Rubénerd!

@risuchiin on The Twitters:

I must've spent 3 hours already just reading @Rubenerd's blog. It's incredibly interesting.

It's readers like you that make blogging worthwhile, thank you ^_^

Now that I think of it, it's all you readers. I blog partly so I don't forget stuff, but also in the small hope that what I write may be fun dash useful dash interesting dash mildly amusing to someone else in the future. There were more reasons, but I forgot.

I suspected my Fifth Estate post would generate some feedback, and it did!

@wonk_01: It's a dangerous new step for them into the military-entertainment-complex, imho.

Agreed.

@TypeDom: Regardless of everything political or propagandistic about it, Benedict Cumberbatch looks creepy.

He was a devilishly attractive Sherlock, but being done up in a creepy fashion is in itself propaganda.

@babylove0306: you [sic] are ridiculous. Judging a movie before it's even filmed?

That's the great thing about scripts. I'm relieved I'm ridiculous though, my greatest fear in life is mediocrity. Well, that and funnel web spiders.

Back in September 2009 I wrote about using Disk Utility to create encrypted volumes, and how to use Terminal.app to overcome Mac OS X's limitation of not allowing pasting of strong passphrases (Good encrypted disk images on Mac OS X). This afternoon, Arpawocky wrote a brilliant followup with his own recommendations and experience, and even donated a cup of coffee!

I'm sending my humble thank yous to Arpawocky, and encouraging you to read the comments section of the aformentioned post if you're serious about using Disk Utility encrypted volumes on Mac OS X with good passphrases.

This seemingly random comment from Sandrew Loset on an old blog post about Twitter sparked this post! I need to do more feedback entries like this :).

The quote is the moat

Twitter, Google, Facebook & PGE Smartmeters exist only to spy on you and sell your information to advertisers. They spy on every single thing you do, look at, click on and sell it.

They also will give the information to people who are suing you and to any agency that requests it. Don’t use them.

Get privacy software on your computer. Don’t be a tool for them anymore.

Clearly Sandrew noticed I was discussing Twitter and dropped in his cookie cutter response that had nothing to do with what I was talking about, but a comment is a comment nonetheless and I think he raises a good point! I know this because it's largely what I've been saying here for years, right down to the concerns regarding law enforcement.

% diff Sandrew Ruben

Where Sandrew Loset and I differ are on the pragmatic details. Sure the easy thing to do is to refrain from using any cloud services, but this is becoming an increasingly untenable position, particularly as more services move online and more of our applications are web based.

No, instead of abstaining from them outright, cloud services must be seen as tools like any other, and as such the key to using them effectively is to be smart. As I've repeatedly stated here over the years, don't use cloud services for confidential or private information, assume your material is always in the clear, and if you must store material of a sensitive nature, not only encrypt it but ensure only you know the keys.

This isn't limited to cloud computing, our internet enabled smartphones (and even regular phones) are tracked based on tower coordinates, and our computers can be traced with an IP address (this will only become easier with IPv6 and the inevitable decline of NAT). We sacrifice as much privacy online as we want for the extraordinary utility we derive from it. It's a continuum, and though I tend to place my pin closer to the privacy side, I still use Twitter publicly, I have Google accounts (though no longer for email) and a Facebook profile with a fake name and even faker details.

Sandrew reminds us to remain vigilant, which is a worthy lesson. That said, I advocate something cheekier. Don't be a tool for cloud services, make them a tool for you.

It's so rare for me these days to have an excellent customer support experience that when it does happen I feel compelled to tell as many people about it as possible.

Last Friday I went to Dick Smith Electronics in the Myer Centre in Adelaide and bought an Ethernet PC Card. When I took it home to try out in my Libretto I realised it was unsupported (Librettos only take 16bit cards) so I took it back this afternoon and with the simplest of explanations got a complete refund.

I'm aware Dick Smith's has a 14 day "change your mind" policy, but to be given the refund with a smile and no lengthy forms or BS was amazing. Kudos.

Now just change your logo back to the old one :).

Sam Harris, photo by Sara Allan from Skeptic.com. One of the people on my life list of people I'd love to meet. And he has a sense of humour!

It seems one of my more philosophical posts from March last year is still stirring up controversy. I commented on a BBC report that stated religious people are happier than the non-religious, then proceeded to pontificate on the reasons why our brains crave faith without evidence, and how wishing something to be true isn't evidence in it's favour.

A comment posted this afternoon to my moderation queue from Mari Thomas got the grey matter pumping again:

I commend you for realizing that holding to a belief simply because of comfort or pleasant results is not necessarily worthwhile. For our beliefs about life to be worthwhile, those beliefs must be based upon truth– evidence. Faith without a knowledge of the evidence behind it is, indeed, lacking in value.

Various religions and beliefs about God abound around the world. Beware of the weighty assumption that there is no God. This assumption permeates the mind similar to the blind acceptance of religion.

If you desire to be open-minded, I challenge you to research the records of history to see if the evidence reveals that there is or is not a God.

I am a Christian, but not simply because of what I have been taught. I believe that the historical evidence of Christ points to the truth of His claim “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

I recommend the book Evidence for Christianity by Josh McDowell. It portrays some of the evidence found by the man who set out to disprove Christianity and was against religion in general. Interesting and worthwhile material.

Rather than specifically defending my position and launching into a debate as to the authenticity of the Bible which would unravel any subsequent arguments, I thought I'd try a fresh approach:

I appreciate your comment Mari, but I would say that if you are to challenge me to look into the evidence for your particular God and faith, I would challenge you to do the same. As the author of "The End of Faith" Sam Harris said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and the evidence provided in defence of any religion so far is either insufficient or (for want of a better word)… terrible!

I admire that you have the conviction to not believe something unless it’s true. As I do, you clearly don’t believe in any other religions because there’s insufficient or terrible evidence for them, so I know it's possible for you to visualise how others view yours.

I don’t try to convert people, but for many of those who’ve tried to call me out on my atheism before have at least conceded this point. By all means be a Christian, but I'd advise against using the reason that there's evidence for it to justify it.

I do approve of hearty philosophical discussions, but I'm starting to think I may need another blog or avenue to do it... at some point on a software blog I should talk about software ^_^. I'm not Bill Kurtis.

On Monday I posted a discussion I had with someone on Twitter who was adamant that everyone was wrong and that George W Bush would be remembered favourably by people... and he was serious! Upon receiving a tweet from me where I contradicted his assertion, he made a comparison between Bush and Nixon.

Not knowing much about historical American politics I didn't know if this comparison was apt, so I asked some folks about their opinions and got responses here, in email and in Google Reader. Let's just say I wasn't surprised by the responses!

Alex wins the grand prize. I had forgotten how terrible Bush Jr had been for environmental causes too; here in the world outside the US the media seemed to have focused more on his... how do I put this delicately?... less than successful international relations. Alex's comment about the "perception of western people" was especially spot on.

Yeah it’s true, Nixon was a pretty decent president but Bush is viewed in a negative light for much better reasons. My brother came up with a list of over 45 reasonably sized screw ups like messing up the Environmental Protection Agency, Hurricane Katrina, a bunch having to do with Iraq.. basically he is oblivious to the irreparable damage he’s done not only to the American economy, the American society, the global society, the Eco-systems around the world and the perception of western people in general.

He’s been a disgrace to us all and the only people who approve of him compose the lower idiotic wrung of society here in America. They kind of people who whole-heartedly believe his meaningless rhetoric and feel an obligation toward supporting the neo-conservative republican party.

I’ve lived in Illinois for all of my life and I have maybe met 3 people who approve of his actions. So yes - history will judge him as an obtuse, unqualified disgrace of a president who got to where he was with corporate contributions and a mutually beneficial relationships with the wealthy, power-hungry, apathetic kind of people who are destroying our planet.

Amen.

Thank you to everyone for your emails and comments, I'd like to think I've learned something today! I didn't learn that Bush won't be remembered favourably though... I knew that already. Did I mention I'm relieved beyond belief he isn't in charge anymore? I'm not Bill Kurtis.

Reactions to the music-free episodes, Ruben's bad luck with tech (old iPod, V3 RAZR and MacBook Pro), the iBook which has never let down, the Telecom New Zealand resignation, The Top 5 (signs it's too cold!), and an AppleCare centre adventure (warranty confusion).

Download MP3 ↓ 10:00 minutes, 4.8MiB

You can also stream it and view its Internet Archive page.

Ruben's MacBook Pro MagSafe power adaptor failing, using my retro iBook G3 to record the show, Rubenerd Hate Mail (from "the immature ruben?" user), and why do you delete if you believe what you wrote), and Ruben pretending to be a synthesiser.

Download MP3 ↓ 10:00 minutes, 4.8MiB

You can also stream it and view its Internet Archive page.