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WordPress 2.5 was released this morning (My time), and I immediately upgraded my blog to this new version. Among many things is a slick new look for the admin interface, much cleaner sky-blue look. Really really nice. It’s also much better organized than it used to be. It’s just hard to say how awesome this is, if you use WordPress yourself, what are you waiting for, go fetch version 2.5 over at wordpress.org ASAP!

I gotta give the WordPress developers’ props for having one of the most pain-free upgrade procedures I’ve ever seen, it’s amazing, it’s just four simple steps! No more, no less!

In case any WordPress developer is reading this, a feature I’d like to see in the future, is an upgrade of the license to some flavor of the GNU General Public License version 3 (GPL/LGPL/AGPL).

Brilliant job guys, please keep it up!

Oh man did it feel good to finally have something positive (Very positive at that!) to write, compared to the last few days!

I always love when a big pissing match, over something related to religion comes up, because the reactions from governments, and the small, vocal amount of people who protest or do stupid things, just make such great comedy! Not that they’re directly funny, but they’re just so ridiculously stupid that it’s funny! The source for all the following statements by people from various governments, is this article, UN chief condemns anti-Islam film, on BBC News.

Get this for instance:

“Pakistan said it told the Dutch ambassador that it was incumbent on the Netherlands to prosecute Mr Wilders for defamation and deliberately hurting Muslim sentiments, the official Associated Press of Pakistan news agency reported.”

Ah, great one to start out with! If they had said that to me (And they essentially did two years ago with the pissing match over the drawings of the prophet Muhammed), my reactions would be something along the lines of: Ummmm, OK? Dude, have you heard about this small concept, which be very alien to you, called freedom of expression? It’s a small concept that we in the west advocate. Anyway, anything else? OK good, then stick it in your asses!

Here’s another one that is less stupid-funny, but just simply stupid:

“The world’s most populous Muslim nation, Indonesia, also condemned the film, saying it was “misleading and full of racism”.”

OK guys, in case you folks in Indonesia skipped out on school, “racism” means:

1 : a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race
2 : racial prejudice or discrimination

Source: Britannica Online Encyclopedia – Definition of racism.

I have watched Geert Wilders film (If you want to see it, here’s you go: Fitna the Movie: Geert Wilders’ film about the Quran (English) ), and going by the above definition, I can find absolutely no traces of racism in it. So to the folks in Indonesia who see “racism” in it, get a dictionary, go to school and get a life!

Here’s one that I think is self-defeating:

“The foreign ministry in Bangladesh issued a statement calling the film “unwarranted” and “mindless”.”

Dudes, if you think something is mindless, please just keep quiet and ignore it, the fact that you bother saying that you think the film is mindless, is mindless!.

And to wrap up, here’s the usual, inevitable and retarded statement from Iran (They must have a book full of these by now …):

“Iran said it was blasphemous, anti-Islamic and heinous – a sign it said of deep hatred felt by Westerners towards Muslims.”

HA! What a surprise, Iran calling something critic of their religion, … blasphemous! … of all the words in the world! Can’t you losers be more creative! Come on!
You know, I think a staunch, zealot lesbian (I have nothing against homosexuality, yeah, I said it, damn it!) would see my dick as blasphemous against her beloved womanhood!

Oh, and Mr. Ahmadinejad … regarding Westerners hating Muslims, please cut the fucking shit! We don’t hate Muslims (In fact a person I consider a true friend is a Muslim, so there!), we just don’t like fundamentalist, facist extremists like you sir.

Dutch politician Geert Wilders, released his Islam-critic short-film Fitna, on the Internet earlier today. I finished watching it about an hour ago, and I just watched a TV debate about the film. One of the people on there, essentially called it a very very mediocre clip show. I won’t go so far as to call it very very mediocre, but it’s definitely a clipshow and not that great a clipshow.

OK, so I’ve seen the film, watched some debates, and thought a little bit about it. So what do I think? Well, it’s very easy to state a clear opinion with very few words, and I think I have found something which former dictator of People’s Republic of China, Chairman Mao Zedong have said, that I can agree with: “Religion is poison”.
People will probably accuse Geert Wilders for inciting hate or racism (You’re an idiot if you see racism in what he says!), however I don’t quite agree. Based on interviews with him that i have watched, I’d say he simply demonstrates how dangerous the Islamic ideology is, when it’s interpreted literally, which a fairly vocal minority seems to do. An argument against the film, which I heard on TV, was that the verse of the Quran being show are taken out of context. But you know, THAT is irrelevant, the fact that hateful words are in there, makes it dangerous, I have read other sources for awful verses in the Quran, so Geert Wilders is not making this up. I don’t really care whether Geert Wilders is taking things out of context, because saying that you should kill an enemy, is definitely violent words no matter how you shape it. So I agree with Wilders that the Quran is a dangerous book, because it does have violent messages that can interpreted, and ARE being interpreted as to “I should do something violent, against XYTZ person, if they do ABC, because the Quran tells me to!”. When you interpret the Quran like that, well you almost certainly become a an extremist terrorist.

So do I think the Quran is a dangerous book? Yes! Should it be banned? No. I don’t support limiting freedom of speech and expression in ether way, unless specific death threats are directly being made.

Now, I don’t want this to sound like I am speaking against Islam, but I am not really (You can apply everything I have said here to the bible of Judaism and Christianity as well), what I’m speaking against is violence in religions.

I am a fairly staunch atheist, and I believe the bible is very bad as well. One of my classmates, who once stated that he himself would probably be classified as Christian fundamentalist (Which I could only shake my head about), argued that that was just the Old Testament. But that’s really bullshit argument, because if the Old Testament is irrelevant, the why the fuck is it included in that darn book!?!?! People would say that Genesis, as described in the Old Testament needs to be taken literally (Even though the bible itself contains two different versions of it), but then turn around and say that other parts of the Old Testament are irrelevant, are being extremely hypocritical in my opinion.

Yeah, like Chairman Mao Zedong said: “Religion is poison”.

While surfing around on Wikipedia a few days ago, it occurred to me that the Chinese army’s name, People’s Liberation Army, is not very appropriate in that it’s a very misleading name. A more correct name, to me, would be People’s Repression Army. Especially with the events that has been happening in Tibet recently, this has been never so true, in my humble opinion, that is!

One of the features of Fedora 8, was the introduction of CodecBuddy/Codeina, as a way to tell users new to GNU/Linux, who tries to play a multimedia file in an encumbered format, where he or she can get codec support for those, as Fedora cannot include them for legal reasons (Hint: The completely stupid, and utterly broken patent system of the United States of America). The problem is though, that the codecs that is being recommended to the user are proprietary software from Fluendo. As a staunch free software guy, that left a fairly bad taste in my mouth after Fedora 8 was released, as it’s widely known that Fedora’s commitment to free software is extremely high, and this new feature seemed to contradict that commitment. Reading Fedora Planet last night, I was happy to notice that this problem has been discussed, and they plan to do something about it. The solution being the removal of the recommendations of proprietary codecs for MPEG-4, Windows Media etc. etc.
Some guy thought that was Fedora making life difficult for the user, while Seth Vidal said the following on his blog:

We think codeina is very useful. As long as it is distributing only open source software then it is fine. It has not been doing that and we are all worried and concerned about it. We discussed it and decided an easy solution was to patch out the closed-source items that are advertised/offered in the xml file that ships with codeina.

I cannot think of a tenet more central to fedora than ONLY AND ALWAYS FREE SOFTWARE. I think the decision of the board is consistent with that tenet.

Which I could not agree more with!

Ubuntu being the superstar in the open source world these days, does, in my opinion, next to nothing to stand up for free software, and the ideals of it. It’s nice to know that somebody does. It’s a tough job, but somebody’s gotta do it! Go Fedora!!

“Thousands of pet cats in Beijing are being abandoned by their owners and sent to die in secretive government pounds as China mounts an aggressive drive to clean up the capital in preparation for the Olympic Games.
Hundreds of cats a day are being rounded and crammed into cages so small they cannot even turn around.
Then they are trucked to what animal welfare groups describe as death camps on the edges of the city.
The cull comes in the wake of a government campaign warning of the diseases cats carry and ordering residents to help clear the streets of them.

… snip …

Animal welfare groups in China are already protesting, but their members fear punishment from the authorities.
Officials say people can adopt animals from the 12 cat pounds set up around the city, but welfare groups say they are almost impossible to get inside and believe few cats survive.
One cat lovers’ group negotiated the release of 30 pets from one of the compounds in Shahe, north-west Beijing, but said they were in such a pitiful condition that half of them died within days of their release.

… snip …

Cat owners, terrified by the disease warning, are dumping their pets in the streets to be picked up by special collection teams.
Paranoia is so intense that six stray cats -including two pregnant females – were beaten to death with sticks by teachers at a Beijing kindergarten, who feared they might pass illnesses to the children.
China’s leaders are convinced that animals pose a serious urban health risk and may have contributed to the outbreak of SARS – a deadly respiratory virus – in 2003.
But the crackdown on cats is seen by animal campaigners as just one of a number of extreme measures being taken by communist leaders to ensure that its capital appears clean, green and welcoming during the Olympics.”

Source: Olympics clean-up Chinese style: Inside Beijing’s shocking death camp for cats.

Well, it looks as if the Chinese authorities are moving on to cut down on “cat rights”. Doesn’t surprise me, because the status of human rights is probably so bad, that they needed somebody else to treat badly to have something to do.

It’s ironic, because they blame the poor cats for spreading disease, yet I can tell you for sure that once all the cats are gone, well the city is gonna face a MASS INVASION of rats and mice, and those are notorious for spreading A LOT of diseases. Cats are experts at keeping these out of major cities. Cats you could easily pick up and vaccinate, and then let him or her go back to policing rats.

Again, if the issues of repressed civil liberties and human rights in China did not convince you, to boycott the Beijing 2008 Olympics, in whatever way you can, then I’d hope cat genocide will!!:

All of the poor cats in the above picture are most likely all dead when you see this. What a horribly undeserved fate!

I believe in guardian angels in a symbolic sense, look at this:

“Retired doctor Hu Yuan, 80, runs one of the few remaining refuges for abandoned pets in her ramshackle home in the ancient Long Tou Jing area of Beijing.
She shares her tiny home with 250 abandoned cats and has taken in 70 over the past 12 months alone.
She pays for neutering and food from her pension and donations. She said: “If I don’t take them in, the government will kill them.
“People believe what the government tells them and that is why they are abandoning more and more family pets.”
She said the problem could be traced back to former president Jiang Zemin for the crackdown.
“He didn’t like dogs so he decided to have dogs killed. But there was a bad reaction from the foreign media and they were pressured to stop.
“Now they have stopped killing dogs but the new victims are cats. It is all connected to the Olympics.”
Cats are regularly dumped on her doorstep late at night by owners frightened by the government campaign.
“The situation is very bad now,” said Ms Hu. “When women get pregnant, the doctor will ask them if they have a cat in the house.
“If they reply Yes, they tell them, ‘You must get rid of it, it will be bad for the baby’.
“I keep all the cats in my house and 100 of them sleep in my bedroom at night. I am too frightened to let them out. If they go outside, they will be taken away and killed.
“The government is not telling people the truth. Look at me. I live with them 24 hours a day, seven days a week and I am very healthy.”

I don’t know what to call that but the work of a true guardian angel!

I swear someday that Maoist regime shall fall! And then hopefully freedom for literally everyone in China will reign.

I’m listening to last night’s episode of The Linux Link Tech Show, they have a guy named Christian Einfeldt on for an interview. During the interview he says: “If you have a 100 million people “stealing” music, well, question, maybe it’s not stealing anymore”.

So true! A case in when the people decide the morals of society, and not big companies!

Close to a month ago, a group of Danish newspapers republished the (in)famous cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed. Which resulted in various religious maniacs throughout the middle east going crazy. And here at home, some groups of assholes have been running around lighting cars on fire (The thought of which is REALLY pissing me off!). I consider all opposition to the newspapers republishing the cartoons as an attack on freedom of speech. In any truly free society, freedom of speech ought to be considered an inalienable civil liberty that should never be dishonored.

I know of this great quote, by George Orwell: “During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.”.

I just thought of my own version, related to freedom of speech, that is directly meant for the situations of today (I am not implying that G.O.’s quote cannot be directly applied to today’s world situation, but it was not meant to be, as it’s not a new quote by any means):

When freedom of speech is under attack, utilizing it becomes a revolutionary act.

“Writing in the British journal Time and Mind, Benny Shanon of Jerusalem’s Hebrew University said two plants in the Sinai desert contain the same psychoactive molecules as those found in plants from which the powerful Amazonian hallucinogenic brew ayahuasca is prepared.

The thunder, lightning and blaring of a trumpet which the Book of Exodus says emanated from Mount Sinai could just have been the imaginings of a people in an “altered state of awareness”, Shanon hypothesised.

“In advanced forms of ayahuasca inebriation, the seeing of light is accompanied by profound religious and spiritual feelings,” Mr Shanon wrote.”

Source: Was the Bible written while high?.

I knew it! The authors of the bible apparently, was on the “crack” of their day, when writing that stupid-ass book. To tell you the truth, this theory does not come as a surprise to me at all, because if you look at some of the insane things written in the bible (The following is an example):

“If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell” (Matthew 5:29-30).

(Because I’m definitely a bad person for thinking that a friend of mine’s girlfriend is beautiful)

You REALLY would expect the author to be smoking something extremely mind-altering. Like I write in my biography: “some of the things that’s written in the bible very often sounds like the writer was smoking too much marijuana, or whatever he might have been smoking! Think about it! If you’re sitting there smoking your marijuana, and writing a story, then the concept of a guy walking on water all of a sudden makes a lot of sense.”.

I seriously doubt people will ever come to realize what a load of bullshit the bible really is, my suggestion to anybody who owns a copy of it, is to use it as toilet paper and then burn it! Creative, aren’t I ?

“An experiment in distributing DRM-free content via BitTorrent has proven to be a success for one Norwegian TV broadcaster, with project manager Eirik Solheim calling the experience “extremely positive.” His network, Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK), has been offering the popular series Nordkalotten 365 as unprotected MPEG-4 files through BitTorrent since late January and has been surprised with the public’s overwhelmingly positive reaction. Solheim said in an interview (republished on NRK’s blog in English) that the experience will likely “clear the rights for this kind of distribution of more content.”
Since the experiment’s inception just over a month ago, Nordkalotten 365 has been downloaded over 90,000 times—shocking to NRK, since Norway is a small country of only 4.6 million. Not only that, but the people downloading have been good torrenters too. The files have had ratios close to 95 percent, which Solheim said saved license fee payers 95 percent of all distribution costs. “People are happily seeding the files,” Solheim said.”

Source: Norwegian broadcaster: P2P experiment “extremely positive”.

This is brilliant, absolutely brilliant!
This is like THE perfect smack in the face, for the recording industry (Who likes to buy laws that take away our freedom!). A Norwegian TV broadcaster comes out and openly states that BitTorrent just “saved license fee payers 95 percent of all distribution costs.”, rather than try to tell lies that say that they lost money or something.

To the guys at NRK, keep up the good work guys, I love what you’re doing! Cheers and applause from Denmark!