Did you know that Weird Al has a MySpace page? Is there is anyone who doesn’t these days?
My prediction: starting with inner city youth a person gets hardcore indie cred for not being online. Of course, you’ll never hear about them either.
Hacktivismo (which is a funky name for a bunch of computer security experts and human rights workers) has released Torpark. It’s a browser built on the Mozilla code base and is created for maximum privacy. They even managed to figure out how to run it form off a flash drive, convenient for that spontaneous browsing on public computers. From the press release:
When a user logs onto the Internet, a unique IP address is assigned to manage the computer’s identity. Each website the user visits can see and log the user’s IP address. Hostile governments and data thieves can easily monitor this interaction to correlate activity and pinpoint a user’s identity.
Torpark causes the IP address seen by the website to change every few minutes to frustrate eavesdropping and mask the requesting source. For example, a user could be surfing the Internet from a home computer in Ghana, and it might appear to websites that the user was coming from a university computer in Germany or any other country with servers in the TOR network.
So remember Geeks, next time your writing diatribes from China… Torpark it? Protect with Torpark? Got Torpark? Torpark ahoy? (ugh… great idea, sucky name - definately doesn’t roll off the tongue… Then again Hacktivismo reads better than it sounds too.)
Weird Al has long produced the kind of wholesome entertainment that only a geek could appreciate. Anybody that can work a reference to Helen Keller into a rap about Pentiums is da shiz (the reference to Comdex at the start is also snicker worthy):
Now Al is back. While the song is ‘White and Nerdy’ (nerd being someone who is just socially inept) there is plenty computer related humor for a militant geek (that is, someone with technical competence) to appreciate. A faux pass on the name, but we will forgive him for the numerous guest apperances that ensue (is that Danny Osmond getting his freak on???!!!):
1. You think HP is just having problems now? Over the last 6 and a half years HP has layed off more than 53,000 people. Ouch. Welcome to Hewlett-Packing.
2. Microsoft’s Lawyers remain busy (and no doubt well paid)
3. Also in Microsoft news, admist all the lawyerly dealings Om Malik questions whether Redmond is facing a voluntary brain drain. But wait a minute - these are the business types we’re talking about here (with the exception of, maybe, Scoble). Had much brain can there then be to drain?
4. Flock Flailing - Hot on the heals of us questioning why the CEO is leaving comes word that another member has left the fold.
5. Segway recalls every Segway scooter every sold… which was less than 24,000. Those kind of numbers even make the struggling US auto-makers laugh. So much for revolutionizing urban transport.
6. Google hires a slimy DC lobbying firm infamous for its deceptive tactics. Do no evil, huh? I guess it’s only evil if other people do it.
You know you want it - your favorite (and/or hated) technology personalities duking it out. A match where those measured leaders of geekdom finally display the kind of machismo seen in mating elephant seals. What would happen if they were in a cage match? With mexican wrestling masks? And maybe sidekicks? Bill Gates! Larry Ellison! Steve Jobs! The two headed Brin-Page GMonster! Leave your comments of how the smack down goes and leave your vote in the poll!
The poll for the fate of Militant Geek’s next reader-participant shirt runs until this Wednesday, September 20th.
Big props to each and every one of you that voted in our first poll, How Best to Mock a Bubble. Despite all options doing fairly well eventually two ‘bubbled’ to the top; expect ‘Adsense is not a Business Model’ and ‘the checkboxes’ to make an apparence in the MilitantGeek TShirt store in the next few days.
It’s propoganda baby! The last 48 hours have been tremendously flattering - if Miltant Geeks blushed we’d be a lovely shade ‘o turnip right now. The official SpreadShirt TShirt Blog picked up on the store and they think we’re funny, bless their hearts. We also probably did the first in what we hope will be many Geek friendly promotions - Banner Propoganda for October 3rd’s Day Against DRM. That story was nicely Dugg by Digg. Defective by Design has our banners on their homepage. This evening our heads swelled to War Zepplin size as THE CORY DOCTOROW, tech activist for possibly the biggest blog on the web, Boing Boing linked to us. In Cory’s words:
Awesom anti-DRM banners from Militant Geek
Yes, he was so taken with our Awesomeness that he couldn’t type fast enough! We’re Awesom!
Seriously, thank you to all who have linked to us and help spread the word. It can get lonely fighting for a geek friendly future. However, you’ve proved that, isolated as we may be, there is an army of us out there. Viva la Geek!
Flock was one of those products a geek really wanted to believe in. It was to be a browser built on the Mozilla code base and developed with passion. They have a community ambassador who blogs… kinda. It even had the idealistic Chris Messina declaring that it would change the world (wha? we’re still talking about a web browser, right?).
Skip forward several disappointing browser releases later (instead of browsing to your blog to make a new entry you could type in a special browser text box… wow… yeah… um). That’s what they raised $2-3 million in venture capital for?! And they’re implying that there users are sheep?
Now comes word that the company built on more feel-good philosophy than common sense has fired its CEO, Bart Decrem. At least Chris Messina had the good sense to get out back in March.
Remember shortly before the shopping spree season last year when some diligent geeks discovered rootkits on their machines? Remember the outrage that erupted when it was discovered that Sony had put them there? Apparently the electronics makers deemed that stopping grandparents and kids from backing up their lastest music purchase had to be stopped at all costs - user privacy, computer security, and digital rights be DAMNED.
What should have been old news is… well… news again. The Texas attourney general, investigating whether to bring a law suit against Sony, has discovered that their rootkit, when combined with AOL (*shudders) can disable user’s CD drives. Despite the holidays being behind us last year’s holiday scandal just keeps on giving.
RootKits by NOSY. Now available in the MilitantGeek TShirt shop.
Well, it’s happened. Proving that he’s a better marketer than film maker George Lucas once again goes to the beleaguered fandom and shakes them down for another version of Star Wars. This is what, the sixth time the movies have been released? And according to what I’ve read this new version is pretty craptacular - leaving room for yet another, improved-yet-skewed release in another couple years.
Oh well. At Militant Geek we have been compelled by the dark swirling marketing forces for a cheap tie in. Call us sell outs. Call us capitalists. But don’t call us to make Jar-Jar funny. Some things are beyond the means of any Jedi.
