Now even fucking Google is trying to put me in a box

• "This video is not available in your country."
  
• "Willkommen bei YouTube!
  Vorgeschlagene Sprache (von uns festgelegt): Deutsch
  Du kannst die Sprache über die Links oben neben dem YouTube-Logo ändern.
  Klicke auf "OK", um die Einstellung zu übernehmen, oder auf "Abbrechen", um die Website in Englisch anzuzeigen.

WHAT BULLSHIT IS THIS?? Everything I love about the internet seems to be going to shit lately. Why would I only want to look at videos made by people from my country or my language? If I wanted to talk to the people around me, I wouldn't do it through fucking Youtube. Youtube, and most social networking sites, chat rooms, and probably even most websites are all about people who don't live down the road from you. It's so fucking awesome to chat/play games/watch videos with people from Karachi, Milan, Shanghai, Antarctica... ok, its not always awesome. But it has the potential to be awesome. You can share opinions about politics, video games, culture, dodgy companies and annoying bastards.

Your sex, race, age, religion all count for nothing unless you specifically choose it to. Sure, that leads to situations made famous by anti-technology activists like 60 year old paedophiles pretending to be 11 year old girls. OK, just as a side note here (and its sort of relevant in a way) why the FUCK is 'paedophile' supposedly incorrect spelling according to the US spelling dictionary? I know they spell it 'pedophile' (yeah that's better underline that one bitch). But surely, surely, surely, surely they should consider the CORRECT spelling as at least an alternate and not INCORRECT. Pfft fucking ridiculous. But yeah, somewhat relevant - why would I encounter that problem unless I was on the internet? It's not like I would walk through Grosvenor Square and have someone stop me and say 'excuse me sir, paedophile should be spelled without an a'. And then I'd right click him and select Dictionary -> English_AU. You can be yourself on the internet, without fear of anything being unladylike if you're a lady or too white if you're white or stupid if you're American. There's also no fear of retribution: if you're an arsehole by nature, you can be an arsehole.

Being on the internet, being an internet personality, its an international thing. You aren't bound by rules or laws of any specific country (except sometimes of wherever the server is located). On the internet, youre not part of a country, ethnic group, sex or anything you cant avoid being part of in real life. The beauty of this chaotic, uncensored, raw environment is amazing and boundless. Sure, letting people do whatever they want also creates its problems. But that just makes it interesting and having experienced countless viruses, including loss of control of computer, data loss, components being fried, I don't think you can say I haven't yet experienced the worst of it. And yes, I've also encountered tubgirl, kitten stomping, prolapse pics, cp, snuff, church of fudge, swap.avi, pain olympics, pretty much everything.

The internet is fucking great, now Australia is trying to censor and moderate everything thats going on. Fucking wicked. Obedient K Rudd will most likely cower to the demands of Sony et al, and force ISPs to block torrents as well as porn. Facebook will start to cost money, or be taken over by Microsoft and crammed with even more ads than it has now. Wikipedia won't be open to editing by anyone. In fact, possibly, Australia will block it altogether. And Google, the company thats supposed to have a shred of good will and decency, they are putting me in a box. I can't watch Australian videos because I'm in fucking England. This is such bullshit. And Tor takes a million fucking years to download youtube videos. FOR FUCKS SAKE!!

Iraq war: Inappropriate conduct and the obligatory blame game

This post is in response to:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/28/international/middleeast/28site.html?_r=1
http://unseenwar.com/ (cache of http://www.nowthatsfuckedup.com/bbs/viewforum23-0-50.html , this site has been redirected to the Florida Sheriff's department)

Concerning the posts of dead Iraqis and Afghans (whether they are Al-Qaeda or civilians is unclear, but it appears to be a bit of both), the images and attitudes toward dead people are quite disturbing.

People seem to be mainly concerned about the fact that they were posted on the internet though (because as we all know, the internet is a safe place where stuff like this doesn't exist). So firstly: fuck off! If you support the war in Iraq but are disgusted by evidence of it then you need to seriously reconsider your idea of what happens in war. Having your 20 year old citizens fight on your behalf while not having to think about it is probably great if you are happy remaining ignorant. What you are upset about is that these photos are informing you of what you are supporting.

Besides of that, my problem is the blaming of the photo posters. The problem is (a) that these things happened in the first place, which would be the fault of the US government, and (b) the attitude people have toward Iraqis, Afghans, Muslims and insurgents (which is the dirty word for people partaking in a rebellion), which is also the fault of the US government and in the soldiers' case also the US military.

So why are the soldiers getting punished for informing the rest of the world as to what is going on? Even if they do it with their perverted 'look ma, I killed an Iraqi' motivation, why do these pictures need to be censored while much worse pictures remain on the internet? Basically, the US government doesn't want the bad publicity.

So the US government rushes to jump on the opportunity to blame their own soldiers. The same young men they have forced to risk their lives for their cause. The same men they have brainwashed to think exactly what they are expressing on that website.

Windows Customizations: AlienGUIse

Those who have seen my desktop will know, I use a very customised version of Windows XP. The major aesthetic change is the theme: Alienware AlienGUIse's Xenomorph. I quite like the visuals of Windows Vista, and that's as much of Vista that I like. In every other way, XP is superior (except that DX10 is more backward compatible with DX8-optimised programs).

Xenomorph makes my desktop look Vista-ish, without the sluggish handling most systems experience. I normally change the aesthetics (wallpaper, icons, etc) fairly frequently because I am a little bit ADHD and/or Chaotic-aligned, but I have been using Xenomorph for years and without it, XP feels... wrong.

I have now encountered my first issue: VLC's new skin system has a minor incompatability with custom-themed desktops: I can still use the tracking slider but I can't see it. So I am tracking blind. It's not the biggest deal, but it gets annoying sometimes. Also the 'goto time' function of the new VLC has the most un-user-friendly text input available - in short, it sucks something hard.

http://www.alienware.com/community/alienguise/theme-manager.aspx

VLC media playlist

I've recently been doing some music and comedy YouTube collecting (only the legal videos of course), and now I have a nice little collection of my favourite songs and comedians.

Of course, WMP (Windows Media Player) can't play FLVs (Flash's video format) which is what YouTube and GoogleVideos are saved as with DownloadHelper (amazing tool btw). VLC, living up to its amazing and infallible reputation, has always been able to play them (although earlier there were a few issues: no tracking, for example) but it never had the playlist feature of most other media players. Now it does. And it's fucking amazing.