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Archive for August, 2013

Dr. Richard Stallman Versus Steve Jobs on Ethics

TechBytes with Stallman

Direct download as Ogg (00:02:02, 6.7 MB)

Summary: Dr. Richard Stallman, the Free Software Foundation’s founder, speaks about the harms caused by Steve Jobs


Made entirely using Free/libre software, heavily compressed for performance on the Web at quality’s expense

For Sale: War on Syria

Faked (staged) Kuwaiti girl testimony in run-up to the 1991 Gulf War

Syria is hardly the world’s biggest problem. Iraq wasn’t, either. None of the 9/11 hijackers came from there; in fact, they were mostly from US allies like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which points to the real motivation of the attacks: imperialism. Osama Bin Laden even said so himself, referring to he violation of the sovereignty in his home nation, where he was raised by a very affluent family. Bush, like Obama and Osama, pretended to be down-to-earth (dumb) and average because he knew his target audience. He didn’t get his position and his academic background by mere chance. He grew up in very a affluent environment, but his campaign showed an image of Bush that — much like Obama — helps sell foreign policy which is cruel and unjust. Obama even got a Nobel peace prize as if it was predicted, without evidence, that he would be good for peace. What utter nonsense. Bush, Obama, and Osama are all violent cowards. They have that in common.

Syria is said to have had many weapons funnelled into it by the CIA, based on leaks (the corporate press was forced to cover this top maintain some credibility). A long-established Zionist aspiration was to eliminate a regime in Syria which is not headed puppets like in Egypt (before the uprising). Iraq too was a concern and we know this because of Israeli bombings there decades ago. Iraq was confronted by Bush senior using false (staged) testimonies and the US had given Sadden a go-ahead to enter Kuwait, as revealed by some cables from Wikileaks. So there is a lot more to this story than we once knew. Recently, as the CIA declassifies material, we also got confirmation that the US supported Saddam’s use of chemical weapons against Iran, which it had derailed using a coup (against a democratically-elected government) decades earlier.

Many of the citizens who watch the corporate press do not know the facts and even have contempt for the facts, so selling a US-led war in Syria to them would just be too easy. As for the chemical attack in the centre of Syria, is seems like media propaganda spearheaded by the BBC. Back in January there was a report in the corporate press about a plot by the US to manufacture a chemical attack on the population and then blame it on Assad. What a strange coincidence. “Red lines” from Obama almost predict what’s likely a false-flag operation, one among many before it.

Free/Libre Software Explained by Richard Stallman

TechBytes with Stallman

Direct download as Ogg (00:04:02, 13.5 MB)

Summary: Dr. Richard Stallman, the Free Software Foundation’s founder, explains how Free software affects matters of control and power


Made entirely using Free/libre software, heavily compressed for performance on the Web at quality’s expense

Richard Stallman on Media

TechBytes with Stallman

Direct download as Ogg (00:00:50, 2.8 MB)

Summary: Dr. Richard Stallman, the Free Software Foundation’s founder, explains how the press in the US is controlled


Made entirely using Free/libre software, heavily compressed for performance on the Web at quality’s expense

What activity history looks like to Big Brother

International_Logo_of_Big_Brother

A lot of people easily fall for the flawed argument that if you don’t do anything wrong, then you don’t have anything to hide. “Metadata” belongs to the flawed argument that if you don’t know the contents of a conversation, then it’s not violating a person’s privacy. I decided to put some hypothetical history to refute these myths.

  • [Search] John Biggs searches Google for “nipple swollen”, clicks on result leading to Wikipedia
  • [ISP history] John Biggs visits Web site with medical doctors’ directory
  • [Landline history] John Biggs calls Dr. Jones, who specalises in cancer of the breast. Call lasts 15 minutes.
  • [Cellphone location log] John Biggs goes to the bathroom
  • [Cellphone log] John Biggs places a call from the bathroom, speaks to his wife for 60 minutes
  • [Search] John Biggs searches Google for “cancer death probability”, clicks on link pro-suicide forum
  • [ISP history] John Biggs spends 2 hours browsing around the pro-suicide forum
  • [Cellphone log]] John Biggs sends his friend, Daniel, SMS message stating: “Those suicide folks are crazy. Did you ever visit their sites?”
  • [E-mail log]] John Biggs writes to his uncle, who is 3 degrees of separation away (friend of a colleague of a friend) from an American Muslim whom the NSA deems “target” (hence E-mail can be viewed fully). E-mail parsed by semantic analyser and then interpreted by one of the many staff members of the NSA.
  • [E-mail log]] John Biggs writes another E-mail in which he mentions ammonia (in relation to a medical drug). The E-mail, which contains detailed description of John’s condition, can thus be read to ensure he is not building a bomb with ammonia.
  • [Cellphone location log] John Biggs goes to a chemist, who is also known by a vast database of people to have sold illegal drugs before. John Biggs is now added to the database as a “target”.
  • [Cellphone log] In collaboration with the DEA, John’s conversations with his wife can now be listened to in real time.

Just another day in life under Big Brother. But hey, it’s about fighting “terrorism” and it’s all just “metadata”.

The War Against Sharing – My Interview With Richard Stallman

TechBytes with Stallman

Direct download as Ogg (00:05:12, 17.5 MB)

Summary: Dr. Richard Stallman, the Free Software Foundation’s founder, explains his take on copyright and the artificial restriction being used against sharing


Made entirely using Free/libre software, heavily compressed for performance on the Web at quality’s expense

Argos Can’t Deliver

An epic fail

Argos

This rant is about Argos, a British retail giant/chain that can’t get some of the very basics right. Today I was scheduled to receive a wardrobe I had purchased a week earlier. It is a birthday gift for my wife. I paid effortlessly on their Web site (they’re good at taking money) and selected a 5-hour delivery slot 6 days in advance. Well, guess what? Nobody showed up. Then, at the very end of a 5-hour wait that kept me out of bed and out of work they have a robocaller call me to say they can’t deliver. No chance to say a thing, I could not speak to a person.

I phoned a couple of people at Argos (waste of time guaranteed), the latter said he would look into it and promised to call within an hour. Guess what? He never called back.

So I phoned Argos again. They struggled for 15 minutes in vain to just bring up the order on the screen. What a mess. They changed me, did not deliver, and now cannot even find the order by number, search on postcode, search on name, etc.

Don’t buy at Argos. They’re only good at charging people.

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