As you might imagine I have got lots of stories to tell, if I can be bothered to actually write posts. But I’ll try.

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CCTV on an old building (a)

What sounds like a bad joke, is soon becoming reality when Great Britain increased measures of surveillance in order to keep terrorists from planing and executing attacks the general populace under government control. A nationwide closed-circuit television network of approximately four million surveillance cameras is already in place and which equates one camera for every fourteenth person in the nation.

They newest plan as being discussed with major Internet service providers will lead to the installation of black boxes on phone and cable network nodes tapping every outgoing and incoming information, saving raw data and sending it to one, central database where everything can, and probably will, be scanned to ensure ‘national security’. People will no longer have to act suspicious to get the MI5 or the police to listen to your calls or to track your mobile phone. Didn’t I mention they also talk about tracking mobile phones just for the sake of it? No? Well, they do.

One nation under CCTV. It reminds me of Half-Life 2 (b)

I think it is astounding that while the British government talks openly about their plans and even the non-tinfoil-hat-wearing part of the population knows about it there doesn’t seem much of an opposition, at least none that I’ve heard of, there is close to none public discussion about it. Most people talking about it are probably the mostly American users of Slashdot, the British seem far more concerned about foreign investors buying into the Premier League.

(a) “CCTV Camera” by “I see modern Britain”, cc-by-2.0-license

(b) “One nation under CCTV” by Jordi Martorell, cc-by-nc-nd-2.0-license

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original picture by Elke Wetzig, CC-SA-BY 2.0 Germany

As it turns out Stallman doesn’t like web applications, he doesn’t like them at all and says that using GMail and its kind is “worse than stupidity” and just as bad as proprietary software.

One reason you should not use web applications to do your computing is that you lose control … It’s just as bad as using a proprietary program. Do your own computing on your own computer with your copy of a freedom-respecting program. If you use a proprietary program or somebody else’s web server, you’re defenceless. You’re putty in the hands of whoever developed that software.

The FSF itself created a license for web applications called AGPL which is used by projects like identi.ca, so this little rant really surprised me. Why do you create a license for some kind of software if it is evil anyway?

I could agree with Stallman on many issues but clearly not on this one. While it is true that we don’t have control over our data, applications aren’t available on every PC, obviously not everyone is able to set up his own server and/or build personal web applications. I run a couple of applications namely irssi, mutt, ejabberd and my webdev environment on my personal server right next to me and Ubuntu does a great job helping you to set all of those things up, but you simply can not expect all people to learn how to set up servers, bother with ports and ips and dynamic dns. This isn’t Sparta but it still is madness.

What’s next? Should I produce my own electricity, drill for water and get some cows living in my flat? I really don’t think so.

Anyway, if now you’re concerned about your data and think about hosting your own services and apps you may take a look at Ubuntu Server and Ubuntu Jeos

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• Web apps on your desktop
• Get your GMails into your feed reader
• Appnr, searching and finding Ubuntu apps

That by the way is beer without alcohol.

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• looking for a way to reduce noise

One thing that accompanied my over the years was the super market at the back of my flat. Every time I needed something, it was there, 1 minute away.

It closed some weeks ago, and I thought maybe just another super market would take its place within some weeks. Boy, was I wrong.

They started demolishing the building the other day which means that even if there is another super market taking its place I will have to wait a darn long time.

Now I’ve to take a 10min. walk to get to another super market with the stuff I want and need, and if you’re only half as lazy as I am, you’d know how frustrating this is.

I have to fight to hold my tears back.

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• VLC 0.9.2 released
• Create FLVs with Mencoder on Windows
• No Reservations: Asia Special

In Russia there seems to exist a community of young people beating up immigrants, capturing it with their cams to post those disgusting videos on the web.

By the end of the video it is revealed that after Christof leaving Russia one of the Neonazis he interviewed was arrested. Which in return caused the kidnapping of two innocent people of whom one was beheaded and the other one was shot, just to force the government to release their comrad.

It really, sickend me. And frankly I can’t even remotely understand how anyone on this friggin’ planet can do such things.

Well, enough talk, here’s the video:

Current’s Christof Putzel investigates a growing movement in Russia where neo-Nazi groups are brutally attacking immigrants and spreading their hate by posting violent videos online.

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• VLC 0.9.2 released
• Create FLVs with Mencoder on Windows
• bye bye oh beloved super market