My Polar Sea Ice Page may soon be dysfunctional thanks to Trump

If Donald Trump goes on with his War on Truth, he will likely drain the source I tap with my page. I use data provided by the US National Snow & Ice Data Center and it is very likely that Trump will do anything he can to stop them from providing current data about the sea ice coverage. For the very simple reason that the plain data alone already clearly shows that the world's climate is going haywire. This is because the Arctic and Antarctic region is hit hardest by climate change in terms.

Michael Geist at INTA Workshop

If you want a brief explanation what is wrong with ACTA this video is an absolute must.

The full text of the report can be found at http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/6350/125/

Send in the Copyright Demolition Squad!

A video detailing what a scientist faces if he wants to publish a scientific article made me share some short, rather polemic thoughts on copyright on Google+. I then realized that they are worth being put on this blog. So here we go:

It is a well-established lie that copyright is a means for creators of art, music, scientific papers and other works to protect their intellectual property against people who want to prey on it. Little could be farther from truth. Copyright is regularly and habitually being perverted into a means to dispossess creators of their intellectual property so that they do not obtain a fair payoff.

In my opinion, those who fight the ever worsening, dreadful state of copyright are no enemies of the authors. They surely are enemies of those parasites who prey on these authors' works but fighting this vermin definitely is a just cause.

Joe Scientist comes face-to-face with
the scientific publication business

Copyright Claims vs. Hatsune Miku Youtube Videos

As you may know, I am a member of the German pirate party. An important reason for joining was that I disapprove a system where the mere claim (without the need for providing any evidence) that certain content infringes copyright is sufficient for its takedown. Not only does this approach collide with my view that guilty until proven guilty should be a universal principle not just for penal codes, it also makes the abusive use of false claims way to easy.

In the case of YouTube’s automated system things are even worse. Not only can false claims be made – they can made by anybody, not just by persons who are authorized by the copyright holder to do so. I am a huge fan of vocaloids in general and Hatsune Miku in particular and while I have an account at nicovideo (the site where most vocaloid music is uploaded), I prefer accessing them on youtube because there you can build a virtually infinite number of playlists.

I now learned that there seems to be a concerted action to have high-ranked Hatsune Miku videos removed from youtube by making false claims of copyright infringement which not only results in those videos being removed but also in accounts being closed due to such claims and the three strikes rule.

The Disappearance of Hatsune Miku from YouTube

This is incident is sad in may ways including:

• A means created for a just cause is abused for a hidous one (first and foremost copyright is not about making money but about empowering creators of content so that they have a say in how it is used – this is so central that German law does not even allow you to give up this right).
• Damage is done to the community because many Hatsune Miku songs usually are happy ones that brighten your day.
• As vocaloids allow every hobby composer to use vocals without having to paying quite a lot of money on a singer or having to find people willing to sing without payment, they allow talents that would otherwise have been lost to give a world-wide audience delight.

For more please visit Recent Copyright Claims Affecting Miku Youtube Videos at Vocaloidism. Please help spread the word about this attack on wonderful music created for what likely is the oldest reason to make music: the fun of making it and listening to it.

Fittingly, the song that you hear as BGM for the above video is The Disappearance of Hatsune Miku.

I wonder if the incident may have to do with the top position at Singers You'd Like to Perform at the 2012 London Olympics Opening Ceremonies

I can't has lolcats?

Do you love lolcats? If so, the following image is for you.

I has a sad tewdai

PIPA, SOPA and other FU-KYA ideas may mean that you will no longer be able to see any more lolcats.

The Day The LOLcats Died

For more see cheezburger’s This is Your Internet … after Congress passes new censorship laws. For tweets and the like there is a short URL you may like to use: http://j.mp/lifeaftersopa+

FireSSH

FireSSH is a free, cross-platform SSH terminal client for Mozilla Firefox. Written entirely in Javascript!

ProxTube

ProxTube unblocks youtube videos. It is useful because in some countries like Germany YouTube videos are blocked for rather questionable reasons. Please do not abuse it for accessing videos of which you know that they are violating your local penal code.

Two questionable reasons for why videos are blocked in Germany:

1. The copyright holder possibly (in contrast to actually) does not allow the content to be  online.
2. The video contains symbols of unconstitutional organizations.

The latter is very annoying. In general, German laws outlaw the use of symbols of unconstitutional organization but not if they serve to further civil enlightenment, to avert unconstitutional aims, to promote art or science, research or teaching, reporting about current historical events or similar purposes.

However, I repeatedly had to circumvent youtube's blocking to watch videos that use original footage from the NS era to illustrate the terrible crimes committed by Nazi Germany. They were blocked due to the ubiquitous swastikas, not due to their message that simply put was: We must never let this happen again.

I’ll Occupy song

As “I will survive” and “I’ll occupy” sound quite similar it should not come as a surprise that someone wrote “occupy” lyrics for this widely known song.

“I’ll Occupy” Song:
The 99 is Pissed and We Will Not Be Dismissed!

If you want to sing the song, here are the lyrics:

I’ll Occupy

❶ I first was pepper sprayed
Just standing on the side
But it took me being blinded
to open up up my eyes
Cause I’d read the daily news,
and not responded actively
and I realized then and there
this revolution needed me

❷ So here I am,
camped in a tent
Which is really so convenient
cause I can’t afford my rent
But they came with shields and mace
In the night while it was dark
A NYPD army
Sent to clear Zuccotti Park

❸ We’ll protest on, with catchy phases
We’re going global
From London to Uc Davis
If you think that your batons are going to get us to go home
GO on and hit me, I’ll just upload it from my phone.

❹ Until I die,
I’ll occupy
As long I know how to sit
And hold this heavy sign
cause the 99 is pissed
and we will not BE dismissed
|: I’ll occupy :|
hell yeah

❺ Call us “hippies” call us “homeless,”
yeah we’re fed it.
And we “don’t know what we want,”
to our discredit.
But if you’re reading all the news, funded by the corporations
Its no mystery
How you’ve missed our declaration

❻ We’re armed too
Yeah, we’ve got twitter
We’re a techno savvy nation
And we’re bitter
There’s no Marie Antoinette
We’re dragging to the Guillotine
Got non-violence, you bet!
Cause we aim to keep this clean

❼ We will not go! Bring on the snow!
Got your faceless cooperate body
One peaceful badass foe
We’re awake, we saw Wall-e, and you know we’re organized
Did you think we’d crumble?
Did you think we’d lay down and not try?

❽ Until I die,
I’ll occupy
As long I know how to sit
And hold this heavy sign
cause the 99 is pissed
and we will not be dismissed
|: I’ll occupy :|
|: HELL yeah :|

❾ We’re off our Meds, we’re watching Ted
And we’re into Zombie culture,
But we’re not the walking dead
If you want to fight for justice join the masses, we are strong
And it wouldn’t hurt to take a
minute to repost this song!

❿ Until we die,
We’ll occupy
As long we know how to sit
And hold these heavy sign
cause the 99 is pissed
and we will not be dismissed
|: We’ll occupy :|
HELL yeah

And just in case you really do not know the original “I will survive” song by Gloria Gaynor (which I’d call an abyss in education) here it is:

“I’ll Occupy” Song:
Gloria Gaynor - I Will Survive (Live 1979)

Censorship in Germany

I am quite pissed at the moment. You may recall that I recently wrote the blog entry »Video advertising German military« in which I embedded a youtube video that was put online by bundesregierung, the official youtube channel of the German government.

For several reasons I am currently adding text links pointing to the already posted videos and in this process noticed that the video has been made unavailable by making it private. Here is a backup copy someone made:

Die Bundeswehr online

I do not have an issue with people making videos private but I do have an issue with governments removing information for the only reason that it possibly sheds a negative light on them. Let’s see what wikipedia has to say about political censorship:

Political censorship exists when a government attempts to conceal, distort, or falsify information that its citizens receive by suppressing or crowding out political news that the public might receive through news outlets.

I’d call the youtube channel such an outlet and while the video is an advertisement for the Bundeswehr, it also transports information, namely that the government does not want the Bundeswehr to be the very last resort when having to defend the actual German territory (the purpose for which it was set up) but to take an active role wherever and whenever it is deemed necessary.

Regardless what I personally think about the message (I grew up when the GDR still existed and the shared hope at that time was that the Bundeswehr would never have go to war) it is unacceptable to first put the video online and then a) make it unavailable and b) do so by not altogether taking it offline but simply marking it private.

I am not pissed because they removed the video but because they only pretended to do so while in fact they left it online and only made sure it is not available for the masses. Here is what I wrote to them:

message to bundesregierung (youtube)

Translation: For what purpose has the Bundeswehr video with the ID neNdW5Qx5IM been later [after being put online] made private? Or has it been assumed that this event would go unnoticed?

Keith Olbermann on Michael Bloomberg

Actually he speaks of morons in general and why morons were the people who actually brought forward the USA and then picks Michael Bloomberg as a fine specimen of moronhood.

Keith Olbermann Special Comment On Michael Bloomberg