 7 met converged on her and the guy and gang-raped them.
Why Saudi men would rape another man is unknown, but apparently, that's what happened.
Anyway, the gay rape is not what is at issue here. What we are talking about is the atrocious treatment this woman received from the government.
Her rapist got sentenced to between 10 months and 5 years in prison. I don't know how that stacks up to other international rape convictions, so I will not pass judgement.
The woman, however, the rape victim got, get this, 90 lashes as punishment for meeting with an unrelated male. Not only did she get raped by 7 dudes, but she's getting raped by the Saudi government as well.
As could be expected, she and her lawyer appealed both her sentence (and presumably ruling) and the sentences of the rapists.
The court increased the sentence to the rapists to 2 - 9 years.
What the court also did, and this is where I start getting nervous twitches, is that they sentenced the raped woman to 6 months in prison and 200 lashes!
What the fuck?!
Not only that, but they disbarred her lawyer in the process, so now she has no legal representation.
The reason for her increased sentence was apparently:

The judges more than doubled the punishment for the victim because of "her attempt to aggravate and influence the judiciary through the media," according to a source quoted by Arab News, an English-language Middle Eastern daily newspaper.

So, not only do we do horrible things to women in general, but we stifle any and all forms of public outcry.
I've blogged about weird religious laws and getting lashes previously, but this is just ridiculous.
How the hell do they expect to be accepted as equals (and not just oil suppliers) in modern society when they pull shit like this in a regular basis?
It's supposed to be the cradle of civilization, but apparently someone got dropped on the head several times by some evil proverbial stepmother, and we end up with this.
Seriously people, it's time to get your shit together. It's stuff like this that makes me think that the atrocities that the US commits against both its citizens and the rest of the civilized world on a daily basis is nothing to be worried about.
I would never live in the US, but I would sure as hell never live in a country with laws like this.
This is one of the few cases where I can honestly say "go team America - world police!".
I don't care what you say about equality, but sentencing anyone, especially a 19 year old rape victim to 6 months in prison and 200 lashes warrants a serious carpet bombing.

Call the cops on your neighbor, get a cookie

Try as I might, I can't keep myself from posting delicious nuggets from Bruce Schneier's blog. If your not reading it every day you should be ashamed of yourselves.
This current one is about the war on the unexpected. How citizens are encouraged to report everything that they see that doesn't seem right to them.
In this day and age, that basically means everything.
You really need to read this article. It is very insightful, and it gives further proof that society as we know it is going to hell. The terrorists have won. Shit, they don't even need to kill another person ever. We are already terrorized by our petty fear. Terrorists don't need to blow up planes to shut down airports. Just call in an anonymous tip, and you'll terrorize the travellers and authorities for hours or even days.
This has got to stop!
People, refuse to be terrorized! Refuse to believe that everything outside your own kitchen is out to hurt you. The world isn't as bad a place as people make it out to be.
Sure, people are assholes, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they are out to destroy civilization as we know it.
A bright example of this fear mongering (that was also linked from Bruce's article) is this campaign that you're supposed to call the cops whenever you see a parent holding a child's hand. Does holding your child's hand automatically mean that you're sexually abusing it? I'm going to go for "no" on that question, but if the societal tendencies today are to be believed, the answer to that question is "yes".
I used to think that people's stupidity was what would bring about the downfall of society, but I was wrong. It's people's unfounded fear that will ultimately cause the world to collapse.

Maybe if people weren't so dumb, they wouldn't believe in all this crap that the media machine churns out.

Fo Shizzle!

This is a surefire sign that language is going to hell, and quite possibly culture with it.
In tha ghetto, bitches!

Full On Ferry Fiasco

Last night me and my girlfriend (as well as a couple of thousand other souls) went to the Full On Ferry Masquerade in Rotterdam. I had had some bad feelings about the whole thing for a couple of days, but I chalked it up to my s.a.d.
Anyway, we got on the train from Enschede at 21.57 to go to Rotterdam. A 2½ hour train trip and a subway ride later, we were showing the people at the gate our tickets.
Once we got inside, we started moving to the dance floor. The place featured only once large-ish dance floor, and a staging area where one could buy hotdogs (the only food available), and some trinkets and other knick-knacks.
We went to the dance floor to get a feel for the music. 30 minutes later, I was convinced that the DJ had not changed the record. Not because of mad DJing skills making for seamless transitions, but rather because it sounded exactly the same. Similar is ok, it's in the same genre, but the same?
Not only was the music incredibly repetitive, but it was also horrible. Labeled as a trance event, this was the housiest trance I have ever heard. And it wasn't the good kind of housy trance (there are a few tunes), but rather trance laid on top of a lazily crafted house loop. Absolutely nothing going on but the rhythm. The music was incredibly boring.
We left around 3 am.
The problem was that last night was the switch day for daylight savings time, which gave us a wonderful extra hour. Now, had this been at a great party, I would have liked it, but the fact that we were stuck in the cold Rotterdam night with no way of getting back to any kind of civilization made this extra hour seem like hell.
Our first train was scheduled to leave at 7.32, a lovely 4½ hours later. As this was clearly unacceptable, we embarked on a long winded train trek over what seemed like all of Holland, just to be indoors on a train instead of waiting out in the cold.
The train trip that normally takes just over 2½ hours took us somewhere around 4.
For those of you who don't know, Holland seems completely devoid of indoor waiting areas. This is fine in July, but it is unacceptable in October.

I've been let down by Ferry Corsten and his ilk before, but this was the last time.
From now on I will refuse to spend 39 EURO parties that I know will never ever be worth the money. If I also have to travel to another part of the country just to attend, I'll be even less likely to go.
I've known for a long time that spending anything over 10 euro on a party is too much, compared to the value I get for it, but silly little me, I keep on going anyway.
Well I say no more. The stupidity ends now!
No more crappy mainstream trance events. From now on I choose my parties with care. Even though it means going to fewer parties, I am totally fine with that.
Seeing as how I am a poor student, I can't afford to blow 100 EUROS for a party night anyway.

I hate seeing stupidity in other people, it's painful, but seeing stupidity in my self is the worst.
Hopefully I can remember this vow next time a big party comes up...

Fuck you Ferry, Fuck you very much!

Now the UK is also off-limits for me.

For the longest time (basically since the introduction of the PATRIOT act) the US has been off-limits for me. Not because I've committed any crime punishable under it, but rather because it gives law enforcement the legal right to do whatever the fuck the want to people without having to prove anything.
Now, after a long line of similar atrocities, the UK is also on my no-fly list. Almost once a week I read about new legal development in the UK (usually on Slashdot and on Bruce Schneier's Blog) that gives the police similar freedoms there. You'd think that people in an EU country would be more resilient to big brother-ness like this, but apparently law makers don't listen to the people anymore (when have they ever, right...).
One could argue that the big grey mass of people would like to give up liberty to gain security, which doesn't actually work, but the reality is that the big grey mass of people probably don't vote anyway, should something like this actually be voted on via referendum.
The US and UK are now right up there with North Korea and China on the list of countries that don't give a flying fuck about the liberties of their citizens, and will do anything to bring about a police state much in the same way that Germany worked back in the day (can someone say Gestapo?). Bush seems intent on finding a final solution to the liberty problem, but other than the problem statement, there are a lot of similarities between him and some other guys in history I can think of.

Intellectual Masturbation

I have come to the conclusion that academia is nothing but intellectual masturbation. I have never seen people who are as full of them selves as academics. They espouse unnecessarily complex theories and procedures for the sole reason of making non-academics look starstruck when dazzled by their supposed brilliance. I'm currently reading part of a PhD thesis on software engineering, and the things that are suggested in this case might be applicable to 1% of development processes, and only in the case where one would be dealing with completely new concepts in computer science.
There are several more or less formal ways of developing software. Some are better than others, but what they all have in common is that they are extremely convoluted, and they requires books upon books to explain what is small sub-part of the entire methodology. It's not unheard of to have 900 page books on "realizing part A and part B of our amazing 59 part model".
Maybe I'm taking the carpentry approach to software development here, but please people it's not as difficult as you make it out to be. Granted, writing good software is not necessarily simple, but coming up with a methodology on how to handle everything around the actual writing of the source code is not as hard as people would have you believe.
The problem, I think, is that people are payed by the letter to write books on methodologies. I don't doubt that we need some research in the field, but to be quite frank, methodologies for developing things are, just like design patterns, revealed almost automatically after having worked in the industry for some time. What then happens is that academics come along and they look at these methodologies that have evolved in companies over time, working in this field, and they lump a bunch of them together, and try to extract some common features of successful methodologies. So far so good, to some extent, but what they then do is add their own rationale for these concept, and then they proceed to add their own parts to the methodology, to add their personal touch. The long-term goal of this is to get name recognition for something. Now, I know that having a good reputation is something we all want, but there are good and bad ways of going about it.
I can't say anything about any other fields of study, since I have just been in the academic world of software development, but I think that most academic research on methodologies, i.e. the meta-layer about getting work done, is pure intellectual masturbation, and it encumbers the whole software development profession with things that might otherwise have become clear, using nothing but common sense and experience.
It's fine when teachers teach students about some well-known methodology that is well rooted in reality. This way the students can have a head start when they get out in business life (which is the whole point of going to school). However, when teachers think "hey, I have a personal opinion of this little thing which I consider a flaw in a methodology, so I'm throwing all other information out the window and I'm creating my own methodology and then I'm teaching that to my students". This is wrong. I'm all for teaching students as much as possible, but we need to keep our eye on the ball here. Consolidate knowledge and look for things that are actually common between methodologies and teach people that. We don't need 10 methods that kinda-sorta work, we need 2-3 that actually work, all the time.
I guess academia is about finding new things and doing research info areas where business can't afford to go, or haven't thought off, but that doesn't give academia a license to go on some wild goose chase. When it comes to problems like some new algorithm, or finding a new element for the periodic table, or figuring out how to synthesize some new drug, I'm all for that. What I don't like is the meta-reasoning about all these things. At some point the reasoning about the reasoning about the reasoning of something has to stop. How many meta layers can we have before it all turns in to philosophy?

I want more concreteness in the things that are taught to students. Let students feel that the time spent in the class room actually gives them something of value, and not just something that they might be able to use should they go down a certain path of research in academia. Again, this is very much a carpenters approach to school, but isn't that what engineering is supposed to be about? I realize software is a young field, compared to building bridges or doing mathematics, but I also know that the rate at which the field develops is much faster than the speed seen for other fields in the past.

I'm rambling, but in summary, less intellectual masturbation in academia (at least regarding what is actually taught to students), and more concrete and correct knowledge.
Feel free to challenge me on this opinion.

Chuck Norris is my Hero No More

I was telling a friend about chucknorrisfacts.com, and I decided to check out the Chuck Norris facts-page on Wikipedia.
I stumbled upon this terrible piece of information:

One of the satirical "facts" made of Norris states that "There is no theory of evolution. Just a list of creatures Chuck Norris has allowed to live." Upon hearing this, Chuck replied:

It's funny. It's cute. But here's what I really think about the theory of evolution: It's not real. It is not the way we got here. In fact, the life you see on this planet is really just a list of creatures God has allowed to live. We are not creations of random chance. We are not accidents. There is a God, a Creator, who made you and me. We were made in His image, which separates us from all other creatures. By the way, without Him, I don't have any power. But with Him, the Bible tells me, I really can do all things—and so can you."^[3]

What the hell man! I mean I realize he's from some shitty backwater in Oklahoma (which, in 2000 had, and I quote, "894 people, 358 households, four registered prostitute[s] and 233 families residing in the town"), but that doesn't excuse the fact that THE Chuck Norris believes in intelligent design. Don't even get me started on intelligent design, that's just laughing in the face of facts.
I don't, by any means, get my sense of absolute certainty from Walker Texas Ranger, but come one man. Chuck Norris and intelligent design. What is the world coming to?...

Mr Moustache

Hah, I just ran across this at a link at the bottom of Engadget. It's a stick-on beard, complete with a small 'stache to match.

When the guy started droning on about how this was an awesome way to get the ladies, I kept thinking to myself "wow, this is just about the stupidest thing I've ever seen". Lo and behold, about half way down the article, the guy agrees with me. Phew. I guess the world is still somewhat safe..

EDITED TO ADD: Ohh, and I'm not going to use Windows Live Writer anymore. I just posted using it, and it felt like the entire app was falling apart. I'm sticking to the blogger interface, until I find something better.

Sharia Schmaria

For a couple of weeks now, I've been reading up about moving to Dubai.
It seems like a great city. Nice temperatures, ocean front, good money, no taxes, and nice temperatures. Did I mention nice temperatures? It's got nice temperatures.
I was reading about it, looking at jobs and possible salaries and cost of living and whatnot.
All in all it seemed like a great country, until I read this. It's an article from gulfnews.com about the sharia laws in effect, and how they can affect me should I determine to move (or set foot in) the UAE (or any other country with sharia laws).
It turns out that it is illegal for a man and woman who are not blood relatives or legally married to be in a "closed space" together. Even elevators count and cars count, to some extent.
Sharing an apartment is obviously out of the question.
My favourite part is this:

Dr Khalifa Rashid Al Sha'ali, Dean of the Faculty of Law at Ajman University, said if a man and a woman who are not related are caught alone in a private place, they face a jail sentence or lashes even if they were not involved in any suspicious act.

Fucking LASHES?!?!?!?!
What the hell. I mean I'm no fan of adultery, but this is fucking nuts.
And it appears that good neighbors call the police on their neighbors too, should they see something like this through their window.
This is absolutely fucking insane. This is what you get when you let religion take over lawmaking. I don't care what religion it is, I just know that the church (or mosque or temple or whatever) has nothing to do with the state. Nothing no matter how you slice it.

And to think I seriously contemplated it. I'd rather live in the heart of red china with their censorship and people disappearing due to secret police and whatnot over this. At least communist people let you fuck whomever you damn well please.

I realized that these things were in effect in some Arab countries, but I thought that the UAE was supposed to be so open and western and cater to foreigners, but with shit like this, it makes you wonder...

Shooting Blind

Literally. Apparently if you live in Texas and have a hunting license, you're allowed to go hunting even if you can't see. (Ok, so the article is about an aid they can use, but it's what got my attention)

...

So, let me get this straight. You can be out in the woods. Where other people are. Carrying a loaded weapon, and also be allowed to fire said weapon.
Am I the only one who finds this terribly frightening? I'm all for hunting; game tastes good, and if you go way back, people hunted their food, but blind people do not hunt out of necessity. They never did. They either died, or someone else hunted for them. More to the point, blind people do not have any reason to shoot guns.
Seriously, what's wrong with people. How the hell would you get a hunting license in the first place if you are blind?

I'm all for people with disabilities being able to do most, if not all, of what other members of society can do, but there are certain limitations, and people should respect them.

It's not like they're letting blind people drive. Hell, I don't even know if deaf people can drive.

And according to the article, there's now some sort of laser aiming device to help them hit what they're (supposedly) aiming at.
What the hell? How do you aim if you are blind? How do you do it? Deaf people can't listen any more than blind people can see. I realize that you might be able to cook up some sound device for aiming, but I doubt we're quite there yet.

Stuff like this just makes me even happier that I'm never ever living in that absolute horror of a country.

I like shooting guns just as much as the next guy (I mean, we're men here, who hasn't played guns or cowboys and indians when they were kids), but that doesn't mean that anyone should be allowed to own or carry one, let alone walk around with them loaded anywhere they damn well please.

Getting a license to own a gun is fine, or if you have an actual reason for owning a gun. Waiting 7 days to get a hand gun isn't responsible gun ownership, it's just postponing the inevitable.

Only in America

Teens beating homeless people (to death) for sport.

Claiming anything other than stupidity as a reason for random violence is a fucking lie. Sure, a lot of violence is triggered by a disagreement of some sort (money, drugs, sleeping with your friend's wife, you name it), but random acts of violence like these can't possibly be fueled by anything else than pure, unadulterated stupidity.

As I've claimed for so long, someone should make stupidity more painful, but I guess in this case being the victim of stupidity is what was painful. (Ok, being the victim of stupidity, yours or others, is usually painful too, but often not to this extent).
Sure, doing 15-to-life in a house of corrections might earn you a rogering or two, but you definitely earned that...

A Burning Smell

What's that burning smell? I'm boiling eggs, not running a chemical plan here...
I walk down to the kitchen to see that my eggs aren't the only items in the kitchen receiving heat.
Also on the stove is the handle of one of the frying pans.
The worst thing is that this isn't the first time it happens. My roommate did exactly the same thing a couple of weeks ago, resulting in a stench that wouldn't leave the house for a couple of days.
Luckily I saved this pan before it was destroyed, but the smell of burnt plastic still lingers.

Bad Pickup Lines

So I'm at this shady club in town, getting drunk with my friends, and this random dude walks up to me and starts hitting on me. He didn't look dutch, so I'm guessing he had some heritage from some other part of the world, which could explain the approach he used.
Here's an except:

dude: *something unintelligible in dutch*
me: I'm sorry, I don't speak dutch
dude: duitse? (German?)
me: no, I'm from Sweden actually...
dude: really? I've got family there, Oslo...
me:...
me: Oslo is in Norway
dude: Helsinki?
me: That would be Finland
dude: Copenhagen?
me: that's Denmark.
dude: where are you from?
me: Sweden
dude: Scandinavia, I've got family there!
me: that's great, I've got to go...

What the hell? I mean, I don't mind dudes hitting on me, in fact I'm flattered, but please, put some effort in to it. Is this what girls fall for? If girls are normally on the receiving end of this kind of stupidity, there's no wonder they react the way they do when guys normally try to chat them up in bars. This was terrible. If you're laying a lie on someone to get in to their pants, you'd better make sure that you have your facts straight, otherwise you're just going to come across as a moron...

I've said it before and I'll say it again, they should make stupidity more painful.

(And he was ugly to boot!)

Call of Warez?

Ohh please, either this is a tip of the hat to the warez community, or these guys are completely oblivious to it. Also, what the hell kind of name of Call of Juarez anyway? Is it some gunslinger legend that I've never heard about?
The people who thinks up the names for a lot of these games needs to have their heads examined.