The Problem With YouTube (and Society)

I remember telling somebody that the internet makes it easier for you to interact with everyone in the world, and also that it makes it easier for others to reach out to you, including scam artists.  It would certainly seem that the same is true for every other kind of horrible person out there in the world. 

I am generally not prone to posting a thing as soon as I see it, especially when it's already five years old. But I do believe this man deserves your attention.

 

The comments on this video are heartbreaking.  You need not read many to get a feel for the harm being done.

Youtube contains cesspits, everywhere.  And its algorithms seem to eventually lead to them, every time.  Of course, the same goes for Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter, Reddit, and all the rest of the social media/ user generated content platforms.  And we are using similar algorithms to shape and perhaps even govern our societies; for nearly everything we attempt to learn from our ever-growing datasets.  And they are all black boxes for those who didn't write them, and even to some extent for those who did.

Never have we had such a dire need for better Christian formation and education.  In the meantime, may God have mercy upon us.

TrueCrypt and Reset the Net

I was reading comments at DistroWatch Weekly, which carried a little blurb about TrueCrypt shutting down. There was a comment about speculation that TrueCrypt had received a National Security Letter.

I don't know. It's certainly possible. I tend to doubt it. Their stated purpose in directing people to use BitLocker, to warn people not to use unsupported security software, does ring true. Their reasons for shutting down .... are impenetrably unknown.

That's all speculation. But it brought out a thought for me. The Internet provides any right-thinking surveillance state secret police type administrator the tool of his dreams: a way to get tons of secrets disclosed to his agency without having to depend upon unreliable secret informants.

I don't participate in sedition, or recommend the violent overthrow of our government. But I think that if I did, I would probably use The Amnesiac Incognito Live System, or TAILS Linux, for all clandestine communications -- probably on a device that I never used for anything else. But that may be a bit much at this point. I can readily recommend Reset the Net and the tools they promote for internet privacy and encryption.

Bear in mind, that the more secure and private your communications network is, the more difficult, time-consuming, and unreliable (in the sense of getting all messages through) it becomes, and apply privacy tools to meet your needs.

Marketing the Escape from Software Captivity

Not having gained employment in health information technology, I've gone back to school for business administration. One of the required courses is an introduction to marketing. It is easily the most engaging class I have this semester.

What's one of the first things I got from it? Desktop Linux fails in no small part because of poor marketing and a complete lack of marketing management. To be fair, most of the things which make desktop Linux awesome, by which I mean community and freedom, prevent it from being marketed effectively as a desktop OS.

Linux is an IT pro's playground. If there's anything such a person wants to play with, Linux is just about the best place to go. In some ways, Linux is like Protestantism. Any time any portion of a community is unhappy with how things are going, he (or they) can split off to start another. In Linux, this is not automatically a bad thing. After all, unlike Jesus, Linus Torvalds never prayed that all in his Kingdom would be one. And it leads to all sorts of nifty innovations, like CrunchBang Linux (still one of my favorites), PCMan File Manager and Terminator terminal emulator (both originally one-man projects, and largely they still are). But it does prevent a unified or even coordinated message.

On the other hand, never have the disadvantages of captive software, and entrusting your computer and your information (like what software you install), to the likes of Microsoft's butterfingers been so evident. So what am I asking of the Linux community at large?

Tell people interested in keeping the control of their computers in their own hands to start with a mainstream starter distro with broad support and friendly forums (e.g., Linux Mint, Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Xubuntu, Ubuntu, Mageia, OpenSUSE, Fedora, Korora, Zorin, Sabayon). Assure them that if there's something they really dislike, it can probably be changed. Ask them whether software should be stable and mature or up-to-the-minute. Ask them which version of Windows they liked best, and why. Ask them what applications they absolutely must have, and if the open source alternatives will meet their needs. And apply their answers to the distro you recommend to them -- if any. There are people for whom total escape is not worth the effort. (And yes, I am one of them. I run Win7 to play Need for Speed: World, League of Legends, and Warframe.) Let them keep it.

I am of the opinion that nearly anyone intent on escaping the control that Microsoft has over their computer, and regularly gives to the likes of the RIAA, the MPAA, and the NSA, would do well to use KDE as their desktop environment. This isn't a knock on Unity, GNOME Shell, XFCE, LXDE, or any other UI. It's an opinion, based on my assessment of KDE's usability, maturity, stability, and familiarity to people used to Windows XP and Aero. I would only point them at distros with interfaces that use the start menu, task bar, and desktop paradigm that Windows has used since 95. I think there is absolutely no point in talking with potential new users about Ratpoison (a GUI that does not use the mouse), Fluxbox, or whether GNOME Shell, Unity, Cinnamon, XFCE, or MATE will become the predominant GTK+ 3.x environment. Sure, they're out there, and useful, and interesting, but not to somebody who has only ever used Windows.

Nor does any good come from trying to indoctrinate them to hold your position with regards to vi vs. emacs vs. nano, init vs. SystemV vs. Upstart, or whatever other dispute or controversy you are absolutely sure has only one correct position.

A fair number of popular projects have elitist communities which are actively hostile to newcomers and people who aren't interested in learning a lot about their computers. And it's possible for new projects to spring up with little or no quality control, and/or promise a lot more than they deliver. Either experience will gravely hinder or derail anyone's Linux adoption. No matter how much you may love such a distro or project, don't suggest it to a newcomer.

Another PRISM post

Mozilla has launched an anti-PRISM campaign at StopWatching.Us. I signed their open letter with my real name. And I know that by admitting that, I'm giving the government a double-check means of determining my real identity. But I've always assumed that anything I say here can be traced back to me, given sufficiemt resources.

Claire Wolfe said at the close of the last century that it was too late to reform the US government, but too early to start shooting the bastards. I wonder if she's changed her mind about that latter part, yet.

I've long been critical of the US government, but I've never been seditious or proposed violence. Long before the government could cross any line past which I could have felt justified at opening fire on any of them, I became Catholic, and learned that martyrdom was the better response, both in its morality and in its effectiveness. If you shoot the bastards, they use that as an excuse for escalating their tyranny. If they martyr you, they cannot -- at least, not to themselves.

PRISM Break

If you haven't heard about the PRISM scandal (where the feds copy and store everything going through numerous web services, including but not limited to google, facebook, yahoo!, and msn), you really have not been paying attention. Even if your stuff's encrypted now, the feds plan to keep it until they can crack it. But there's a bit of help from the Electronic Frontier Foundation: http://prism-break.org/