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This is new for me. I don’t think I have ever posted an official political or religious stance on my blog before. I suppose some quick political opinion and other notes are in order for some perspective:

• I am not a registered Republican nor am I a registered Democrat.
• I have voted in every major election since I turned 18, our country is too important not to care.
• I believe in a liberal social policy, mostly around states rights and less federal government interference (regarding your sexual preference, recreational drug use, etc. move to a state with supporting laws. Also the war on drugs == broken).
• I believe in conservative fiscal policy mostly around paying less taxes. I work hard, so did my parents.
• I subscribe to the founding father’s policy of isolationism to a point (see: Hitler 1933, radical Islam/caliphate 2001)
• I believe in the separation of church and state and the textual interpretation of the Constitution
• I am totally OK with my tax dollars paying for both green fuel development and badass boondoggle military weapons
• The education of American kids and the future of entrepreneurship is more important than most everything else so we can kick more ass in the next 100 years

So obviously I don’t fit into either party. Unless there was a Hunter S. Thompson party, I would totally register with them.

I was up in the air about who to vote for until recently when I hit a mental wall at 300mph. I realized that of all the things I care about technology is truly important to me. I mean this blog’s tag-line is “Waiting for a technological singularity.” I have deep discussions with friends about how do we do ethics in the era of nanotechnology and are we human if we upload?

Now the U.S.A. is a true democracy where whoever is president doesn’t matter in the sense that in some crappy 3rd world country the president could have a life or death impact on the population. Our system is robust enough to suffer the occasional fool (re: George W. who I voted for). In the end it really is a values decision for the voter. The country won’t implode but what is the right direction? What is the extra awesomesauce we can apply to our nation?

The correct answer is: Barack Obama. Now before you say anything else I am not an Obama cheerleader. He has a positive and inclusive message but perhaps a bit naive in some areas. I disagree with many of his views on expensive government programs (my tax dollars want to be elsewhere). Regardless, this is the mental wall I hit:

McCain: Town Hall Meeting 12/29/07

Holy crap, McCain hates bloggers? He was probably referring to the liberal bloggers right? Cuz nobody who is not a liberal blogs right? I’m still getting a weird feeling, holdon…

John Mccain Admits He Cant Use a Computer

Oh God, at 0:33 the old bastard says he doesn’t know how to use a computer, he actually says it. My grandmother is older than McCain and she checks her email every week. If a bill were to be introduced on his desk as president regarding technology he would have NO FUCKING CLUE what it said. Like a nanotechnology restriction bill. Or a 4th amendment (amendment) to privacy of electronic data. As much as I hate swing issues I think I finally understand how important they are. Thus there is no way I can consider voting for McCain unless I see him demonstrate intelligently under debate conditions that he can hack it in the post-1960 technology space.

edit: John Scalzi (brilliant author) has some interesting posts 1 2

So unbelievably lame! I am paying for the 16 MBit down / 2MBit up internet pipe and for the entire day my internet access is capped at a modem-esque (well not really, but close enough) 200KB/s!

All of a sudden at 10pm, my bandwidth magically improves! The real giveaway is in the Azureus Network Status Monitor which is clearly showing the insane rate of TCP resets which Charter is performing on my connections.

My internet provider sucks, can we have FIOS please?

Lets begin this exercise in hilarity by covering this little gem of a tagline:

Encryption Chip Will End Piracy, Says Atari Founder

The problem here is that another attempt at draconian DRM enforcement (at the hardware level) is totally worthless. While this might stop a casual pirate, the same people who are currently successfully pirating media will continue to do, regardless of security efforts. The time-rich and cash-poor will always find a way to bypass TPM, DRM and whatever is the current fad in copy-protection. I’m sure some Brazillan kids in a favella already have this particular hardware issue figured out. After all, people don’t need to break the encryption (hard), just find a weakness in the system to exploit (easy).

The DRM failure world tour – “uncrackable” systems that have been bypassed:

• PS2 – 2001
• DVD – 2002 (DVD Jon)
• XBOX -2002 (Team Xecuter)
• iTunes – 2003 (DVD Jon)
• XBOX 360 – 2006 (TheSpecialist)
• HD-DVD -2006 (muslix64)
• Blu-Ray -2007 (muslix64)
• iPhone -2007 (DVD Jon ?)

• Most computer software: id Software / Blizzard / Adobe / Autodesk / Microsoft / etc. – 1990′s to today

The thing about TPM chips is that you give up all rights and lose control of the hardware that you purchased. An example to drive this point home is that it’s exactly like buying a new BMW, only if you decide to get service at the local shop instead of the dealership the car will turn around and drive you home. Not only does this mean you don’t really own your technology but someone else is making your choices for you. Cory Doctorow’s fantastic new book Little Brother covers some of these issues (read it, it’s free).

This draconian type of security is really a problem since 95% of the general public does not understand the consequences of losing ownership in their technology. Unfortunely that means that same public will blindly go along with the DRM people and end up shocked when they can no longer use the data they purchased.

via ShackNews