Once you’ve run the gamut of jugglers, drunks, and other associated weirdos, and passed the small market full of useless hand-made junk near the Palau del Mar, you’ll happen upon an enclosed area by the harbor promenade where, if you’re lucky, you’ll find a table in the sun, with a nice breeze blowing in from the ocean, tourists looking in jealously, and only the odd accordion-playing freak trying to get you to give him money for blasting you with an ear-shattering rendition of “Guantanaméra”.

The food’s just great. Our favorites are the monkfish and giant shrimp in garlic cream sauce, the black rice with sepia, or the grilled squid strip escalivada salad for starters. They also make great classics like the omnipresent tomato and garlic bread or giant crayfish from the grill. And, of course, the gigantic gin & tonics – Spain would be counted among the most civilized countries in the world for these alone, if it came down to it. It ain’t cheap but it’s sure worth every cent.

Eventually you’ll walk out, bloated and happy from your rich meal with a nice bottle of Albariño to tamp it down, weaving gently between the skateboarders, and vowing never to eat anything again, until dinner of course. But hey, what else are you going to do on a sunny afternoon as the rest of Europe is smothered in a grey, depressing shitcover of clouds? Drunken late lunch sounds pretty good.

Plaça Pau Vila s/n
Port Vell
Barcelona, ES
(+34) 93 221 44 60
www.calpinxo.com

Let’s face it, most of it for “prosumer” (I hate that word) work boils down to Canon and Nikon, with exceptions for the odd Sony, Panasonic, or other model, unless you’re willing to shell out a spare kidney’s worth of cash for a Leica or some other such obscenity.   Each brand, generally speaking, has some pros and cons, and each individual model and generation has its particular quirks.  At least, for most users, the differences between various brands and models in the same class are often too subtle to notice, which makes the rantings of brand-loyal fanboys touting their particular home team’s technical features all that much more hilarious and pointless.

My first DSLR, a long-serving EOS 350D / Rebel XT, was the result of me asking an experienced photographer friend what I should buy – he told me to go to B&H (at the same time the most curt and efficient and yet the most professional and knowledgeable service I’ve gotten in a photo shop so far),  look at the Rebel and the Nikon D70, play around with both, and buy whichever felt more “right” because they were pretty much the same camera.  Just get a real (non-kit) lens, and realize that you’ll probably stick with that brand from there on in, and you’re set.

Sage words.

I haven’t had any cause to regret that first purchase (I mainly bought the 350D because the D70 felt too large), although at times I’ve been curious about Nikon lenses and different (better?) low-light / high ISO performance – most of my pictures these days are in dusky, dirty, underground or nighttime environments.  But on the whole, while I’m one of the few people out there who will unabashedly admit that my camera gear has much more impact on the quality of my pics than my (sadly not-so-awesome) mad photo skills, I don’t think there’d be that much difference.  Also, I absolutely love my f/2.8 70-200 IS USM even though it’s an utter tank of a lens.

Lately I’ve been using mainly a 5DMarkII, bought before a big safari trip in Tanzania in 2008.  I’d wanted a full frame camera for a while, and while this is an absolute beast, it’s also a miracle of engineering.  So far, it’s been on about three continents and brought me uncounted fun and great shots.

So imagine my consternation when I started experiencing bizarre gremlins in my long exposure photos – a mysterious green bar along the bottom 1/5 of all my shots over about 30s exposure time.

What an absolute pisser, that is.  This kind of puts the kibosh on a major part of my hobby.

Nor could I edit this out or just desaturate the greens in post – all colors were green, leading to some fantastically fucked photo opportunities in places that I’d probably not be able to see again anytime soon if at all (the abandoned theater at left is now heavily boarded up and inaccessible.)  If I wanted to salvage anything at all, I’d have to turn it black & white or just live with my crappy lighting skills.

I tried asking everywhere, from the dpreview and Digital Photo School forums to various other user groups and experienced photographers – nobody had any clue.

Finally an online associate from Canon UK took pity on me and told me to send the thing in so his boffins could poke it with sticks – all it cost me was the price of shipping, a good bottle of thank-you scotch, and the anxiety of being without my baby for a week or so.

Unfortunately, nothing came of it, as during a recent trip to an abandoned French bunker complex, the same goddamned bug turned up again – green haze everywhere, and still nobody had any clue what the issue was.

Finally, the good man just told me to send it in again.

As of this morning, I have a brand-new (I’d thought even hoping for a refurbished RMA or demonstration model would be more than I had any right to) 5DMarkII on my desk at home, with the blessing of Canon UK, 5 days after sending off my long-suffering old one.

I am speechless at the speed, lack of hesitation, and general awesomeness of this.  While I really liked my gear before, I’d never had much to do with company repair service, and always feared having to deal with what I imagined to be labyrinthine bureaucracy – let alone for a camera out of warranty.

What can I say, maybe the differences between camera models in the same general price range are not that huge, but some companies sure seem to go far out of their way to be awesome.  Top notch, A+, ten points to Gryffindor, Canon, you’ve got yourself a loyal customer for life.

Well, you may not necessarily ask, but I’ll tell you anyway.

If you’ve ever worked in compliance and/or risk management, you’ll know that it is all Magic and Fairy Juice, relying on 40,000+ row spreadsheets feeding into some sort of dusty legacy statistical system that keeps chugging on spit, bailing wire, and hamster power, which nobody’s allowed to touch for fear of upsetting the delicate balance of the ca. anno 1985 legacy hardware for which there are no replacements outside some long-sealed Soviet military warehouse somewhere in Kazakhstan.

The “tools” used by the so-called quants who spend their days losing billions through bizarre, incomprehensible structured products trading, are written during cocaine-fueled binges using a Visual Basic for Dummies book.  They rely on things like the price of tea in China, the Sri Lankan 10-year treasuries yield, and Candi the uberhooker’s measurements as input. The whole thing probably runs on a NeXT Cube, its monitor wedged somewhere in the six screens of arcane widgets and squigglynumbers scrolling at a mind-boggling pace. If you come too close, you might smell incense – beware of stepping in the pentagrams drawn on the floor, it will cause them to twitch more than usual and shout at you. Also, take care of the dead cats being swung overhead.

Most likely at any given time they’re trading CDOs using the predicted spreads from the 15:00 heat at the racetrack as underlying assets, as part of some crackheaded dark pool they run together with their ex-roommate over at Nomura who has a similarly twisted setup – each one of their caffeine-fueled trades probably involves more virtual cash than the annual jute harvest of Botswana, which is probably another thing they’re betting on. And as long as they keep raking in the buku bucks, their management just smiles beatifically, only occasionally pausing to shout at an underling and throw a telephone out of their glass-walled office at the edge of the trading floor, not having a clue or a care about what the fuck is going on.

And that, boys and girls, is how investment banking works.

I’m a great fan of the classics, although “douchenozzle” has recently caught my attention.

Shitbag, cocksucker, pigfucker, cunt (for men, mind you, the British have a wonderful thing going there), bitch (for women), retard ([explanation](http://www.freefunlinks.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/difference-between-mentally-challenged-and-retarded.jpg) in case of lack of clarity), cretin, and other elements are wonderful bases for good insult generation.

You can pretty much build anything around (1) excretion, (2) sexual proclivities, (3) mental capacity, (4) appearance, or (5) family descent.  I’m assuming that we aren’t motivated to go into the witty, calmly delivered cut-down so often associated with Oscar Wilde, as this is frequently the mark of the sort of pretentious shit who gets off on making others feel bad about themselves, and is, let’s be honest, usually less genuine for being studied and rehearsed for an appropriate occasion.

Certain insults may be spiced up with some carefully sprinkled fuck/shit/cunt/cock/etc. – consider them the soybean of the insult world, highly versatile but rarely effective on their own unless delivered unapologetically, with a huge degree of conviction (“you SHIT”).

While we’re on the topic, the above are tremendously enhanced when accompanied by some sort of qualifier. Words like utter, total, complete, little, etc, can add fantastic mileage to your insults – particularly when delivered slowly and clearly, with barely controlled frustration or fury.  Try it – “you…utter…cunt”.

Unless a short, sharp cutdown is appropriate, a bit of elaboration is encouraged. Verbs and adjectives are great. Some samples of adjectives include “knuckle-dragging”, “shit-festering”, “diseased”, “filthy”, “inbred”, while the “action” component of a good insult can be something like one of the many variations on “go fuck yourself” – always a favorite.

Always be careful that your insult does not come across as excessively florid, as this can make it contrived. A good example of this would be the use of Shakespearean insults by a whiny-voiced college student of the nerd persuasion – it just does not work and comes across as pretentious and silly.

Advanced usage can range further afield in the Thesaurus – Hergé’s Captain Haddock, in any language, is a marvelous source of useful terms. Hottentot, amoeba, fascist, patagonian, these are all a potential gold mine, if used carefully. Context is all-important, as is judicious usage – don’t just rattle off words or you risk coming off as pathetic, like our hypothetical nerdling in the previous paragraph.

Generally, while profanity can be extremely effective and satisfying, it’s not always strictly necessary.   Calling someone who’s incapable of following basic directions an imbecile, illiterate, mongoloid,  moron,  or analphabete can have the same impact as “fucking idiot”.

Nationality-based insults take a bit of finesse to carry out and only work with certain countries – furthermore, certain slurs do not function well when originating from any but a select few countries (e.g. “whingeing pom cunt” works better when used by an Australian than an American).   Try to be creative; archaic insults (e.g. “the boche”) can shine in this usage.

Choose your delivery style carefully.  A sweet smile can be as biting as a contorted mask of rage – but the sorts of insults acceptable for various types of expression vary wildly.  Insults delivered in furious anger can be less eloquent and more elaborate (although maintaining clear enunciation and consistency while shouting at someone is of huge benefit.)  Timing and appropriate length are everything.

A true professional will not use certain categories of slurs (ethnicity and physical disability come to mind as examples) unless they are truly called for, and in the context of a highly deserving target.  Naturally, regardless of your sensibilities, you’re not here to be politically correct, but be aware that you are always walking a fine line between figuratively biting off someone’s head and coming across as a boor.

Above all, practice and conviction make perfect.

During the Liberian and Sierra Leone civil wars (and doubtlessly, endless other minor African bush conflicts), teenage and child soldiers were taken from their families, often forced to kill their parents and siblings, enticed to become addicted to drugs, and sent into combat for insane local warlords’ mercenary units such as General Butt Naked‘s Butt Naked Battalion.

In the process, they picked up some pretty messed up idea about things like magic or just plain craziness, resulting in plenty of hilariously awful contrasts between the usual ravages of brutal civil war, and merciless mercenary soldiers dressed in pretty pink tutus.

With no heed paid to good taste or attribution, here are a couple that I found online, including from various “African Infantryman of the Year” threads, Google images, and a miscellany of other sites – here in their pure visual glory without the stupid racist comments that inevitably go along with them.  Most-if-not-all have been making the rounds for some time and weren’t original from the pages where I found them to start with.  Enjoy

These are some I found at stardestroyer.net, notable for the hilarious techniques used:

By the way, try to avoid google image searches for “crossdressing African soldiers”.  You may not get the results you were expecting.  You’ve been warned.

For those of you instantly screaming “pirate!”, be aware that BitTorrent is a protocol that is extremely practical for fast downloads of large files.  In recent weeks, I’ve used it for

- an open source operating system install DVD (5+ GB)

- a collection of Left 4 Dead 2 community maps (10+ GB)

- a large patch collection for software I own (god-knows-how-many-GB)

In addition to speeding up your own downloads, bittorrent takes load off the provider’s systems, by distributing downloads, lets you schedule when and how fast you download, and allows you to provide out-of-date or difficult to find files to others.  So all the hysteria aside, saying “bittorrent = piracy” is about the same as claiming “the Internet = child pornography” because people use it for that.  But you already knew that.

It’s not rocket science, but took me a bit of tinkering to figure out.  This article assumes that you have a basic idea of what you are doing.

I. Operating system installation – FreeBSD

So, we start with a FreeBSD system.  I recently upgraded mine to 9.0-Release, the latest production version at time of writing.  Get it here.  Instructions on installing from scratch or updating from source are linked from the Freebsd.org page.  I like FreeBSD because in my view it’s the most UNIX-like of the free *NIX systems, and I learned on BSD-related OS, so there.  People who start operating system religious wars are not worth listening to – so use whatever works for you.

If you go with FreeBSD, this assumes that you have an updated system source tree and have done a buildworld / installworld.  If there is any confusion on this, handbook, handbook, handbook.

Please note that in 9.0, cvsup is deprecated, if you’re using this to update your sources – use csup and make your life easier.

Make sure your ports tree is also up to date.  Running portmaster -a or something similar can be a big help.

II. Building the kernel

You’ll need to add a few devices to your kernel configuration file in /usr/src/sys/i386/conf/.

I have the following:

options         IPFIREWALL
options         IPFIREWALL_VERBOSE (more on these later)
device          tun             # Packet tunnel. (just make sure it’s present and uncommented)

Build your kernel:

cd /usr/src && make KERNCONF=<yourkernelfilename> buildkernel && make KERNCONF=<yourkernelfilename> installkernel

Reboot.  If you need help building a new kernel, make sure you’ve read the FreeBSD handbook first.

III. Anonymity – OpenVPN

Because of the frequent association of BitTorrent with piracy, I’d rather not have to deal with nosy providers.  After all, you close the door when you’re on the toilet, regardless of what you’re doing in there, right?

There are two major options for this – use a seedbox, or a virtual private network (VPN) to a non-busybody country via a provider that supposedly does not keep any log files.  Both have advantages and disadvantages – the seedbox tends to cost a bit more, and only uses your bandwidth when you’re actually downloading files, while a VPN lets you use it for all kinds of Internet traffic, and lets you have the downloaded files directly at hand once they’re finished downloading.

I’m using Mullvad – they’re cheap, fast, have a good reputation, and seem to take users’ privacy seriously.

III.a. Setting up OpenVPN

First, install OpenVPN from ports.  It’s a TLS-based VPN.  Mullvad supports MacOS, Windows, Linux, and Android natively, but allows you connect via OpenVPN if you configure it yourself.

cd /usr/ports/net/security/openvpn && make install

Next, add the following lines to /etc/rc.conf to start the VPN at boot.

# OpenVPN
openvpn_enable=”YES”
openvpn_if=”tun”
openvpn_configfile=”/etc/openvpn/mullvad.conf”
openvpn_dir=”/etc/openvpn”

III.b. Setting up Mullvad

Sign up for Mullvad (or your own provider) here -> http://mullvad.net/en/openvpn_conf.php and click on “create a new account”.  You won’t give them any money just yet.

Download the .zip file with your customer ID (this is important as it identifies you for billing and whether you’re allowed to connect).  You’ll want to extract the following files into a directory called /etc/openvpn:

behemoth# ls -l /etc/openvpn
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  6296 Mar  7 20:05 ca.crt
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  6296 Mar  7 20:05 master.mullvad.net.crt
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  1143 Mar  9 12:05 mullvad.conf (this was originally called mullvad_linux.conf but I renamed it for simplicity’s sake)
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  4905 Mar  7 20:05 mullvad.crt
-rw——-  1 root  wheel  1675 Mar  7 20:05 mullvad.key (make sure the permissions on this are correct)

Here’s my mullvad.conf, minus blank lines and comments:

client
dev tun
proto udp
remote openvpn.mullvad.net 1194
resolv-retry infinite
nobind
persist-key
persist-tun
comp-lzo
verb 3
remote-cert-tls server
ping-exit 60
script-security 2
up /etc/openvpn/update-resolv-conf
down /etc/openvpn/update-resolv-conf
ping 10
ca master.mullvad.net.crt
cert mullvad.crt
key mullvad.key

III.c. Setting up resolvconf

This was a bit of a pain to figure out.  Mullvad requires the resolvconf package, or an equivalent, to allow it to manipulate your /etc/resolv.conf (nameserver configuration) for when the VPN goes up and down – you want all of your DNS queries to go via Mullvad while your VPN is up.

I used the openresolv package for this:

cd /usr/ports/dns/openresolv && make install

 You will then need to make sure you have the update-resolv-conf script handy – I put it in /etc/openvpn.  Please note that this may not be the tidiest way of doing things, but I spent so long tracking down how openresolv did things, that as soon as I found a way to make it just work, halleluja.  There are a few versions out there – here’s the one that works for me:

#!/usr/local/bin/bash
#
# Parses DHCP options from OpenVPN to update resolv.conf.
# To use set as ‘up’ and ‘down’ script in your openvpn config:
# up /etc/openvpn/update-resolv-conf
# down /etc/openvpn/update-resolv-conf
#
# credit:
# * Thomas Hood <jdthood@yahoo.co.uk>
# * Chris Hanson
# * chlauber@bnc.ch
#
# Licensed under the GNU GPL
#

[ -x /sbin/resolvconf ] || exit 0

case $script_type in
  up)
    for optionname in ${!foreign_option_*} ; do
      option=”${!optionname}”
      echo $option
      part1=$(echo “$option” | cut -d ” ” -f 1)
      if [ "$part1" == "dhcp-option" ] ; then
        part2=$(echo “$option” | cut -d ” ” -f 2)
        part3=$(echo “$option” | cut -d ” ” -f 3)
        if [ "$part2" == "DNS" ] ; then
          IF_DNS_NAMESERVERS=”$IF_DNS_NAMESERVERS $part3″
        fi
        if [ "$part2" == "DOMAIN" ] ; then
          IF_DNS_SEARCH=”$part3″
        fi
      fi
    done
    R=”"
    if [ "$IF_DNS_SEARCH" ] ; then
      R=”${R}search $IF_DNS_SEARCH”
    fi
    for NS in $IF_DNS_NAMESERVERS ; do
      R=”${R}nameserver $NS”
    done
    echo -n “$R” | /sbin/resolvconf -a “${dev}.inet”
    ;;
  down)
    /sbin/resolvconf -d “${dev}.inet”
    cp /etc/openvpn/resolv.bak /etc/resolv.conf <– NOTE THIS LINE.  IMPORTANT.
    ;;
esac

See that bit about “NOTE THIS LINE.  IMPORTANT” up there?  Remove that (and the arrow).

create a file called /etc/openvpn/resolv.bak:

nameserver <IP of your nameserver here>
nameserver <IP of your secondary NS here>

I use Google’s nameservers, 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4, because my own firewall’s DNS forwarder is unreliable.

Again, there is probably a better way to do this, but it’s the only way I could ensure that update-resolv-conf left me with a working DNS setup whenever I killed the VPN tunnel.

IV. BitTorrent – Transmission

I screwed around with several web-based BitTorrent packages before settling on Transmission; it was one of the few that’s still actively maintained and which installed right off the bat.

Note that there are a ton of other decent-looking BitTorrent clients out there – a friend swears by rtorrent + xmlrpc as much more capable of automating tasks.  Perhaps – use whatever works for you.  I needed something simple and robust, and have been using Transmission on OSX for a while.

Assuming you stick with Transmission, you will need the transmission-daemon package:

cd /usr/ports/net-p2p/transmission-daemon && make install

The default config is in /usr/local/etc/transmission/home/settings.json.  The only line you should have to change is:

“rpc-whitelist”:  “127.0.0.1,<Your client IP address(es) here>“,

This entry accepts wildcards, so for example 192.168.1.* will grant access to all machines on that subnet.

Add the following lines to your /etc/rc.conf:

# transmission
transmission_enable=”YES”
transmission_download_dir=”/data2/Download/Bittorrent” (or whatever works for you)

Once you have that, you can run

/usr/local/etc/rc.d/transmission start

and connect to

http://yourmachine:9091

Transmission will now run at boot.

Note that the package does some shenanigans with your config files – i.e. it will overwrite certain entries when stopping or starting.  Check your config file (settings.json) after starting/stopping transmission the first few times to make sure this is not the case – I don’t know which entries are overwritten (for example the line “download-dir”: is overwritten, but “bind-address-ipv4″: is not.)

V. Blocklists and ipfw

This is not strictly necessary, but I’m paranoid.  I want to avoid the following:

- accidentally starting bittorrent when the tunnel’s down (and going over my non-encrypted interface)

- peering with known nasties

I get a bunch of blocklists from BlueTack, but they appear to have restricted registrations.  Look around a bit – there are plenty of ipfw-compatible blocklists out there.

I followed Alex Kruijff’s guide to setting up p2p firewalls – some of the blocklists in blockfetch.sh do not always work or are outdated, you will have to experiment a bit.

Next, I want to avoid having transmission make any connections when the tunnel is down.  My non-OpenVPN interface is called re0.

Alex’ blog instructs you to add a line to your crontab to update your blocklist.conf.  I simply created the file blocklist.local with my own firewall rules to avoid connections to my peer port configured in transmission (default is 51413) and change the crontab entry to append blocklist.local to blocklist.conf:

behemoth# crontab -l
0       20      *       *       6       /usr/local/sbin/blockfetch.sh && /usr/local/sbin/blocklist.pl > /usr/local/behemoth/etc/blocklist.conf; cat /usr/local/bbehemoth/etc/blocklist.local >> /usr/local/behemoth/etc/blocklist.conf

Obviously your directories will vary.

Even though I have a dedicated Internet-facing firewall, I added this extra bit because I permit bittorrent connections from and to my home network (I occasionally get lazy and download stuff onto my laptops or desktop and I keep forgetting who has which IP).  Read up on ipfw syntax for what the local blocklist should look like.

VI. Activate the VPN

Lastly, you will have to give Mullvad some money.  I am currently on a 5 Euro / 1 month trial (just until I see how this holds up, and it seems to be working beautifully thus far).  Go to their page, log in with your customer number (see section III.b. above), and pay them.  Your VPN will work shortly thereafter.  Give it a little time, then start OpenVPN:

/usr/local/etc/rc.d/openvpn start

If it’s working, you will see something like this:

behemoth# ifconfig tun0
tun0: flags=8051<UP,POINTOPOINT,RUNNING,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
        options=80000<LINKSTATE>
        inet 10.8.0.90 –> 10.8.0.89 netmask 0xffffffff
        nd6 options=1<PERFORMNUD>
        Opened by PID 1365

behemoth# cat /etc/resolv.conf
# Generated by resolvconf
nameserver 10.8.0.1

And that’s it.  You can now open your transmission instance and start torrenting.

VII. More Stuff

JKT has a blog post up on configuring FlexGet.  If you’re so inclined, this will allow automated transfer setups – mainly of use if you are interested in downloads of regularly published items that are announced via RSS.

For those of you who don’t want to screw around with FreeBSD or Linux, here is a Lifehacker guide on setting up utorrent + web UI on Windows.  Ideal if you have a spare derelict old laptop lying around.  Configure it to not go to sleep when you close the lid, install RealVNC or similar software for remote access in case you ever need to log in, connect a nice big external hard drive, install the Mullvad (or equivalent) VPN client (in my provider’s case, a one-click installation, no configuration needed) and you’re good to go.  Old Apple laptops are equally simple to set up, with web access to the OSX Transmission client.

You may wish to make sure that the tunnel does not close due to inactivity – to that end, you can put something like this in crontab:

# crontab -e

* * * * * /sbin/ping -c 5 www.slashdot.org

This will send 5 pings every minute to an IP or hostname of your choice.

Please be aware, as always, that you’re entirely responsible for what you do with your new toy.  Anonymity and security are good, but nothing is 100% guaranteed anonymous or secure.

Next time, I’m bringing my Fez.  Fezzes are awesome.  Especially when they’re little mini-fezzes being worn by monkeys, but even sans monkey, the Fez is probably the ultimate gentleman’s accessory, whether you’re an English colonial gentleman in a dinner jacket, or a hooka-smoking Syrian trader.

The Fezzes (does one capitalize the name of the hat?) in the Yahabibi seem like the real thing, though.  Along with the swords and plates and rugs (take off your shoes and sit around a low table, with tons of cushions, for extra goodness) and belly-dancing videos featuring seductively gyrating Russians constantly distracting you from your dinner and conversation.  In fact, that was the only downside of this restaurant – the lack of a real flesh-and-blood bellydancer, but I guess they don’t do that on Tuesday nights.  And the name of the restaurant just runs off the tongue.  Yahabibi.  Say it.  It makes you happy and want to wear a Fez.

Fare is the standard “Arab” food, for those of us ignoramuses who can’t tell the difference between a Moroccan falafel and a Lebanese burek, and done well, with cute and attentive service to bring the stuff.  The wine list’s not bad either, with the first restaurant serving Kefraya – Lebanese red that we used to really like back at our favorite Lebanese place in Zurich, despite the fact that, at some point, they decided that they were a gourmet vintage and that they’d start charging obscene prices.  I guess someone realized the silliness of that, and brought the cost back down to normal levels.  Also, we were served the wrong wine, which doesn’t matter, because it was pretty good.  That says something for the quality of a wine list, when a waitress screws up your order and you’re still happy.

Go there, sit down, take off your shoes, pig out, have a shisha for dessert – have two, I couldn’t because of a miserable two-week cold.  But I’m going back, dammit.  The food’s just so good.  And I’m wearing my Fez.

Sömmeringstr. 48
50832 Köln
+49 (0) 221 510 7162
yadaary-orienthaus.de

If you’re tired of hearing about it, good.  If you’re not, you haven’t heard enough about it.  If you’re not yet sick to the heart of the vile, cynical idiocy and greed of it all, you don’t understand it.

This is not about the oppressive, cynical, corrupt nature of SOPA – a bill paid for by an industry that has consistently managed to blame everyone but itself for its failed, obsolete business model.  Nor is it about broken lobbying and media industry interference in government, defective intellectual property laws, disproportionate enforcement, undemocratic and secret trade negotiations, or lack of respect for other nations’ sovereignty when pushing your own broken laws on others.

It’s about the inevitability of pointless and restrictive laws that may have, at some point, had their roots in some well-meaning idiot’s mind, but which serve only to advance the agenda of some fringe.  Blackouts, petitions, and logical arguments won’t stop them, because the forces of greed, fanaticism, and stupidity are an inexorable force that gnaw at liberty, free markets, prosperity and common sense.   And yes, it’s a rant, and a fairly discouraged one at that.  Because I feel like ranting.

A great comment, thieved from here, about “the MPAA’s SOPA backup plan”.  I’ll copy it in its entirety:

It’s not a waiting game, it’s a game of poker. Lamar Smith has a royal flush and few people know it.

SOPA may pass. It may not. He doesn’t care, and it doesn’t matter. The MPAA and RIAA started working on their legislative strategy to pass a new anti-piracy bill in late 2010. SOPA was designed to raise the noise. Everyone is playing right into the entertainment industries hand. The lobbyists are laughing manically at the ignorance of the mob. Even Wikipedia and reddit have played into it.

What people don’t know about is the ace: H.R.1981, the Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011 which is lying in wait. It’s not complete. You see, PCIP is not contestable because it’s about protecting children. They can, and very well might, copy and paste the full text of SOPA to the end of PCIP. That’s the backup. That’s the deal that was struck with entertainment industry lobbyists. We will try to push this anti-piracy bill. It probably won’t work. Don’t worry, we can pass it under an anti-child pornography bill.

There are two things which no Congressman will risk supporting: terrorism and child pornography. There can be no opposition, no discussion. Any anti-piracy law can ALWAYS be reframed as an anti-child pornography bill and it will pass, without even discussion. It will have the full support of the House (minus Ron Paul), the full support of the Senate, and most importantly the full support of the American people. NO ONE wants to risk being called a pedophile.

The entertainment industry has finally caught up with technology. They understand how it works. It took them 15 years, but they know what DNS is. They are going to exploit a fundamental problem with the way DNS is centralized and there is nothing that can be done to stop it. They have found an error in the very architecture of the Internet. The solution, from a free speech standpoint is not to fight it politically. The solution is the fix the error.

We must move to a decentralized system of DNS. It is not impossible. It requires some new thinking and a re-architecture of some web services, but it must be done if we want the Internet, as we know it today, to exist in 5 or 10 years.

Or, put graphically:

The same goes for all laws that seek to limit, ban, violate, and infringe.  PIPA (PROTECT IP), DMCA, CDA (thankfully struck down), Sonny Bony copyright act, Fair Copyright in Research Works Act, ACTA (international treaty), Sinde (ES), HADOPI (FR), LOPPSI (FR), you name it.  Further afield, you’ll find the same things happening in the name of “security – NDAA, the PATRIOT Act, RIPA (UK), PTA (UK) and others.  Phrase something in terms of wanting to “protect the vulnerable” or “prevent evil”, get enough money in the game from those who would benefit materially from your ham-handed assault on individual freedoms and basic intelligence, and you’re good to go.  You don’t even need to demonize your opponents – just disregard them; after all, a large enough part of your electorate can always be convinced that “if you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide.”  Right?

Europe and Canada are not immune to this disease.  It’s in the nature of power and greed for established interests to want to foist their crap on others, in the name of democracy and goodness and fluffy bunnies.

What’s to be done, then?

Naively speaking, I’d say to lobby your elected officials, threaten to boycott companies that support such legislation, run for office yourself, speak out in the media, sign petitions, educate your peers, you name it.

It won’t work, because it’s much more work and cost and grief than any normal human being can afford to deal with over a prolonged amount of time – and the people you are fighting are paid for their efforts.  The more they fight, the better off they are.  The more you fight, the worse off they are.  And they have money – if you ever had any doubt that your supposedly democratically elected representatives are bought, corrupt, and useless, this Mother Jones article, which mistakenly postulates that SOPA is dead, has an interesting link to a Maplight list of campaign contributors to American legislators.  Surprise of surprises, the ones for SOPA got more money from the entertainment industry, the ones against it got more money from the tech industry.

What you can do:

- learn about anonymization methods like TOR and Vidalia.

- support efforts to create distributed communications, like mesh wireless networking – all well and good until you get court rulings like this one in Germany that state that it is the responsibility of the owners of wireless networks to encrypt all traffic.  Bye-bye public access networks.

- use encryption.  SSL for web traffic, TrueCrypt for files, anything and everything – all well and good until you get court rulings like this one in the United Kingdom that state it is the responsibility of the owners of encrypted files to provide decryption keys to police upon request.

- don’t buy from companies that support and lobby for restrictions.  Do buy from those who don’t, and from those who create products free of technological encumbrances to doing what you want with content that you own.  Yes, back to the naive stuff, but it can’t hurt.  Not to mention indie software/movie/music producers.  But I guess you really want to watch Transformers V, huh.

- give money to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Free Software Foundation, and their local / national equivalents.  They’re usually decent and smart people, and good at hiring lawyers to fight this sort of crap.

Your elected officials are corrupt shills.  They do not care about reason or logic, they don’t care what they are destroying.  The only thing they care about is re-election and money.

Hope for the best, expect the worst.  Sound vaguely nihilistic / fatalistic?  That’s the idea.  The idiots and cynics are out there, and they’re more motivated and have more money than you.  Remember the golden rule:  he who has the gold makes the rules, and you don’t have the gold.