My HTC is killing me

Yes, I've had problems with my HTC before, but I managed to solve those. Now a new and interesting problem has arisen... The phone simply refuses to make itself known to my computers when I plug it in using the USB cable. Yup, that's right. It is fully aware that it has connected to a computer, starts charging the battery and everything, but I'll be damned if it shows up as a device on my computer.

I suspected it might be the computer, so I tried it on another one. Nope. Tried it on yet another, but no - no luck.

Seriously, this piece of s*it is driving me insane. I need a new phone, the sooner the better.

Ipredator going live

Good news. Swedish newspapers DN and SvD, as well as frontman Peter Sunde himself, report that the anonymity VPN-service Ipredator is in it's final beta stage and could be going live any day now.

Of course, in an ideal world Internet users wouldn't need such a service, but in a world where our civil liberties are constantly under fire by repressive governments and private interest groups, it's a necessity.

Update: According to police lawyer Fredrik Ingblad Ipredator will only make it a bit more difficult, but not at all impossible, to track down users of file sharing services. Of course he refuses to give any examples of how this would be done...

The VPN-solution I use at work, or rather when I'm not at the office but want to access the company network, encrypts the traffic from my client and to the VPN-server, and the only visible IP-adress is the one of the VPN-server. I'm assuming Ipredator is working more or less the same (except, obviously, my company keeps logs of what I'm doing when I'm using their VPN service), so I would like to know which rules Mr. Ingblad and his comrades intend to break in order to get past this. Install spyware on every Swedish citizen's computer (would be all the more reasons to switch to Linux)? Either way I'm sure they could get plenty of good advice from sleazeball extraordinaire Henrik Pontén and Antipiratbyrån on this.

Mac vs PC - the battle continues

Microsoft takes another sting at Apple with a new Laptop Hunters commercial, bashing the Macbooks for being to expensive and not having a large enough screen. I have to say I completely agree with Microsoft on that one. However, the solution, if you want cheap, safe and fully functional, is hardly a PC laptop with Microsoft Windows installed.

Instead, surf to ubuntu.com and download the latest version of this Linux based OS (there's even a Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix available for those low-spec'd netbooks). The Ubuntu packages is exceptionally easy to install, and it includes the Mozilla Firefox browser, a mail- and calendar client, OpenOffice (as opposed to paying 995 SEK for the Microsoft Office 2007 home and student version, that does absolutely nothing more...), and Gimp for retouching those digital photos (instead of buying Adobe Photoshop Elements, which will set you back another 1095 SEK). The package also includes various media players and other stuff. Plus, you won't have to worry about computer viruses, trojans and other malware anymore.

It's all there, ready to use out of the box - no annoying activation and registration process, and it's for free.

Linux FTW!


P.S. There's even a Ubuntu version for Mac, so if you do go ahead and buy that overpriced piece of white plastic anyway, you can still keep your software costs down...

The redundancy of man

Great, now scientists are able to create sperm from the stem cells of male embryos, making men a completely unnecessary part of the procreation process - at least in the traditional and fun way. Way to make me feel useless and obsolete.

Why don't you do something useful, like finding a cure for cancer or something?

The boycott continues

Nice to see that I'm not the only one boycotting a mafia industry that will stop at nothing, absolutely nothing, to squeeze as much money as possible out of people's pockets before they crawl under a rock and die. It actually seems to have an effect! The sooner it happens, the better.

Don't feed the monster!

Insects

Why is it that a freakin' fly or bee, or any other winged insect for that matter, has no problems whatsoever navigating, in the middle of night, through the vast nature outside and right into the little crack in my window, but is completely unable to find it's way out again, driving me to insanity as I have to get up at 5 am, find a newspaper, roll it up, and use it to end this insect's miserable life, before I can get back into bed and try to get to sleep again. Aaaaargh.

Bloody disposable grills

What's up with those damn disposable barbecue grills these days? Granted, they've never been good for much more than warming a hot dog, but at least it used to be possible to actually set the coal on fire. Well, not anymore it isn't. These days the quality of these stupid, little 10 kronor grills from Statoil, Ica or Willys is so far below par that you end up huffing and puffing for half an hour trying to get some sort of heat out of that coal, after using up all your matches trying to set it on fire. That is, unless you've got the foresight to go and pick up some lighter fuel before heading out on the beach with that bloody little grill (which of course you never have).

Anyway, I got sick and tired of working so hard just to be able to heat up a hot dog or two, so I gave up and bought a proper, portable barbecue grill instead, the Weber Smokey Joe. Brilliant little thing, I'm in love with it already. And, as opposed to the disposable shit, this baby can actually take on pretty much any kind of meat.

So no more disposable grills on me. And contributing to saving the environment is just a bonus.

Newspapers - look at the entertainment industry!

In case you didn't know, newspapers around the world are having a pretty tough time. Some are going bankrupt, others are desperately trying to change their business model and offer a paid online subscription, or simply offer their news for free (well, not entirely, you still have to look at a lot of ads...), like most Scandinavian newspapers.

In times like this, instead of doing that painful transition into an online economy, you'd think the newspaper industry would look at what the entertainment industry is doing: Lobbying for laws banning websites that distribute any kind of news, giving newspaper employees a carte blanche to track down any perpetrators within the privacy of their own homes, suing their readers for not subscribing to the paper copy of the newspaper, and generally just refuse to give their customers what they want.

Why should the entertainment industry have monopoly on such outrageous and destructive behavior, when it can be applied to virtually any business these days?

Speaking of Mona Sahlin

Now that I'm at it, I couldn't help but notice Mona Sahlin's response to the following question during a net meeting at Aftonbladet.se:

Rasmus Nordin säger: Hej Mona, Jag undrar lite om hur nu ställer er till FRA-lagen? För jag tror att ni får VÄLDIGT många fler röster om ni går ut med att den ska bort?
Mona Sahlin säger: Hej Rasmus! Det har vi rödgröna redan sagt. Vinner vi valet river vi upp FRA-lagen.

Sounds like a straight answer, for once. Unfortunately it's a deceiving one. Sahlin seems to already have "forgotten" (wow, I'm beginning to see a pattern here...) that she is all for mass surveillance of the Swedish people, and that the current FRA law will simply be replaced by another one should she get in position:

Att de lovar att tillsätta en "bred parlamentarisk utredning". Men både Sahlin och Wetterstrand påpekar att Sverige behöver signalspaning och en fungerande underrättelsetjänst, något deras partiföreträdare i den heta FRA-debatten knappast skyltat med.
Så i praktiken handlar det om en FRA-lag "light".

In other words, never trust a politician.

Let (s)he who is without sin...

Swedish tabloid newspaper Expressen has revealed a political "scandal": One of Piratpartiet's members, Henrik Alexandersson, worked as a cameraman shooting porn for a couple of months back in the 1990's. Oh my God, he was a cameraman - whatever should we do?

Of course, members from the more established parties take the opportunity to score some cheap points by crying out their outrage. Seeing Mona Sahlin standing first in line and saying that she "feels disgust" makes me think of the biblical "let he (or in this case she) who is without sin cast the first stone" incident. Not often has it been more appropriate.

So, in the 1990's, Henrik Alexandersson - far from being a full-time politician - worked briefly in a line of business frowned upon by most. He blew the whistle on this business after discovering unsettling conditions. He did an ethical choice. Mona Sahlin, on the other hand, was at this time a full-time politician, and busy stealing taxpayer's money (as if her salary wasn't enough!) - 53 174 SEK, to be exact, after which she took off on a family vacation to Mauritius, sponsored by - you guessed it - the taxpayers. She was also busy hiring black labour to take care of her children (1990), "forgetting" to pay her public service fee (1993), and "forgetting" to pay her parking tickets -98 in total (1998). Oh yeah, and it continues all the way into this millennium: In 2000 she "forgot" to pay 30.000 SEK in tax arrears, and in 2001 she "forgot" to pay her bills, including the annual car tax. To mention a few.

Sometimes it's just best to keep your mouth shut and stop pointing your finger at others.