Richtig said Fred!

Try some Anonymous Surfing

Take a look at Peacefire

You can also visit OpenNet Initiative

There is also en entry on OpenNet Initiative’s Blog about the way Google uses censorship in Chinahere.

Or better yet install your own proxy server to help others bypass censorship, you can get it here.

According to an article in the Science Daily, a Michigan court has ruled that anyone who creates a backup of pornographic content is liable as if they produced the pornographic content themselves.

Why is this so bad for any network administrators? Simply because all network administrator have a duty to protect the data in most enterprises and since the size of backups can easily range in the hundreds of gigabyte or even terabytes (every day sometimes) they cannot obviously analyze all that data carefully to determine its content, but now they’re liable for protecting data. This definition of creating pornography is really too broad.

Also there is also a law 18 USC 2257 which puts strict record keeping requirements on the producers of sexual explicit materials. I quote Wikipedia article’s :”The guidelines for enforcing these laws (colloquially known as 2257 Regulations (CFR Part 75) require producers of sexually explicit material to attain proof of age for every model they shoot, and keep those records on hand. Federal inspectors may - at any time - launch inspections of these records and prosecute any infraction.”

So if you are in Michigan and you are a system administrator in charge of backups you should:
1.- Know everything that is backed up on your network, especially pornographic material.
2.- Ask for proof of age to all the actors depicted in the pornographic material.
3.- Keep all those records on hand in case the police shows up for an investigation.
…because if you don’t do this you are liable and could face five years in federal prison for each infraction.

You can read Science Daily’s article here.

According to an article from Reuters, the Bush administration tries to censor James Hansen the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. This happened because his research on climate change does not match the Bush administration’s official views, just like their rejection of the Kyoto treaty.

You can read Reuter’s article here
You can read about James Hansen on wikipedia here
You can also view the results of James Hansen’s research here.

Do you want to know everything there is to know about those obscure computer guys that work in computer rooms with freezing atmosphere, while everyone else is out playing in the sun on a summer day catching that next skin cancer?

Then read the chronicles of the Bastard Operator from Hell:

The best ones to read are from the original version
There is also the 2k version of the operator (still updated regularly)
And if you are fluent in french then read that Quebec version

The NASA has published a nice graph of temperature trends since 1880. To all those who say global warming ain’t happening, look at this article here. The trend is very graphic indeed. Now why on earth is the US government denying facts like these? I guess it is a reminder that political power doesn’t have to comply with reality nor facts.

The economic impact of not doing anything will probably create problems as worse as what happened with New Orleans digs’s in 2005 when hurricane Katrina flooded the whole city but on a worldwide scale. And what do narrow minded politicians do and instead of putting millions in a disaster preparation plan ? Well they seem to play the odds and in the end they spend billions to bring devastated cities back to life.

Well according to an article from DefenseLINK News there is a new device that can sense “activity” through concrete walls…

You can read the article here

Google decided not to comply with the american government’s request for search data! This is especially good since it was not approved by any courts! It also appears Microsoft and Yahoo turned their back on their own customers and GAVE all the information requested by the government. SHAME ON MICROSOFT AND YAHOO

Read the article on Google Watch about this here

Intel is the world’s first chipmaker to create a 45nm silicon. That is great, I hope they can also improve on their reliability, because all they seem to be able to do are faster, smaller and buggier processors these days.

The article on the new processors is here

Well that’s is what I think after reading an article on Geek.com.

I suggest these new names to Intel for single core processors (actually those that have a defective second core):
Bug-O
Crud-O
Crap-O

Then there is also the dual core versions (those in which we have not found too many bugs yet):
Duo Bug-O
Duo Crud-O
Duo Crap-O

Then there’s the slimmed down version (the ones with defective caches/SX-type/Celeron-type):
Bug-Itt-O
Crud-Itt-O
Crap-Itt-O

You can read the original article here

The election day is over and the Conservatives have won in Canada. It is midnight and they have 125 candidates which means they will have to put the brakes on their right wing policies. The oppositions is pretty strong at 183 candidates. In other countries the opposition would form a coalition and run the country, here we let the Conservatives run the country.

Blue Monday is also the name of a song by New Order. In the Wikipedia article on Blue Monday, there is an excerpt which I think describes this particular Blue Monday of January 23rd 2006 :”many people have surmised that “Blue Monday” concerns the suicide of Joy Division vocalist Ian Curtis”, well today is a suicide for Canadians, we loose part of our identity, values and freedom, some of which we may not regain until a long time.

It is indeed a blue monday.

===UPDATE=== It is 8:00am and the conservatives have won with 124 seats, the BBC site has a good article describing the results here.

The Globe and Mail has an interactive map of the election results here.