We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
|
… this guy needs to buy a cat and take some well deserved ‘chill time’ for, oh, the rest of his life maybe?
“So I got down with my back to the grenade and used my body as a shield. It was a case of either having four of us as fatalities or badly wounded – or one. I brought my legs up to my chest in the brace position and waited for the explosion.”
The short version: he set off a booby-trap (the old tripwire/grenade shtick) in the middle of his patrol, jumped on the grenade and his body armour and the stuff in his backpack took the brunt of the explosion. Other than getting blown through the air, this Royal Marine walked away pretty much in one piece. Fortitude and insane luck are a very cool combination.
Let me offer the Lance Corporal a career suggestion: head back to civilian life and get a job doing endorsements for a certain backpack manufacturer.
Hackers in Indonesia have defaced a government website in protest over that increasingly authoritarian nation’s plans to block internet access to porn (and what is the internet for if not porn?)… Sadly the site has now been repaired, but nice one, guys. Stick it to them!
And here is a nice list of proxy servers for our Indonesian readers (yes, we do have at least a couple).
I have just received my new passport. I am not British, and I will be deliberately vague about the country that issued it. The fee for getting it renewed was significantly higher than last time. I do like the nice touch of requiring me to pay a “priority fee” for getting the new passport in a reasonable time. The idea that we should help our citizens by being prompt and efficient in the first place is gone completely.
Upon receiving the passport, I perhaps discovered the reason for the higher fee. The passport has a little logo of a chip on the front cover and on the details page. There is an insert stating that “This is an ePassport. This passport contains a microchip which stores the same information that as appears on the data age. The chip can be read electronically to confirm the identity of the bearer. This document complies with International Civil Aviation Organisation standards and incorporates security features to prevent illegal access to the information stored on the chip. See the centre page of the passport for further information”.
My country is the sort of place that tends to be proud of being first on the block with respect to implementing fancy new international protocols, so I suppose this does not greatly surprise me. If the chip only contains the same data as the details page, then I rather fail to see the point, given that the passport is machine readable already. If the intention is to add more data to such chips later, I am not sure that the present “This is just a new way of storing the same data” claims are entirely honest. Storing digitally signed data on the chip probably does make sense and genuinely does make such a passport harder to forge. So I will concede that point.
Still, making it possible to read the passport without requiring it to be opened seems to me to rather reduce my security rather than increase it. As for the security features to prevent illegal access, surely for technology to be useful it must be made possible for every border post in every country in the world to be able to obtain equipment for reading it. Even if I made the ludicrous assumption that I trust every government in the world, I still find it hard to believe that such a widely distributed technology would not fall into private hands.
So, where from here. Well, as it happens I can turn to the centre page of the passport. This page is stiffer than the others, presumably due to having a chip embedded in it. It also has information written on it. “This passport contains sensitive electronics. For best performance, please do not bend, perforate, or expose to extreme temperatures or excess moisture”.
So, which of those things should I try first?
Hysterical Guardian readers are getting absurdly upset. The reason? A member of the Samizdata team suggested that a new tax on prestige cars was more about the politics of envy than saving the planet.
If I was a believer, I would be pouring a thankful libation right about now. Eliot Spitzer, one of the most nasty power crazed politicos in US politics today, perhaps second only to Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson in authoritarian thuggishness, has just shown that he who lives by the judicial sword, can oh so easily die by the judicial sword. To see a man who thought nothing of using the power of the state to intimidate those who dared cross him get caught in a Federal wiretap is… well… sweet. I love the smell of schadenfreude in the morning.
Update: heh… just found an article in the New York Times which has almost the same title and sentiments 
Update 2: oh this gets better and better… not only has he resigned apparently, it is causing dyspepsia for his statist confrères at the Huffington Post. Happy days indeed.
[Samantha] Power is gone now – but not for the odd article this post points to. No the lady was fired because she said (to a journalist for ‘The Scotsman’) that Hillary Clinton was a monster who would do anything for power.
In short the lady was dismissed for telling the truth. After all the Democrats have to kiss and make up at some point.
– Paul Marks
Just came across some footage of a Dutch Apache helicopter gunship facilitating some interesting ‘inter-civilisation dialogue’ with a couple Talibs in Afghanistan.
I find myself watching YouTube more than TV these days.
The very worthy folks of the Free State Project are holding an event in June in New Hampshire to highlight their work and maybe attract some more supporters.
[PorcFest 2008] is the FSP annual event as an out reach to those that are interested in migrating to promote Liberty and Freedom. We are trying to get the message out to a larger population that there will be a gathering of Liberty Activist coming together from anarchists to those working within the system meet and make the migration.
If you are interested in supporting the FSP and becoming a ‘porcupine’, check it out!
Gary Gygax, super nerd, all around great guy and hero to a generation of bored collage kids, has died. I weep 2d6 of bitter tears.
The fine folks on The Line is Here (subtext: an anti-nanny state collective) have started something called the Picador Project which may be of interest to our USA based readers.
The Picador Project was started in order to combat what many of us see as a root problem underlying the pernicious rise of the nanny-state mentality in our society. Namely, that too many people believe they are entitled to gifts from the government, coupled with a government all too willing to hand those gifts over in return for a few basic human freedoms and a monopoly on “truth.” This sort of trouble being a perennial consequence of basic human nature, utopian schemes of running off and starting over are never the ultimate solution. Thus, if we want to preserve our way of life, we have to face these troubles here at home and conquer them.
Check it out.
Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
– Ronald Reagan
Some social critics go on about The Permissive Society, but what we are really facing is The Priggish Society currently being created by busybody politicians and other authority figures… Going out for a night in a bar with close friends is now denounced as “binge drinking”. Smoking an occasional joint means you are a “drug addict”.
– Alex Singleton
|
Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
|
