...but this blog is healthsome

Bristol Water, Stop Pretending You're a Public Service.

2012-02-04T03:05:00.002Z

Recently the privatised water companies of England pretty much all put up their prices in line with or just ahead of inflation, despite the fact that almost nobody has had any kind of wage increases like theses, this however they can sort of justify on the basis that in the (however dodgy and corrupt) system in which they exist it is on the government to increase and maintain the standard of living.

The national average for the rates increases is about 5.7% however the money grabbers at Bristol Water have decided to make a rise of 8.8% almost double that of most other companies in the area.

A representative of the company on BBC Points West stated that this was to pay for renovations and replacements for the old Victorian water system still largely used in Bristol.

You aren't a public service Bristol Water you're a private company who also happens to have a monopoly on the water... by virtue of having all the water! You don't get to just tax people for the cost of fixing your shit. You should pay for it out of your own profits; you know all that money you make, from charging people more than the cost of running shit and paying your workforce!

If a privatised infrastructure company can't keep itself running without adding what is essentially a water pipe tax (public cost reduction being the usual excuse for privatisation.) then it should be taken back into public ownership on grounds of failing to reasonably provide people with necessary services.

Stop using shite excuses like this to rip people off knowing full well that they have no other choice, dip into your big fat greasy over stuffed wallets and sort your own system out. You bought it!

An Activist's Guide To Android

2012-01-18T11:44:00.005Z

Across the last year we have seen activism and especially more spontaneous forms of protest utilising mobile technology and the internet, unfortunately with new forms of communication come new forms of surveillance Police in the UK have bullied web hosts into closing down sites and targeted event organisers, pressuring them into deleting their demos from Facebook. For the forseeable future this isn't going to get any better.

One of the best ways to avoid being targeted for your activities, whether online or in real life is to not be identifiable, and this is where so far android is the only mobile operating system showing any promise, although there are plans to release a fully open source Ubuntu mobile OS they will have some real catching up to do.

First of all The Guardian Project (not affiliated with the news paper) have a selection of apps built precisely with the intention of protecting identity on Android devices and as far as I know no one has come anywhere near as far as they have, on any mobile platform. Here are some of the apps of theirs I have tested

Obscuracam - This is a must have for people wanting to photograph at protests and upload on the fly, it allows the user to take a photo on their device and redact or pixelate faces before uploading or tranferring. This tool is still in the development so it doesn't always detect faces, but this can be corrected manually. [work is also in progress for video face detection.]

NoteCipher - This I the Ideal little tool for securing notes made at meetings to plan actions and such, it allows you to type up plain text documents in memory (RAM) until you're done, then it saves them in a 256 bit AES encrypted file. The only downside I can see so far with this app is that it doesn't (as of yet) allow you to use a password only a numeric pin.

Orbot & Orweb - These two apps really go hand in hand, Orbot is the Android port of Tor a tool for anonymous online activity (whilst tor is not completely secure it's still a lot better than nothing) and Orweb is a browser made for it by The Guardian Project which is automatically configured to use Tor.

Gibberbot - Giberbot is an instant messaging app which routes traffic through the Tor network Much the same as Orbot does, to make yourself unidentifiable for this you will need to set up an account with OpenFire, eJabberD or Google Talk using false details in a browser connected through Orbot.

Cyanogenmod logo = badassery

Cyanogenmod - Cyanogenmod is an aftermarket firmware for Android phones which includes a whole load of features not included in official manufacturers or even Google's releases including. iptables support, overclocking, native theme support, FLAC playback, unlocking gestures, a large Wifi access point list and tethering via both Wifi and USB. One of the more funny tools is Phone Goggles with which you can set mathematical problems which must be solved before using fatures such as calls and texts, making it quite good for not drunk dialing friends at 5AM and asking them for sex or a pizza... or both.

Plausible comic plots #1 - The Disavowable Hulk

2011-10-10T14:28:00.003+01:00

Dr. Bruce Poster has been working for the military trying to find practical ways of nuking things into oblivion for several unsuccessful years, when he accidentally gives himself radiation poisoning.

The ensuing sickness destroys his previously large and toned physique, he becomes addicted to the painkillers he has been prescribed and this causes his wife to leave him. Once he has recovered, in a drug induced attempt to relieve himself of his crushing self image crisis and win his wife back, the doctor sells military secrets to a spy working within a foreign embassy in order to pay for an ill conceived and dangerous set of cosmetic procedures, which are intended to restore his former appearance.

The procedures however are a botch, his muscle implants swell when he is exposed to too much heat and a batch of sub standard peeling acid turns his skin green.

Dr. Poster lives out the rest of his days as a hideous freak who stalks his ex-wife whilst on the run from shady government agencies who want him executed for espionage.

Occupy wall street and 'media blackout'?

2011-09-21T03:00:00.003+01:00

You may or most likely may not know that for the last few days there has been an occupation of wall st in protest against the current economic situation in the US and the general culture of brazen heartless capitalism that habituates it, the protest was originally organised by Anonops but has since engulfed several other groups, having been going on since the 17th the police are becoming quite agitated and seem to be adopting the dubious tactics people have seen over here in Britain for several years; namely that of arresting someone on dubious grounds and then either letting them go after being left to wear down in the cells or coming up with a spurious charge that'll just about fit but had nothing to do with the original arrest.

Image from Anonops blog (not that they'd give a shit.)

Obviously this has all somewhat figuratively pissed in the NY Mayor's metaphorical coffee, so he decided to take the perfectly logical approach of putting it down by comparing it to the events of the Arab Spring despite it's noted popularity with... just about everyone.

And now on to the odd bit the 'media blackout' thingy, there isn't one, to clarify the mainstream media have certainly tried to keep this one a bit quieter than they usually would, although credit due this is an anti capitalist demonstration and they are businesses. So at least we know they're evil but not stupid.

There have been reports that I've read about the 'blackout' and so I thought I'd take a quick check of the New York Times, The Guardian and BBC news. The only one of my (admittedly far from scientific) test sample to not have a feature or an article about the protests was the BBC but then that's hardly a shock given their 'switch over' to a right wing bias, poor fact checking and rolling [bullshit] news lately.

So if you want to spread the word, or support, or whatever; I'd probably suggest getting involved with anonops or one of the other groups involved, but please for fucks sake don't say there's a blackout.

For more information from people who can be bothered to write about actual events more specifically (because they get payed to) just read the articles linked above.

Cioa

You can't stop the pirates, we're too good.

2011-09-15T16:56:00.001+01:00

UK culture secretary Jeremy Hunt, rhymes with... Fuck it that one's been done too much, basically the man's a prick and as it would transpire not even a clever prick.

Yes for some reason a man who has no technical knowledge of how the internet works and how people use modern technology has taken it upon himself to try and legislate pirates out of being able to get stuff online with his Communications Act, If this sounds familiar that's probably because it's basically just a rewrite of Peter Mandelson's Digital Economy Act, which famously acheived exactly fuck all.

I'm wondering at what point these feckless morons who choose who does what in government thought that a man who used to do PR work for IT firms would be in any way better that someone who has even the vaguest idea of what they're doing when it comes to the web.

"Unlawfully distributing copyrighted material is theft - and a direct assault on the freedoms and rights of creators of content to be rewarded fairly for their efforts,"

Essentially what hes' actually saying is; " I've been lobbied by lots of big entertainment companies who have probably provided me or my party with a perverse amount of money to do this so I really have to and besides it's only poor people who pirate stuff so I don't care."

How do I know he won't be able to stop people pirating stuff? Simple, the internet, and computers on the whole are essentially a completely fictitious universe, everything online is completely changeable there's nothing that can be done about it. The people who mould the internet aren't the big companies or the ISPs it's the people on the fringes; pirates, hackers, bloggers, bored kids writing code. the only exception is google and they largely hire these people.

He doesn't even have them on side; "Without a court order, any copyright owner can already use our removals process to inform us of copyright infringing content and have it removed from Google Search,"

Google knows how much of it's web traffic comes through piracy it also doesn't want to have to block sites off it's own back, that's a long and expensive process and Google is a business they won't do it if they don't have to.

Just in case his stupid law does go through (not that it would be enforced) there are some useful links at the bottom of the page.

Also, TPB turned eight years old today.

So it seems it's that day again...

2011-09-11T16:20:00.002+01:00

In preparation for the fact that all anyone is going to be talking about today is the date, and that thing that happened ten years ago. I've decided I should write about just about any fucking thing else so instead I'm going to write out a list of significant events that have happened on the 11th of September other than... you know, that one.

In 1297 the Scots won the battle of Stirling Bridge lead in part by William Wallace, probably making this one of the pivotal dates in creating the nationalist feeling that has helped towards Scottish devolution.

In 1541 the Newly founded Spanish settlement of Santiago in Chile is destroyed in a battle with indigenous warriors.

In 1609 Manhattan Island is discovered by English explorer Henry Hudson.

In 1814 the U.S. wins the battle of Plattsburgh a major victory against England in the war of 1812.

In 1916 - Canada, the Quebec bridge's central span collapses killing 11 men.

In 1922 The British mandate of Palestine begins laying the groundwork for the division of the territory into separate lands under the supervision of the league of nations.

In 1940 Bell Labs researcher George Stibitz performs the first remote operation of a computer

In 1941 the first ground is broken for the construction of the Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia, United States.

In 1943 the Nazis Begin liquidation of the ghettos in Minsk and Lida and German troops occupy Corsica and Kosovo-Metohija.

In 1944 RAF bombing raids on Darmstadt and the following fire storm kill 11,500 people.

In 1961 the conservation group and charity; the World Wildlife Fund is founded by; UNESCO president Julian Huxley, environmentalist Max Nicholson, a few other influential scientists and a prince of something or other.

In 1973 with CIA backing the Chilean military launched a coup against democratically elected President Salvador Allende which would eventually see the installation of General Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship.

In 1997 NASA's Mars Global Surveyor reaches Mars and Scotland has a nationwide referendum in which it decides to have a devolved parliament within the UK.

In 2007 The Russian federation tests the largest conventional weapon ever; a thermobaric bomb which has the explosive force of 44 tons of TNT and is known as The Father of All Bombs.

In short A whole fuck-ton of scary, important and world changing shit has happened on the 11th of September so please for fucks sakes if you have to bang on about the date, talk about some of that instead of either boring the shit out of your friends or getting sucked up in a wave of sensationalist hysteria.

Google +, why aren't more people using it?

2011-09-06T19:02:00.000+01:00

Being the sort of geeky weirdo who leaps at a chance to try out new technology like Silvio Berlusconi leaps at anything with tits, I was inevitably going to try out Google's latest attempt to break into the social networking realm. Sure enough I soon managed to get my hands on an invitation to try it out.

So what's it like?
Well from my experience so far Google+ has been very well thought through, unlike other social networking sites it has been started with all the features currently expected being put in at the beginning which leaves it much less crammed together and well spaced out. There is also the ability to sort your friends into groups which you can then choose to share different types of content with, quite good for sharing your blog with people who'll actually get what you're on about or not letting your family read the post about that fucked up acid trip you had.

I won't spend forever writing about the features in Google+ because I probably actually could, I will however mention my two favourite aspects. Firstly there's the +1 feature which is already spread across several sites (Including blogspot) allowing you to recommend posts, pages and articles you find interesting to your friends without cluttering up their feeds. Secondly there's Sparks which is your own personal feed of information and news about subjects you find interesting. If you want to know more about the features you can follow this link although be warned there are some corporate videos accompanying the text that are so nauseatingly sweet they'd probably give you diabetes if you watched them all.

Why isn't it taking off?
This is quite a difficult question to answer although it seems that the main reason is that people just really don't care, they already have social networking and they don't need more of it. what Google needs to try and do is prove to people that this site can go beyond social networking and be a reliable platform for news sharing and integration with other forms of online communication.

Is there hope for it?
One thing that may weigh in Google's favour is that they do have the largest share of the smartphone market in Android and their moblie version of + is very well made, certainly more practical than Facebook is on Android. This combined with the fact that they have made Google plus to work alongside their other services might save it, but I'm not holding my breath.

In the mean time those of us who have already signed up and like it will just have to hope it will catch on so that it's actually usable. After all a social networking site without people is rather like a pair of sunglasses in Scotland, absolutely pointless.

Hang on, have I walked into 1984?

2011-08-19T01:45:00.003+01:00

As if it wasn't enough that we are being constantly covered in a blanket of surveillance cameras wherever we walk and our internet activities closely monitored by shady government agencies and even shadier police officers. It seems that our politicians are now actively taking leaves straight out of Orwell's dystopian masterpiece.

Our education secretary has recently been trying to emulate the ministry of truth.

"celebrate the distinguished role of these islands in the history of the world" and portray Britain as "a beacon of liberty for others to emulate" - Michael Gove; secretary for education, public money thief and now it would seem accomplished Goebbels impersonator*. (Making his first mission statement for Minitrue.)

Yes apparently in his last nationalist wankfest of policy invention he decided that we should ignore the fact that Britain was responsible for mass invasion and occupation of colonial territories, the enslavement of millions and the overthrow of democratically elected governments (Such as that of mid-20th century Iran.**) in the name of profit. Instead giving amoral dodgy bastards like Churchill even more of that massively undeserved hero worship they (to my disgust) seem to receive in ignorance.

* Joseph Goebbels was the Nazi Reich Minister of Propaganda, he often air brushed over German historical facts in order to promote nationalism.

** In 1953 British and U.S. intelligence services orchestrated the overthrow of Iran's democratically elected government at the orders of Winston Churchill and the Eisenhower administration.

In conclusion I'll leave you with Robert Newman's History of Oil - A brilliant combination of stand up comedy and documentary which should definitely be shown to all history students, covering the bits the news and history textbooks conveniently left out.

Xubuntu as a netbook OS.

2011-08-10T11:00:00.020+01:00

I came to the realisation that so far all of my posts have been somewhat down in nature so I'm going to give you some good news for a change!

I got a new netbook about a year ago which rather typically came with a very bloaty "starter" edition of Windows 7 so for the last few months I've been searching about for a decent operating system that won't kill it's rather limited resources whilst still having a decent supply of programs and applications available.

Finally I came across Xubuntu a lightweight version of Ubuntu using the lightweight Xfce desktop environment.

A very simplistic but still visually appealing environment meet with the wide array of software and compatibility of Ubuntu to make for a very lightweight and user-friendly operating system.

The desktop looks much the same as most other Linux environments and it uses the normal Ubuntu software repositories and despite only having 1GB of RAM I haven't seen any signs of freezing up of slow response even when running multiple desktops. (Although I have a friend who has a knack for opening tabs into the triple digits who could be useful for testing it out more thoroughly!)

So for anyone looking for a decent all purpose OS for a netbook or an older laptop I would definitely recommend this one. It's fast and it's free!

http://www.xubuntu.org/

... so riots eh.

2011-08-09T14:02:00.002+01:00

There's been a bit of an uprising of sorts in london and other cities which i'm sure if you are reading this you'll already have heard about, at this stage I think it's important to point out where I stand on the actions of the rioters.

Things I am fine with include; looting chain stores, burning police cars, raiding government buildings, looting banks and money lenders and hurling bricks at riot officers.

Things I am not so okay with are looting or burning down small businesses and peoples homes.

I think the worst casualty from these riots however will be our civil liberties already I see online posts and hear comments in public about how 'they should use rubber bullets or water cannons or call in the army', yeah! That'll calm people down, whilst providing a strong moral message that what is largely just widespread breaking stuff and nicking stuff is wrong but opening fire on crowds of people (potentialy containing innocent bystanders, onlookers or journalists) is perfectly moraly justified.

But regardless of the dangers of it one of these things is likely to happen, frankly our home secretary Theresa May has been itching to grant the dangerous psychopaths in riot gear more powers and weapons since she got into office and probably long before.

Which will leave us in a much trickier situation when they get to pull them out at the next strike, march or anything they can find an excuse to.

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Well folks I'm sorry it had to start this way but...

2011-07-07T07:11:00.005+01:00

I'm afraid my first post is going to be something of a geek-rage session, although the implications stretch to further afield up to and including revolution and political dissidence.

I have recently got a new phone running an android 2.x operating system and have been trying to get the online anonymising service Tor's android app; Orbot to work on it, having absolutely no luck "rooting" it (rooting is essentially a way to gain more control over you software on android) and no more luck with most other things, I eventually discovered that there was an add-on for the latest version of Mozilla's mobile Firefox which would be able to remedy this...

Enter compatibility clusterfuck number two Mozilla have not bothered making support for phones with my particular model's processor; the ARMv6. To this you might think "Oh well it will only affect a few users."

No it won't! The particular phone I bought is about the only decent Android phone currently in existence with a real-world keypad, you know? The ones you used to get with buttons which actually existed and you could actually use at some kind of pace at least a fair bit faster than a snail carrying an anvil.

What this means in digital communications terms is that people who need to co-ordinate activities using secure anonymous channels have the choice between lugging a laptop around (which I'd imagine is slightly harder to ditch or shove up your arse or whatever in an emergency) or joining in with this logically backwards touchscreen fad.