Today is Tuesday and Guess What

CISPA still sucks.

Go here for some tweets if Twitter is not loading them here for you:
https://cyberspying.eff.org/

BlackOut in Protest of CISPA

Variations on a Pattern

If you want any of these, please right-click to save to your computer.  No hot-linking.  I made these.  You can use them as is or add to them as you will. 

All Your Info Belongs to Us-- No. I Resist.

I've been here with Google for  a bunch of years now.  And I don't like what I've been seeing lately.

Specifically, when using a v.p.n. plus a proxy, I get the error message from hell.  The particular wording of the message involves the accusation that my computer network is having unusual traffic and thus may be using automated queries.  There is no option for a capscha to "prove" my humanity.  This pisses me off.  What pisses me off also is a visit to the Google forum reveals that I am not the only customer with the problem.  The help page advising me that somehow my computer is infected with malware is totally not helpful.  It isn't.  Period.  In the age of tell-all, v.p.n.s are bad m'kay and apparently proxies are too.

Let me be quite clear.  This pisses me off to the point where I am now exploring the possibility of moving the whole shebang over to Wordpress and/or using one my domains with hosting in a non-u.s.a. country to publish my blogs.  And yes, I am also checking out other search engines whose mission does not involve data-mining things such as how big my snots are.  I am not the product.  That is why you have ads, Google.  A big fruck you to you and to the fact that the words "Google support department" is an oxymoron.

I am absolutely sick of the mindset that says "All your information belongs to us."  I am sick of being blocked from searching Google News because I use a proxy and a vpn.  I am sick of the assumption that the opposite of the word privacy is the word security.  I am sick of Big Brother-- which unfortunately now in my brain includes Google-- and sick of the shenanigans of The Big Five [cable companies] in cahoots with Big Hollywood doing deep packet inspections in order to "catch" a few pirates sharing [not stealing] files.  By the way,  stealing means I am claiming that I authored the work in question when I did not.  I suspect that the deep packet inspections are or will ultimately be used for something more than having some pirates arrested and hot-footed off to kangaroo courts and then to jail.  No love there folks, none.

I will throw in the Facebook I mean Fedbook phenomena which requires folks to grant access to all kinds of personal and wallet info to like eighty percent of the universe.  I don't really understand why folks would ever give their real names to Fedbook, never mind all the other stuff that in a civilized society used to qualify as t.m.i., or too much information.  

I sort of blame those teevee talk shows for the Fedbook phenomena.  It appears to me that the same folks who were spell-bound by the dirty laundry of total strangers are the same kind of folks who wish to display their own.  Of course, no one is forced to use Fedbook, Google, or any other service.  And yes, since we are playing on their playgrounds, we have to at least make an attempt to look like we are following their rules.  One of these days, I will be taking my business elsewhere and I will leave a forwarding address.

No love to Big Brother, The Big 5, or the Police State that some politicians are bent on the United States of America becoming.