Movie week : Movies every geek should see (4 of 5) : The internets own boy.
Oct 16The one thing that has upset the previous generations the most in the modern digital age, is that sometimes a 12 year old kid could come along and be better at something then everybody else. No matter if you had a Harvard degree, or 20 years of experience .. Sometimes some kid came along and did stuff that made your jaw drop. This was the case with Aaron Swartz , a bright kid who founded Reddit. Aaron was an exceptionally gifted person with his own views on freedom of information. This often clashed with a surrounding world that was not quite ready for his pioneering vision. Unfortunately Aaron is no longer with us .. and the sad story why this the case can be discovered in the full documentary below. A “must-watch” !
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kw802 : Storytime.
Feb 09Its storytime again on the Knightwise.com podcast. We bring together some awesome tunes and two great stories from the blog. Sit back, relax and enjoy our two columns ” I’m not a Gamer ” and ” Privacy is a statement”
Shownotes.
– Privacy is a statement (original article : https://knightwise.com/column-privacy-is-a-statement/)
– I’m not a gamer (original article : https://knightwise.com/column-im-not-a-gamer-im-just-retro/)
Music.
– Aural Planet : Hydropoetry Cathedral.
– Puff Dragon: Chinese_Radio.
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Column : Privacy is a statement.
Feb 07“Privacy is dead” It’s one of those boilerplate expressions you hear whenever there is a discussion about the NSA sniffing bits along some transatlantic cable, or a scandal about a flash light application that shares all your contacts with a Chinese scammer. Perhaps people are right. Keeping your data to yourself is becoming harder and harder to do. Marketeers, Governments, applications, devices, .. they all seem to be out to track and trace our every move and share whatever we do with the world.
Google knows all about my emails, Facebook knows everything about my life. My Cellphone is playing little snitch to some Canadian marketing agency in their plan to help push targeted advertising my way. Why should I bother with privacy ?
“Why should we bother” Well : you can ask yourself that question. The only way to remain untraced these days is to crawl into a cave in the centre of the woods and never come out.
But when I look at most people around me … they seem to be doing the opposite. Not only don’t they have a problem with their privacy being invaded .. they seem to rationalize the very invasion of their privacy into something trivial.
“ They can watch me , I have nothing to hide” .
If that were to be true .. why bother wearing clothes to work in the morning. Let’s rip off the curtains in the bedroom so everybody can see your “lateral aerobics” on Sunday afternoon.
Lets take away all the doors of the restrooms so we can poop and talk face to face at the same time .. You said you don’t have anything to hide .. right ?
You see, that is where the “nothing to hide’ statement” breaks down. Our personal privacy makes us who we are. Whether you are pooping out the longest turd in history OR shooting heroine up your arm .. you will close the door of the toilet stall nevertheless.
You don’t have intimate conversations with your wife from opposite sides of the football-pitch… You don’t scratch your lady parts in front of your boss when they are itchy ?
How about shouting out what you make a year to your co-workers ? No ? See .. you DO have things to hide. Personal things. And that personal privacy defines you as a person, as an individual .. and not a member of a mindless herd.
‘I’m not doing anything wrong’ is another slippery slope. Because “Right” or “Wrong” are relative to whatever situation you are in. Take the family that googled “Fertiliser” and “pressure cooker” on a Sunday afternoon. They had a swat team break down their door and arrest them on suspicion of trying to blow stuff up. Did they do anything wrong ?
Try doing a paper on Fundamentalism, cancel your life insurance and book a one way plane ticket to the US. You will end up with a lot of questions to answer at best OR a cavity search before you leave the airport. Why ? You’re not doing anything wrong. But the lubed up glove of the border patrol officer sure makes you wonder if something might be ‘up’.
“What can they do with that info anyway” You would be amazed how you can puzzle the most trivial of data together into one giant revealing blob of information about your interests, your habits, your life. And if you are lucky , the picture they paint will be correct. What they DO with that picture is completely out of your hands .. But suppose they get it WRONG ? What if taking that information out of perspective, or crunching the data wrong will depict you as somebody chronically addicted to gambling. What if your future boss thinks you are an unreliable alcoholic because he saw those 5 public pictures of you at this embarrassing party. If the information they collect gets misrepresented, distorted or manipulated it can mean a whole lot of trouble. And the more information that’s out there , the higher the odds of that happening.
“I don’t care if they are watching”. Maybe you don’t. But that depends on WHO is watching ? You might not have a problem having your internet traffic logged by the government who want to “keep you safe”. But what about that dingy kid in the corner of the internet café who is sniffing the local wifi network for dirty pics and juicy urls ? What about that stalky sys-administrator at work who is going through your logs to find out what flowers you like. ( It’s Valentines day soon , creeps need to get laid too) Are you sure you want to be this “open” with them ? Are you sure you don’t want to keep some stuff away from nosy snoopers ?
So take care of your privacy. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that it is JUST the government that is trying to watch you. For every NSA agent looking at your personal data … there are 10 marketeers trying to analyse your habits and e 20 more script kiddies, hackers, key loggers and mallware bots trying to get their hands on your information. You might want to disclose everything to the authorities .. But that doesn’t mean you have to do it to everybody else.
So lets make privacy a statement. I protect my information, my communications and my data NOT because I’m doing anything wrong .. but because I’m NOT doing anything wrong. I’m exercising my basic right of being my own private free individual. I’m not a felon, not a convict. My bedroom does not get searched every two weeks by guards . I’m not in jail. I am free , free to choose NOT to disclose my personal information to ANYONE who queries it.
So protect your right to your privacy as a basic right of being a free individual. Wear your encryption skills like a medal of your techno-skills. Be smart and challenge every request for your personal data. Go tell Runkeeper to sod off when it wants to see all your friend info on Facebook. Ditch applications/websites that needlessly want to log or track you. Share what YOU want to share. Your personal privacy is not only a basic part of your personal freedom .. its a statement : The statement that YOU are FREE.
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Still looking for the best : David Hasselhoff’s very best now on CD.
May 03Thank god its friday my friends and fellow geeks. Friday : That day in the week where we can shed our dull dry articles about command lines and the possible future of Windows 8 on daiperboxes and deal with whats really important : The ridiculously stupid. Let us all hold digital hands as we celebrate the release of a music album that can, without a doubt, be seen as one of the epic musical milestones of the 21st century. An album that will be owned by many of you, loved by all and probably will find its place in Picards personal musical library on the Enterprise D … in about 300 years. Who might this be who can create such a timeless piece of musical history ? Of course the answer is simple : Only the rider of the Knights (Wait .. that sounds all wrong from my point of view.) the “Watcher of the Bays” can do this. I am talking about the “VERY BEST” album of none other then “The Hoff”.
Compiled on a silver platter we can find some of his most popular tracks where he brings us the ultimate musical coitus with his personal awesomeness. An album that will stand the test of time, the call of ages .. Music that might even break dimensional rifts and rock Daleks right out of their armored casings. Bring forth the Hoff and let us revel in the wonderful reviews on Amazon.com where musical enthusiasts and geeks like ourselves .. chant praise to the Hoff. From the great book of Amazon I bring you this faithful Hoffstodians confession :
Economic nationalists throughout the country shuddered when the Commerce Department announced a Q3 trade imbalance comfortably exceeding $100 billion, the highest on record. We buy our electronics from Japan, our confections from France, and our oil from the Persian Gulf. So why must we import the cream of our own culture from abroad? We don’t store the Constitution in Germany. We don’t launch the Space Shuttle from China. So why must we buy our Hasselhoff from distant foreign lands? Demand for this benchmark piece of Americana will surely send the trade economy reeling even closer to the abyss.Its pending stupefying popularity notwithstanding, this is not an album without flaws, as flaws are inevitable when one takes on the impossible task of distilling Hasselhoff to a single disk. This is, after all, akin to reducing Aristotle to a lone pamphlet – nay, a matchbook cover. Because while this CD does include every Hasselhoff song that topped the charts in ninety countries or more, it was really the deep album work that made Hasselhoff synonymous with underground edge, incendiary lyrics, and youthful angst the world over. The poets who found their calling in the deeply nuanced lyrics of 1984’s “Night Rocker” will be crestfallen to see that album underrepresented beyond its touchstone hits. Jungle-based rebels from Columbia to Burma who viewed 1989’s “Looking for Freedom” as a clarion call to arms will be outraged that the entire second side of that inflammatory album is absent (with the inevitable exception of “Flying on the Wings of Tenderness”). And lovers who exchanged their lifetime vows to the ballads of “Crazy For You” will be devastated to see that only two of them are included here (even “I Wanna Move to the Beat of Your Heart” is inexplicably omitted!). However, the wounds gouged into our souls by these countless omissions are salved by the sweet succor of the eighteen songs that are included. All told, despite the travesties that come from reducing Hasselfhoff to a single disc, this is clearly one of the finest works in the entire oeuvre of human expression. By Charles
So let us dance into the weekend with this wonderful video clip. Some call it the worst song ever made .. I call it an artistic exploration of how far you can take bad green-screen technology before it makes your eyes bleed. Aside from “Looking for Freedom” this must be his all time best !
So go forth and BUY THE CD.
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This is why the internet should never be censored.
Nov 28You hear a lot online about net neutrality and governments who try to “protect” their citizens from the dangers of the world wide web. From the great firewall of China to the corporate IT control freak who wants to whitelist ‘his’ part of the internet. The world is filled with people who try to impose their view of what is wrong or right. Here is what I have to say about those who try to regulate what we see :” DON’T ! ” Yes, the internet is a crazy place without borders, and YES there are creepy guys out there trying to do all kinds of strange stuff… But its also a fun place, a wild unpredictable place where , under the banner of anonymity we can expose our soul , our strangest cravings and our weirdest creativity. But more importantly .. the free and wild internet lets us connect with other humans on a fundamental level. In the blink of an eye we can share a moment, and experience with a total stranger. Behind the veil of anonymity and far away from the social clutter that is called Facebook .. We find the one thing we share in common with EVERY stranger on the internet. The fact that we are both human and can share the most primal emotions. Watch the video below and watch the reactions on all those faces. It takes a minute to get furiously angry at someone .. It takes only a second to share a common smile. And I DARE YOU … try not to smile while watching the video … If you do ? Then you’re human after all 😉
