Rubénerd!

We've finally got some details about that "Fifth Estate" movie about Julian Assange and Wikileaks, and unsurprisingly it's a piece of propagandistic bullshit. Pardon the French, but this is such a cliché hit piece it's embarrassing.

Assange was understandably angry:

"It is a lie upon lie. The movie is a massive propaganda attack on WikiLeaks and the character of my staff," the Australian Internet activist told the audience at the university's Oxford Union debating club.

Reading from the script, he said the opening scene was set inside a military complex in Iran with documents containing nuclear symbols. [..] "How does this have anything to do with us?"

Regardless of your opinion of Assange, the fact the movie is misrepresenting honest people and advocating war should be unacceptable to all of us. I'm disgusted.

Produced by DreamWorks, the movie is being directed by Bill Condon, the genius behind the first two Twilight movies. I'm not making this crap up.

"We want to explore the complexities and challenges of transparency in the information age and, we hope, enliven and enrich the conversations WikiLeaks has already provoked," he said.

I don't know what's scarier, that he's being paid to say that, or whether he actually believes that's what he's doing. Ditto Benedict Cumberbatch.

Sorry for the serious tone, this stuff just makes me furious. This is important, not that fake Facebook Graph search scandal that merely made public what governments with and without due process have long had access to already. Back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Patrick Wintour reporting for The Guardian:

Britain and America are willing to offer the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, safe passage – and even clemency – as part of a diplomatic push to convene a UN-sponsored conference in Geneva on political transition in Syria.

And yet Julian Assange, who has not been charged or convicted of any crimes, is asking Equador to protect him from Britain and America. This whole farce would be hilarious if it weren't so tragic.

Having just posted about the Higgs boson, other matters suddenly seem inconsequential. Still, such a convincing defeat of ACTA in the EU gives me cautious hope we'll be rid of it worldwide. Well, until we replace it with another acronym; after SOPA and PIPA we've still got plenty of letter combinations left!

Image from RT.

In a shocking move of common sense, the Australian Senate has made the trivially easy process of importing R18 games into Australia unnecessary. Right?

ABC News carried this at the end of their report:

Provided the states pass complementary legislation, the changes are due to come into effect on January 1.

I've been told on Twitter it's a shoe-in, but I wouldn't get my hopes up yet. Let's just say... past experience with trusting all our different layers of government ;).

I don't play R18 games, but I blogged about it in 2010, complete with a Haruhi/SHUFFLE image. Because I could!

My responses to the online survey for the Marriage Equality Amendment Bill 2012 and Marriage Amendment Bill 2012 in the Australian House of Representatives, preserved for posterity :)

3. Can you explain your reasons to the above questions?

Indeed I can! The gender or sexual orientation of a couple should have as much to do with their right to marry as their ethnicity. The majority will of Australians should be respected and same sex marriage introduced, as well as recognising foreign marriages. These said, I would rather see religious leaders render themselves obsolete than force them to wed two consenting adults.

4. Do you have any further comments on the legal implications of these Bills?

As much as I hold homophobic people in contempt, I fear forcing the religious to perform same-sex weddings goes against freedom of/from religion. Allow secular and progressive religious leaders to legally perform these ceremonies, and time will take care of the rest.

Why comment on the name when there's already a prefabricated meme? ;)

Editional Redundancy

Having bought myself a large cup of caffeinated beverage at my local café without even specifying what I wanted (I've always wanted to be a "regular" somewhere!) I dug into Microsoft's news about the upcoming release of Windows 8.

According to the Window Steam blog, which I can only assume discusses how best to clean panes of glass, Microsoft will be releasing Windows 8 in three versions; a regular, a premium and one specifically for ARM tablets dubbed Windows RT.

Two quick asides about the hardware. First, isn't it a fascinating historical twist that an Apple spinoff eventually became so successful Microsoft had to break their Wintel model and release a version of Windows for it? Windows on different architectures isn't new; Windows/386 was specifically targeted at that CPU and Windows NT Workstation was offered on the DEC Alpha and PowerPC, but it shows even the once invincible Microsoft wants to hedge their bets in this emerging market.

Secondly, you've got to think Intel are keeping an eye on this trend!

Back to the Editions

Microsoft have been very successful in convincing people that having editions of their operating system is a great idea, though fortunately they're only releasing Windows 8 in three versions. It's still too many, but it's a start. See what I did there?

Why is it still too many? One word: encryption. With the need to artificially differentiate products in order to charge people differing sums of money, certain features have to be removed from the final product in order to entice people to upgrade; again a practise plenty of people are willing to defend for some reason.

While Microsoft seem to have been fairly consistent with only including enterprise and more advanced features in their higher end Windows versions, some features that really should be part of the base product have also been removed at times. Not being able to change desktop wallpapers in Windows 7 Starter, for example. You can't make this stuff up.

Unfortunately, the feature they've decided to leave out of the standard version of Windows 8 is far more critical than whether or not you can put a cute anime girl as your desktop background.

Encrypting File System

Okay, I used this entire post as an excuse to show Madobe Nanami again. Honestly, of all the reasons I've had given to me to move back onto Windows, this adorable Windows 7 mascot is the most convincing one so far. True story.

Anyway, when I saw the lack of an "X" under their "Encrypting File System" for the standard version of Windows 8, I was lucky I didn't regurgitate the mouthful of otherwise fantastic coffee I was sipping on. I wanted to reach through the screen, pull out a Microsoft engineer and ask them why not!

Certainly it's not a technical limitation, as far as I can tell. Mac OS X has it, most Linux distributions have it, even Google's ChromeOS (remember that?) has it. The pro version of Windows 8 has it.

Putting people's privacy and data at risk for the sake of product differentiation seems reckless to me. I hope — nay, implore — Microsoft to reconsider.

Tin foil hat!

That is... unless they're leaving it out for other reasons. Perhaps the prospect of default whole drive encryption on virtually every new computer around the world was scary enough a prospect for law enforcement that they leaned on Microsoft to not include it on the most popular version. Heck, the rhetoric in the US has long been about how difficult encryption is making certain investigative jobs.

Of course I have no proof of this, but the speculation is irresistible!

A statement from the new centre-right government in Queensland:

The Queensland Government has decided not to proceed with the Queensland Premier's Literary Awards in 2012 which will save Queensland taxpayers $244,475, not including the cost of resourcing the Awards.

And only a few days later from Singapore:

SINGAPORE: Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong will donate $350,000 towards three new awards. The awards support community bonding, social service, and the arts.

Clearly there are more issues at play here, but fascinating timing nonetheless!

From TODAYOnline, a Singaporean news site:

The first 250 US Marines will arrive next month in northern Australia where a permanent joint training hub will be based. [..] In November, the United States and Australia announced plans to send more US military aircraft and to rotate up to 2,500 Marines through the northern city of Darwin to better protect American interests across Asia.

They're not evening hiding who this arrangement benefits any more.

Tristin Hopper writing for the Canadian National Post:

He felt that in Canada the risk of violent protest was simply too high,” said Ryan Ruppert, president of promotions company Spectre Live Corp., which had booked Mr. Cheney for an April 24 appearance at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.

So you're brave enough to send thousands to their deaths and shoot animals in a reserve, but not to face your critics? You sir, are beneath contempt.

From Channel NewsAsia, regarding Singapore's Foreign Affairs and Law Minister's current trip to the US:

SINGAPORE: Singapore and the US have reaffirmed their desire to enhance the existing strong legal cooperation between both countries.

Ah crap.