10 Nautilus tips and tricks

This page has been moved to my new blog dedicated to Linux, here.

The eye's complexity

The light-sensitive cells ('photocells') are not the first thing the light hits, but they are buried inside and facing away from the light [...]. The first thing the light hits is, in fact, the layer of ganglion cells which constitute the 'electronic interface' between the photocells and the brain. Actually the ganglion cells are responsible for preprocessing the information in sophisticated ways before relaying on it to the brain and in some ways the word 'interface' doesn't do justice to this. 'Satellite computer' might be a fairer name. Wires from the ganglion cells run along the surface of the retina to the 'blind spot', where they dive through the retina to form the main trunk cable to the brain, the optic nerve. There are about three million ganglion cells in the 'electronic interface', gathering data from about 125 million photocells. [...] As you look at the fine architecture of the photocell, keep in mind the fact that all that complexity is repeated 125 million times in each retina. And comparable complexity is repeated trillions of times elsewhere in the body as a whole. The figure of 125 million photocells is about 5,000 times the number of separately resolvable points in a good-quality magazine photograph. The folded membranes on the right of the illustrated photocell are the actual light-gathering structures. Their layered form increases the photocell's efficiency in capturing photons, the fundamental particles of which light is made. If a photon is not caught by the first membrane, it may be caught by the second, and so on. As a result of this, some eyes are capable of detecting a single photon. The fastest and most sensitive film emulsions available to photographers need about 25 times as many photons in order to detect a point of light.

Richard Dawkins - The Blind Watchmaker

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.