There’s a lot of talk about “social media” and “social networks” these days, but what I think really makes a difference for many of us is the social filtering made by one or more (sometimes online) friends.

I have a few good friends that are active within a wide range of areas, where-as one person is a bleeding edge kind of software guy (open source / Ubuntu Linux) and whom both try out and give me tips on cool new software for my Ubuntu box (yes, I run both Windows and Ubuntu). Instead of me having to put down time and effort (and sometimes risk) in trying new software, my Linux friend does that job for me.

Another friend is an avid web 2.0 fan, whom jump on basically every site out there. Through him I get reviews of what is good or not, and combining this intelligence with a more general buzz I can decipher what is hot or not.

A third friend is an experienced journalist, and he gives me fresh ideas and angles – especially when it comes to politics, but also other fields.

The fourth friend is a security expert, who shares his deep knowledge from within the security community.

The fifth friend… Well, you get the point – right?! The friendship chain of trust is a very good and (most often) trust-worthy source of information. This is why it is so important to form social bonds with the right people, this is not something that Google, Facebook or Wikipedia can offer you.

In short; never understimate the value of personal relationships.

The funny actor Michael Richards, you know; “Kramer” from the late hit sit-com “Seinfeld”, goes off on a racist slur on stage. I don’t think that it was intended to be racist from the start, as you can sense that he is trying to go off at the hecklers in the audience, but it is still not “ok”. I mean, you shouldn’t be held accountable for such statements in a court of law (due to freedom of speech) in my personal opinion, but it’s still not “ok” in my book.

A commenter on YouTube had a point when he wrote:
” but its ok for them to call him cracker ass…

go to his show and watch, don’t heckle. rediculous. if you dont like it leave. uncalled for my ass.

chris rock would call that guy a n*gger too. watch chris rock’s stuff. He makes fun of people just like that who can’t stop talking.

If only he hadn’t been so stupid ass to call him that, and used something a little more tasteful to get back at him. what a shame.”

Touché!

Richards should have made a George Carlin-like comeback and bury the hecklers in their chairs, now Mr Richards just ended up looking like a fool. Yeah, you should be able to say whatever you want up on stage, and yes – hecklers should thrown out with a pitchfork and yes I think it’s ridicolous that certain words are paria, but I should say that this particular stand-up is one of the many reasons to why certain words after all are paria in the view of the general public. (Apart from the PC-panic showing up once and again.)

We could go into a detailed discussion/conflict regarding the hypocrisy about hizzing at some words, but saying the same things with another “dress-code” and we can also discuss that these words are not a disease, but a mere symptom of something being very very wrong. If there wasn’t something wrong, you’d be able to say any possible racist slur possible and no-one would raise an eyebrow.

With this said, google “racist slur” and you’ll be taken to “the database of racist slurs” and also a full wikipedia entry with various racist slurs. Not for the faint hearted, but why do we really react?!

Aren’t we citizen of the global village yet?!

See this flash-animation and make up your mind on if the United States should send Nuclear Bunker Busters towards Iran or not.

From the page:

“This animation depicts a proposed weapon with a one megaton yield. The funding for this weapon was cut in 2005 defense appropriations. However, the United States still has a B61-11 nuclear ‘bunker buster’ in its arsenal which has a 400 kiloton yield, which could still cause hundreds of thousands of deaths and spread radiation to other countries.”

How many of you administrates your own server(s)? How many of you don’t but still receive on the magnitude of 10 to 1 more spam than real email in your inbox?

Matt Lake really puts down the grim reality into words in his chronicle.

One of the biggest problems is the outgoing spam which we as domain-owners can’t protect ourselves against: Spoofed from-addresses.

This quote says it all:

“Somebody out there, probably thousands of people, are getting messages for V-1-A=G-R-A and c1a-L:IS and embedded GIFs touting some penny stock that nobody’s heard of–all with my domain name all over the From field.”

The above can be handled on a pure technical level, as most of the error-responses can be filtered out automatically. What is worse however is the bad-will that these spoofed send-outs creates, whether these fake emails contains the spam mentioned above or viruses.

This is how it works, told through Matt Lake’s experience:

“Essentially, spoofing would mean that a spammer ran a piece of software that got hold of my domain name, possibly from its own spam lists, maybe from sniffing around in vulnerable e-mail servers from which e-mail came to me, or maybe from the central WHOIS database. The software then generated a mess of fake addresses with my domain on the end to masquerade as the sender’s addresses in the From and/or Reply To fields of their crass bulk e-mail. Then they sent out messages to unwitting strangers.”

Matt continues:

“I picked up the bounced-back messages only because I have a catchall account at my domain host. E-mail spoofing could happen to anybody with a domain (it could have happened to you), and most people never find out about it.

Unfortunately, if this spammer manages to annoy enough people, my domain may end up on a blacklist. Fortunately, because this kind of thing happens all the time, the blacklist compilers probably won’t punish me for what that spammer did, but they may. So I need to keep an eye out for any dropped messages to important clients and friends and comb the huge public list of blacklisted sites and hope for the best.

All told, my options aren’t terribly cheering.”

What is needed is an overhaul of the email-system, however there are many competing technologies and companies promoting these technologies plus that email shouldn’t lose it’s simplictic and genious usage.

A risk that is often forgotten when talking about which way is best to develop email to be less sensitive to UCE (Unsolicited Commercial Email = spam) is that less developed countries will be left behind (again) if the systems becomes too complex and / or expensive.

Another quote from Matt’s chronicle shows on another trap you as an administrator / provider can run into:

“So perhaps Verizon’s spam filter was doing exactly what it was supposed to do: removing objectionable unsolicited content from my mailbox. But of course, this does also mean that Verizon considers itself a spammer.”

Also note that there’s been a class action lawsuit against Verizon due to their spam-filtering methods. (Read about it here.)

It looks like we are stuck between a rock and a hard place…

The European Union has now put it’s foot down and denying Serbia membership if they fail to bring Bosnian Serb military leader Ratklo Mladic to the war crimes tribunal in The Hague. This is something valuable for the quality and internal bond of the European Union, making it a factor of justice in Europe.

However, these strict rules need to be applied to prospect countries such as Turkey – where over a half million kurds are being oppressed on a dialy basis by the Turkish regime.

(From The Guardian)

EU tells Serbia: no Mladic, no entry

Simon Jeffery and agencies
Wednesday May 3, 2006

The European Union today suspended membership talks with Serbia over its failure to deliver the Bosnian Serb military leader Ratklo Mladic to the war crimes tribunal in The Hague.

Mladic is the UN tribunal’s second most wanted war crimes suspect from the Yugoslav wars after Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb political leader. Both are charged in connection with the massacre of more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebenica.

Announcing the decision to suspend talks, the EU enlargement commissioner, Olli Rehn, said:”Serbia must show that nobody is above the law and that anybody indicted for serious crimes will face justice.”

The western Balkans are a key area for EU enlargement, with supporters of the process arguing that the 25-member bloc has a choice between promoting stability and living with a volatile collection of states on its borders.

The talks had been intended to conclude a stabilisation and association agreement with Serbia, the first step towards EU membership.

But Mr Rehn’s announcement, made after consulting the chief UN prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, could further destabilise Serbia’s shaky, centre-left coalition. Vojislav Kostunica, the Serbian prime minister, is dependent for parliamentary support on nationalist hardliners who oppose Mladic’s extradition.

In a statement to the press, Mr Kostunica said Mladic was “hiding all alone” after a crackdown on his support network, and called on him to surrender.

He said his government had done “absolutely everything in its power” to capure Mladic and send him to The Hague.

Ms Del Ponte later accused Serbia of misleading UN prosecutors by telling them Mladic’s capture was imminent.

Because of his precarious position, Mr Kostunica was reported to have been trying to persuade Mladic to give himself up voluntarily.

His government faces a summer with plenty of potential for conflict with nationalists: Montenegro votes on dissolving its three-year union with Serbia on May 21, and the ethnic Albanian majority in Kosovo – officially a Serbian province – is seeking full independence in talks under way in Vienna.

The Serbian deputy prime minister, Miroljub Labus, said yesterday the suspension of membership talks would represent a serious defeat for liberal parties advocating closer cooperation with the EU. He predicted that it would have “serious repercussions” on the political situation in Serbia.

Slovenia is the only former Yugoslav republic that is a member of the EU, but Croatia and Macedonia have both signed stabilisation and association agreements with the bloc, which is due to expand to 27 members next year with the entry of Romania and Bulgaria.

Croatia’s membership talks were delayed over its failure to surrender General Ante Gotovina to the UN tribunal to face charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The impasse was broken in October last year when EU national leaders decided to begin talks with Turkey, too. Gen Gotovina, the third most wanted suspect after Mladic, was arrested on the Spanish island of Tenerife the following December.

Reuters has this content on their website:

Jihadi videos thrive on execution scenes

Mon May 1, 2006 9:55am ET

By Arshad Sharif

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – The movie salesman was selling jihad to the converted.

The buyers thronging his stall on the sidelines of a late-night rally in the Pakistani capital belonged to a crowd organized by a sectarian Sunni Muslim group.

“This is the latest video of the beheadings,” he told his customers, as they pored over titles including “Slaughter of Americans in Iraq,” “Slaughter of Traitors in Afghanistan” and “Taliban Celebrations.”

In Pakistan, compelled to join a U.S.-led global war on terrorism after al Qaeda’s September 11 attack on the United States, anger has risen over what many see as an attempt by the West to suppress Muslims around the world.

But that is only part of the story. Pakistan is also locked in a long struggle with its own demons, particularly sectarian violence that has killed thousands.

Three weeks ago, a suicide bomber killed at least 57 people at a prayer meeting in Karachi celebrating the birth of the Prophet Mohammad.

At the other end of the country, in the Waziristan tribal area bordering Afghanistan, the toll from weeks of fighting between security forces and pro-Taliban and al Qaeda tribesmen pushed toward 300.

The video seller didn’t have the latest action from the conflict on the Afghan border, but he had something just as gruesome.

“This one is about the activities of mujahideen in Waziristan and Afghanistan,” the seller said.

Dated in December, and supposedly shot in Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan, it had footage of hangings ordered by influential militant clerics.

The bodies of the hanged men, described as criminals and bandits, were then dragged through the streets by pick-up trucks, in a grisly demonstration of rough justice in an area where the civil administration has, according to tribesmen, collapsed.

HEAVENLY VIRGINS

“The commentary in them makes no bones about who is producing them — they are Pakistani Talibs,” said Samina Ahmed, the Islamabad-based director of the International Crisis Group’s South Asia project.

For less than a dollar apiece, some VCDs glorify the exploits of al Qaeda and Taliban fighters, promise 72 heavenly virgins for prospective suicide bombers and prescribe beheadings for informers.

There are also training films on how to run a guerrilla war, based on Islamist militants fighting the Russian army in Chechnya.

Messages in the films put Presidents George W. Bush, Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan and Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan at the top of a hit list for would-be assassins in a war against what are described as the American “crusader forces.”

Musharraf has banned several militant organizations since 2002, and just last year he launched yet another campaign against groups stirring sectarian violence between Pakistan’s majority Sunni Muslims and minority Shi’ites.

But some, such as Sipah-e-Sahaba (Soldiers of Companions of the Prophet), keep bouncing back, although they seem to be getting less space to put their message across. The group organized the recent late-night rally in Islamabad but under another name.

BAD FOR BUSINESS

Irfan Ali runs an Islamic bookshop in Karachi and says Musharraf’s policies since September 11, 2001, have definitely been bad for business.

“The fact is our business was doing very well when we were selling jihadi literature,” Ali lamented. “Now our sales have come down drastically.”

The owner of another bookshop in Karachi said such material could always be arranged for trusted customers.

“Jihadi literature, cassettes and VCDs are still available but you will not find it openly. This business has gone underground. It is only sold to known acquaintances or reliable people,” he said.

That said, it is not too hard to find the leader of one of the most feared militant groups in Pakistan. His message of radical Islam can be heard outside a number of well-known mosques.

Maulana Masood Azhar, head of Jaish-i-Mohammad, has kept a low profile for some time because of pressure from Pakistan’s security apparatus, according to some analysts.

But outside Islamabad’s Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, his voice blares out from speakers from among the stalls selling perfumes, skull caps, religious texts, cassettes and videos after Friday prayers.

“Curse on the face of the Americans … Mullah Omar and Osama are the light of our eyes. Whoever tries to steal this light, we will rob them of their peace,” Azhar shouts.

“Spread the message of Jihad in every street.”

Not all Pakistani preachers of militant jihad are such shadowy figures. Some are members of the National Assembly, representatives of Islamist parties that form the largest opposition block.

Maulana Mairaj-ud-Din, a legislator from South Waziristan, is captured on a video titled “Ghadaran,” or Traitors, inciting tribesmen to take up arms for the cause.

What comes to mind is that these videos and the Jihadist movement is picking up young people who need a context to exist in. In other parts of the world there are youth clubs, sports clubs etc, though in poor and under-developed countries such as Afghanistan terrorists becomes heroes for the young (predominately male) people that have no hope for the future.

Something to realize is that the extremist right-wing movements are acting in a similar fashion through gathering young and lost young people who needs a sense of belonging. So the jihadists aren’t unique, they just take it to the extreme.

On top of this you have people who wishes to make money on these tapes, on of the most vile kind “entrepreneurs” you can think of. (This applies both to the video salesmen in Afghanistan as well as those who make video series like “Faces of Death”.)
The third kind of people who deal with these beheading videos are those that sit in the comfort of their homes in need of excitement. They then go online and start to surf sites like Ogrish and others in need of their daily fix.

Humanity shows it’s ugly face, once again…

Boing Boing picked up on the story of Canadian Internet Service Provider Shaw blocking iTunes store and / or their podcasts due to the content coming from multiple sources.

Over the past month Rogers (ISP) in Canada has put some software on their networks that prevents activity for BitTorrents, P2P, IRC, and also along with that is a rule that if you are trying to download a large media file from more then 1 server it will be dropped. When you download a Podcast from iTunes it downloads that file from multiple servers in the background (I confirmed this by watching my cable modem logs). As soon as it tries to use more than 2 different servers for the download, it just stops. That’s the reason why Podcast downloads stop at random places – it’s the point where a 2nd server is involved in the download. The same issue causes timeouts and cut-offs in the iTunes music store.Here is the problem – when anyone calls Rogers about the problem they say it is either a router, firewall or Apple problem and they shrug you off.

Hundreds or thousands of people in Canada can no longer get Podcasts or purchase music from the iTunes Music store. This is BAD. Please, Apple, contact Rogers and sort it out. So many people have called Rogers with no luck.

The question I ask myself is why an Internet Service Provider should be capping bandwidth or limiting net-services in any way?! For security issues I do not mind certain restrictions, such as blocking port 25 for outgoing email to reduce spam coming from the network, and/ or blocking the ports135 to 139 in order to reduce common worm-threats – but there should always be some kind of user agreement where the advanced user should be able to sign a paper and taking all responsibility for unlocking these ports.

What your Internet Service Provider should do is to deliver you an unfiltered Internet-connection, if you choose to have this. With no traffic limitations or other restrictions. What you do with your Internet connection should be your business and responsibility, no-one else should be able to dictate what sites you surf to, what content you choose to download and so on. What should be applicable is the laws of the country you reside in, not the arbitrariness of your Internet Service Provider.

So, if you are a customer of Shaw or any other Internet Service Provider that is limiting your Internet-access, vote with your feet and with your wallet: switch to a provider that will provide you with un-filtered access. Sooner or later, your old provider will be forced to change their policy.

There’s been a series of un-fortunate events in the life of my family, and a close and dear relative has passed away before his time. This is why I haven’t been able to update the Hypocrisy weblog, at all. I wish and hope for your understanding.

PS. To all it concerns: Thank you for all your kind words!

Ah, so now it finally happened, the bird flu is now inside the borders of the EU. The greek island of Inousses is reported to have sick turkeys on it’s farms, though it is not yet known if these sick birds have lethal H5N1-strain of the bird flu virus, or a virus that “only” transmits between birds and not bird to human.

Reuters posted an article, which both speaks about the greek newsmedia running amok (as usual) and a small island of 600 whose population is around 680 people, mostly elderly, being invaded by a horde of scoop-hungry journalists and where the whole world of these 680 people getting thrown upside down, where neighbours turn on neighbours and where fingers are pointed.

Also, the mainland of Greece is being svept by panic, and all bird flu vaccines are sold out at local pharmacists. This is really bad planning from the Greek state’s side, as the limited amount of vaccine should only be given to those individuals that are needed to keep the country going – it shouldn’t be a “up for grabs” kind of system. If there is a pandemic, then the lack of planning from the Greek government’s side will bite them in their backsides, but more important: the citizens will suffer from this, in fact – the whole of Europe will suffer.

As the bird flu found in Turkey was of the deadly H5N1-strain, I am worried, to say the least. If this virus mutates further, the vaccine that we have today is totally useless, and we’ll be seeing people dying like flies, economies collapsing and general human suffering.

If there is a god, I hope he / she is fair to us in our near future.

On the Salon.com Blog, Geraldine Seale writes about the reasons of Paul Wolfowitz being appointed the head of the World Bank after working close-knit to the Pentagon.

A short yet informative piece.

PS. Salon.com is ad-supported, so you might have to look at an ad before getting to the actual Blog.