Author: erik

Attack of the Zombie!

Not quite.

A New York Times article titled Attack of the Zombie Computers Is Growing Threat talks about botnets and other malicious programs that use a person’s computer for uses, often illegal, of hackers and kiddie-scripters. The article talks, in very inflammatory language, about how security is easily compromised.
I just find it amusing how it mischaracterizes a lot of things; it suggests IRC(which it takes a lot of effort to vaguely explain, and spells it I.R.C.) is an integral part of a lot of hacking efforts, which really it’s not, and laughably suggests that people buy pirated/illegal software on online auctions. If someone is getting illegal software, they’re getting it off of some kind peer-to-peer service, IRC, newsgroups, or bittorrent, all assuming that it isn’t self-built with open source tools. It would be completely moronic to suggest people, at least knowingly or intelligently, buy pirated software.

Again, the mass public cannot handle simple facts about the reality of the technology they use because they are not willing or capable to actually understand it, and again a media outlet caters to this ignorance.

If people aren’t willing to learn about the technology, why would they think they would want to know how their lack of knowledge makes them vulnerable?

John Stuart Mill

I can’t believe it, but I’ve found myself defending John Stuart Mill’s placing liberty on a pedestal.

A person is trying to argue that we should have the freedom to kill ourselves or allow ourselves be put into slavery. The problem is that these actions remove our freedom, and anything that removes freedom would be unacceptable, under a viewpoint that liberty is the most important and the hindrance of it is not allowed.

A right to freedom means that the right should not be allowed to be removed, as it is a universal right always applicable. The irony is that freedom means responsibility to ensure freedom.

So no, a person’s freedom, even if it only affects their own self, does not authorize them to do whatever they want. It needs to be within respect for freedom as a whole.

Time

I need to reconnect with the rhythms of the universe and the rhythms of life.

We lose our intelligence, our consciousness, our awareness, when we do not realize and personally feel our connectedness and relation to the universe around us.

We are small beings, but through being part of a whole we are more than our individual capacities.

Pantheism mode: now disabled.

Reading

I haven’t read anything recently; because of the heavy amount of reading I had to do in this last semester I put off personal reading. Now, though, I’m feeling like I’m missing something, so I think reading will be a good idea.

The problem is that almost all of my books are up in my college dorm room, which is inaccessible to me during winter break while school is out.

I think the only books I have with me are Objective Knowledge by Karl Popper, The World as Will and Idea by Arthur Schopenhauer, and The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux. I’ll probably read the Leroux novel, as it’s more suitable for casual rest reading.

Update: Every time I see the word “reading” I think it’s the name of the British city of the same spelling but pronounced “redding”.

Tempted to buy a video player

Right now I’m considering purchasing either an iPod or a Zune. The iPod does, baseline, what I want, but I don’t like the idea of iTunes or in general Apple mitigating my device. I don’t like how picky it is about video format, not just the use of H.264(which encoding to seems more difficult than other formats), but that it has to be the exact resolution and bitrate or otherwise it won’t work; great for iTunes-purchased content but that’s about it. Also, it’s the same price as the Zune with the Zune having bells and whistles.

I have a number of problems with the Zune, though. The 3×3 feature of the Wi-Fi, in combination to the Wi-Fi not allowing video transfer and not doing anything other than Zune-to-Zune communication means it’s not a very useful feature. The use of the WMV video format, though not quite as good of quality, is more friendly to the kind of conversion I would need to do. Also, the DRM it puts on music kind of conflicts with what I may want to do, and unrightly applies it to items under the Creative Commons. With the Zune, the changes that would make me happy seem to be for a future release, but I don’t want to wait until the end of 2007 to get a player.

Very conflicted. Any ideas, such as alternatives to these that will do what I want, would be nice.