The Hypocrisy Weblog

When being online for work, studies and leisure I’ve been hanging on several IRC (Internet Relay Chat) networks to both gain knowledge, but also to gain new friends that I’d never meet before etc. IRC is a great way to communicate in a fast and easy way.

Of course, as with any other social interaction, there are hierarchies formed. IRC is divided into networks of servers, which can differ from each other when it comes to what features they have, what they allow etc, and each network have individual “channels”, which for example can be #worldchat. In every channel, there are 3 kinds of users, the regular user (who “only” can chat), the “voiced” user (who has a “+” in front of their nickname, and who can talk when the channel is set to “moderated”) and the operators (which can throw other users out of the channel and even ban them from coming back).

Some networks, such as DALnet allow indidvual users to register both their nicknames and indiviual channels. I’ve registered the nickname “Henrik” (doh) on mentioned DALnet, and I also run the channel #Metal (for those who likes harder kind of music). When being an active chatter on the DALnet IRC-network, I want both mine and other users’ experience to be the best possible. I follow several email-lists connected to DALnet, in order to keep track on current events, and also to put in suggestions on what could get better.

DALnet has been through hell, in late 2002 and early 2003 the network was taken down by severe DDOS–attacks, which Wikpedia writes about as follows;

The network operation was severely disrupted in late 2002 and early 2003 due to distributed denial of service attacks. Added to the DDoS issues was the fact that the owner of tsunami.dal.net (the world’s largest single IRC server, hosting more than 30,000 clients most of the time) delinked his servers (for personal reasons). The other servers on the network could not absorb the extra client load, leading to users’ complete inability to connect to DALnet. The network was first crushed by attacks, and then by its own userbase. About 60% of DALnet’s population moved to other IRC networks due to these extended connectivity issues.

After this ordeal, DALnet came back and launched “The IX Concept”, an anycast-solution, where the users connect to one single server (irc.dal.net), and this server (which really is a pointer) directs the user to the server that is closest to them. This is a good solution, as those who wants to DDOS the network never will be able to pinpoint one single server, and therefor the load is shared and the network remains operational.

The above is great, but there are some things that should be done in order to make DALnet a much better network to chat on, and to keep the users safe. The 2 major things are; the user should be able to hide their real hostname, in order to not be subjected to mischief (such as DDOS-attacks and portscans) and have their hostname replaced with a virtual host, such as registered-nickname.dal.net), and the possibility to connect to the network via an encrypted line, called SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) so that all data transferred between the chatserver and the user can’t be intercepted by anyone and in order to keep personal information, passwords etc safe. (This is something very important for users on the road and who are using public (often not encrypted) wireless networks) for their connectivity to the Internet.)

When mentioning these 2 things on the general email-list, there was a fast and firm “NO” from the people who run DALnet, who said “it can’t be done” etc. The fact is that several IRC-networks have implemented SSL and the virtual hostname, such as Undernet, so it’s not impossible. It is just a matter of will from the responsible administrators behind DALnet to do so. I am aware that DALnet is not a commercial institution, and that the entire network depends on volunteer-efforts – but I still want to see these 2 features added…

If you want these features added too, send an email to service@dal.net and let them know!!!

Swedish newspapers Aftonbladet, Expressen and Svenska Dagbladet (SvD) all have blogs in one form or another, though these don’t feel like “blogs” at all. Why?! Well, that is an easy question to answer; They do not contain a comment function!! How hard can it be to administer a comment system? I know, it costs money to have some poor bugger monitoring every reply that comes in, due to the fact that the publisher is responsible for every word written on their site(s), but the void where reader-comments should’ve been is too large to ignore!!!

Also, Aftonbladet have their co-worker Fredrik Virtanen writing his “stop smoking”-blog, which in fact isn’t interesting at all. It just feels like a publicity-stunt from Aftonbladet. (Virtanen gave up it looks like) Of course, their political commentators Helle Klein and Lotta Gröning have a blog each… but a brilliant concept where their readers could interact directly with them is shattered due to the lack of comment-functions whatsoever..

So please, take a chance… let the readers speak their minds too, or else you could stop already and push out your static (printed) words instead.

Over and out!

Swedish/Finnish telecom company TeliaSonera launched a TV via GPRS earlier this year, where you via your GSM (2G) or UMTS (3G) can see either news from Swedish channel TV4 (for free until the last of August), music videos and interactivity from The Voice or entertainment channel Star!.

I wasn’t really wild over this service at the start, mostly because of the fact that I didn’t appreciate the small screen and hacked up streaming that the news broadcasts from TV4 had to offer, but then something happened in my mind; I started to look at these newsbroadcasts in my Sony Ericsson K700i as radio with images – and I started to appreciate the service. It’s actually very handy when being on the bus, train… or having dead-moments in general.

Though, I don’t think I’ll pay around 1€ per clip or whatever the cost will be when the try-for-free offer is over. I mean, ok – it’s a nice service, but the quality offered isn’t worth the extra cost to get these chopped up sequences for. Then I’d rather listen to the radio for free.

If TeliaSonera creates a fair cost for all of the above, and add more content, well… then I’d be willing to pay an extra fee per month to obtain these services. If they bake in free GPRS-access to this as well, like 3G-operator “3″ has done, then this is something very attractive, which will bring TeliaSonera new customers.

A sidenote; Whoever is doing the branding for TeliaSonera in Sweden really should be fired – the company has NO profile whatsoever.

Hate is such a strong word, I agree – I guess I just wrote that one down for shock-value!

But in all seriousness, what is the use of having a laptop, aka a portable computer, when you can’t use it when you are out in the sun? (anyone ever tried to work outside under the sun knows what I’m talking about)

It really bugs me that I can’t go out in the sun with my Dell, just because I can’t see squat of what is on the screen, thus making the mission of working outside impossible.

Same thing with mobile phones. Ok, they’ve gotten better these later years – the mobiles with colourscreen that is, but they are still not a pleasure to use when under the sun.

Anywho, I just wanted to get this off my chest!

See you next time…

Football-legend, George Best is in trouble accused for attempted rape of a girl under the age of 13 (he was accused of assualt of a 39 year old woman just earlier) and Liverpool’s Steve Finnan is accused of causing the death of an 81 year old man, which by the way swedish newspaper Aftonbladet refers to as a woman (“kvinna” is swedish for woman).

So, apart from newspapers not being able to get their records straight – why does athletes seem to be more keen on causing trouble than other professionals?! Too many headbutts?!

So, I am joining the mass of fellow bloggers writing about the Michael Jackson verdict. I won’t go into detail about it, as there are others who do this better – though what I find interesting about this case are the reactions from people surrounding this whole circus.

I switched on CNN this morning, and the brilliant new-sanchor Richard Quest had a viewer-poll, where 92% of the voters (I don’t remember how many actually voted) thought that Jackson would be able to re-start his career again. Which, Richard was fast to point out, probably is due of the fact that Michael Jackson has some dedicated fans.

The fact if Jackson did what he’s accused of or not is something no-one will ever know, but he’s found not-guilty the american legal system and this should be enough for him to be able to rebuild his life and career, but unfortunately I believe that Jackson has become pariah and will always be seen as a child-molestor.

Some will hum “smooth criminal”, other will sing out “beat it”… Whatever happens, I believe that Michael Jackson never will be able to get up on his feet after this. The king (of pop) is dead, long live the king.

Hypocrisy.nu now switched from Movable Type to Webpress. This was done due to the strict software license which MT runs under, while Webpress is more flexible and GPL.

This platform-switch also will mean a more frequent update rate.

Next step is to install a new theme, and install all the old links and blogrolls.

Cheers!