The last room of half-freedom we have left is under massive threat by a concerted effort at imposing antidemocratic legislation / binding international agreements. It may be called or be part of ACTA, C11, IPRED2, PIPA, RWA, SOPA or TPP – the aim is the same: often under the assertion of protecting intellectual property (whose exactly?), the basis for an infrastructure of active censorship on the writer’s side or restriction of information on the reader’s side is to be set up. Because the Top has no long-term interest in you being able to do, say and write what you want online, just as well as it has no vision for a future outside of its own self-replication. And indirectly, it is right: i don’t believe the actual system has a future either. Enough signs show it. The question is: do we have to suffer on the way towards its demise?

No, we don’t. But we are heading towards a time when we will have to defend ourselves even more often than now. It is time to counter-attack. There are many ways to do it. One of them is to participate this Saturday 11 February 2012 to the day of action against ACTA. There will be something going on near your place. You should go.

I did my best to keep it short, really.

Edit, Saturday 11.02.2012, 20:30: Wow. This was probably an historic day. Although both media and politicos have failed to even mention ACTA for years, there were over 100K people on the streets of Germany alone. 10K+ in Berlin, in sub-zero temperatures, for a demonstration whose costs were covered through crowd-funding in under 48 hours. And most positively: lots of teenagers. This is awesome and brings hope for the future. Next step: stay alert, keep the pressure up and start thinking about this: if the current copyright laws are no longer relevant for many reasons, what is to think of a political system that creates things like ACTA in the first place?

Have two pictures from Berlin:

This is a spoof of the typical “This video is not available in your country” message that German internet users encounter ever so often on YouTube. The reason for those warnings is a lasting conflict between Youtube and the German collective rights society GEMA over fees, in which GEMA has proven itself unrealistically inflexible.

The crowd at Friedrichstraße, seen from the middle of the demonstration.

• $subject is just doing his job.
• $subject’s religion demands it.
• But what about $irrelevant_compared_item?
• Isn’t there anything more important?
• You are saying this because you are $stereotype.
• If you don’t like it, don’t watch/read/listen to it.
  

Thank you for your attention.

* Many have good resolutions that won’t be kept, so i can have wishes that won’t come true, MKAY?

Can’t believe how this site has been neglected. This will have to change in 2012, and this probably will as i have some plans…

Picture courtesy of Norway, which remains a funny country when it is not being shot at by christian fundamentalist pro-zionist antisemitic right-wing psychos.

First, and most important: marmots.

Marmot plays sentinel. Can you see it?

Of course you can’t. Here it is:

Stealthy! Fortunately, its Dragunov is optional.

Moar marmots:

marmot from far, looking to the left:

marmot from far, looking to the right:

marmot from far above (sunbathing):

marmot from fairly near (check out that phat ass!):

marmot on a roof (wtf):

Also, i spotted a dangerous anarchist, obviously planning some scheme to disturb our orderly green pastures:

I may be living abroad, i remain a good citizen and immediately informed the authorities.

Talking about authorities: this year’s summer drama in Switzerland was the currency, the Franc CHF, which has gained over 20% in value over the Euro in a year. This is bad for Swiss exports but good for marmots, as there are less tourists in the Alps. Hardly anyone can afford this country anymore, and the minority who does does not go where marmots are. Subterranean victory! So what are the authorities doing to help the over 30% of the economy that is suffering from that? Nothing. When asked, the government will forward the question to the national bank (BNS), arguing that it is caring for Switzerland’s monetary policy since aeons (which is a bit crazy in itself). On the other hand, the BNS plays dumb, saying it is only responsible for the stability of prices on the inner market and can’t influence exchange rates – as if, for example, selling some of the insane amounts of gold it has (the origin of some remaining dubious) would not be possible.

I hear you begging to differ: that’s capitalism, the State does not and should not intervene. In a way, you may be right. And you will be excused because you probably don’t belong to those preaching this all the time just to bail out big, mismanaged and outdated corporations with tax money when the? weather changes. But you will agree, capitalism is free market and competition, right? So how about this:

While i was denouncing dangerous anarchists, readers of Le Temps, on their side, started reporting many more products that are massively cheaper on the other side of the border, that is, where the supposedly ill Euro currency reigns.

Welcome to Switzerland’s pseudo-capitalist paradise, where cartels use the invisible/nonexistent Hand of the Market to slap you in the face, all year long. But rejoice, Swiss Folks, you just received another AAA rating from some criminal organization that is co-responsible for worldwide financial ruin.

Did i mention hardly anyone can afford this country anymore?

Anyway, here is an universal truth for you:

For marmots are way cooler than you and i, alone for the fact that they sleep all winter.

Edit: since i wrote most of this text on a mountain top about a month ago, things have moved a little: the BNS sort of acted, and it did not work much. Now an idea that was still deemed satanical a month ago starts to make its way: tying the CHF to the EUR. Bet if that will help.

Examining a perpetual calendar (in the World Almanac) I see that we have a Friday the 13th whenever the month begins on a Sunday. I also see that every year has at least one and at most three Friday the 13ths (usually there are two). 1998 had three, 1999 had one, 2000 will have one. There can also be Friday the 13th in two consecutive months (February and March) as there were in 1998. The probability that any randomly selected month will have a Friday the 13th would seem to be 1/7 (.1428571428…), as there are only seven types of month (ones that begin on Sunday, Monday, …). And each would seem to be equally likely. It turns out that this is not quite true. It was shown by Brown (I don’t know his first name) in 1933 that the Gregorian Calendar (which we use) repeats itself exactly, every 400 years. In that time, there are 4800 months and 4800 13ths. Of those 4800 13ths, 688 occur on Friday. So the probability of a Friday the 13th is 688/4800 which is .143333…, which is slightly greater than 1/7. In fact, Friday is the most likely 13th, slightly. Of the 4800 13ths, Sunday is the 13th 687 times, Mondya 685, Tuesday 685, Wednesday 687, Thursday 684, Friday 688, and Saturday 684.

© Copyright 1999, Jim Loy

If any maths nerd wants to contest this, you can count on me to witness the discussion and not understand a thing.

Source: Tagesspiegel via Fefe
Background: 2500+ cops for 15- persons

Meanwhile, in Tunisia and Egypt, people show a courage and a determination that have not been seen in the Western World for a long time. If you think this has nothing to do with the situation there, you may want to read this article by Umair Haque, who is not exactly a paranoid leftist. Indirectly, the current situation in the Arab World / North Africa opens some interesting questions about our hypocritical “democracies” as well. Their long support for Mubarak and others playing in the same league is just the start.

So when will our time come when the ratio turns to 15- for 2500+? Probably when we will have learnt to (better) link facts together.

edit (June 2011): first confirmation: Spain. More to come, i assume.

So I am looking into this TYPO3 thing. It is a huge ass content management framework that can do anything up to achieving World Peace, if I am to believe the papers around me. The people around me, however, warn me that its Typoscript is a complicated pain that is looking nothing similar to other such languages. We’ll see. First it needs to be installed and that is what I just did. There is an OK official Getting Started Tutorial for it, but it misses some points that I want to address here, in the specific case of a GoDaddy Linux hosting account.

Caveat: this is no expert opinion here, I am basically a n00b. However, my installation worked. So this is for anyone like me: a beginner with a Cyberduck client, a GoDaddy Linux account and a (very old) mac. The words below are to help you avoid time consuming mistakes that I have made. Do not ask me questions about other hosters than GoDaddy. Do not ask me questions about other FTP clients than Cyberduck. Also, anti-GoDaddy trolls will be ignored.

Photos taken today through the dirty window of an A319

With this, I wish you a successful new year. May 2k+11 make you smarter.

This made my meat all warm.