Fun with libertarians

I should start a webpage where people bait libertarians.  I'll call it Loonbook.  They're pretty easy, really.  A lot of them paint themselves as moderates or centrists, but there's nothing moderate or centrist about them.

Pretty much without exception, they're all raving, ultra-paranoid, grasping right-wingers who see tax as theft and government spending as absolutely necessary if it's on them.  And the moment that you suggest that government does something, you're a "statist" and as bad as the rest of them.

But you know, for the most part, libertarians do mostly the right thing, in standing up for people's rights.  Strangely, though, where people are too weak to assert their own rights, libertarians are only too keen to ride slipshod over them.  Get a load of this fine fellow:

13 things that you can do to improve your privacy online

I was asked by a mate of mine recently, 'Dikkii.  Why don't you do a blog post about all the privacy stuff that you have done with your browser?'

Personally, this mate of mine is pretty switched on, internet-wise (I cracked a pun!) so I was a bit taken aback that he genuinely wanted to know about why he should get his web-surfing privacy under control.  I thought that he might already have this sorted out.

The reality of it all is, that these days, it's a game with moving goal posts.  To keep up with the companies mining your browsing habits really needs one to be on one's toes.  But it's so difficult.  Consider these:

Blocked again

I've only been blocked on Twitter once before, that I know of.  That was by Helen Razer and to this day, I have no idea why.  I only know that I was blocked, because I went to follow her one day and found that I could not.

But I thought I'd regale you with this tale of more blockage.  This time, it came about in a record quick exchange with some tetchy Belgians who run an online magazine that goes by the name of Side-Line Magazine.

Specifically, it was this article that suggests reasons why you can't re-sell electronic media files once you've bought them.  It reads as a defence of DRM, because the reasons given is that once you have the file, you might copy it before you re-sell it.  Just "might", mind you - we're not all pirates.

Alternate method - Linux, Calibre, e-books (epub) and DRM

You may already have read my previous post, where I examined the utterly ludicrous situation that Linux users are placed in if they want to buy, download and finally read an ebook on their ebook reader.

You may recall me mentioning that I had given you the long version.  This post will cover off on the slightly less long version – this is the Calibre plugins version.

Same as before, note that for this exercise, I'm using Linux Mint 14 (Nadia) XFCE.   Also, I'm assuming that the ebook that you purchased was DRM protected by Adobe's Digital Editions software and is in the .epub format.  Most lending libraries use the .epub format for their ebooks, so if you plan on using a library, this will help.  Sadly, if you have a Kindle, this will not help you.  Apologies, however you may notice later on in this that we will be downloading a plugin for Kindle users.  We'll pretty much leave it at that and go no further with that or any other plugins in this post.

How to get round DRM issues with e-books in Linux (epub)

What a hassle this post was.  You'd think that in this 21st century world that we live in, there would be less issues with using any kind of media.  Sadly, no.  Ebooks are still possibly the number one reason why I can find myself in the situation where I am likely to throw my computer across the room.

Downloading ebooks and using them via Linux is a diabolically difficult, stupid and possibly legally dangerous situation.  You'd be forgiven for thinking that the reason is merely the reality that desktop Linux users are the one percenters and that the system is biased towards Windows and OSX users, but it's actually more insidious than that – copyright has sabotaged any kind of simplicity here.

This is a joke.  Only in the land of intellectual property law (and possibly high end encryption) does one find that the world is actually getting more complicated, rather than simpler.

I've just spent the best part of the last couple of days attempting to try to load my computer with the usual fixes to ensure that my computer can have the DRM cracked off it, which is necessary for using Linux with DRM-protected ebooks.  It's a time-consuming and wasteful job, and it's made worse by the fact that I totally fluked it the last couple of times and then didn't write the steps down.  Oh sure, there are plenty of web pages out there that have the steps, but no one seems to have the order right.

15 things to do after installing Linux Mint 14 (Nadia) XFCE

When I did the last one of these after installing Maya, I got way more traffic to that post than pretty much most of this blog any time ever.

For those of you who are visiting for the first time, I don't actually normally blog about tech stuff.  I blog about politics, religion, consumer affairs, pretty much stuff that is totally un-tech.

But I've just installed Linux Mint 14 (Nadia) XFCE on my little old Eee PC, so enjoy my guide to the first 15 things to do after installation.  Please excuse the liberal copying and pasting from the previous version.

This time, for fun, I did an update to my father's netbook as well.  Things went swimmingly for both and I'm pretty happy with how things turned out.

Fixing the news

It's been a little while since the Finkelstein report came out, and we've since seen the Leveson report come out in the UK.  We've also seen the response to Leveson by the British Prime Minister, David Cameron.

The same thing is pretty much happening here with Finkelstein.  Thanks to articles like this, the hysterical reaction pretty much ensures that any government that wants to enforce standards on the news media will be considered to be recklessly trampling free speech beneath satanic jackboots in an Orwellian orgy of dictatorial facsism by the time that media is finished with them.

I don't support this at all.  Leaving aside regulation for a moment, no one seems to have twigged that the problem is with news itself.  In short, we don't really get it any more.  We get something that looks like news, but is quite slanted and biased and, as I alluded to in my previous posts, we now are getting some pretty second-rate product that we, as consumers, don't really deserve.

In other words, the market is not providing and therefore, there is market failure.  Which, in other industries, means that it's time to regulate.

So, I thought I'd have a good think about this.  What is is that we would like a news service to provide us with?  What is it that we, as consumers, think of when we think of news?

16 Things to do after installing Linux Mint 13 (Maya) XFCE

Edit 28/12/2012: I've just done one of these for Linux Mint 14 (Nadia) XFCE.  You can see this here.

You may have just installed Linux Mint 13 (Maya) XFCE.  What next?

This is a list of stuff I did to get my Eee PC into a state that I can use after installing Mint XFCE.  It might not necessarily work for you, but hey.  It's a kind of sequel of sorts to a post I did earlier today, and again, it's unlikely to appeal to anyone except Linux converts.

One of the things that has struck me about Mint XFCE since I installed it on this machine is its sheer reliability.  XFCE has been around for a little while, now.  While some have regarded it as a bit of a poor man's GNOME, it doesn't have the baggage that GNOME is presently dragging around.

So here are 16 things I did after installing Linux Mint 13 (Maya) XFCE on my Eee PC.

Linux Mint 13 XFCE. Why?

This post is not going to provide any searing insight or anything like that. It's merely a documentary record, for me, if not necessarily anyone else. It's probably only going to appeal to the Linux curios, a diverse group who I can truthfully (and happily) say have completely different ideas about what an operating system should be. So consider yourself warned.

I've just installed LinuxMint 13 (Maya) XFCE onto my aging Eee PC. I have the Eee PC 1008HA Seashell, which is the model (together with the 1008HA) that started ASUS on the path to be a bit more adventurous in their design.

The PC has aged pretty well, although the single core Intel Atom processor and the 1GB of DDR2 RAM hasn't. But after sitting back and watching the bloatware that Ubuntu became with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin), I needed to investigate other options.

Credit where credit's due

Andrew Bolt (Hun/Tele/Advertiser) had a blog post pulled on Monday.  Mainly due to the fact that his post could have been interpreted as muckraking by making a big song and dance about a fraudulent Glenn Milne article in The Oz.  An interesting part is that some are suggesting that Bolt might have posted after Milne’s column was pulled.  Not only that, but News left the post online for a considerable amount of time after Milne's article was removed.

Milne, of course, is best known for attempting to blue Stephen Mayne one year on stage at the Walkley Awards.  I had absolutely no need to mention that, but I'm hedging my bets in case Bolt is correct about his post being 'fair, accurate and in the public interest'.

Today, in his column, he’s got me in stitches by squealing “censorship”.  The problem with Bolt’s brand of satire, is that it’s often lost on his audience, who see his character’s flagrant racism and bullying as being the real deal.  And this is where the problem starts.

I’m aware that Bolt’s blog is a bit of a testing ground for his wilder humour.  What goes out there gets tested amongst the comments from the fruitcakes that dominate his readership and the eventually worked on a little harder.  Eventually, Bolt creams off the stuff that’s silly enough to outrage and amuse, yet the stuff that’s too ‘out there’ gets forgotten about.  What’s left gets written up as ‘proper’ copy in his columns in News’ south eastern newspapers.