Dave Pollard at How to Save the World¹ writes a post questioning society’s attraction to violent entertainment media, he asks:

“What’s going on here? Why, when we could be going to movies or plunking down in front of the TV to laugh with people, to be charmed and delighted by funny characters delivering clever lines, are we instead going to laugh at people who behave offensively, who act ridiculously, and who insult and demean others? Why, when we could be uplifted by stories of courage and indomitable human spirit, do we instead choose to see stories of unimaginable brutality, anguish, relentless horror and suffering, often without resolution or redemption? Why, rather than piquing our imaginations with what they don’t show, do today’s popular films use grisly hyper-realistic graphics and special effects that leave nothing to the imagination? We’re still coy about the depiction of sex in films, so why are we so blatant and vulgar in the depiction of extreme violence?”

I presume the attraction of violent entertainment is simply as a metaphor for our lives. The metaphor speaks to the non-physically violent raping that all of our minds have been subjected to year in and year out, from birth to death, by powerful corporatists intent on subjecting us to: their minds and their rule and their daily pick-pocketing; surely a kinder and gentler form of warfare.

While we may not have been violently murdered, the invisible butterfly wings we were all given at birth, and for some of us which were eloquently described in the U.S. Declaration of Independence, particularly the phrase about the un-alienability of each of our respective pursuits of Happiness, have been sliced away from many of us in a way similar to a violent murder, and arguably more cruelly than to simply have killed us quickly and to have been done with the matter.

Since great masses of people are hosts to a few powerful parasites, and since killing the hosts typically kills the parasites, the parasites seek the opposite, extending our lives so they can continue in their ways. Like the metaphor of vampire, the parasite seeks to suck our blood without actually killing us — but altering us — so that they can receive sustenance from each of us everyday, and so they can live their powerful lives of darkness and power, an ability which is multiplied exponentially with more hosts.

When one thinks about the metaphor of violence with this pattern, one may realize that coyness surrounding sex in movies serves the same metaphor. Sex, as fundamentally a reproductive act when performed between heterosexuals, simply perpetuates the aforementioned parasite-host relationship from one generation to the next, so coyness regarding sex could be reflective of a communal sub-conscious desire to not reproduce, even when, at the individual level, one’s own body signals powerful reinforcements and one’s mind rationalizes that it is only through reproduction that survival is guaranteed. But that guarantee is really nothing more than a promise to the potential child-to-be that they, too, will be subjected to the same, or perhaps improved, parasitical methods that ultimately lead to a denial of Happiness, and therefore reproduction represents little more than a passing of parasite-host misery from one generation to the next.

I presume that a population that loves violent metaphors has experienced great psychological warfare wreaked against it. As metaphor, it is familiar.

Bibliography 1. http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/2006/10/03.html#a1663

Recently I added a plugin named Sociable to another weblog. While perusing the blog of Sociable’s developer, one post caught my attention. Peter Harkins asked his readers if they could recommend a good feedreader for Linux. Unfortunately, not having yet made the switch to Linux on our personal machines, it’s not possible to fully answer his question from the perspective of that operating system.

Recently I looked around for a newer feedreader for Win98SE, either one that runs under Firefox as an extension, or as a standalone program similar to FeedReader, and had some success. After finding some that didn’t work quite in the desired way, and others that had promise but unfortunately were still quite buggy, what I eventually settled upon was BottomFeeder, a standalone cross-platform Atom and RSS reader. It appears open-source and released under an Artistic License.

From the BottomFeeder front page:

“BottomFeeder runs on Linux x86, (also FreeBSD), PowerPC Linux, Sparc Linux, Windows (98/ME/NT/2000/XP/CE 4), Mac OS8/9, Mac OS X (PPC), AIX, SGI Irix, HP-UX, and Solaris (SPARC and x86).”

I have no intention of critiquing the program, as they all seem to have shortcomings and strengths of one kind or another; in the case of BottomFeeder, its feature set is impressive. This may imply it isn’t the simplest feed reader out there. I’m currently watching just under 100 feeds and have noted no big issues, but then I’m a simplistic user with basic needs who has always been attracted to the usefulness of powerware.

While it’s not perfect, you might like it — try BottomFeeder.

Now that Microsoft is no longer supporting Win98SE, where will people get security patches as they become necessary? Via cnet.com, one such third-party Win98 security patch source is calling themselves the Zero Day Emergency Response Team, or ZERT.

Jamesoff, coder of the RBL plugin for SpamKarma 2 has decided to shut down his blacklist at blbl.org, he writes:

“In due time, I’ll shut down rbldnsd too, but that’ll be a while yet. If you’re using the SpamKarma2 plugin for WordPress, or any other RBL lookup plugin on any blog software at all, please remove blbl.org from the lookup list (bl.blbl.org and uri-bl.blbl.org).”

Thanks for all the help, Jamesoff. Your decision seems a good one: if your heart is no longer in a project, then what’s the point?

I noted this hardware firewall via a digg.com posting with a title that suggests it is designed for Windows XP, which in turn leads to a linuxdevices.com entry, which in turn references the portal where the Yoggie Gatekeeper will be sold.

I don’t see any information regarding a particular operating system required, presumably this device would work for networked computers of different OSs because it seems independent of them. The company’s PDF brochure doesn’t seem to make or infer any similar OS dependency claims. Whether it does or not is something to check out before a purchase.

Linuxdevices.com says the pro model will cost about $220, and the site selling the product claims it will be available by the upcoming winter holidays.

I wonder if the firewall can be secured from the Yoggie Management Server, a separate device marketed to corporate IT departments. The brochure claims “proprietary patent-pending developments”.

Antivirus protection is generally one of the must have software products if your computer is connected to the Internet. Commercial programs vary in their effectiveness and cost, but there are also some reasonably good free anti-virus programs available, if you look for them.

There are several organizations that test and rank these programs, one is http://www.av-comparatives.org/ and another is http://www.av-test.org/. It takes some time to study the comprehensive reports at av-comparatives.org, such as this anti-virus test PDF (their latest test as of the date of this post). Another series of anti-virus tests was journaled by pcworld.com in affiliation with av-test.org.

The other day I noted a link titled And The Best Antivirus Is…. The article is based upon a recent AV test report at http://www.virus.gr/.

As an aside, it’s curious to note the disparities between all three sets of AV software comparisons linked above. Back to virus.gr’s comparison.

Kapersky Lab’s product is listed as number one, and I’m not particularly surprised based upon previous test results I’ve seen, but the second best ranked product with the same percentage rating is AOL’s Active Virus Shield (AVS). AOL?

As another aside, here’s a different set of free security tools from AOL. Back to AVS. . . . . AOL’s End User License Agreement should give one pause regarding privacy. Will Active Virus Shield’s tool bar contain adware functionality at some point in time? If so, then my read of the EULA suggests the use of certain types of strict port-blocking stateful-inspection firewalls, unless they’re configured to allow AOL’s potential future ads, would be prohibited.

I decided to give AVS a try. (read more . . . )

The following website has a slideshow that offers a reasonably good explanation of how the stock market and its clearing mechanisms works, with several case studies, as well as some commentary about the SEC placed in historical context. Rather than trying to synopsize it further, it’s offered for your perusal. The show lasts for about 80 minutes, so be prepared to spend at least that much time listening and watching. As a slideshow, it’s not presented primarily as text, so it’s hard if not impossible to speed it up, making my favorite method of reading fast impossible.

The information presented is worth the time spent watching and listening, even if you have little interest in the stock market. Darkside of the Looking Glass may dispel some myths.

The hypocrisy of the Executive Branch and their legislative cohorts is stunning. They want secrecy and privacy for their actions, but are unwilling to grant privacy to others. They seem to want citizens to have the perception of privacy, without the reality of privacy. They seem to want corporations to collect extra customer cash from the value added by customer-perceived privacy, but they want corporations to give them free customer data. They seem to want the private sector to be somewhat more transparent, more like the public sector, but with funding by the so-called choice of consumers instead of by the mandate of taxpayer funding; while simultaneously seeming to want government to be less transparent, more like the private sector, more secretive, and to maintain the mandate of taxes to pay for it.

A curious pattern of common hypocrisy emerges: Beside the collection of money, corporations and government both seem to want loyalty from the worker, customer, taxpayer, and citizen; but both seem unwilling to be likewise loyal to the citizen. (read more . . . )

AT&T is in the news, this time they are alleged to have updated their privacy policy to include language that grants them ownership over customers’ data according to an article by David Lazarus of the San Franscisco Chronicle. Yesterday, the Associated Press wrote about how police agencies across the country have been using private data brokers to bypass privacy laws that prevent the police from legally obtaining that information without a warrant.

It seems that our 4th Amendment guarantee to be safe in “persons … papers, and effects” has been shredded (read more . . . )

Wow, I haven’t posted for a long time, I guess I have nothing to say publicly, at least not using my real name! Yes, I do post elsewhere under the alias that I’ve used for something like 7 or more years now, but posting under a real name seems, somehow, different. I’m under no illusions of anonymity, however, I’m quite certain the government knows precisely who I am and the alias I post under, with the NSA and alleged telephone eavesdropping that’s been under some, ahem, fire.

I just found that Contact was still sending email to the old email address of the now disconnected ISP I used to use, but I thought I had changed it. I sure hope that nobody tried to email me—never mind that nobody has used the Contact button in all the months that it’s been on this site. So if you tried to email me in the last month or two, sorry(!), I never received it.

On an unrelated note, “U.S. scientists say the more consumers are absorbed in the narrative flow of a story, called transportation, the less likely they’ll respond well to ads.” I wonder if this means when person is caught up in the narritive flow of life in ‘the now’ moment surrounding them, that they won’t respond well to ads? If so, then marketers would logically concentrate upon the future and what could be, instead of what actually is, because reaility is part of the narrative unfolding of each moment with respect to each individual’s life. This seems to explain the so-common culture of ‘denial of reality.’

Have we been indoctrinated, perhaps starting when we are young and continuing through all of our individual years, by a media and various supporting societal structures and culture, to always be ‘looking forward’ or ‘preparing ourselves’ for some illusory world to come, instead of the world we’re actually in right now?

Has the world been hijacked by slick marketers?

While in this blog’s control area, I noticed that in the last few days 239 spams advertising all sorts of drugs piled up. It seems that the spammers are targeting blogs that appear inactive, but that has probably always been true; what seems odd is that they aren’t bugging my partner’s blog much, no more than one or two a day, and she posts every couple of weeks or so.

Why would spammers be avoiding more active blogs? They don’t want to upset the non-abandoned blogs’ users, but if it’s been abandoned, then hey, who cares? Seems as likely as any other answer, if there is an answer.

Note of 6/21: Spammers are still hammering on the door, so perhaps they’re not targeting inactive instead of active blogs.

Note of 8/22: While it’s not the source of the increased spam, the real-time blacklist (DNSRBL) opm.blitzed.org has ceased operations, and that would explain the massive increase of spam: the timeline seems about right.