John Goerzen reminds me of what from my perspective is one of the most amusing parts of watching the Democrats squabble over whether estrogen or melanin is more important in a presidential candidate. Apparently, the same people who just a few short months ago were the progressive vanguard of the peoples struggle to speak truth to the fascist power of Bushitlerburton are, in fact, STUPID EVIL RACISTS!1!!! Of course on August 25, they will magically turn back into audacious hope changers but until then I LOL.

Some TV network did some interviews with West Virginia voters at the time of their primary. The Daily Showpicked up on it (click link for video). Among the comments:

"I guess because he is another race. I'm sort of scared of theother race because we have so much conflict with them."

"He's Muslim and that has a lot to do with it."

"I don't like the Hussein thing. I've had enough of Hussein."

The segment on this starts at 1:03 into the video, and the comments start at 1:45.

By the way, if you think Obama is Muslim, check out IsBarackObamaAMuslim.com. (Though it won't comment on the separate question of why it matters).

Sigh.

“… Today is the first day in office for President Barack Obama … In other news, Hillary Clinton is still on the campaign trail and is not giving up …” - best ever joke about the current US election. I think it was from The Daily Show, but I cannot be certain.

This made my day! Here's an excerpt if you're too lazy to click on the link: "Als humanos, tambien nations, after seine geborn, become bambinos und grow adult. Aber als humanos, sommige nations never become adult und necessite psychiatrico help", dixit once Sigmund Freud aan Herr Kanzelier Otto Von Bismarck attemptante de le convince que Germania eine tumultuosa puberty was traversante.
Otto Von Bismarck ignored die wise parolas des fader des psychanalyse und wat happened aan Germania next, wir know mucho well.
Die freudiana diagnose noch todag applicable und validissima est, by exemplo, por wat Grosse Britannia betreft. Eine nation die encore play mit kleine soldatos und make carnaval parades out des season, mature est suremente nicht.
Wat pushe flegmaticos aged britannicos de dresse in hooliganicos costumes und parade mit tambouros und trompettes in der nordirlandico landscape? Sicheremente eine mucho neglected mentale desease.
Eine people waar hombres can wel dress in skirts, waar animals habe more rights dann mensen, waar man drive op de wronge side des strada, must echtemente seriose problemas van personnality habe. Eine people die nicht only play cricket und darts, aber les regarde tambien op TV, bastante insane must definitamente esse.
(...) There are more texts in this, er, language, on the Europanto main site. Edit: fixed link

A survey has shown that 16% of youth doesn't know why we're celebrating the 5th of May. According to quality news show Editie NL, this is a worrying fact. Well, is it? I find it rather reassuring that appearently 84% of the younger generation do know that 5 May is about the libration from German occupation (I remember now that I forgot to thank the Canadiens when I was there two weeks ago). 16% is not much: if you get a 16% discount you're usually not making a great deal. Actually, I would be very surprised of a survey that would show that less than 16% of people are completely ignorant of the world around them. These same people probably would't know the connection between the colour of the national team's shirts and the royal house, or be able to tell whether St Nicolaas is a protestant or catholic. Or the ones that claim money because -6 is larger than -5. Every country has its fair share of "challenged" people. Also in recent news is that Barack Obama is losing votes because he admitted to eating rucola (arugula) from time to time. Voter's "reasoning" boils down to "if I don't know what that is, then a president that eats it can't be trusted". It gets even more sad when you realise that these people probably do know it, but don't realise they call it rocket. Great way to lose votes.

A survey has shown that 16% of youth doesn't know why we're celebrating the 5th of May. According to quality news show Editie NL, this is a worrying fact. Well, is it? I find it rather reassuring that appearently 84% of the younger generation do know that 5 May is about the libration from German occupation (I remember now that I forgot to thank the Canadiens when I was there two weeks ago). 16% is not much: if you get a 16% discount you're usually not making a great deal. Actually, I would be very surprised of a survey that would show that less than 16% of people are completely ignorant of the world around them. These same people probably would't know the connection between the colour of the national team's shirts and the royal house, or be able to tell whether St Nicolaas is a protestant or catholic. Or the ones that claim money because -6 is larger than -5. Every country has its fair share of "challenged" people. Also in recent news is that Barack Obama is losing votes because he admitted to eating rucola (arugula) from time to time. Voter's "reasoning" boils down to "if I don't know what that is, then a president that eats it can't be trusted". It gets even more sad when you realise that these people probably do know it, but don't realise they call it rocket. Great way to lose votes.

Apparently it is a political suicide in USA to make people think. Obama’s ex-preacher Jeremiah Wright is the most sane US preacher that I’ve ever heard. If you read or listen to his sermons in full length and go beyond the Fox News presented soundbites, he is 99% right. The US has long been doing extreme violence to countries around the world, so it is no wonder that such violence came back to US. Russia had the same problem with Afghanistan and Chechnya. If you try to put yourself up as ‘world police’, some people will disagree. Then he damned America’s _government_ for letting Americans down by not caring enough about the people. The only thing that I would smile and shake my head at was the statement that American government invented HIV. I doubt even they have such resources. Read this transcript for example, the sermon is just a great sermon that urges the people think for themselves. And what people put this sermon down for? Using a word ‘Negro’? Having an issue with some specific politicians? He is a pastor, pastors are meant to have a strong opinion a vision and to project that for the congregation to see. “I’m not going to stop thinking just because I love Jesus” is the summary of that sermon if you ask me. And that is the most positive religious message I’ve heard from that side of the pond for a long time. You can agree or disagree with rev. Wright, but you can still go to his sermons and enjoy it because he makes you think. I would talk to most racist bastard, serial killer or even Hitler himself if he could tell me something that would provoke my mind to think and thus improve myself. You don’t have to agree with people to benefit from speaking to them or from listening to what they have to say. Even if someone is 100% wrong and misguided, if his speeches can make you think of some good idea, it is worth it. And rev. Jeremiah Wright is not 100% wrong, from what I’ve heard he is on the money most of the time and only some of his statements I would disagree with. And he is a great speaker. If I would have not been an Obama supporter, I would become one because of Wright. Or because of the very accurate observation by Obama that in hard times people in rural USA cling to trusted values such as guns and religion. There is nothing wrong with that. I am amazed how such true statements can be so turned by US press and can actually reduce Obamas rating. I was starting to believe that not all is lost in the US, but if Obama does not get elected, well … it is all lost in the US. PS. How this related to Debian? Or software is the best choice for the society in the long term. However, that is only true if we assume that people behave rationally and use it, improve it and contribute back improvements for the public good. If the general population is made weary of rational thinking and starts thinking in soundbites and slogans, then there is a ceiling to free software expansion and the whole free software movement can eventually be crushed in the interests of homeland security with strong corporate commercial software backing. (Only government approved software is allowed to run with mandatory government approved back-doors and hardware verification to prevent cyber-terrorism or something, thus also forbidding any compilers and interpreters outside government controls.)

NPR has been doing an interesting series this week. They've sent out a reporter who is going all across Pennsylvania interviewing people at local food markets. He found a fish shop in Pittsburgh, a market in Lancaster, and some shops in Philadelphia. He sought out Democratic voters to ask them about their thoughts on Clinton vs. Obama.

A lot of the Pennsylvania voters were for Clinton. When asked why, most of them said that they liked Bill Clinton and his policies. A few said they liked how Hillary handled the Lewinsky affair. To me, none of that has anything to do with whether Clinton or Obama would be better for the country.

Then there was the person this morning who was criticizing Obama for not offering specifics. She said she is Jewish, and so Israel is important to her, and Obama hasn't said anything about helping along the peace process. So I went to barackobama.com, clicked Enter the Site, went to Issues, Foreign Policy, then Israel. Then I clicked on the full fact sheet, which was a full 2 pages on Israel, including far more detail than the voter said she wanted.

I often wonder about these people that say Obama doesn't have specifics. Just because each speech doesn't read off a whole lot of information doesn't mean that he doesn't have it -- it's all there on the website. I'm sure people that don't have Internet access could call the Obama campaign and get information, too. It seems Obama ought to do a better job of mentioning this fact at every possible opportunity.

Then I hear a lot of Clinton supporters saying that since Clinton has won states like Ohio in the primaries, she'd do better there in the general election. I think that is a totally facetious argument. Just because Clinton did better with Democrats doesn't mean that she'd do better in the general election. We can generally assume that the Democratic voters will vote for the Democratic nominee, whoever it is. The question is how many independents and Republicans a person can win over.

I am just watching US Senator Barack Obama speaking at Google about his bid to become the next US president [1]. He has announced plans for allowing greater citizen oversight of the government including having all government data in open file formats (a great idea - the Australian Bureau of Statistics has a large amount of data online in Excel format). But his most significant item so far is to have a National CTO (Chief Technology Officer). It’s an idea that seems totally obvious now that I’ve heard it and leaves me wondering why I never thought of it before! Barack understand technology, wants a functioning democracy, and gets a +5 Insightful from me for the CTO idea! He also announced a plan to double federal funding for basic scientific research as part of a measure to make the US more competitive with other countries. He mentioned the US standing in the world as a problem (it’s the first mention of this that I’ve heard from anyone in the US government) and notes this as an issue which limits the ability of the US to save lives in regions such as the Darfur. He also claims that there is no clash of civilisations and cites his experience living in a Muslim country as helping to build bridges. When discussing his reasons for running he said that he believes that he can bring his country together to solve problems better than other candidates. That’s the type of thing you often hear and ignore in political campaigns. It is often difficult to believe that someone wants to be famous and powerful for anything other than the most selfish reasons. But Barack gives me the strong impression that he is genuine. He stated a plan to shut down Guantanamo bay (presumably just the prison and torture aspect - I’m guessing that he is not intending to close the military base) and to stop “rendition” (sending prisoners to other countries to be tortured). His plans for education are innovative, as part of educating young children (0-3 years old) he stated an aim to teach parents to read so that they can read to their children! It’s sensible and obvious once you have heard it, but no-one seems to have publicised that idea before. He announced that he will increase teachers’ salaries. He describes the US as having an “empathy deficit“, it’s obvious to almost everyone outside the US but not something that many people in the US realise. He wants decisions to be based on facts and is determined to use facts when dealing with health insurance companies. I just wish that we had some politicians like him in Australia. In terms of policy the Greens politicians would agree with him, but the combination of great policies, insight, and excellent delivery seems a lot better than any of the options in Australia. Update: Changed the post (including the permalink) to have the correct spelling of Barack. Mental note - double check the spelling of everything in the permalink.

• [1] http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=m4yVlPqeZwo

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I am just watching US Senator Barak Obama speaking at Google about his bid to become the next US president [1]. He has announced plans for allowing greater citizen oversight of the government including having all government data in open file formats (a great idea - the Australian Bureau of Statistics has a large amount of data online in Excel format). But his most significant item so far is to have a National CTO (Chief Technology Officer). It’s an idea that seems totally obvious now that I’ve heard it and leaves me wondering why I never thought of it before! Barak understand technology, wants a functioning democracy, and gets a +5 Insightful from me for the CTO idea! He also announced a plan to double federal funding for basic scientific research as part of a measure to make the US more competitive with other countries. He mentioned the US standing in the world as a problem (it’s the first mention of this that I’ve heard from anyone in the US government) and notes this as an issue which limits the ability of the US to save lives in regions such as the Darfur. He also claims that there is no clash of civilisations and cites his experience living in a Muslim country as helping to build bridges. When discussing his reasons for running he said that he believes that he can bring his country together to solve problems better than other candidates. That’s the type of thing you often hear and ignore in political campaigns. It is often difficult to believe that someone wants to be famous and powerful for anything other than the most selfish reasons. But Barak gives me the strong impression that he is genuine. He stated a plan to shut down Guantanamo bay (presumably just the prison and torture aspect - I’m guessing that he is not intending to close the military base) and to stop “rendition” (sending prisoners to other countries to be tortured). His plans for education are innovative, as part of educating young children (0-3 years old) he stated an aim to teach parents to read so that they can read to their children! It’s sensible and obvious once you have heard it, but no-one seems to have publicised that idea before. He announced that he will increase teachers’ salaries. He describes the US as having an “empathy deficit“, it’s obvious to almost everyone outside the US but not something that many people in the US realise. He wants decisions to be based on facts and is determined to use facts when dealing with health insurance companies. I just wish that we had some politicians like him in Australia. In terms of policy the Greens politicians would agree with him, but the combination of great policies, insight, and excellent delivery seems a lot better than any of the options in Australia.

• [1] http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=m4yVlPqeZwo

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• Security futurists shun perimeter, anti-virus systems
• Battlestar Galactica Last Supper
  (warning, image contains spoilers)
• An hour and a half with Barack Obama
  He'd get my vote.

I am a huge political junkie and I have been closely following Europe and US politics for more than 5 years. After this time and several disappointments, I have to admit that Obama is the first truly inspirational politician I have seen (listen to the Yes We Can song based on his New Hampshire speech). Some of his detractors dismiss his speeches as lousy, empty or vague, but you just have to listen to a couple of them to see that he is genuinely smart (such as the one about faith and atheism or the interview at Google). He doesn’t only take the right stance on most issues that I care about (Iraq, foreign policy, ethics, net neutrality, …), but he does it in a sincere way. Obama just gets it. I have got this impression from watching several of his speeches and interviews, but Marc Andreessen had the chance to spend an hour and a half with him a year ago and got the very same feeling. The main argument against Barack Obama nowadays is his alleged lack of experience. “Watch how I run my campaign”, Barack said to Marc when inquired about that. It’s obvious that running a primary campaign isn’t the same as being POTUS, but being the president’s wife isn’t exactly the same either. So if we compare the Obama and Hillary campaigns we can easily see Hillary’s experience as an “old school” politician. She overstates, lies, accepts loads of money from lobbies (because “they represent people too”, haha), resorts to fear-mongering (”Obama is not a muslim, …, as far as I know”, 3 a.m. ad), sides with McCain if needed to get some extra votes, surrounds herself with nitwits, … . To summarize, she uses every dirty trick she has learned in these years in Washington, and that’s exactly what I am so sick of right now. On the other hand, Obama’s campaign hasn’t just been one of the best organized and executed campaigns I have ever seen, but also the cleanest one. He has managed to overcome double-digit Hillary leads in most states without having to resort to any of these experienced politician’s dirty tricks. If I have to trust one of both to run a country, the decision is obvious. If I didn’t manage to convince you, I hope Lawrence Lessig and xkcd’s Randall Munroe do. Obama is leading and almost there, he just needs the final push. Please, do the right thing.

I have just watched The Wire’s last episode. For those who don’t know about it, The Wire is the greatest TV series ever created (Salon and Slate back me on this). It’s been acclaimed by critics, but widely disregarded by audience. I’ll never forget Jimmy McNulty, a troubled Irish American dipsomaniac murder detective (played by brilliant Brit Dominic West) or Omar Little, a Robin Hood-like stickup homosexual man in west Baltimore. The rest of the deeply portrayed characters of the show are great too, but above all of them, the real starring role belongs to Baltimore. I am sure Baltimore’s reality goes way beyond this show, but I don’t think a show can get more real than The Wire. Each season focuses on a different topic, such as drug-dealing, unions, politics, the press, always keeping the police department around. The story arcs are really long and complex, The Wire is not the kind of show you can enjoy watching a single episode of, but more like, as its own creator - a former Baltimore Sun journalist - put it, a “66 hour movie”. Well, I could keep praising it for hours, but lots of people have done that already, even Barack Obama loves it (:P, let’s ride the hype). Praise available in Spanish too Besides, Eliot Spitzer has made wiretaps really popular again these last days Really, you must see it.

Madduck complains about the lack of attractive data plans for mobile phone providers in Switzerland. Madduck: As always, you will have to remember there are many people confronted with a much worse situation than yours.
Up to a month ago, I never envisioned using my phone for anything besides... Well, talking. But yes, since I got my new gadget, I keep playing with GPS or using it for simple things that require Web access and do not require much interactivity (the suckiness of a 12-key keyboard is berhuge!) - Provided, of course, that I am near a WiFi hotspot, of course. My mobile service provider, Telcel, just publicly launched its 3G network - this means, of course, prices are well over the roof:
The cheapest plan starts at MX$59 (around US$5.5) a month, and gives you a whooping 1MB of allowed transfer - Anything you do over 1MB will cost you MX$0.06 per kilobyte. Yes, Telcel offers a 1.5Mbps connection, so it'd theoretically take only 6 seconds to exceed the monthly plan. After the joyful first seconds of network access, each second of full-fledged data transfer will cost you 9 pesos - Around US$0.85. How nice!
Now, there are plans for 1, 3, 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, 50, 100 and 1000MB. Their price increases at a slow pace up to MX$459, which is still somewhat expensive if you even thought on using your cell phone as a gateway (say, over Bluetooth) for your regular computer's connectivity. Of course, if I buy 1GB of data transfer, I'd expect a much lower price for each additional Kb. Well, no, it only goes down to MX$0.03. Per Kilobyte, yes, you read right. Those little things your Vic20 was full of.
There is even an unlimited plan. Well, yes, unlimited but limited - For MX$579 (~US$55) you get a nice deal, right? After all, I pay MX$350 for my 1024/128 DSL connection - it is on the right range. Well, no - If you get over 3GB in one month, your data rate will drop to 128Kbps for the rest of the month. Nice. No good as a gateway either.
So, I'm not hiring a 3G plan at all. But that's also a danger - If I open a net-using program at the wrong moment, I'll be billed at MX$0.14 per Kilobyte.
Bah.
[update] There is another similar service in Mexico, IUSAcell's BAM. Pricing is equivalent, though.

Obama is world’s choice for Democratic nominee? So, no surprise there then! If you’re reading this in Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island or Vermont, please go place a vote tomorrow for the rest of us out here and also for someone who understands the internet, creative commons, freakonomics and wants to make life easier for those that need it.

Raphael, what you're doing is incredibly inefficient, especially with one million string-to-integer conversions and two million back. You could do this instead:

% zsh -c 'zmodload zsh/datetime;
(( s = EPOCHSECONDS ));
for (( c = 0; c  1000000; c++ )) do : ;
done;
print "$0 took" $(( EPOCHSECONDS - s )) "seconds to finish"'
zsh took 3 seconds to finish

Currently in the US the main political parties are deciding who will contest the next presidential election. Naturally this gets some commentary from all sides. Planet Debian has syndicated two blog posts commenting on these issues, it’s interesting to compare them: First John Goerzen writes a post about an issue he (and almost everyone in the Debian community) considers important - copyright law [1]. He quotes the Randall Munroe who is the author of www.xkcd.com (described by the author as “A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language“) which is wildly popular in the free software community (I believe that there is a fan-club which has meetings). Randall’s commentary is quite interesting and I recommend reading it [2]. The most noteworthy fact is that Barak Obama has sought advice from Lawrence Lessig - who has done more for the free software community than any other lawyer. John’s post doesn’t contain much original content, but citing a lengthy post from a highly regarded source and quoting a particularly relevant paragraph make it very noteworthy. Next Jaldhar Vyas writes about “the war against Islamic terrorism” [3] and makes the claim “we are finally gaining the upper hand in Iraq“. To consider that claim it’s best to read some expert commentary. William S. Lind [4] is a widely respected conservative who is an expert on military strategy, his comments about stabilising Iraq are always interesting [5]. It’s sufficient to note that William has been predicting failure for the US occupation of Iraq right from the start and that events over the last five years have proven him correct. William S. Lind’s thoughts on Democracy are interesting too [8], I don’t agree with him in this regard (I generally disagree with him on most things other than military matters) but it’s an interesting thought. Jaldhar also claims that “Democrats on the other hand have a closer association with the media who are behind many of the sillier IP laws“, this seems to be a reference the the “liberal media” conspiracy theories. There seems no clear party association with bad IP legislation (both the Democrats and Republicans do silly things in this regard), and debunking the liberal media claims can be done simply by watching some TV (choose a couple of random news shows on different channels). Fox is not the only right-wing news outlet. Jaldhar also has a conspiracy theory about the Supreme Court and the “need to ensure that the court does not veer leftward again as it will inevitably do during a Democratic administration“, not that the Democratic party is particularly “left” by whatever definition you might apply to the word. I prefer the www.politicalcompass.org analysis which shows that all the serious contenders in the Democratic primary are Authoritarian Right [6]. So the result of the next US presidential election will determine how authoritarian and right-wing the government will be, the fact that it will be authoritarian and right-wing is beyond doubt. That said it would be good if the authoritarian right-wing government that we (*) get at least has some decent policies in regard to IP law (which is the hope for Barak Obama). John Nichols has an interesting analysis of Ann Coulter’s support of Hillary Clinton over John McCain [7]. It would be interesting to see Jaldhar’s comments on this issue. (*) I use the term “we” when talking about US politics to acknowledge the fact that the Australian government will take orders from Washington. Some pundits predict that the Greens will be the second major party in Australian politics in a couple of elections time, so maybe in 8 years time we will have an Australian government that represents Australians instead of Americans. But for the entire duration in office of the next US president (be it 4 years or 8) they will be able to get the Australian government to do almost anything that they desire.

• [1] http://changelog.complete.org/posts/683-xkcd-author-endorses-Obama.html


• [2] http://blag.xkcd.com/2008/01/28/obama/


• [3] http://www.braincells.com/debian/index.cgi/search/item=181


• [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_S._Lind


• [5] http://dni2.wordpress.com/2008/01/23/on-war-247-crossing-the-channel/


• [6] http://www.politicalcompass.org/usprimaries2008


• [7] http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?bid=1&pid=278859


• [8] http://dni2.wordpress.com/2008/01/29/on-war-248-my-masters-voice/

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