Bad Evidence

Spectrial is only a day and a half in, yet half the charges against The Pirate Bay have been dropped. (see Torrentfreak)

Due to the fact that the evidence used cannot prove that the Pirate Bay's tracker was used for a set of .torrent files the prosecutor had for "evidence", the charges of "assisting copyright infringement" have been dropped, leaving only "assisting making available" which is, as I said, something Google and every other search Engine on the Internet is also guilty of. As is your ISP, might I hasten to add.

If The Pirate Bay lose this trial now (not likely, IMO) then you will quickly see any company on the internet that has any user content on it that IFPI/RIAA/MPAA/etc don't like being sued.

Those companies wouldn't try to take on Google (so my blog is safe, for now at least) but if the remaining charges succeed, then expect any ISP that doesn't agree with whatever IFPI/RIAA/etc want, then expect to see something like New Zealands propsed S92a.

Spectrial

The trial of The Pirate Bay has started in Sweden.

Apparently, the prosecutor wrote a memo in 2005 saying a trial couldn't be argued over evidence (source: Torrentfreak) indicating what we all thought: This trial is purely political. It is a political attack on The Pirate Bay and it's creator's.

Several media outlet's have been banned from all of the Pirate Bay's conferences for making it all personal. They have been making the trial about the creators and their political views, not about the issue at hand and The Pirate Bay itself, which I think we can all agree is wrong.

Well, here's my two cents (or whatever denomination you choose.)

The Pirate Bay is no different from Google or your ISP. They are all carriers of information, and it is up to the users to decide what to do with the information.

Google is a very good finder for torrents, or any direct methods of illegal downloading.

P2P technology is a very good idea and, to be totally honest, the reason why it's mainly used for illegal downloading (other than because it's more anonymous) is that no company has started to use it for legal filesharing, despite to costing companies less, easy enough to control, and very efficient.

When Microsoft failed to release Windows 7 Beta on time, everyone blamed it on the fact that they didn't use P2P. There are ways of controlling who gets it (there have been small uses of P2P for legal things, all of which MUST have been suggested to Microsoft) and it decreases load on the original servers exponentially once some people start seeding it other than the original server.

Anyway, back to the point: You wouldn't blame Google for being able to find websites with people offering illegal downloads.
Nor would you blame your ISP for allowing you to access Google, even though, as we just pointed out, Google has lots illegal content. if you blame The Pirate Bay for allowing you to see any torrents people put up, legal or illegal, then you need to blame Google and your ISP too, plan and simple.

Now, assuming you blame the carriers (something you can't do in any medium other than the internet: would you blame the postal service for delivering a mixtape?) then every ISP on the internet is breaking the law and owes millions or even billions of pounds/dollars/etc. to the various companies (IFPI, RIAA, MPAA, etc.) who "own" the material. (With about 5p in every pound going to the indvidual recording companies, and about half a penny or something ridiculous going to the artists.)

Now, the only way ISPs could continue to deliver the internet would be to have limited access to specific sites to ensure you never see any illegal content. Think about the ramifications of this: You could see this site, but not my site (Mehall.co.cc) because I couldn't afford to pay the fee they would inevitably charge to check my site had no illegal content (or any content speaking in any negative way about the ISP, filtering, circumventing the filter, the current, past or future governments, laws, etc etc etc.)

The same would apply for hundreds upon thousands upon millions of sites all over the internet. The internet could have been kept closed, with Tim Berners Lee (who invented the internet at CERN in the early 1990's) able to make millions of pounds. Instead, he used his vision and made it free for everyone to use, to allow a global community to be created, with no one person having a greater sway over any site than any other.

Now, I agree, some filtering of content has to be done, but I only think this should be done in cases such as paedophilic content and hindering the progress of terrorist activity, with the latter verging on allowing more, than denying more. Our freedom's in real life should also apply to our freedom's on the internet, and they should not be curtailed for any reason.


I look forward to the whole of "Spectrial" (the name of The Pirate Bay trial which, it has been said by Pirate Bay owners, will eventually be a soap opera) and I look forward to see the outcome.

Recent Happenings

First things first, I found a belated entry to my "The good, the bad and the Ugly" blog, the Internet Five. As shown in the image (unless Vern Troyer is reading my blog now, better viewed in full-size, so click on it, the come back here to read the blog) you merely place your hand on the screen. similar to the self-five, yet individual in it's own right.

EDIT: Fixed. At all those reading the Crunchbang #! Planet, I apologise. In my blog post, the image is scaled to a reasonable size, but not on the planet. I'll try to be more aware in the future.


Anyway, on to other matters.


Terry Pratchett
I finally got around to watching "Terry Pratchett: Living with Alzheimers" on iPlayer and find that, even when he is talking about a matter so serious, and so close to home, he still gets his lovely wit through.
My favourite two quotes, one from each episode as it would happen, are thing's I Twittered when watching the show. The first one is when he is showing you his office in his house. He has a decent computer, and he has six (yes, 6) screens on his desk. Three large widescreen ones, with non-widescreen versions above. He tells the viewers "Some people ask why I have six screens. It's because I don't have enough room for eight." He is a man after my own heart, and the money to fund it. (I don't even OWN six screens just now, never mind the graphics cards to use them all.)

The quote from the second episode, he is starting to wonder about the future, and he says "I'm thinking will I end up lying somewhere as a vegetable. And part of me is wondering: What kind of vegetable shall I be?"

I'm going to contact his agent, Colin Smythe, and see if there is a chance for him to visit my club at Strathclyde Uni, "The Fanatical Guild of Terry Pratchett Fans" next time he happens to be in Glasgow, as I would love the chance to meet him again.

Crunchbang #!
Philip Newborough is hard at work on the new version of Crunchbang, 8.10.03 (the 3rd version based upon Ubuntu "Intrepid Ibex" aka Ubuntu 8.10) and this one shows many changes. The most important thing is that Crunchbang is now hosted on Launchpad, so anyone can now offer to help Philip with the new version.

The other major change is the introduction of Crunchbang's second supported architecture, though it is only 64-bit support, rather than adding in PowerPC or SPARC. (Or even Alpha ;)

Crunchbang is coming along nicely, and it is currently my Operating System of choice, being on 3 different computers, and soon to be my dad's EEE PC (a 701 4G if anybody cares.)

Final Note
My mum was doing a clear-out of her room, and she found my Primary 1 report card. It's something she has considered throwing out every time she clears out, but always kept it. This time she said either I could take it, or it could go in the bin, so I lifted it for now.

This report card showed I started as I intended to continue in that the teacher's main criticism was that I "Can be rather talkative during task times", a motif that was repeated throughout my time in Primary and Secondary School.

Learning? No need for learning.

I saw something indescribable today. I was on IRC and someone I know was admiring another user's bot, and asking about using it himself. He declined using the bot from his own computer/our department/on an extra shared shell server we have that can run it. Why? "I don't have Python on my computer. How do I invite your bot into my channel?"

What is the point in having the option to try out something so simple, especially when there are various options open to him, and it's an opportunity to learn something, and declining it because of so simple a reason?

Whatever you're studying, whatever you do, whatever you are interested in, you shouldn't ever pass up on a chance to learn about something you're interested in using.

Websites don't belong to the community.

Yes, that's right.

Far too often I see member's of a community on any number of websites assuming that just because they don't think the site should run the way it does, it should change, or that a possible decision shouldn't be made because they don't like it on the site.

A website is owned by a person, a group, or a company/organisation.

It is up to the site owners what does and doesn't, can and can't happen on a site.

Yes, most sites value their communities and take them into consideration when considering any changes/additions to the site, but the community DOES NOT RUN the site.

Repeatedly making comments about something when they have been shot down by the community as a whole or by the site owner will not make a difference.

People far too often forget that sites are not a community item, but something owned by someone.

Edit: I'd just like to clarify that this is not strictly aimed at any one site, and chances are if you're reading this, it's not aimed at what you think it is. This is just something I've been thinking about for a while.

High Fives: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

We are all familiar with the common or garden high five, but there are many other ones out there. In this, I aim to enlighten you as to which to avoid, and which to covet.

The Good

Meme Five
Now don't mistake me, I love Internet Memes, but there are far too many of them. Over 9000 some might say. So when I say this, I mean more friend specific in-jokes, rather than full-blown memes. Having said all that, there IS the following:

Rick Astley/ RickRoll Five
Sometimes, this can come across as a bit of a jerk thing to do, but when rickrolls are properly executed (the best ones being ones IRL like this) They can actually be excellent, and in such cases generally deserve a Five.

The Bad

Self Five
The Self five is one of the most pitiable objects on the earth.


The Ugly

Torture Five
The Torture Five is when the Geneva Convention is pushed to its limits in order for one person to take an undeserved Five from another. The Torture Five is to be avoided at all costs, and it is often reccomended to give an undeserved Five, rather than be involved in someone taking a Five from you.

"Thats what she said" Five
Now it may seem that this is, in fact, a very positive thing, but under many occasions, the phrase gets overused, and you end up with needless Fives being given for things that, in retrospect, weren't very great at all.


Remember: only allow Fives when they have been earned.


In other, more serious news, I'd like to tell everyone about a great Linux Distrobution I have been using called #! Crunchbang Linux.

It uses the "Openbox" window manager, and has a cool resource monitor called Conky. Conky can be set up to tell you network usage, disk space, your rapidshare points, you could probably use it with twitter, you can have it tell you the weather, it's endlessly scriptable, and there is a large following of people who love to mess about with it.




That's one of my set-ups, though I did keep mine simple. Oh, and the standard theme is very minimalist, but I picked an even MORE minimalist theme. The thing entitled "Terminator" on the left is the standard terminal for the distrobution, but my theme means its top bar fades into the black of the wallpaper.



EDIT: Fixed all the superflous apostrophies. Sorry Al!

Windows 7: Now we're getting somewhere

Well, now that people have actually been allowed to get the Windows 7 Beta, I have to say it's looking good. Not the greatness that Microsoft needed right now, but good. it's what Vista wanted to be, basically.

As is normal for a Microsoft release, they have moved some of the advanced options further away from us. I spent a good half hour trying to find how to do something that takes 2 minutes in Xp and 5 in Vista, so not all is good.

There are various posts in the web talking about how you can fix any of the issues annoying you (most notably, having text on the "superbar", so you can see which have active windows, and which are quickstart buttons.)

Overall I'm happy enough with Seven, but it's just Vista SP2, and Microsoft needed mroe than that.

XP is dying on my machine, despite only being there for a few months, so I'm moving to Linux full-time. Seven's not there as a full-time OS, in my opinion, so I'll be wiping my computer when there's a final version of a Linux OS with ext 4 support (probably looking at kubuntu 9.04)