Terminally Incoherent

It seems that Microsoft finally decided to make their Genuine Advantage “anti-piracy” checks mandatory. If I remember correctly, when this thing was first introduced, they said it will never be mandatory. So much for promises from MS

Don’t you love how they give the most positive sounding names to things that are really evil? The Genuine Advantage is peaty much equivalent to having your car searched by police every time you take it for a tune-up. Before you yell at me for exaggerating, think about it. How does MS check for “illegal” copies? I don’t know the details, but I’m peaty sure it involves registry scan because your cd key, registration and activation details are kept somewhere in your registry hive.

So, if MS can access that info, they can also access any other part of the registry. And guess what - that’s where information about every single piece of software you have installed is kept, and that’s where you can find clues about hardware you are running. If you have ever attempted to clean up your registry, you will also know that even after uninstalling, many programs leave traces in the registry.

Seth Schoen from EFF in an article at The Globe and Mail points out that:

Microsoft would not be able to identify customers personally through the program. But the data collected are unique to every customer, just as human fingerprints are unique, and the issue becomes how long the company holds onto the details and whether they could become personally identifying later on, he said.

This essentially means that Windows Update with Genuine Advantage check will exhibit spyware like behaviors. Could this be the reason why MS wanted to buy Claria? It appears that these talks did not go anywhere, and the deal is off - but it still makes you think. Was the real intention for that purchase to acquire Claria’s spying technology for use in Genuine Advantage? This is a very scary thought…

But again, they do not need Gator tech to scan through your registry, and collect enough information to generate a unique signature for your computer. Then they can track how often do you update, what kind of software do you use, how often do you update your hardware and etc.

Hell, what is stopping them from grabbing some system logs while they are poking around, or running a file system scan to see what kind of pr0n do you watch? I’m not saying they will do it, but they could do it, and you wouldn’t even know it!

I don’t like this

Cory Doctorow just posted this story at boingboing. Apparently some kid got busted for screwing with his school network. When they searched his house they found bunch of cantennas made out of empty pringle cans and such. The cops allegedly claimed that it is illegal to possess them!

Cory comments this in his post:

I’m not sure which law-book these two are reading, but this is simply not true. If there are cops from a “Hi-Tech Crimes Task Force” in Sacramento who think that making your own WiFi antenna is illegal, I think the Bee and other papers should be covering it, to be sure, but not because it’s true: because it’s a shockingly stupid and dangerous thing for a cop to believe, especially one who is billed as some kind of high-tech specialist.

Cory is my hero!

I guess according to the Sacramento “Hi-Tech Crimes Task Force” those who sell cantennas would be considered trafficking illegal goods. They would probably also need to arrest all these people posting instructions on how to make your own. Even one of the O’Reilly bloggers would have to go to jail.

This happens when you have people ignorant about technology working on “High-Tech Crimes Task Force”. This reminds me the Hackers movie in which the clueless FBI agent gives the same spiel about evil hackers every time he is interviewed on TV. Or course the movie is silly, but the situation is similar. We have a cop who doesn’t know any better, making stuff up for the media. Gah…

The same cop also claims that it is illegal to access a wireless network without proper authorization. This is also bullshit, but not as far fetched. After all, some people got arrested for that already. So the legality of using your neighbors access point is in question right now.

The new White Dwarf just came in the mail. They are featuring a preview for the new Wood Elf range, and I must say they have some impressive miniatures there.

Look at the Wood Elf Noble shown on the pic to the left. That must be one of the coolest elf characters available in the GW range. I want that miniature!

On the other hand the Highborn on that same pic looks mighty retarded with these horns on his helmet. Ugh… What were they thinking? I would so use the Noble miniature as my Highborn! That mini is so cool, I’m actually thinking about getting it and converting into a Dark Elf character

Speaking of horns - this guy on the right makes horns look good! One of the best elf mage characters ever! I actually want to start collecting this army just for these two models! But then again, I’m broke and I don’t have time to paint anymore My Dwarfs need a complete overhaul, and my nonexistent Dark Elf army needs more models. Eh… Not even mentioning my would be Eldar army… I just don’t have money and time for these things anymore.

But that doesn’t stop me from getting excited about the new minis. Btw - if you have seen these like last year on some tournament or GW event pictures, then good for you. I’m really out of the loop so this is news for me.

It seems that I have been featured on Computerworld’s Blogwatch page over my recent rip on Windows Chicken trademark dispute. Hehe. I’m glad I’m not the only person who finds this humorous!

It’s official - I’m on a mission now. I will not stop until everyone will start calling Longhorn the proper name: “Windows Chicken”.

I found a very interesting post in the Very Small Doses blog. Marc Xavier points out that in most Science Fiction today:

there’s this strong bias toward the view that people who are religious are ignorant, unintelligent or evil, and secular humanists are the “saviors” of true enlightenment.

I think there is some truth in this statement. There are countless examples of Science Fiction shows and movies which portray religion that way. Does that mean that most of Sci-Fi creators bigoted about religion? I don’t think so.

The way I see this, is that we have this cultural archetype of a religious zealot. We all know that religion can sometimes get slightly out of control. Christianity is as guilty of past blunders as almost any other religion of the world. Who haven’t heard of witch hunts, inquisition, and torture chambers? And who can forget about some extreme factions of Islam, which are willing to kill thousands of innocent people in the name of Jihad.

So we all know that religious fanatics do exist. They were here in the past, they are here now, and they will probably still be doing questionable things in the future. This is nothing new. Hence, many authors choose to use this archetype to create characters, and societies that we can relate to.

This is especially true for writers who grew out of Christian tradition. I guess all of Christians are aware of the less than perfect track record of our religion. We all know, that some pretty nasty things have been done in the name of god. But as the time passed, we have figured out that witches do not exist, and we really do not *need* to burn heretics… We also finally figured out that earth is not flat.

So stories about reason and science conquering superstition give us some sort of self-retrospective catharsis. So it’s not really an attack on religion itself - just a critique of blind superstition, and rejection of common sense and scientific thought. We like this types of stories, because they remind us that we really came a long way, and it makes us feel better about our civilization, and our religion.

Of course we also have the archetype of a mad scientist. There are countless stories featuring characters who abandoned religious, ethical and moral values and took science to the extreme. We like to moralize about “playing god”, “going against nature” and etc… In this type of stories we usually have a moral, and often even religious protagonist setting out to defeat the evil scientist, and his godless creation(s).

Again, science can be used to do some pretty nasty stuff. We developed nukes, biological weapons and etc… So this theme grows out of our fear of science technology getting out of control if left unchecked.

The stories about religious fanatics do no really attack religion, just like stories about mad scientists do not try to discredit science. What is attacked and demonized here is the notion of extremism. We fear both the fanatic zealot, and the insane scientist. These stories simply show that religion without science can turn into fanatic cult and that science without religion (or at least sound moral and ethical system) can also be very dangerous.