Data Privacy Day

Yeah, so it's DPD again. And today it's more important than ever to be aware of data privacy issues. In our society, as it is today, we're rapidly approaching total populace monitoring. We're not quite there yet, but it's just a matter of time.

Of course, it can be argued that not everyone will have to worry too much about being "monitored". Authorities, the government and cynics tend to say: "If you don't have anything to hide, you don't need to worry". Well, is this completely true? I would disagree.

A lot of the sensitive (and often, very personal) data stored about individuals online can be used against private citizens without the intent of criminal persecution what-so-ever. An individual does not strictly have to be a criminal to be monitored. It can be any one of us. And who's to say that law-abiding citizens won't be persecuted for reasons other than direct judicial causes?

The major problem(s) with national surveillance is often: "who has the right to disclose this information?" and "who determines what parts of this information can be utilized as judicial evidence?" and last but not least "to whom can this information be disclosed?". These questions worry me.

Of course, it would be argued that ALL crime should be fought with the tools we have readily available. Fair enough. But WHO has the right to pry into such sensitive information? What do they have as a legal-inscentive to use this information for? And for whom can the person(s) responsible for gathering specified informatiom disclose this information to?

Time will show...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Privacy_Day

The corporate environment

I'm sorry to say (not really, but I'll get into that later) that this looks like the last month I'll be working @ my current job.

I can honestly say I'm sick and tired.., nay, PISSED OFF at people with over-exaggerated opinions of themselves, driven only by their enormous power-seeking egoes...

Every time I have started work @ new office/business over the last 5 years, I almost certainly ended up working for these kind of people, which lately started to directly affect my work. And as a tragic turn of events, ended up giving the bastards more than one valid reason for discharging me, but they did not do so... Instead, they saw an opportunity to take major advantage of the situation and abuse my abilities to the fullest extent, while threatening with a dishonourable discharge if I don't comply.

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It's not that I'm ungrateful for the advantages I've been given or anything like that, but being told I'm not that devoted to my work, when all I've done for my employers is sacrifising my free time and also giving 110% at the same time.

Not being devoted enough? For Fuck's Sake!

Firstly, while I was given "flex-hours" (governing your own work schedule), I was stripped of the opportunity to work overtime, which in turn meant a fixed-rate salary every month.., no matter how much I worked! B.S.!

Then, in the 1st Q of 2009, my boss hired a P.R. consultant. This in itself did not do much in terms of working arrangements or anything. But, eventually, it became clear to me (and the lead programmer of the company) that this P.R. consultant was in fact, quite incompetent in our area of expertise.

And, as if this wasn't enough, he was endowed with the title "Staff Manager", and why you ask? Because he had managed a pizza-shop full of teenagers before he ended up at our offices.

Yes, a pizza-shop manager ended up staff manager at an IT company specializing in business-2-business, business-2-customer and electronic invoicing. Go figure...

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So, to show how much he appreciated my work, Mr.PR had kept an eye on me, the six months he had spent @work, noting non-standard conduct on my part, compiling a massive offensive. In my opinion, this is not showing respect. And not showing respect, yields nothing in return as a result, period.

You cannot expect to recieve respect, if you do not show any on your own part, *moan*-*sigh*, some people are just absolute fucking morons... no matter what.

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Just to clearify, I'm not whining because I might not have a job in 30 days. I'm generally pissed off because you'd think that grown men over 40-50yrs would be more fourthcoming and blunt about the whole mess.

But instead, they're fussing about what I'm costing the company in these unstable times, and that they cannot afford to keep my position any further.

So, either they had planned this all along, over a whole year! Or, they're just serving me bullshit to try and scare me to do something stupid to push me off the edge of my career, which is *NOT* going to happen.

I'll keep on showing up in the mornings to come, smiling ear-to-ear, tearing THEM down, day by day...

P.S. (14.08.2009 12:20)

I am not trying to act out a fit, or deliberately pissing them off with a clear conscience. Rather, I'm playing them at their own game. They can't fire me because they need me, and I can't quit because I need the cash.

Coincidentally, I've already been to a few job interviews, and to my surprise, this time around it wasn't really that hard to get them like so many times before. What with my newly appended CV, stronger and longer working experience and better understanding of business in general. Actually I find my self-entitled "unemployed period" to be quite tempering.

Kind of a blessing in disguise if you think about it =)

Moss on Firewalls

Think Free

Richard's Dream

An open book on the subject of freedom.

The book is entitled "Free as in Freedom", and is an interesting read about the hacker who started it all; computer ethics, software freedom, freedom of choice, open standards, open sharing of computer knowledge...

 RMS (Internet alias) is both loved and hated in the open source and free software camps. He has strong beliefs, and does not compromise about his 'freedom'.

MIT AI lab hacker; Richard M. Stallmann's crusade for free software. http://oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/

"Unquestionably, one of the great seminal figures of the hacker culture" -- Eric Raymond, open source evangelist and author of "The Cathedral and the Bazaar"

Linux, a disruptive technology?

I really like articles focusing on the disruptive force of Open Source and Linux ;P

The unknown, emerging from nowhere, taking on the big guns. Most of the big multi-national corporations are even beginning to realize the potential and cost-effectiveness of the systems available, and also it's insanely huge userbase. So it does not seem like Linux is going to be squeezed out of the market at first, due to it's superb' portability, stability and cost-effectiveness.

(Click the post-title for the original article.)

Operating Systems & area's of use

I'm getting quite fed up about reading articles discussing and comparing GNU/Linux, Windows and Mac OS X. A lot of the people writing these articles are missing the big picture. The systems are NOT similar, they are NOT based on any same principal or guideline what-so-ever...

Now, just to mention it; yes, they ARE based off some common UI (User Interface) guidelines. Most Operating Systems dating before the 80s did not incorporate any graphical user interface.



If you have seen the TV-movie "Pirates of Silicon Valley", you know that the whole GUI-idea was a rip-off from Xerox in the early 80s. As was the mouse peripheral device. A lot of the standards we enjoy today, were at first experimental projects at big companies that weren't all that comfortable about releasing any new technology, thinking it wouldn't appeal to the computer industry which had a reputation of being very conservative since the 70s.

To clear up about these different systems:

GNU / Linux:
Was developed as a hobby project by a software engineer student from Finland; Linus Torvalds. It was never supposed to become as big as it has. This is mostly thanks to the many computer hobbyists, gamers, professors, nerds and geeks around the world that endorsed development of an Open Source Operating System. For those of us that DO understand computers enough to be able to use a POSIX-system on a regular basis, it was a matter of choice: do we want a system that tells us what we need, can have or do? *OR* do we want a system that gives us the opportunity to do whatever we want? and even gives us the ability to modify/improve any part of the system at will?

GNU/Linux is, and will still be for some time; a system for specially interested.

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MS Windows / Mac OS (X):
Were developed as alternatives to IBM's business systems that were dominant at the time. Most computer systems at the time were very expensive "business machines". UNIX mainframes and super computers running at universities and big companies.

But in the latter part of the 70s and early 80s, Bill Gates from Microsoft, and Steve Wozniak from Apple Computers realized that normal people could benefit from owning a personal computer.

Steve began developing an affordable computer machine in his garage. While Bill Gates and fellow MS-colleague Paul Allen were buzy rolling out their founding product "Altair BASIC". When Steve Wosniak and Steve Jobs revealed their machine at a local computer convention, Bill and Allen were gobsmacked. Someone had beat them to the punch. After setting up a meeting with Apple Computers, they *borrowed* the GUI and peripheral device technology, and basically did what a lot of people accuse GNU/Linux communities of doing now; copying the user interface and input technology that had landed Apple on the map.

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Both companies were basically trying to do the same thing; bring a business-only solution to the consumer masses. Only, they stepped on each others toes in the process. Not to mention quite a lot of commercial sabotage and espionage.

Today though, the companies have different goals. And Microsoft owns quite a large part of Apple.

Apple changed their focus from being just a personal computer manufacturer, to become something of a cult icon instead. Bringing the movie, music and image industries together to worship the Apple Macintosh as the de-facto standard for audio/visual compositioning and editing.

Microsoft on the other hand paved along with their same goal of putting personal computers in the hands of the common man. Succeeding in having almost 90% of all computers running a MS product to this very day.

To quote a software engineering friend:

"Most of the average users I know would rather buy a new PC than upgrade Windows"

This says a lot about how normal computer users want to get their hands dirty with software handling. Most people get others to do it for them, or they do as quoted above. How things work, and how they should be set up, are not appealing to most non-tech-savvy people.

So it's not a question of which is better than the other. They have different areas of expertise, and so also different areas of usage.

To quote once more from my friend:

"The average consumer just wants to be able to pop a CD into his optical drive, wait 10-15mins and have a working system."

With popular open source operating systems, this is not actually an idiot-proof option yet. You still have to know what an MBR is, what a bootloader does and have some basic knowledge about different filesystems.

You really have to pocess a fair amount of advanced computer handling knowledge to be able to install a *nix-system on your PC. Let alone getting it working without any headaches or special considerations.

There ARE user-oriented Linux distributions which simplify a lot of the administration-tasks when maintaining a Linux-box. But these are usually quite bleeding-edge compared to older (matured with rock-solid stability) distro's, and tend to be buggy and unstable.., unless, you have prior experience handling difficult Linux-boxes / POSIX-systems like I have ;P

P.S.:
*nix = general acronym for POSIX-based operating systems (UNIX,Linux,BSD,Solaris).