I have relocated.

After holding the domain for almost a year and doing nothing with it, I have finally moved my blog from blogspot to it's new home ...

http://bastardsheep.com/

All previous entries can be found there, so please update your bookmarks and start using that URL instead.

Lesson #5489 in getting media sympathy: violate human rights worse than your neighbor.

What the f*%k is up with the media in the last 12 months? Anywhere there's a conflict happening, the reporting is as arse-backwards as it could possibly be, if not more so. Case in point, the current fighting happening in Sri Lanka between the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tigers. I am yet to see a news story that doesn't demonify SL while glossing over the TT. Sri Lanka attacked a hospital, they injured and killed women and children.

I'm sorry, but the only reason not only the women and children were attacked as well as the hospital in the first place was because the Tigers set up their base of operations INSIDE the hospital, using the women, children, sick and injured as human f*%king shields! That's a horrendous act. It's low. It's despicable. It's cowardly. It's pathetic. It's a MUCH worse violation of human rights than what Sri Lanka are doing, yet it's only Sri Lanka getting demonified for it! WHAT THE F*%K IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE???

I don't give a rats arse how bad it is that Sri Lanka attacked because comparitively the act of hiding where they did and using innocent civilians as they have done is a hundred times worse.

It's the same with Israel/Palestine in their conflict earlier. Hamas regularly send salvo after salvo at Israel trying to provoke them, yet every time Israel fire back they are the ones demonified. In the latest invasion of Palestine by Israel, it was as a direct response to regular attacks on Israel despite cease fires being in place. Again, Hamas hid troops inside peoples homes using civilians as human shields. They set up their base of operations in hospitals using the sick and injured as human shields. They booby-trapped hospitals, schools, and peoples homes trying to lure Israeli soldiers inside often resulting in civilian deaths as the traps went off or were detonated prior to soldiers going in. Who copped all the blame in the media and calls for humans rights violations? Was it the ones who set up the innocent civilians to be injured and went out of their way to ensure innocent people were between them and the guns? No, it was Israel!

Damned f*%king straight I'm pissed off, and with good reason. I understand the people of Palestine want their independance, same for those in the area where the Tamils are, but the actions of the Tigers and Hamas are so horrible, despicable and cowardly they defy words. I can't think of anyone more deserving of going up against the human rights courts, yet by all accounts they appear to be getting off scot-free, and it just makes me sick.

The difference between supernatural and natural: underinformed.

One often wonders how there can be so many people out there that believe in supernatural things. Or for that matter, how people can not believe in them when there's so many websites, books and documentaries about such things. So much information, but is it enough?

Despite all the information these sources have, they're always incomplete. They always paint a picture of what is directly observed but highly lacking in surrounding information. It is usually in this surrounding information that the explanation lies.

Take a look at this post by Brian Dunning. You can tell straight away he's a sceptic by the amount of seemingly irrelevant information he's providing. A believer for example would talk about the hills and the cars driving on those hills, the houses, and that's it. They wouldn't talk about the trees, the clearness of the sky, or mention the security guard in such detail. Without that key but seemingly irrelevant information that a believer wouldn't include, one would have no hope of coming up with the right explanation for the lights as per Brian's second post here.

It reminds me of a discussion at another forum with someone about so called light angels. This particular image (right) was the example he used of a mysterious light that appeared for 3 days in a row. These would appear before the sun was up and would disappear and re-appear quite quickly. I've seen these before so instantly knew what it was and tried to explain them to him, but no matter what I said he wouldn't believe me. His most common rebuts were that the sun wasn't up and that these were in a shaded area.

After a lot of very persistant questioning he started a new thread and included a location (Novy Jicin, Czech Republic), a rough map (left), sunrise (5:22am) and times it appeared (6am-7:30am). From this I was able to track down the location in Google Maps. From google maps, I could use the shadows of the buildings and surrounding trees to scope out the size of them in comparison to each other and low and behold, all the evidence backed up my explanation to a tea.

What was happening was that it was early in the morning. In both maps you can see roughly where the photographer was located. They were in a position that kept them in the shade. The building to the south blocked the direct light from the sun to the person. The building behind the person was taller than the building to the south. The walls of that building are not reflective enough to reflect much of the light. The windows on the other hand, were.

As the sun caught the windows, they not only reflected the light but also expanded as things do. With nowhere to expand due to the window pane, the glass formed an ever so slight concave shape which warped the light being reflected. This light then shone over to the building across from it, warped, forming the shape seen in the picture. It only appeared in the morning when the sun was in the right position and at the right height.

The trees to the south of the southern building as well as clouds meant the lights appeared and disappeared suddenly. The change in path of the sun through the seasons means it only occurred for a 3 week period.

Here we have a perfect example of the warping of the light. The ones in red are unwarped, the ones in yellow are warped.


Evidence which he hadn't payed enough attention to himself to take note of happened to be the key evidence required to find the rational and correct explanation, no supernatural one required.

Is nothing safe? Woo is now involving wine!

Today I tried to summon a sandworm. I know full well they are a fictional creature, but sometimes you come across something that affects you in a way that you just cannot help but to create a rhythmic thumping sound similar to that used in their summoning. I'm sure you too have experienced such things. One moment you're innocently browsing the internet, reading the paper or watching TV. The next moment there is an emanating thump, thump, thump, thump, as your forehead repeatedly hits the palm of your hand or the desk in front of you.

Today's summoning comes from a story on BoingBoing about an apparently new trend taking rise mostly in England, Germany and America. The story is about a method of farming called "biodynamics". The methods read word for word as though from occult, magical, and mystic traditions although the purveyors of it do not advertise it that way. They tend more to claim it as a method of organic farming, free of modern "harsh" chemicals and sprays.

Before reading further, I would like to request you ensure you are seated and have a collection of cushions ready. Please place one either in the palm of your hand, or on the table in front of you.

It was all started by one Rudolf Steiner in 1924 who claims to have come upon this after communicating telepathically with spirits. Please add another cushion. The two most popular are to place either fermented cow manure in a horn, or ground oak bark in a cow's fresh skull. This horn or skull is then buried in a shallow moist hole in a field for two seasons upon which time it is extracted and the contents applied in nearly undetectable quantities (akin to homeopathy) throughout the field.

It doesn't stop there. Biodynamics extends beyond the farm too. Please add another cushion. The two wine producers responsible for almost one third of the wine sold in the U.K. have started using biodynamics in their wine tasting too. You see, it's not just about the growing of the plants, there's also the consumption to consider. The consumption times are based upon a combination of moon cycles and astrologyy to seperate the days and hours out in to periods known as fruit, flower, leaf and root, the former two being the best for tasting and the latter the worst. How one figures out which period is which is a tightly held concept, but of course they are more than happy to let you know what times are good and bad ... by selling you an overpriced calendar containing this information.

So, biodynamics can be summed up as a combination of druidic, wiccan, magic and occult practices, ghosts and other-worldly beings, homeopathy and finally astrology. I bet these people claim to be christian too. Those of you who didn't add enough cushions throughout reading this most likely also have wormsign.

Source1: BoingBoing.
Source2: The Guardian.
Source3: SF Weekly.


As an aside, I've heard many people speculate that thanks to modern medicine, human evolution has all but come to an end. Sometimes though when I look at all the woo and people purposefully and willingly choosing the options which have zero supporting evidence and deriding the options that have mountains of supporting evidence ... I start to wonder if this increase in willing ignorance is actually a new evolutionary change to once again bring back the possibility of survival of the fittest.

The piddler fails again.

The piddler is continuing on his campaign of misinformation and blatant lies about the filter. Anybody else would have gotten sick of being caught out so many times, but fortunately for Conroy, the media for the most part don't really care so it's only those of us who are informed about the Rabbit-Proof Firewall who seem to notice how pathetic and incompetent he is at anything other than backstabbing and weaseling.

Case in point, according to this article at computerworld, at a press conference earlier today Senator Conroy stated "It is completely untrue that the leaked blacklist contains political content. This is a list which contains sites that promote incest, rape, child pornography and child abuse."

I would like him to point out the incest, rape, child pronography and child abuse at abbey winters, a website whose tours and opening page are on the blacklist. I'd also like to see how any of those are promoted by euthenasia websites. Amongst the other pronographic websites, is he going to stand by his words that every single one of them promote those things? Most of the ones I dared visit to check certainly didn't, nor did an Australian reseller of toys and media whose address is located in Queensland and again is on the very same list.

Mr Conroy, I believe these words of yours could well be considered defamation by those whose websites are on the list who do not promote such things. Are you willing to back up your claims?

Source: ComputerWorld.

Agnry on the filtar!

I'm regularly being surprised by the number of people who are letting their anger at the Australian Rabbit-Proof Firewall cloud their judgement and ability to analyze things clearly. I too am completely opposed to the Rabbit-Proof Firewall in its current form, but lets take some realistic looks at what can be seen on the list.

One thing that majority of people seem to be forgetting, Michael Meloni and Mark Newton included, is that it's not just about the content hosted on the site. It is also about the delivery methods. I know people hate comparing new media to old media, but it's the clearest way I can think of to give an example of what I am talking about.

Old Media:
When it comes to pornography on old media, most people think magazines. There's limites to not only what you can and can't show in magazines, but also in what you can and can't show depending on the restriction methods. If you want to have skin showing but no boobs or genetalia on the cover, your magazine is allowed to have its entire cover being displayed on the stand. Exposed boobs require a bit of censorship, the more you show inside the magazine and on the cover the more restrictions you have in place right down to the magazine having to be in a sealed plastic cover with a large non see-through patch covering the magazine.

Now in the final example where the magazine is one that must be in a non see-through sealed plastic bag, although the content itself (the pictures in the pages) themselves are legal. If you take two copies of the magazine, take one out of the sealed plastic cover and put both back on the shelf, what do you have? One is now illegal and one is now legal. They are both the EXACT same magazine with the EXACT same content, but because one is being distributed WITHOUT the required age verifications, that makes that particular magazine's distribution illegal.

New Media:
For new media I will use an example which has been mentioned on almost every website with an article about the blacklist ... abbywinters. The ONLY parts of Abbywinters which are blocked are the free tours and the base page, both of which display full frontal nudity without age verification. This method of distribution according to all Australian laws is illegal. These are examples of the magazine that is not inside the sealed plastic cover.

The sections of abbywinters behind the login page (which does adequate age verification at time of signup) and the login page itself are all accessible! These are examples of the magazine still inside the sealed plastic cover. The difference is the distribution method, nothing more nothing less.

Summary:
This is the key to what can be seen on the ACMA blacklist. Same website, same images in some cases, but examples of legal and illegal distribution. It is only the sections being distributed illegally that appear on the 18th March 2009 ACMA blacklist.

----------------------

99.99% of the list then can be summed up as the following: Illegally distributed porn, childporn, terror on teh interwebs (anti-zombie website which tells you how to make a small bomb), incest, euthenasia instructions (not just discussion).

There's that, and 3 other pages.
1. A website link anonymiser. The idea behind it is that the linked-to website cannot see in the server logs where the person who clicks on the link is coming from. I am completely at a loss as to how this is illegal.
2. The dutch blacklist. Again, I'm at a loss as to how this is illegal. The best possible excuse I can think of is that it is a link to a link to a page of links to illegally distributed content.
3. A ballroom dancing website's guestbook which has had the crapola spammed out of it. Again the best possible excuse I can think of is that it is a link to a link to a page of links to illegally distributed content.

Can anyone tell me if it is actually illegal to link to such things in this country, or are all three examples above overly-zealous?

----------------------

I'm sure there's more 100% legal pages and sites I missed when perusing the list, but that's the best I have found for now.

Tequila. The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems.

If anyone had tried to tell me this I would have just looked at them strangely and allowed the word "bullshit" to flow out of my mouth. However, this is found on the internet so it MUST be true!

It seems some scientists in Mexico have found a way of using Tequila for more than just getting people drunk, getting ugly people laid, and making people worship the porcelin god. They claim that they've found a way to turn it in to "diamonds" which can be used for detecting radiation, coating mining equipment, and even as a replacement for silicon in computer equipment.

Can someone explain to me how a drinking alcohol, a radiation detector, a solid coating for mining tools and a silicon replacement can be even remotely related?

They say that due to restrictions on tequila/cactus harvesting many Mexican farmers have changed to hashish farming. Methinks the scientists have been smoking a tad too much of their produce. Read the article and decide for yourself.

Source: ABC.net.au.
Via: OCAU.

Nananananananananananananana Batmaaaan!

The cheap-arsed money grabbing mayor of Batman in Turkey is ruining the credebility of his town and making the entire world and their dog laugh at them by sueing Nolan and the WB for royalties from the success of the Batman movies.

Nobody seems to have told him that for this to be successful he needs to have trademarked the name Batman, plus there needs to be some correlation between the brands. Maybe if the city was called Gotham or something? Maybe.

I'm too busy chuckling about this to be able to think of much more that can be said.

Source: El Reg.

It's a beautiful day.

In relation to this post below, it seems that although the amount of spam getting past the filters in my inbox has gone up, the overall spam volume has gone down by a massive 50%. That number is almost impossible to believe, but that's what they're reporting over at Security Fix as well as numerous other non-affiliated IT news websites.

Good news? This is friggin brilliant news. I wonder which bastards are next.

Source: Security Fix.

NebuAd sued.

Normally I'm against America's over litigatious ways, but this is one case where I can't help but feel glad it is happening. A class action suit has been filed against the company and numerous US ISP's in regards to trials of their new products at said ISP's.

In a nutshell, NebuAd are ex-Claria (who used to be known as Gator) staff, a company infamous for silently installed adware and spyware which was notoriously buggy and difficult to remove. At NebuAd these staff are using similar lack of scruples and working in secret with ISP's to spy on customers without any notification what so ever in order to sell this data to advertising companies for split profit.

They were found out though, and it was only after numerous people spoke up and the media latched on to any of this that anything was made public. Understandably people are upset and hopefully this will be one more nail in the coffin of these people and their ways. I somehow doubt it, though.

Source: Arse Technica.

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!

Gullible? Idiotic? Moron? Then we have the deal for you.

The 4000 year old ancient chinese art of placing furniture where you're most likely to find it in the middle of the night with your shin, has now been modernised with this all new ultra fab ... Electronic Feng Shui Compass!

Yes, that's right for the low low price of the contents of your wallet and 1/3rd of your brain cells you too can be ripped off and demonstrate to your friends just how idiotic you are with this handy wallet sized Feng Shui Compass. Be the envy and embarressment of your friends, order one today!

Source: Gizmodo.

The hills are alive, to the sound of dead hard drives!

I saw this on /., and got very excited. I quickly opened up the site, then it hit me just how sad it was. However, I don't care. This site goes off like a sog in a frock. I can't think of a decent way to describe it, so I'll just quote some text from the site itself.

"These are some typical sounds we hear in our data recovery lab.
To listen to the sound simply click on the play button. Click on the drive manufacturer next to the sound button to learn more about common problems these drives experience."

Source: Hard Drive Sounds.
Via: /..

CC companies do something non-useless.

Most people dislike security because it adds complexity. One could almost say "with greater security comes greater complexity", but it is in no way true that "with greater complexity comes greater security". And in this lies the problem, many a time companies add to the complexity in the name of security, but they don't actually add any security at all.

Credit card companies are brilliant at this. That 3 digit number thing (CCV - remember this term) on the back of your card for example, if someone is skimming visually then when you turn the card over that is read too. Microchips, no more secure than the magnetic strip just read in a different way. It's like writing a sentence in English twice, but the second time using crayons rather than felt tip pen. It's still in English, it's still the same information. RFID? That's LESS secure as it can be skimmed simply be being in the vicinity of the card. It really does make me angry and glad my current card only has the magnetic strip. I hate the idea of any cards I carry around with having RFID to be honest.

The credit card companies or to be more accurate, Visa, has now actually done something intelligent that DOES add to security. Looky at the picture above. The basic idea is that you enter your PIN on to your own card (so the PIN cannot be skimmed except for visually), then then generates a one-time code to use in place of the CCV. This means the theif needs to visually note your PIN then actually steal your card (at which point you'll know to cancel it immediately), they can't just copy it with a skimmer.

THAT IS FUCKING BRILLIANT!

If these come out in Australia and only on Visa, I'll definitely be switching (I have a MC at the moment). It's the first change CC companies have made in 5-10 years which hasn't angered me. My hat goes off to you, Visa.

Source: DarkReading.

Spam and scams and other S words.

My home email is weird. It seems every time there's a success against spammers or other malware pundits, the amount of email getting through my filters actually increases. This morning for example I had 3 times as much through the filters (which I only tightened two weeks ago), and now I read this.

It appears Brian Krebbs from Security Fix has, on the back of his assistance in the take down of EstDomains, struck a blow at another large hoster of malware and malicious websites. This is one I haven't actually heard of before, McColo Corp. After gathering data on this company over the last 4 months, just the other day they contacted a few ISP hosts to see if they would assist in doing something about it. Although only one of them has so far, it has resulted in the homepage for the company as well as other sites of theirs vanishing in to thin air. Unfortunately some of their clients are still online, so we are waiting for the other ISP's to react and to see what their reaction is.

Source: Security Fix.

In other related news (so part of this post rather than as its own separate post), it seems SPAM isn't quite as affective as researches used to think. Every mailing results in a significantly smaller return than previously thought. For example, one mailing of 350 million addresses resulted in only 24% making it to a mailbox. Of that 82 million, only 10,500 resulted in clicks, and only 28 resulted in a purchase. You can read more below.

Source: DarkReading.

Revisit: Rabbit Proof Firewall.

It's been a while since I've done an update, so I thought the best way to start would be by explaining a post a page or two back. The post in question is this one in regards to Australia's Rabbit Proof Firewall.

Well, at the time I was under the impression the filter would either be on or off. The on setting being one designed to protect the children, off being no filtering what so ever. My biggest gripe was that I had just come from an argument with the people on OCAU about it, me saying this is all it would ever be and those saying it would be more need to dump the paranoia and to look at things in a more realistic sense, there's no way the sky is falling and their claims/worries could be even remotely accurate.

I was wrong. They were right. I'm leaving my post for posterity as I'm not afraid to admit when I fail. In fact, they couldn't have been more right. This internet filter is looking worse and worse by the day as more information comes out. It's also coming out VERY slowly with Conroy not wanting to let anybody know what is really in the works.

For starters, the only reason we even have any information right now is due to a technician at a large ISP came forward in a forum and told the world what it is he was currently working on. If he hadn't have done that, every man and his dog would still be completely in the dark in regards to it. Conroy has also been lying left right and centre about what is and isn't happening. He lies about the tests, he lied when he said initially that it was only one filter (it's now two filters, a kiddie one and an adult one), he lied about what the filters were (the adult one was originally just illegal material, now he's added "other unwanted" to that).

It's beyond a joke, and Conroy deserves to have his political career unceremoniously stripped from him. He's abusing his position and those he's supposed to represent. What he's doing isn't democratic, it's unaustralian, and it's just plain wrong.

For more information follow the below links.

Somebody Think of The Children - Discussing censorship and moral panic in Australia.
No Clean Feed - Stop Internet Censorship in Australia.
Censored - Add this image to your avatars/website images in protest.

Poe's law as it applies to the internets.

"Poe's Law — Without a blatant indicator such as a smiley, it is impossible to tell the difference between religious Fundamentalism and a parody thereof."

I suggest an addition to this. "Without a blatant indicator, it is impossible to tell the difference between a comic strip and real life." What brings forward this suggestion? Well, the numerous real life actions inspired by the comic XKCD, and now changes to the (in?)famous CAPTCHA system at Yahoo and Hotmail which to me hints at the idea they are moving slowly towards this.

Source: Secure Computing.

Voting machine musings.

Is it just me, or every time there's a test (or live usage) of voting machines and the votes screw up, it's always in favour of Republicans?

Am I imagining things?

Blu-ray price hike.

According to an article at the SMH, the price of Blu-ray players has gone up 5% since the announcement that Blu-ray won the format wars.

To be perfectly honest, I'm surprised it isn't the discs themselves not only for royalties for other companies to make, but also for the movies they come out on (ie, hikes on two seperate fronts).

This hike in players isn't surprising. No more competition from another format, so manufacturers can afford to charge more for the product now as they're only competing against other manufacturers of the same format.

Source: SMH.

DDoS's make up 2% of all traffic in the tubes.

One out of every 50 packets on the internet is malicious junk intended simply to clog the tubes, according to a high level traffic analysis by Arbor Networks.

Distributed Denial of Service attacks or DDoSes aim to bring a site down by bombarding it with fake requests for a web page or image. It's like having 1,000 people continually crank calling a company -- the real customers can't get through.

Arbor now says those attacks account for about two percent of internet traffic, with peaks of up to five percent.

Some DDoSes are spurred by online grudges, such as the ones that occasionally target the anti-phishing site CastleCops or the large one launched against Estonian targets by Russian nationalists last year. Others are launched by cyber-criminals as part of an extortion attempt against an online retailer.

Plagerised from: Threat Level.

You can't help but laugh.

Sony, infamous for their proprietry formats, DRM, rootkits, and coming down VERY hard on anyone who doesn't use their products exactly the way they demand (including plugging a PS3 in to a powerboard), have been caught out as being the hypocrits you'd expect them to be.

PointDev, a French software company that makes Windows administration tools, received a call from a Sony BMG IT employee for support. After Sony BMG supplied a pirated license code for Ideal Migration, one of PointDev's products, the software maker was able to mandate a seizure of Sony BMG's assets. The subsequent raid revealed that software was illegally installed on four of Sony BMG's servers. The Business Software Alliance, however, believes that up to 47 percent of the software installed on Sony BMG's computers could be pirated.

Comedy gold I tells ya.

Source: Ars Technica.