iGoogle is closing down. What now?

I have been a faithful user of iGoogle for years. I did not consider it something vital and did not spend much time on it, but when I've heard the news it will close in 16 months ( November 2013 ), I realized that it was my (only) daily source of world news, weather and recipes.

Even if, by far, not the most used website, I think Google is doing a bad move here. I know many people that use iGoogle, more than Google+, honestly, and even if I understand the choice, I think Google is pointing exactly in the direction that I do not like (promoting more profitable Google products).

This is an extract from the news page:

I really like iGoogle -- are there any other alternatives?
On your mobile device, Google Play offers applications ranging from games to news readers to home screen widgets.
If you’re a fan of Google Chrome, the Chrome Web Store provides a similar range of options like productivity tools and applications to check the weather. In addition, just like iGoogle, you can personalize Chrome with a theme.

This is as helpful as convincing users to set the blank page as homepage.
First of all, I am sure there is a big number (the majority? They should know) of people using iGoogle from PCs, including me, so Google Play is useless.
For the rest, they just suggest to use Google Chrome. Please tell me where is the bit where they suggest alternatives, if you can find it.

Since Google didn't do a great job providing alternatives, I went looking for them and I can suggest a few. As trying them out is worth a thousand words, I will not spend much time describing them.

-   Netvibes: maybe the second most popular after iGoogle
-   Protopage: very easy to use, but less implementations
-   Favoor: clean interface
-   uStart: there is no possibility to share content (which I regard as good)
-   Webmag: similar to Netvibes, promoted even for non-smartphones

How to circumvent the Pirate Bay censorship

The annoying screen many people are
experiencing when trying to access
the domain piratebay.org.

I wrote a post about Pirate Bay being censored in Italy a few years ago. I was disgusted at the time and I provided some methods to get around the block.

When I've heard the same news here, not so long ago, I could not believe it. How ignorant and naive must a government be to think that blocking a torrent website should stop piracy?

I will not go into describing all of the copyright problems and morality of using Pirate Bay, as the debate is big and still going on, but I must comment on how stupid is the choice of blocking it.

First of all, I am against any form of censorship and this alone puts me against that choice.
Most importantly, though, Pirate Bay is only one of the million torrent websites. Stopping one is like vaccinating one person against malaria and thinking of having eradicated the bacteria forever.
On top of that, people will always find way around to such puny barriers, and I will list a few down:

1. This is the most hilarious. There is already a new domain with Pirate Bay on it for UK people:
   
   tpb.pirateparty.org.uk
   
   This might be brought down as well, but no worries.
   
2. Use a web-proxy, such as Anonymouse. This is the "anonimized" link to Pirate Bay:
   
   http://anonymouse.org/cgi-bin/anon-www.cgi/http://thepiratebay.se/
   
   It's as easy as that and safe on the long-term.
3. Use a proxy (there are many) or VPN services as TOR or Hotspot Shield. Which might be even useful to bypass other country-dependent blocks. 

If you want to stop piracy, you need to think of other smarter and indirect ways. We are in 2012 and it is still much easier to download a pirated version of a movie or a game rather than buying it. This means that a service provided by pirates, for free, is better than any one provided by big money-eater production companies, which only good job is putting irrelevant locks and pointless anti-piracy videos on their products.

Take as an example a person wanting to see a movie already out on DVD:

Legal way:
- Find movie on Amazon.
- Look for cheapest price and buy.
- Wait a few days (or more) for the DVD to be shipped and arrive.
- Put on DVD and watch 10 minutes of trailers even if you didn't ask for it (and can't be skipped).
- Watch the same anti-piracy video for the billionth time, even if you know it by heart, and even if, to watch it, you must've bought your beloved DVD in the most legal way possible.
- Finally watch the movie, if you still have some time left.


Illegal way:
- Find movie on any torrent website.
- Look for positive reviews and download torrent.
- Wait 20 minutes.
- Enjoy movie.


Honestly, I would pay for the illegal way.
A big applause to the incompetent, narrow-minded governments, production companies and anti-piracy associations around the world.

Boris bikes

It has been a while since Boris Johnson, current Major of London, introduced the bicycle sharing scheme and I had a chance to use them as well, now.

There are really many advantages in using "Boris bikes" as:

-   It's cheap and easy to rent. You can purchase a day or week access fee and then you are off. The first 30 minutes of renting is free, which is reasonable for any short distance in Central London, more convenient than taking a bus, for which a return ticket would cost almost three times the price of renting a cycle.

-   Cycling is good for your health, etc. etc.

-   You don't need to worry about where to tie down your own cycle, and then no need to worry about cycle thieves (which I'm still thanking for easing my decision towards buying a new wheel and a new saddle).

The downsides, though, can unfortunately be pretty terrible:

-   You can't leave your cycle everywhere and you need to find a docking station and then plan your route in advance, unless you have a lot of confidence in your luck (sometimes they are hidden from the main roads).

-   It is amazing how difficult is to find a cycle at certain times. As many people are using them, the locations in the centre are filled up in the morning and emptied at night, while the opposite happens for locations outside the centre. This is understandable as people go back home at night and go to work in the morning. Unfortunately, I need exactly the opposite (usually: going back home drunk at night and leaving home when I wake up in the afternoon) and it is extremely frustrating and time-wasting looking for the nearest docking station with cycles in it, and it also becomes a problem when you have to leave your cycle and the docking station is full.

I think that I'll continue to use the service, though. Not that I don't mind walking for 20 minutes looking for a non-empty docking station, but maybe the desire to find it full when I need it will regulate my already messed-up body clock.

My (second) take on Facebook

"Once you have shared any information online, even with a restricted audience, you need to consider that as being in the public domain. Although you may be able to control which members of your social circle can see that information, you can't control what they do with it."

-Rik Ferguson

What would have been the best way to celebrate the re-opening of this blog?
Looking at the motivations that moved me to open it, of course!

I've looked at the first post on this blog, back in 2009 and I've been repeatedly pierced by its sharpness. I had some good hate against Facebook, such that I even put the label "hate" to the post and deleted my account. Good move, I'd say now, but I think I rejoined Facebook after a week, if I remember well.

That was only 3 years ago and the world has changed much, and I have as well with it. And so did Facebook. Let's see some of its milestones:

- Facebook is approaching 1 billion users. Humans are bad in judging dimensions, so I'll try to let it picture to you in easier words: one every seven persons in the World (including poor countries) is on Facebook. That is more than three times the population of US.

- A movie has been made about Facebook. If you would have told someone in the nineties that a movie about a website would be shot, they would just laugh at you and wrote about your outrageous idea on their geocities.

- Facebook has decided to go through its initial public offering, and the company could value as much as $105 billion. It hopes to raise $10 billion when it begins to sell its shares and that would dwarf Google's. (Update: it did already!)

- Timeline has been introduced and the general look and workings of Facebook has changed.

In a few words, Facebook has now got power. This is something that did not happen before. We all know what happened to social networking websites as MySpace or Live Messenger. They have been very popular and they are now a cemetery of the past. Will this happen to Facebook as well? I do not think so. It has established well on the internet (and now even the market) and it will be hard to see its end soon thanks to its slick CEO and the huge popularity it has reached. In social networking websites people look for places where they can find most of the friends they know in real life and that is already a huge disadvantage for any other website that wants to take off.

What scares me most is when people say: "Internet is Facebook". If that would be the case in the future, I would officially declare the internet dead. I might be a bit too nostalgic, but the golden period of internet was right at the beginning of Web 2.0. For those who think Internet is Facebook, I can safely say that they have never known the Internet. Nowadays, though, it is difficult to stay away from Facebook as it is the most convenient and free (for now, even if I think it will always be) way to connect with friends. It has cunning traps, though, so if we can't avoid it, what to do?


Use your brain before sharing. This is my philosophy. People should really understand that everything that goes on the internet with their name, can be easily considered public and non-removable from anyone's eyes, for an unlimited period of time. Writing something on the internet is more effective than throwing thousands of flyers off a plane, and that is not an exception on Facebook. Even if something is shared only with a certain group of people, don't take it granted it's safe. In the case of Facebook it's even worse, since everything you share is now in possession of Facebook. The disgusting side of the coin is that it uses it to track your interests so that it shows the perfect advert to you and makes money from it. If you are even fine with that, do not think the information is still safe, as Facebook has changed many times its privacy regulations at its will. The ironic part, though, is that last year it even made public some private photos of its CEO Mark Zuckerberg. So, if even the founder of Facebook is not safe from it, why would you think you are?

Last month Facebook introduced the Timeline. I've seen thousands of people lamenting. Unfortunately they were lamenting for the change of interface. I hope people did also see what Facebook was trying to do. They are trying to get everything from the user's life, trying to reconstruct the events even before we joined facebook. Smart marketing move as Facebook is trying to convince us to give all of our privacy information, for free, with the clever excuse of "improving our social experience". But the scary part comes from the big part of the young population on facebook, who shares irresponsibly every moment of their life. Facebook has become the new diary, but if in the past diaries had locks, now they are more public than an advert board, and held by an external company.

Facebook is not that evil overall (nothing can get as evil as banks) but it is now entering people life more than it should, especially in youngsters. I think a new branch of education should be formed: internet education. This will surely go against interests of Facebook and many other websites, but it is necessary from protecting ourselves from the chaotic dungeon that has now become the Internet.
 

Semplice metodo per aggirare la censura di Pirate Bay

 

Se usate costantemente client torrent per il condividere files in una p2p, sarete venuti a conoscenza del recente blocco del sito The Pirate Bay in Italia, uno dei più grandi distributori di torrent a livello mondiale.
Quando tentate di accedere a thepiratebay.org vi dovrebbe uscire un "Connessione fallita" o una irritante schermata della Polizia di Bergamo che informa del blocco del sito. Blocco? Io la chiamo censura.

Il sito, anche se ha subito centinaia di accuse riguardo la violazione di copyright da molti paesi, è sempre uscito vincitore dal tribunale, poiché i file .torrent sono solo dei link a file che circolano nelle reti peer to peer. In quanto link, non è illegale distribuirli, ma scaricare il file in questione, se protetto da copyright, lo è.
Non è da nascondere il fatto che la maggior parte dei torrent riguardano files protetti da copyright, ma non per questo tutto il sito deve essere bloccato, dove circolano anche files molto interessanti, soprattutto per utenti come me che usano sistemi operativi UNIX.
Tra questi si possono trovare diverse distribuzioni di Linux, programmi open source, album musicali non protetti da diritti (tipo "In Rainbows" dei Radiohead) o di piccole band che cercano popolarità, film di più di 70 anni fa (sui quali c'è diritto di copia) e soprattutto il più recente scandaloso "ACTA Agreement".
Un prezzo sacrificabile, secondo lo stato italiano. Con questo gesto ci è stato sottratto un piccolo pezzo di libertà di espressione. Possiamo riprendercelo? Sì, e anche legalmente.

Il primo blocco sul sito è stato effettuato a livello di filtro sui DNS. Niente di più semplice di aggirare, basta digitare l'indirizzo IP di thepiratebay invece del link, ed il gioco è fatto.
Tuttavia, recentemente tutti gli IP del sito sono stati bloccati, quindi questo trucco non è più applicabile. Aspettare che il sito cambi IP o ne prenda di nuovi non è conveniente, anche perché non costa niente mettere un IP in più nella censura.
Un trucco è quello di usare un' intermediario, che si trova in un altro paese dal quale si può accedere, e fargli fare il compito di connettersi al sito, inviandoci i dati al nostro pc. Questo intermediario si chiama proxy.
Un'altra soluzione è quella di criptare i pacchetti, nascondendo i siti ai quali ci stiamo connettendo, quindi non facendo sapere che stiamo accedendo a thepiratebay: una rete vpn.


*LA SOLUZIONE*

La soluzione più pratica e veloce per accedere senza problemi a thepiratebay è usare il sito Anonymouse (che non centra niente con Anonymous, se vi stavate già facendo qualche domanda).
Basta cliccare su questo link diretto per thepiratebay . Potete anche salvarvelo nei preferiti.


Se Anonymouse vi da problemi con i magnetic links, potete usare questa versione mirrorata inglese del sito a questo link: https://tpb.pirateparty.org.uk/


Per saperne di più:
The Pirate Bay sarà di nuovo censurata in Italia 
Sigillo IP per The Pirate Bay

Why this blog?

Facebook is one of the reasons that led me to open this blog.

I've often been thinking about facebook recent success and my conclusion is that facebook is an instrument that can and should be avoided. Maybe every social networking website has to be avoided.
Everyone has facebook, why I do not? Why do I hate it? It's cool. Am I strange?
Maybe, but I discovered that many people actually hate facebook, even though that is a tiny faction compared to the majority.
There are many reasons for which I deleted my facebook account and I'll try to explain some of them. I already know that most of you will disagree with me or will just think: "Duck the privacy, facebook is fun".
That's fine, if for "fun" you mean "addiction, waste of time, stalking, be stalked, tolerating plenty of ads and invites, permitting that your personal data are sold, strutting about having hundreds of 'friends', playing silly games" and so on...
I'm not being drastic. Facebook, for some people, could be seriously dangerous, and do not think that you're definitely safe.
A small example: weeks ago I've read about a crazy guy that stole a notebook from a woman "to login into facebook" and has been jailed.
I don't know the psychological mechanisms involved by the use of a social networking, but honestly it smells fishy to me.
But let's start from the very beginning:
I was a facebook user last year. I've heard about facebook here in London, I don't remember if someone has ever mentioned it before in Italy, but it's unlikely.
I was in London around last September and it was quite exciting having a "book with all the people you have met", in which you can chat, leave messages on the wall, keep in touch with everyone you want, share links, photos and videos.
These are the only things that i still appreciate about it, but they are meaningless when the system doesn't care about you and your privacy, even if you are its source of money.
It cannot be that much money, you can be wondering, but it is more than a billion (and the founder has also been sued for stealing the idea of facebook... a great idea, to be developed, needs luck and a clever mind).
Anyway, facebook was cool and user-friendly, innovative. One thing that I never liked were that stupid games or tests that I admit, were very attracting, but the first time i received one and I decided to click on it, I saw the "Privacy request" and i said NO. It was the first and the last time i clicked on that games or tests.
Anyway, facebook was good and i used it more and more, at the point to check it daily and when i wanted to relax a bit. Without really knowing it, I was already depending on facebook.
However, I've always felt something wrong with it, something slightly insidious... "Nevermind, it should be just an impression" and I continued facebooking for a while.
That's some months ago that I realized how pathetic it was. I realized what facebook really was.
I can do a survey, just having a quick look on the computer displays in a cluster room at UCL: 60% of the students are wasting their life on facebook. It's not so bad if they were chatting or talking with someone, but most of them they were "spying" other guys photos.
But on facebook the word "spy" doesn't exist. It is called sharing... What a fantastic thing, sharing something with the entire world... unfortunately something that should be private. "Whatever, I have got nothing to hide", neither your privacy? It's not so funny to be tagged on a shameful photo that everyone can see.
It's so easy to destroy one person's life on facebook. Just disseminating something he doesn't want to do so, but also divulging fake news about someone.
I was also fed (RSS) on one of the most interesting blogs I actually read: "Il disinformatico" (I recommend it, if you understand Italian) and Paolo Attivissimo, the founder, gives a lot of reasons to be against facebook.
All these revelations convinced me to delete my facebook account, and now I don't regret that choice.
To be clear, I'm not writing to convince to delete your facebook account, even if I assure you that would be better, but just to let you think more about it and above all using it prudently. Basically, use your brain when you are on facebook.
In fact, I don't hate people who are on facebook, but how most of people get use of it, wasting time on games, being happy to be spied and feeling cool.
Initially the idea of facebook was not bad at all. Unfortunately, in not so much time, facebook became more and more popular (also in Italy) in the younger generation.
Nowadays, facebook is popular all over the world, and I'm just asking myself when it will be more popular than some brands like Coca-cola or Microsoft (maybe it is).
This is not good, obviously and its popularity led people to be addicted (and unfortunately it charms adolescents, that are too young to be involved in something like facebook) and to get the attention of the media and of companies that are only after money.
One of the result is that there is a huge number of groups in facebook and should have been better if most of them would never existed.
There are groups about companies that use facebook as free advertisement, groups that inspire violence and other things that is better not talking about (if you're asking right now, yes, facebook has also be sued for this, but if you have money, a trial is like a midge for you).
On the whole, I've never liked facebook groups... I've been in very few groups and I have always hated invitations (oh, god, how I hated them)... but you should forgive me, because i couldn't resist to the "Pepe means perfect" group!
Facebook's popularity led also to some funny (and very interesting, according to me) projects, like the Whopper Sacrifice. The project was easy: with every deleted friend (whom would have received a message like: you have been sacrificed for a sandwich), burger king decided to offer a free sandwich. This experiment worked so well that this project was forced to close (they gave 232,566 free sandwiches in a week).
This is very interesting because it is clear how much does a "friend" worth on facebook. They're just contacts (as they were always called before), not friends.
By the way, I conclude here (if not I would speak endlessly about facebook) with the last try of cheat by Mark Zuckerberg. He tried to sell to some companies user's data to do marketing researches (that were, without any doubt, very powerful on facebook), but he has been fortunately forced to change his mind, because of the groups of protest:
try to sell customer's privacy for money (privacy that is already well-violated, since simply googling you can find someone's friends and interests). No further comments.
In conclusion, you have an idea of what I think of facebook. If you want to know if I'll be back on facebook sometime, my answer is: maybe, if something will improve or if it will be necessary, now I'm too disgusted to commit this error again. I'm opening this blog to underline that there are other methods to keep in touch with people, to share multimedia and have fun in a bit more productive way, and blogs are a very good method to share ideas.
Thanks for your attention, negative or positive comments are welcomed!
Take care.