Xeno-Genesis

Stop SOPA

Jean-Pierre Rupp — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 21:48:10 +0000

In about eight hours, the Wikipedia website, as long Reddit and many others, will join in an unprecedented effort to stop a dying industry from hijacking the freedoms of American citizens. The intellectual property wars is escalating, and it can only become harsher if the governments of the world don’t understand that the most common forms of intellectual propery (patents and copyrights) are obsolete and should be entirely removed from law, as evidenced by Rick Falvinge in his blog. The intellectual property wars will not end until that happens. What’s left of our right to share and create are in great peril. Let’s not give up these freedoms to corporations and governments as we have been doing in the past. There’s no place for patents and copyrights on the Internet.

If you’re thinking that you’re safe from laws like SOPA and PIPA because you’re outside of the USA. Think again, many of the laws that your country abides by are pushed from Washington.

Ubuntu Private Folder

Jean-Pierre Rupp — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 21:01:50 +0000

I’ve been using full home directory encryption in my Ubuntu system for awhile. Although it works very well, there’s a slight performance impact. Not a big deal, but still, I don’t need to encrypt everything in my home directory, just some sensitive stuff. I decided to decrypt it, but still use an encrypted «Private» folder for sensitive files.

To create a Private folder, I used the ecryptfs-setup-private command. This was fairly straightforward. The interesting part came later: using symbolic links to allow applications to find sensitive data in the Private folder.

First, let’s move the Firefox passwords:

mkdir ~/Private/Firefox
mv ~/.mozilla/firefox/*.default/{key3.db,signons.sqlite} ~/Private/Firefox
ln -s ~/Private/Firefox/* ~/.mozilla/firefox/*.default/

Next step, my Bitcoin wallet, stored in ~/.bitcoin/wallet.dat:

mkdir ~/Private/Bitcoin
mv ~/.bitcoin/wallet.dat ~/Private/Bitcoin
ln -s ~/Private/Bitcoin/wallet.dat ~/.bitcoin/

Finally, the GnuPG keys:

mv ~/.gnupg ~/Private

Other sensitive files that aren’t related to any particular application I can also place in the Private folder to protect them from eavesdroppers. Now I don’t have to encrypt my whole home folder to protect a few sensitive files. In any case, full home directory encryption works very well in Ubuntu, and is the fastest encryption overlay I’ve used.

Desconfía de los psiquiatras

Jean-Pierre Rupp — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 16:14:18 +0000

Un psiquiatra decidió poner a prueba los diagnósticos de trastornos mentales enviando gente sana a una serie de hospitales psiquiátricos en EEUU en 1972. Los pacientes debían actuar normalmente, como gente sana que eran. Sin embargo, debían decir que sufrían de ciertas alucinaciones auditivas, lo cual por supuesto era falso.

Los hospitales no lograron identificar a los pacientes falsos, asignando diagnósticos de esquizofrenia o desorden maniaco-depresivo. Las estadías fueron de entre 7 y 52 días.

En una segunda segunda fase del experimento, se les indicó a los miembros de un hospital que les serían enviados pacientes falsos, y que tenrían que detectarlos. El hospital alegó que 41 pacientes eran impostores, y otros 42 eran sospechosos. Lo cierto es que todos eran pacientes legítimos. Los investigadores no enviaron ningún paciente falso al hospital.

Los resultados del experimento se publicaron en la revista Science, dejando a la práctica del diagnóstico psiquiátrico en descrédito.

Internet Explorer finally goes below 50%

Jean-Pierre Rupp — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 21:05:56 +0000

I said once that I was going to make a party when Internet Explorer market share dropped below 50%, but now given that its market share slowly dwindled instead of quickly dying, I find it all but surprising that we’re already at that point. Although Internet Explorer 9 is a decent effort to keep it alive, open source web browsers have already won the fight, for the better: thanks to them we have a more sophisticated and faster web.

But there’s still work to do, older Internet Explorer installations (versions 8 and lower) are still very much alive, and they need to die before the web can benefit from a wealth of good things that newer standards and browser implementations allow.

The fall of Internet Explorer is one of the biggest motivators for the new web technologies that we shall see in the near future. This is a victory of open source software and open standards, and a blow to Microsoft’s embrace-and-extend practices and disrespect for compatibility.

I also feel somewhat happy about the punishment that corporations that stuck with Microsoft no matter what received in the last few years. After Internet Explorer 6 was rightfully shot in the head and buried without honors, older sites and applications meant only for it could no longer work, prompting the businesses that depend on them to spend great amounts of resources to replace them. In a way, they got what they deserved. They should’ve known better than to help Microsoft dominate the web with incompatible proprietary standards.

Fortunately, it seems the web is meant to be free, and it rids itself from leeches sooner or later. I hope Flash becomes the next victim of standards, although it doesn’t need to be shot, only honorably discharged.

Now, when is it that an open source operating system will finally replace Windows?

Dropping computers from helicopters

Jean-Pierre Rupp — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 14:40:59 +0000

I admit that using helicopters to drop computers in remote locations and leave the villagers to learn how to use and support them sounds like a terrific plan to me. I suppose that at least the smart kids will figure out clever things to to do with them. I hope it actually gets done.

The sods must be crazy: OLPC to drop tablets from helicopters to isolated villages

Bitcoin: une monnaie ?

Jean-Pierre Rupp — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 14:13:44 +0000

Voici une bonne explication de comment Bitcoin répresente une vraie alternative aux monnaies traditionnelles émis par des banques centrales. J’aime décrire Bitcoin comme s’il s’agissait de l’or télétransportable, une monnaie presque parfaite. Plus d’information ici: http://www.contrepoints.org/2011/07/08/33982-bitcoin-une-monnaie

Mining Calculator Perl Script

Jean-Pierre Rupp — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 11:56:04 +0000

I made this Bitcoin mining script to help me calculate expected profits from my mining rig. I’m now sharing it with everyone under the GPL3 license to pass on and alter however you see fit. Download it from GitHub.

Rich people are not necessarily bad

Jean-Pierre Rupp — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 06:22:23 +0000

I don’t like the assumption by some people that rich people are generally bad. I seem to fail to see how that can be the case in a developed society with a working justice system and no government privileges granted to particular companies or individuals.

If there’s nothing but the market between you and your customers, I don’t see how bad people could succeed by cheating and lying their way to wealth. The justice system is there to enforce agreements and contracts, and well, justice. Misdeeds do not go unchecked. We sort of have this already. There are other cases where our current state of affairs is far from desirable, but these are generally due to some sort of special privilege or waiver extended from the government to certain groups. Look at intellectual property, for example, or import taxes. They benefit the few while hurting the many. But further from that I seriously doubt someone could get by selling poisoned toothpaste or a similar product in modern Europe or the US.

If you abide by market rules, and receive no government grant, privilege or waiver, and become rich, it can be assumed that your wealth have been rightfully earned. You have participated in voluntary exchange of goods, or services, you have probably provided jobs and paid salaries, while treating your employees properly in a way that they’ve decided to stay working for you voluntarily. You probably had to compete against other market players in terms of quality, or price. If you succeeded, well, I can only wish you enjoy your wealth.

If on the other side, you cheat, lie, and somewhat have strong ties with the authorities, so you find a way to avoid being caught. If you enjoy government-granted privileges, like intellectual property, and you use any means available to enforce it. If you have lobbyists in high government spheres defending your particular interests, working successfully to give privilege to you above others. If you have exclusive concessions or subsidies, then you don’t deserve my respect, you’re a bureaucrat, you’re a manipulator, and you don’t deserve any of your wealth. Damn you and all those like you.

Bitcoin Android

Jean-Pierre Rupp — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 21:22:38 +0000

A new Bitcoin client for Andorid has been released today, featuring a wallet that’s backed up in the cloud. It both looks and works great. Included are the ability to scan and create QR codes, sending payment requests by email, and performing offline transfers. It’s the first polished Bitcoin client I’ve seen for smartphones.

Legal ≠ Bueno

Jean-Pierre Rupp — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 05:17:54 +0000

En este brillante artículo Falkvinge expone que legal no necesariamente significa bueno, de hecho en incontables ocasiones significa exactamente lo opuesto. Todos los gobiernos se creen a sí mismos benévolos, desde los tiranos sanguinarios de Irán hasta los moralizadores suecos. Artículo en inglés.