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  <channel>
    <title>Jaromil's musings</title>
    <link>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html</link>
    <description>This research journal is an attempt to build a cartography of the explorations I and I are doing in life: a collection of experiences, encounters, ideas and things learned outside of the usual box.&#13;
&#13;
Our research method is nomadic, aims always at crossing borders and seeks liberty of thought, healthy criticism and hopefully good humour.&#13;
</description>
    <language>en-us</language>
    <generator>Emacs Muse</generator>

Here is the research journal for 2010.

If you like to support me writing more on this
journal: please donate money (you can also be mentioned in our final
book publication). BTW, you can also flattr me thanks! :^) 

Research 2010 wasn't public until October, mostly because of lack of
time while I'm personally busy surviving through an age of rapid decay
for Europe, our hi-tech continent becoming a Kafkian panoptykon.


However, I took notes of many events for this year, some of them are
published here, some not yet; I'm doing my best, thanks for all your
support.




<item>
<title>ClubHACK Indian magazine</title>
<link>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#ClubHACK%20Indian%20magazine</link>
<description><![CDATA[This year was born and grew very well, it is a new hacking magazine:
CHMag - and this time is made in India (and written in english)

Ladies & Gentleman, Hackers & Geeks, Nerds & Newbies.

In India we were waiting to see any 'hacking' magazine to happen and
the wait was getting little longer. So finally ClubHack decided to
come out with its own 1st Indian "Hacking" Magazine.

All issues free to download online.

After a quick look i can tell this mag goes for some real stuff, it
definitely interesting for a worldwide audience and finally unleashes
all the potential of the vast and highly skilled hacker communities
growing in Asia since years. Just check out their recent article on
reverse engineering Android apps

Namaste'!

(and thanks to naif for the pointer on the hackmeeting ml)


]]></description>
<author>jaromil</author>
<pubDate>Tue, 21 Dec 2010 00:00:00 CET</pubDate>
<guid>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#ClubHACK%20Indian%20magazine</guid>

</item>

<item>
<title>San Miguel penitentiary on fire</title>
<link>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#San%20Miguel%20penitentiary%20on%20fire</link>
<description><![CDATA[Yesterday a fire in the San Miguel penitentiary in Santiago de Chile
killed over 80 inmates and severely wounded dozens. Among the dead,
Bastián Arriagada, 22 years old, was in jail for 61 days for an
infraction to the Intelectual Property Law.

Bastián had been detained for selling pirated CDs.

"No tenía trabajo y por eso se dedicó a vender CDs en la calle, lo
hizo para no caer en la delincuencia y mire lo que le pasó… En este
país no hay justicia para los pobres", declaró la tía del fallecido
al diario La Nación. Otro familiar declaró a EMOL: "Bastián vendía
discos pirata de amigos para mantener a su familia y poder ahorrar,
porque quería retomar sus estudios de educación media, que había
dejado hace unos años atrás. Bastián no era un criminal".

El incendio de la cárcel de San Miguel dejó 83 muertos, entre ellos
muchos que no estaban por delitos violentos.




]]></description>
<author>jaromil</author>
<pubDate>Fri, 10 Dec 2010 00:00:00 CET</pubDate>
<guid>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#San%20Miguel%20penitentiary%20on%20fire</guid>

</item>

<item>
<title>4th Amendement underwear</title>
<link>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#4th%20Amendement%20underwear</link>
<description><![CDATA[4TH AMENDMENT UNDERCLOTHES provides a way to protest those intrusive
TSA X-ray scanners without saying a word.



Metallic ink-printed undershirts and underwear. Kewl.



]]></description>
<author>jaromil</author>
<pubDate>Fri, 26 Nov 2010 00:00:00 CET</pubDate>
<guid>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#4th%20Amendement%20underwear</guid>

</item>

<item>
<title>A Demoscene documentary</title>
<link>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#A%20Demoscene%20documentary</link>
<description><![CDATA[If you don't know what is the demoscene then this is a good chance to
have a complete retrospective: the Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE)
has produced a documentary about the Finnish demoscene.

The biggest part of the demoscene has always been flourishing in
northern Europe and especially in Scandinavia, where massive demoparty
gatherings were held - nothing compared to our TIG97 or TIG98 in
Italy, but hey at least we tried :D - so the fact this documentary is
made in Finland now makes it extremely interesting.

The demoscene documentary episodes are online with english subtitles,
the first one is titled "Early 1990 era - Moving from cracking to
demos" and says a lot about the good old days

.



]]></description>
<author>jaromil</author>
<pubDate>Thu, 25 Nov 2010 00:00:00 CET</pubDate>
<guid>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#A%20Demoscene%20documentary</guid>

</item>

<item>
<title>Why the Aut/Inv server was raided in Norway?</title>
<link>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#Why%20the%20Aut%2FInv%20server%20was%20raided%20in%20Norway%3F</link>
<description><![CDATA[Now finally its seems the Aut/Inv collective got to know the reason
why one of their servers was raided on the 5th of November in Norway,
an act performed by the Norwegian police on behalf of an international
mandate of investigation from Italy, which disrupted the private email
and web publishing services for thousands of users, also potentially
endangering their privacy.

Here below I'm quoting their communicate published today on noblogs:


A/I’s Norwegian crackdown in a nutshell

The Autistici/Inventati collective and the Investici Association,
which represents the collective in legal and bureaucratic matters,
are a group of people who mantain and develop electronic
communication services for individuals, associations, informal
groups and movements and, among their particular aims, defend the
freedom of expression and privacy.

The story we are going to tell started in Avezzano, Italy, between
the 9th December 2008 and the 30th March 2009. A lawsuit gave rise
to an investigation where it is mantained that Gianluca Jannone,
leader of the neo-fascist group “Casa Pound”, and Ercole Marchionni,
founder of “casa pound Avezzano”, suffered threats and slander. In
particular, there are charges concerning a message painted on a
wall, some red paint on a door bell and some texts published on
abruzzo.indymedia.org and orsa.noblogs.org, claiming that no public
space should be given to declared neo-fascist groups.

After this lawsuit, public prosecutor Stefano Gallo activated
together with the Avezzano police office, and the case reached the
postal police in Milan. In August 2009 the Investici Association
(and therefore the Autistici/Inventati collective) was called to
witness, and formally declared in front of police agents that no log
files linked with the orsa @ canaglie . net mailbox were kept in its
servers, nor did the association have any personal data regarding
the subscriber of the mailbox.

The Avezzano police office sent a rogatory letter (with charges of
threats!!!) to Norway, Holland and Switzerland, asking the local
authorities to contact the providers where Autistici/Inventati keeps
its servers and obtain the data that our legal representative had
not given them – not with reticence, but because that information is
clearly unavailable.

In November 2010 the Norwegian postal police performed their duty
towards their Italian colleagues: they turned up at our provider’s
webfarm and asked to copy all the disks in the server, whose
contents are mostly encrypted.

About two hours after the seizure, we re-activated the services in
different servers. After approximately 24 hours, our whole
infrastructure was running exactly as before. In this case the R*
Plan worked nicely as an anti-censorship system.

Some considerations

We think that what happened can be read at several levels,
reflecting different facets of the Italian society.

First of all, the relationships between Neo-Fascism and
institutions. Recently the process related to the Piazza della
Loggia bombing ended with a series of acquittals. In two different
phases of the Italian history, Neo-Fascism and some state
organizations where closely connected. Historically, several
elements link the Piazza della Loggia bombing with neo-fascist
groups, and in this case there have been clear cover-ups, attempts
to pigeon-hole the case, and silences which have obscured many
details until today. Thirty years after that attack, it is
impossible to obtain some kind of truth about what happened. The
protection mechanism that was started in the 70s worked perfectly
well.

This kind of attitude is endemic, and can be found in more recent
incidents that may be minor but are nonetheless painful.

The men who confessed to have killed the antifascist activist Dax
have been sentenced to ridiculous punishments, if compared for
instance to the four-year imprisonment sentence given to four
Milanese anti-fascists who had “robbed” a nazi-skin by taking his
jacket.

These days, when all over Italy the police is complaining about
reduced funds, we find it unexplainable that a private lawsuit filed
at the Avezzano police office regarding minor events can unleash an
international rogatory frenzy aimed at acquiring data that are
inexistent and would be irrelevant to any investigation.

We can explain this only if we assume that “Casa Pound” has a
certain influence in some sectors of the Italian police.

Since we were asked to witness and bound to answer, we have clearly
declared that we did not have the requested information. The
subsequent seizure means that they did not believe us.

We don’t understand what legal motivation can justify a damage to
2,000 people’s privacy just to obtain an evidence that the data
regarding one unknown individual do not exist. This investigation
regards a single mailbox, and what was requested in November 2010
was some logs dating back to late 2008, which we did not have even
back then.

Some answers can be perhaps found in the text of the rogatory
letter, and a passage from that brilliant English translation must
be quoted:

“to obtain the file of log, and IP-access, for consultation,
registration, change of password and updating relative to the
mailbox ORSA @ CANAGLIE . NET (SHE-BEAR @ SCOUNDREL . NET) in the
time span 2008–12-09 to 2009–12-09.”

The Public prosecutor’s office ordered the seizure, but did not
realize that translating a user name and a mail domain is as
ridiculous as it is useless. To be honest, we don’t think that this
office is able to produce any technical assessments regarding an IT
case.

To sum up: this action appears as a small political intimidatory
retaliation against Autistici/Inventati, who have been considered
reticent in denying a piece of information we have never had and
never will have in the future.

But this small retaliation implies a major privacy problem for the
2,000 users who had a space in that server. Likewise, the facts that
gave rise to this investigation have been seemingly
overrated. Starting from an irrelevant political skirmish,
overstated charges were used to send three rogatory letters abroad.

Along this line, any argument among neighbors could be turned into
an international plot.  This makes no sense, but in the end, nothing
makes much sense in this whole story.




]]></description>
<author>jaromil</author>
<pubDate>Wed, 24 Nov 2010 00:00:00 CET</pubDate>
<guid>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#Why%20the%20Aut%2FInv%20server%20was%20raided%20in%20Norway%3F</guid>

</item>

<item>
<title>DYNDY is out!</title>
<link>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#DYNDY%20is%20out%21</link>
<description><![CDATA[This project took a year to be conceptualized. Before its release has
been known to a few subjects under the codename: "O' SISTEMONE".

Visit the DYNDY website and
read about our launch in De Balie, Amsterdam.






]]></description>
<author>jaromil</author>
<pubDate>Thu, 11 Nov 2010 00:00:00 CET</pubDate>
<guid>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#Shell%27s%20media%20tactics%20on%20Saro%20Wiwa</guid>

</item>

<item>
<title>Server raid in Norway</title>
<link>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#Server%20raid%20in%20Norway</link>
<description><![CDATA[One server of the autistici/inventati R* network (distributed and
highly resilient host architecture for Italian activists)
has been raided by the Norwegian police today, apparently on the
mandate of Italian authorities running an investigation.

Here a report in German while below follows the communicate of the
Aut/Inv collective:


It happens, since notoriously police doesn't know how to aim properly:
shoot in the crowd, you might eventually hit your target. Exactly as
when they run round-ups, bringing havoc to whole streets as they look
for something that might not even exist. The Italian postal police has
a bad habit of rummaging in hundreds or even thousands of people's
personal data just to fine one particular message. It has happened
again with the server the A/I collective keeps in Norway: its disks
have been entirely cloned for an investigation we still cannot know
anything about. It is likely that A/I is not directly implied in this
supposed enquiry, but whatever may be happening, our users' data
(which were mostly encrypted) have been acquired by someone who could
at most show a warrant for one specific search. It is the principle of
hitting hundreds of people to pinpoint one of them: and while they're
at it, seizing all data is too much of a temptation; after all if you
won't find what you are looking for, you'll have a prize at least to
show your police friends. When such things happen in China or in Iran,
crowds of privacy champions pour into the streets to protest against
the "regime" spying on its citizens. But if it happens in front of
them, they are distracted, perhaps due to the media hype on the petty
scandals that haunt this petty country.
Such occurrences require us, all of us, to react quickly, learning to
protect our privacy as well as protesting against electronic
surveillance, which, clumsy as its claims may be, is in any case
unjustified and repressive.
It is also interesting to note that there was no need for this
operation: every time we have been asked for logs or information, we
have always answeredit is not our fault, if the data they need do
not exist or if they find them useless. Actually, we find this is one
of our merits. And we think it is also a merit that the R* Plan has
allowed us to restore the services that were hit by this raid in no
more than 24 hours: for 5 years now we have been telling our users
that our aim is avoiding the destruction of our services, while in the
meantime we have also realized and tried to tell everybody that each
single user is responsible for her own privacy, which depends on your
intelligence when you write and read and on your accuracy in never
entrusting this fundamental aspect of your life to someone else. Apart
from the mailing lists archives, our disks were encrypted, but now
they have been copied, and with time no encryption system is
unbreakable. So don't delude yourselves in a false sense of safety.
Support the battle that we will launch as we did after the first
crackdown on our server: spread the news we will publish, fight
against any restriction to your freedom of communication. Unlike the
police, we want to educate hundreds to hit onethe genius at the
postal police who thought that copying 2000 people's data could be a
good idea to find nothing at all.



]]></description>
<author>jaromil</author>
<pubDate>Fri, 05 Nov 2010 00:00:00 CET</pubDate>
<guid>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#Server%20raid%20in%20Norway</guid>

</item>

<item>
<title>Plug in walls</title>
<link>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#Plug%20in%20walls</link>
<description><![CDATA[

Aram Bartholl's new artwork Dead Drops builds an anonymous exchange
network simply made with usb storage plugs embedded in walls.

More than ever, this project offers an inspiring metaphor of the gap
between digital and analog: the time when the access to digital
information networks hits the street level has come the walls are
whispering data.

However for the long term I'd suggest using female plugs.



]]></description>
<author>jaromil</author>
<pubDate>Sun, 31 Oct 2010 00:00:00 CEST</pubDate>
<guid>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#Plug%20in%20walls</guid>

</item>

<item>
<title>Between the bars</title>
<link>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#Between%20the%20bars</link>
<description><![CDATA[Just met Mako in Barcelona, he show me this amazing project:
Between the bars blogging letters from incarcerated people.




Between the Bars is a weblog platform for prisoners, through
which the 1% of America which is behind bars can tell their
stories. Since prisoners are routinely denied access to the
Internet, we enable them to blog by scanning letters. We aim to
provide a positive outlet for creativity, a tool to assist in the
maintenance of social safety nets, an opportunity to forge
connections between prisoners and non-prisoners, and a means to
promote non-criminal identities and personal expression. We hope to
improve prisoner's lives, and help to reduce recidivism.



]]></description>
<author>jaromil</author>
<pubDate>Fri, 29 Oct 2010 00:00:00 CEST</pubDate>
<guid>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#Between%20the%20bars</guid>

</item>

<item>
<title>The Netherlands stops commemorating the Schipol Fire</title>
<link>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#The%20Netherlands%20stops%20commemorating%20the%20Schipol%20Fire</link>
<description><![CDATA[Today on Radio Netherlands Worldwide they said:


Some 40 people attended a commemoration ceremony at Amsterdam's
Schiphol Airport on Tuesday evening for the 11 people who died in
what's known as the Schiphol Fire. As public interest in the memorial
is diminishing, it has been decided that this year's ceremony will be
the last official one to commemorate the victims.



This is a tragic mistake. Dutch authorities are so myopic they don't
recognize the progressive loss of trust between them and the
communities of migrants (and workers) still aloud to exist in the
country, especially following the outcome of the court case on the
Schiphol Fire held in Amsterdam, which held no authority responsible.

Here below the direct response given by some survivors of the fire:


Brothers and sisters
some people today made a commemoration of the Schiphol Fire. They did
it in the town hall of Hoofddorp.
They say it is is the last official commemoration of the fire.
We want to let you know that we don’t do official commemorations.
We don’t want to do this together with the authorities who can do no
better than build a new prison for undocumented migrants. They say
this one will be more humane.
We don’t think that a prison for undocumented migrants can ever be humane.
Migrants are normal and want more freedom
Papa Sakho, Jo van der Spek and Ben Duivenvoorden
Migrant to Migrant
Amsterdam, 26 oktober 2010


More info on the Schipol Fire is now found on the Schipholwakes.nl
website.

]]></description>
<author>jaromil</author>
<pubDate>Tue, 26 Oct 2010 00:00:00 CEST</pubDate>
<guid>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#The%20Netherlands%20stops%20commemorating%20the%20Schipol%20Fire</guid>

</item>

<item>
<title>UN warns EU</title>
<link>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#UN%20warns%20EU</link>
<description><![CDATA[Recently in Strasbourg, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon
warned:

A dangerous trend is emerging, a new politics of polarization. Some
play on people's fears, they accuse immigrants of violating European
values.

Yet too often it is the accusers who subvert these values and thus
the very idea of what it means to be a citizen of the European
Union.

Europe's darkest chapters have been written in language such as
this. Today the primary targets are immigrants of the Muslim faith,
Europe cannot afford stereotyping that closes minds and breeds
hatred, and the world cannot afford a Europe that does this.

In the meanwhile: chancellor Angela Merkel recently stated that the
concept of multiculturalism had "absolutely failed" in Germany, while
the government coalition in the Netherlands now include, besides the
Christians and the terror-strategy party VVD, also Geert Wilders' PVV
most famous for his anti-Islam hate campaigns.

Oi vEuropa!

]]></description>
<author>jaromil</author>
<pubDate>Tue, 19 Oct 2010 00:00:00 CEST</pubDate>
<guid>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#UN%20warns%20EU</guid>

</item>

<item>
<title>RIP Benoît Mandelbrot</title>
<link>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#RIP%20Benoît%20Mandelbrot</link>
<description></description>
<author>jaromil</author>
<pubDate>Thu, 14 Oct 2010 00:00:00 CEST</pubDate>
<guid>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#RIP%20Benoît%20Mandelbrot</guid>

</item>

<item>
<title>Google's "ethical dilemma" over taxes</title>
<link>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#Google%27s%20%22ethical%20dilemma%22%20over%20taxes</link>
<description><![CDATA[As many other companies, Google is also hopping countries to bypass
legal taxation systems.. anyone has heard of the /dutch sandwich/
before? while the tea party is advocating the legalization of tax
evasion, that is already legalized in practice, at the price of
corporate consulting.



Even if the tax avoidance structures are legal, not everyone
considers them ethical. Google is "flying a banner of doing no evil,
and then they're perpetrating evil under our noses," says Abraham
J. Briloff, a professor emeritus of accounting at Baruch College who
has examined Google's tax disclosures.


Google is called to loose ground on well settled financial crime
practices that everyone else survives with  Here is an informative
business week article mentioning how the World goes until we change
it - but then let me argue this change must be for everyone, ASAP.



]]></description>
<author>jaromil</author>
<pubDate>Thu, 30 Sep 2010 00:00:00 CEST</pubDate>
<guid>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#Google%27s%20%22ethical%20dilemma%22%20over%20taxes</guid>

</item>

<item>
<title>Web 2.0 multiplying flaws</title>
<link>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#Web%202%2E0%20multiplying%20flaws</link>
<description><![CDATA[What the Web 2.0 buzzword is really about: using a browser as if it
would be the desktop of an operating system. My views on this are
mostly unprintable, I'll just limit myself to list some recent
security flaws threatening the vast audience of Web2.0:

XSSER javascript injection
Evercookie cookie poisoning
CSShack history knocker


]]></description>
<author>jaromil</author>
<pubDate>Wed, 22 Sep 2010 00:00:00 CEST</pubDate>
<guid>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#Web%202%2E0%20multiplying%20flaws</guid>

</item>

<item>
<title>Artists make more money in File-Sharing Age</title>
<link>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#Artists%20make%20more%20money%20in%20File%2DSharing%20Age</link>
<description><![CDATA[A recent article on torrentfreak recites:


Artists Make More Money in File-Sharing Age Than Before It


An extensive study into the effect of digitalization on the music
industry in Norway has shed an interesting light on the position of
artists today, compared to 1999. While the music industry often
talks about artists being on the brink of bankruptcy due to illicit
file-sharing, the study found that the number of artists as well as
their average income has seen a major increase in the last decade.

Every other month a new study addressing the link between music
piracy and music revenues surfaces, but only a few really stand
out. One of the most elaborate and complete studies conducted in
recent times is the
master thesis of Norwegian School of Management students Anders Sørbo and Richard Bjerkøe.

In their thesis, the students take a detailed look at the different
revenue streams of the music industry between 1999 and 2009. By
doing so, they aim to answer the question of how the digitization of
music – and the most common side-effect, piracy – have changed the
economic position of the Norwegian music industry and Norwegian
artists. The results are striking.

After crunching the music industry’s numbers the researchers found
that total industry revenue grew from 1.4 billion Norwegian kronor
in 1999 to 1.9 billion in 2009. After adjusting this figure for
inflation this comes down to a 4% increase in revenues for the music
industry in this time period.  Admittedly, this is not much of a
growth, but things get more interesting when the research zooms in
on artist revenue.

In the same period when the overall revenues of the industry grew by
only 4%, the revenue for artists alone more than doubled with an
increase of 114%. After an inflation adjustment, artist revenue went
up from 255 million in 1999 to 545 million kronor in 2009.

Some of the growth can be attributed to the fact that the number of
artists increased by 28% in the same time period. However, per
artist the yearly income still saw a 66% increase from 80,000 to
133,000 kronor between 1999 and 2009. In conclusion, one could say
that artists are far better off now than they were before the
digitization of music started.

(Written by Ernesto)



]]></description>
<author>jaromil</author>
<pubDate>Wed, 15 Sep 2010 00:00:00 CEST</pubDate>
<guid>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#Artists%20make%20more%20money%20in%20File%2DSharing%20Age</guid>

</item>

<item>
<title>Quantum proof Crypto</title>
<link>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#Quantum%20proof%20Crypto</link>
<description><![CDATA[KentuckyFC writes on slashdot:


"In 1978, the CalTech mathematician Robert McEliece developed a
cryptosystem based on the (then) new idea of using asymmetric
mathematical functions to create different keys for encrypting and
decrypting information. The security of these systems relies on
mathematical steps that are easy to make in one direction but hard
to do in the other. Today, popular encryption systems such as the
RSA algorithm use exactly this idea. But in 1994, the mathematician
Peter Shor dreamt up a quantum algorithm that could factorise much
faster than any classical counterpart and so can break these codes.
As soon as the first decent-sized quantum computer is switched on,
these codes will become breakable.  Since then, cryptographers have
been hunting for encryption systems that will be safe in the post
quantum world. Now a group of mathematicians have shown that the
McEliece encryption system is safe against attack by Shor's
algorithm and all other known quantum algorithms.  That's because it
does not depend on factorisation but gets its security from another
asymmetric conundrum known as the hidden subgroup problem which they
show is immune to all known quantum attacks."


]]></description>
<author>jaromil</author>
<pubDate>Thu, 19 Aug 2010 00:00:00 CEST</pubDate>
<guid>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#Quantum%20proof%20Crypto</guid>

</item>

<item>
<title>dot.com &amp; totalitarian govs</title>
<link>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#dot%2Ecom%20%26%20totalitarian%20govs</link>
<description><![CDATA[BWO Felix Stalder:

What happened to the great showdown between freedom-loving
tech-companieswho were supposed to depend on earning their
users's trust by protecting their privacyand authoritarian
governments bent on all-around surveillance and censorship?

While initially there has been a lot of press about Google
challenging the Chinese government, the reports have slowed to a
trickle recently.  From what I understand, China has renewed Google
commercial license for another year or two, though it remains
unclear under which conditions. This seems to indicate that the
government got enough of what it wanted, or, that it doesn't see
Internet-freedom as so threatening, after all. see http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/09/rim_saudi_arabia/
[2] see http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/07/google-china-fiction/

And then there is RIM decision to cooperate fully with Saudi
Arabia's authorities to prevent their email services to be banned in
the country. Instead of protecting their users's privacy, RIM (the
company that makes the Blackberry devices) agreed to "to locate
three servers within Saudi Arabia, putting them under the
jurisdiction of local security forces and thus removing the
necessity of the planned ban." [2]



]]></description>
<author>jaromil</author>
<pubDate>Tue, 17 Aug 2010 00:00:00 CEST</pubDate>
<guid>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#dot%2Ecom%20%26%20totalitarian%20govs</guid>

</item>

<item>
<title>Surprising Europe</title>
<link>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#Surprising%20Europe</link>
<description><![CDATA[What awaits an African when he tries to make a better life in Europe?
Ssuuna Golooba, journalist from Uganda, was in Amsterdam when the
Schiphol Fire happened (26th of October 2005). How could this happen?
How was this possible? It took him four years to finish his film.

Today (Thursday 12) at 11.20 p.m. you can see Ssuuna Golooba's
documentary film Surprising Europe on Nederland 2

More on the Surprising Europe website.


]]></description>
<author>jaromil</author>
<pubDate>Thu, 12 Aug 2010 00:00:00 CEST</pubDate>
<guid>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#Surprising%20Europe</guid>

</item>

<item>
<title>Benjamin's briefcase</title>
<link>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#Benjamin%27s%20briefcase</link>
<description><![CDATA[My friend Tiziano Bonini together with a team of passionate walking
poets have realized the Benjamin Briefcase project, an on-line and
on-site intervention to commemorate the death of Walter Benjamin 70
years after his death, they hiked the mountain path from Spain to
France that him and many other people clandestinely crossed during the
war.


Un progetto on site/on line per ricordare Walter Benjamin, a 70
 anni dalla sua morte, e tutti quelli che, come lui, hanno
attraversato e attraversano i confini nazionali da clandestini.
Il progetto ha due dimensioni:
Riscoprire il sentiero usato da Benjamin e da centinaia di
clandestini per scappare dalla Francia, riscoprirne la storia e il
territorio in cui è immerso.
Ricordare Benjamin attraverso un’installazione invisibile: una
valigia nella terra e un blog nella rete.
Abbiamo camminato la Ruta Lister da Port Vendres a Port Bou,
ritrovato il luogo dove Walter Benjamin passò la notte il 24
settembre del 1940, dormito sotto il cielo e sotterrato la nostra
valigia.


]]></description>
<author>jaromil</author>
<pubDate>Sat, 24 Jul 2010 00:00:00 CEST</pubDate>
<guid>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#Benjamin%27s%20briefcase</guid>

</item>

<item>
<title>The cake is served</title>
<link>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#The%20cake%20is%20served</link>
<description><![CDATA[

Graffiti artist Blu strikes a chord in his home country with a new
giant mural in Grottaglie, Italy, famous for its olive trees, ancient
ceramic tradition and new, ever-expanding waste dumps. As the artist’s
contribution to FAME Fest, a yearly event inviting top urban artists
to create street and gallery works, Blu chose to highlight the town’s
growing problem with his work É Pronta la Torta (The Cake is Ready).

More on the artthreat article.

]]></description>
<author>jaromil</author>
<pubDate>Fri, 16 Jul 2010 00:00:00 CEST</pubDate>
<guid>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#The%20cake%20is%20served</guid>

</item>

<item>
<title>Economy and equality</title>
<link>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#Economy%20and%20equality</link>
<description><![CDATA[The Insight Center for Community Economic Development in Oakland,
California, has temporarily released a document named
/LiftingAsWeClimb-InsightCenter-Spring2010.pdf/ (which went off the
net shortly after its release) reporting that in USA the net average
income of a white woman between 36 and 49 years old is $42.600 while
that of a colored woman of the same age is $5.

Obviously that is even worse in Europe.


]]></description>
<author>jaromil</author>
<pubDate>Wed, 07 Jul 2010 00:00:00 CEST</pubDate>
<guid>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#Economy%20and%20equality</guid>

</item>

<item>
<title>The Artvertiser open sources</title>
<link>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#The%20Artvertiser%20open%20sources</link>
<description><![CDATA[The Artvertiser source code is now available, licensed under the
GPLv3.


Introduction
The Artvertiser is an Improved Reality platform, designed for the live
substitution of advertisements in a video stream with alternative 2D
content.
The code was initially developed by Julian Oliver before being
significantly improved by Damian Stewart.
A typical application of The Artvertiser at work might be the Product
Replacement of street billboards with 2D art using a laptop with
webcam or camera-enabled mobile device. You might also want to have
your own personal exhibition in the Louvre, substituting well known
paintings with your own creations and inviting others to enjoy the
show.
Counter-propaganda operations are also well suited to the platform,
like changing the imagery of a disliked political campaigner before
uploading the recorded result for all to see. Alternatively, it can be
used to product replace planar images in archival video, like a
HollyWood movie or TV advert, using popular films as an 'exhibition
surface'.
You can see a couple of examples of The Artvertiser at work using our
own specially crafted digital binoculars, The Billboard Interception
Unit, on the project website:
http://theartvertiser.com
The Code
The entire project tree exists as a git repository, cloned like so on
your local system:


git clone git://repo.or.cz/The-Artvertiser.git

The code should currently build on any modern Linux-based OS with the
addition of a couple of dependencies and - thanks to Damian - should
also compile on OS X with the correct prior tweaks in place. See the
README file in the top-level directory for more information.
A special 'mob' user has been set up allowing complete Read/Write
access for anyone at all. Once you've cloned the repository as above,
just:


git checkout mob

.. to move to the mob branch. It's all yours!
We look forward to your improvements, forks, derivations and vandalisms.
Happy (urban) hacking!
Julian and Damian







]]></description>
<author>jaromil</author>
<pubDate>Tue, 22 Jun 2010 00:00:00 CEST</pubDate>
<guid>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#The%20Artvertiser%20open%20sources</guid>

</item>

<item>
<title>How the Warlords took over EU in 2012</title>
<link>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#How%20the%20Warlords%20took%20over%20EU%20in%202012</link>
<description><![CDATA[BWO John Thackara:


I found a chart in Aviation Week which is almost a trade magazine of
the military industrial complex, that included these numbers for per
capita military spending:

U.S.: $545.3 billion, that's roughly $45,500 per head of the population.
- U.K.: $63.2 billion, or $34,800 per head.
- France: $60.3 billion, or $32,100 per head.
- Germany: $41.8 billion, or $33,800 per head.
Then I found a study that concludes that the United States spent
$1,780 per head on education in 2001 (France, The Netherlands and
Canada each spent more than $1,200 per capita). Hmmm.
Turning to culture and the arts, the best I could find is a perplexing
web database that appears to show that cultural expenditure per capita
in Spain is euro 135, compared to Germany which, in 2007, spent 99
euros per capita.
In round numbers, then, Germany appears to spend 25,000 euros per person on
defence, versus about 100 euros per head on culture. I have to assume that
the gap in the US and UK, were the numbers to be available, would be a good
deal wider.
As I said: insane numbers.
I distract you (and myself) with these numbers mainly because, in the years
ahead, spending on the things that we do care about - education, culture,
sustainability - looks certain to plummet.
In the UK, for example, commentators are talking gravely about public
spending cuts of 10, 15, or 20 percent. Insiders tell me that cuts will be
40 percent or more, in real terms, over the coming few years.
Large cultural and educational institutions will suck in what little public
funding is available. Government funding for small, grassroots activities
will dry up almost completely.


Full article online here.


]]></description>
<author>jaromil</author>
<pubDate>Mon, 21 Jun 2010 00:00:00 CEST</pubDate>
<guid>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#How%20the%20Warlords%20took%20over%20EU%20in%202012</guid>

</item>

<item>
<title>Dutch Gov Troika</title>
<link>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#Dutch%20Gov%20Troika</link>
<description><![CDATA[BWO Tjebbe van Tijen


DUTCH GOVERNMENT TROIKA 1 + 1 = 3 – the non-mathematical logic of democracy

This is the coalition government most seriously studied in the coming
days: two big winners trying to persuade one big loser to combine
forces.  Compared to the elections of 2006 VVD grew from 22 to 31
seats, PVV from 9 to 24 and CDA lost 20 seats and now has 21
representatives in parliament.  Historically speaking the actual
argument – supported by almost all parties – that governmental
participation of the PVV party should be taken most serious as they
have seen the biggest growth in votes, shows how party politics is
based on short memory. The oscillating favours of Dutch voters in the
last two decades resulted in the national elections of the year 2003
in sudden growth of votes for the Socialist Party (SP). They grew from
9 to 25 seats which is one seat more of sudden growth than the now
triumphant PVV party of Geert Wilders. In 2003 the bright red horse of
the SP was maneuvered out of government within days.  Nobody taking
their victory serious. Where the PVV has grown in 2010 elections with
15 seats to a total of 24, the SP had grown in 2003 with 16 seats to a
total of 25 (of which they have lost now 10 seats). These are the
vicissitudes of the parliamentary system in which the act of counting
and the value of numbers is most peculiar and has its own
non-mathematical logic.  As ‘a majority’ in our actual democratic
system = 1/2 the numbers total number of seats +1, the ‘ars
combinatoria’ of selecting party horses that will pull the ‘wagon of
state’ will at one moment in history not value an electoral success,
while at another moment prize a defeat.
Most parties in the scattered landscape of Dutch party politics enter
the election process with blind faith and false hope that they will
gain enough votes to form a government with one or two friends. Most
of the party leaders refuse to tell the voters on forehand who their
friends are or will be. The most heard argument has been that is “you
voters who decide.”  After the elections democracy ends up with a
decision process of wheeling and dealing directed by a hereditary
monarch and a lackey appointed by her for this occasion. “De kiezer
heeft gesproken” (the voter has spoken) is the expression of the day,
while on the basis of marginal differences in actual votes,
unpredictable government coalitions are wrought which have measures
and policies in stall that will go against that what the majority of
the voters have tried to express at the one brief moment in time that
they could mark their ballot-paper.  After one month of staged
political debates on television and party leaders feigning ‘direct
democracy’ on twitter, it is back to ‘back-room policies’.


version with image and explanatory link on Dutch party system can be
found on The Limping Messenger blog.









]]></description>
<author>jaromil</author>
<pubDate>Fri, 18 Jun 2010 00:00:00 CEST</pubDate>
<guid>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#Dutch%20Gov%20Troika</guid>

</item>

<item>
<title>Digital prohibitionists</title>
<link>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#Digital%20prohibitionists</link>
<description><![CDATA[Same old censorship arguments since ages now, but with a better
website it seems: smile29.eu is setup by the prohibitionist cast at
the EU parliament asking a "low latency" mechanism that would "signal
child pornography" semi-automatically

Yet another field of analysis for the false-positive theory?

Oh yea, machines analysis will go faster and save our children!

Meh.




]]></description>
<author>jaromil</author>
<pubDate>Thu, 03 Jun 2010 00:00:00 CEST</pubDate>
<guid>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#Digital%20prohibitionists</guid>

</item>

<item>
<title>Machines predicting humans</title>
<link>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#Machines%20predicting%20humans</link>
<description><![CDATA[Klaus Walher, portavoce della compagnia aerea Lufthansa, ? un uomo che
crede nella scienza. Eppure, osservando il cielo europeo desolato e
sgombro, lamenta la mancanza d'intuizione e di buon senso. Walher
vuole solo volare. La sua opposizione al blocco aereo ? un passo
importante nella storia della "critica della tecnologia", una pietra
miliare nella storia della societ? moderna che si priva del potere dei
modelli matematici da essa stessa creati.

Le compagnie aeree, naturalmente, difendono prima di tutto i loro
interessi. Per? Walher non ? uno che sacrifica la sicurezza
sull'altare del profitto. Anche chi non ha confidenza con i voli
aerei, in questi giorni, ha la sensazione che la nube invisibile che
paralizza il traffico non sia fatta di cenere e polvere, ma da un
mucchio infinito di dati. Le conseguenze scaturite oggi da
un'esplosione vulcanica domani potrebbero innescarsi per qualsiasi
altro imprevisto, geologico, economico o sociale che sia. Una
simulazione informatica paralizza la circolazione aerea, con perdite
di centinaia di milioni di euro al giorno. Cosa potr? accadere domani?
Quale sar? il prezzo da pagare?

http://www.presseurop.eu/it/content/article/234591-nelle-mani-del-computer



Important to be clear that this is not neighborhood predictions, like
Crimespotting, which have problems of their own, but predictions about
whether a person will commit a crime.

(
http://gizmodo.com/5517231/crime-prediction-software-is-here-and-its-a-very-bad-idea
)

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Florida-Department-of-bw-1587995596.html?x=3D0&.v=3D1

CHICAGO(BUSINESS WIRE)SPSS, an IBM (NYSE: IBM) Company, today
announced that the Florida State Department of Juvenile Justice
selected IBM predictive analytics software to reduce recidivism by
determining which juveniles are likely to reoffend. Identified at-risk
youth can then be placed in programs specific to the best course of
treatment to ensure offenders do not re-enter the juvenile justice
system. 

IBM recently also announced that the Ministry of Justice in the
United Kingdom uses predictive analytics to assess the likelihood
of prisoners reoffending upon their release to help improve public
safety. With predictive technology from IBM, the Ministry of Justice
is analyzing hidden trends and patterns within the data. IBM SPSS
predictive analytics has helped identify whether offenders with
specific problems such as drug and alcohol misuse are more likely to
reoffend than other prisoners.



Deepak Advani, vice president of predictive analytics at IBM, said:

Predictive  analytics  gives  government  organizations  worldwide  a
highly-sophisticated   and  intelligent   source   to  create   safer
communities by identifying,  predicting, responding to and preventing
criminal  activities.   It  gives  the criminal  justice  system  the
ability to draw upon the wealth of data available to detect patterns,
make  reliable projections and  then take  the appropriate  action in
real time to combat crime and protect citizens.


]]></description>
<author>jaromil</author>
<pubDate>Thu, 22 Apr 2010 00:00:00 CEST</pubDate>
<guid>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#Machines%20predicting%20humans</guid>

</item>

<item>
<title>Poortgebouw wins courtcase</title>
<link>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#Poortgebouw%20wins%20courtcase</link>
<description><![CDATA[http://indymedia.nl/nl/2010/04/66526.shtml



]]></description>
<author>jaromil</author>
<pubDate>Fri, 16 Apr 2010 00:00:00 CEST</pubDate>
<guid>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#Poortgebouw%20wins%20courtcase</guid>

</item>

<item>
<title>Sorting contributions</title>
<link>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#Sorting%20contributions</link>
<description><![CDATA[http://lwn.net/Articles/222773/
sorting contributions is not a simple topic
# as pointed out in this article http://lwn.net/Articles/222773/

git logpretty="format:%an %ae" $1 \Style does not support tables.




]]></description>
<author>jaromil</author>
<pubDate>Mon, 12 Apr 2010 00:00:00 CEST</pubDate>
<guid>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#Sorting%20contributions</guid>

</item>

<item>
<title>Online normative observatory</title>
<link>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#Online%20normative%20observatory</link>
<description><![CDATA[http://www.normattiva.it/static/index.html

Normattiva  è un  nuovo servizio  che  lo Stato  italiano fornisce  ai
cittadini.  Si  tratta  di  una  banca dati,  accessibile  a  tutti  e
consultabile gratuitamente,  che contiene i testi  delle leggi statali
vigenti aggiornate in tempo reale

]]></description>
<author>jaromil</author>
<pubDate>Mon, 22 Mar 2010 00:00:00 CET</pubDate>
<guid>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#Online%20normative%20observatory</guid>

</item>

<item>
<title>Crypto SMS</title>
<link>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#Crypto%20SMS</link>
<description><![CDATA[https://cryptosms.org/




]]></description>
<author>jaromil</author>
<pubDate>Fri, 19 Mar 2010 00:00:00 CET</pubDate>
<guid>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#Crypto%20SMS</guid>

</item>

<item>
<title>Symbian lies on open source?</title>
<link>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#Symbian%20lies%20on%20open%20source%3F</link>
<description><![CDATA[Symbian is Open Soruce - Really? via Harald Welte's blog on 2/4/10

In  recent  news, the  Symbian  Foundation  announced  that "All  108
packages containing the  source code of the Symbian  platform can now
be downloaded from Symbian's developer web site". This is great news!

This morning  I tried to  look at the  parts most interesting  to me:
phonesrv (implementing  call engine,  cell broadcast and  SIM toolkit
APIs) and poc (implementing push-to-talk). Their pages don't have the
usual "source code" tab at  the bottom right which links to mercurial
and tarball download pages!

Either I'm  too stupid, or  I am unable  to find any source  code for
those  two components. I'm  quite sure  something essential  like the
API's  for making  phone calls  are  considered part  of the  Symbian
platform. So how does that match with the statement that all packages
containing the Symbian platform can now be downloaded?







]]></description>
<author>jaromil</author>
<pubDate>Sat, 06 Feb 2010 00:00:00 CET</pubDate>
<guid>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#Symbian%20lies%20on%20open%20source%3F</guid>

</item>

<item>
<title>The last days of Jack Sheppard</title>
<link>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#The%20last%20days%20of%20Jack%20Sheppard</link>
<description><![CDATA[A new worthwhile film is out, concerned with the historical moment and
relation  of  finance and  class  violence:  "The  last days  of  Jack
Sheppard"  by Anja  Kirschner and  David Panos,  also  taking critical
inspiration from  historical accounts found in  Peter Linebaugh's book
"The London Hanged".

On the  Mute magazine was  published an interesting response  by prof.
Linebaugh,  outing   some  criticism  juggled  between   him  and  the
film-makers, which  regardless of  polemical tones ends  up discussing
some  very   interesting  aspects  of  history  and   the  process  of
subjectivation taking  place among populations oppressed  at the times
of   the  slave   trade,   industrial  revolution   and  more   recent
anti-capitalist movements.

It is  a perfect commentary for  facts often neglected  and truly well
related to  the contemporary financial crisis  and consequent bail-out
solutions adopted. Making  our mouths wet for watching  the film, here
below the incipit of prof.Linebaugh's article:

In August 1971  Richard Nixon devalued the dollar  and suspended its
convertibility  to gold.  The  gold  standard had  been  one of  the
pillars  of the  capitalist  order according  to  Karl Polanyi,  the
others being  the balance of power, the  self-regulating market, and
the liberal  state. A  few days later  George Jackson, who  had been
imprisoned 11 years earlier for stealing $70 from a gas station, was
assassinated in San Quentin prison,  a cold blooded murder which led
directly  to the  seizure by  the  inmates of  the maximum  security
penitentiary  in  Attica,  New  York.  Notoriously,  Governor  David
Rockefeller suppressed  the uprising  with the worst  massacre since
the Indian  wars of the 19th  century. 39 prisoners  and four guards
were killed making  a total of 43 mortalities.  (William Calley, the
perpetrator of  My Lai massacre of  1968 which killed  20 people was
pardoned by Nixon  earlier in the year.) Clearly,  the liberal state
was going the way of gold.

While there is not a direct causal relation between the rebellion of
the  incarcerated  and  the   abandonment  of  gold,  this  kind  of
relationship was not unprecedented. The conjuncture between monetary
disruption by the  ruling class and defiance of  the legal apparatus
by the other class had  parallels at the birth of finance capitalism
in the period 1690-1725. By  comparing the two situations perhaps we
can learn something, and a movie may help us do this.

The gallows and money went together by a logic that is considered in
a film  by Anja Kirschner  and David Panos  called The Last  Days of
Jack Sheppard. The film is sponsored by the Arts Council of England,
the  Scottish   Arts  Council,  the  Henry   Moore  Foundation,  and
commissioned by the Chisenhale Gallery  in London and the Centre for
Contemporary Art  in Glasgow. As we shall  see it is an  art film in
other senses than its sponsorship. Jack Sheppard was a carpenter and
thief who frequently and famously escaped prison until he was hanged
at the  Tyburn gallows in London  in November 1724. He  was also the
subject of the first chapter in my book, The London Hanged.

You can  go read  the whole debacle,  full of historical  accounts and
observations about the role of  the ruling class and its imposed sense
of un/justice online on MetaMute.


]]></description>
<author>jaromil</author>
<pubDate>Fri, 01 Jan 2010 00:00:00 CET</pubDate>
<guid>http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2010.html#Pimping%20mutt</guid>

</item>

  </channel>
</rss>