TOR Browser on an USB Stick

The TORProject is a very powerfull tool to make internet trafic anonymous using an onion routing network. Now I just spotted that the TORProject provides a selfcontained browser boundle which lets you run a TOR enabled browser (Firefox) directly from an USB stick without the need to install any software on the computer. Just plug in the USB stick on which you have copied the TORBrowser and start surfing the internet without leaving a trace.

Chicken Chicken Chicken

And if we are already at it, then here is another nice presentation on how not to use PowerPoint.

Avoiding the Electronic Police State No.5

I am living in the UK which is currently ranked in this study by Cryptohippie as the 5th under the worlds electronic police states (the UK is only exceeded in this field by China, North Corea, Belarus and Russia). I am not much surprised by this ranking. But reading this ranking gave me the final push to think about doing something about it.

Just recently I thought what to do about it and got the following idea: why not to try out one of the many public VPN services which are out there? So what did I do? In my case I moved my connection to Switzerland (which is ranked on place 30 in the same report). It doesn’t cost much (5USD for a month which is about the price of a good beer and a package of chips here  in the UK) and is set up easily in less than … 5 minutes!

Herbie Hancock and Melody Gardot

Afghanistan’s only Pig Quarantined in Flu Fear

Afghanistan’s only known pig has been locked in a room, away from visitors to Kabul zoo where it normally grazes beside deer and goats, because people are worried it could infect them with the virus popularly known as swine flu.

The full story can be found here at Reuters (funny enough it is filed under the category “lifestyle“). Felix says on his blog that this somehow reminds him of the following joke:

They closed the Kansas public library after someone stole the book.

Nuff said… :)

One of the Guiding Principles of Modern Mathematics

The following quote is from Everett C. Dade article on Group-Graded Rings and Modules:

One of the guiding principles of modern mathematics is that the main difficulty in any subject should be to find the right way to look at it. Once this proper viewpoint is found the theorems become obvious and their proofs routine if not trivial. Make the right definitions and the rest will take care of itself.

Nuff said. :-)

Gettin the Network the World Needs

A wonderful presentation by the professor of law Lawrence Lessig! The presentation on YouTube consists of 5 parts, part 2 had temporarily “gone missing” due to a DMCA take down notice by Warner Music.

The other 4 parts can be found here: part 2, part 3, part 4 and part 5.

Police, Protest and the Surveillance Society

I found an interesting collection of letters send by its readers to The Guardian by its on the way the police in UK tends to missues their position in the democratic society which gradualy converts more and more to a surveillance society. Just again a small step in disturbing developement.

Modern Darwinism at Work

From biology we know that if you provide a constraint to a biological system, then evolution will addapt. The same happens in the internet: if you try to control and restrict the information exchange, people will begin to develope means how to get around the atempts of control and restriction. One recent example where one can observe this to happen is in Sweeden. There the new anti-piracy laws boost the market for encryption technology.

How Long does it Take…?

Today’s question: how long does it take to connect an electric toothbrush to the mains? Huh, is that even worth a question? You plug its cable into the nearest socket in the bathroom and this should take not more than a second or two. So what is the fuss about it?

Let me restate the question: how long does it take to connect an electric toothbrush to the mains in the UK? You plug its cable into the nearest socket … which socket?! Oh … Yes, Huston, we got a problem here. I live in a fairly modern hous (it was build about three years ago) … and in the bathroom there is just one single socket to connect an electronic device, and this socket is part of the lights above the mirror, and the socket does not even support a hair dryer! At most you can charge a hair cutter, an electric shaver or a electric toothbrush. But my appartment does not come with any suitable near enough to this socket to place my electric devices on. And as soon as I want to connect more than one device I am out of luck anyways.

So what I had to do extend the amount of proper sockets to a useful number. In the photo you can see where I attached an extension socket, namely to the georgeous energy wasting heating device of the bathroom (I basically never use it; who came even up with such a rediculous 2000 watt energy waster in a modern building?). Alltogether it took me about an hour to attache the additional cable in a proper and save way to the existing cablel. But now I have four sockets which will increase the usability of the bathroom a lot (amongst other I can now plug in my electric toothbrush nicely).

So, how long does it take to connect an electric toothbrush to the mains in the UK? About an hour if haven’t solved the electric socket problem beforehand. But why this is so I can only imagine: probably some ridiculous safety regulations prohibit the installation of usfull sockets in the bathrooms of UK houses. Why ridiculous? Becaus I have seen enough countries where they manage to savely install sockets in bathrooms without a noticable impact on the death rate in the population. If done properly sockets are not dangerous in bathrooms!