As I wrote elsewhere, my first option (if I could vote in the USA) would be Alaska’s Mike Gravel. He is all for real changes in the political system rather than just fixing what Bush messed up. But Gravel would never get elected. He’s too revolutionary, and without money.

Between Clinton and Obama, there is not a whole lot of difference in terms of policy for the important issues. However, Obama inspires me, while when I see Clinton I see a mule-minded bitch — much like of what I see in the mirror. A president should be open to more opinions than just his, so I think Obama is a better candidate in this regard.

Download and playback the video that Stanford’s professor and Creative Commons’s director Larry Lessig put together. Pretty interesting points on Clinton’s integrity and vision compared to Obama’s.

I’ve always been disgusted by the way LG does business. It’s the mobile company that I can not stand the most. They do quick jobs with shady usability, and most importantly, they never release firmware upgrades. “Arpa-kolla”, as we say in Greece.

MobileBurn posted their recent press release where the Viewty LG phone can now capture 120fps at VGA resolution (previously it would only do so for QVGA). Instead of releasing a firmware upgrade for everyone to have access to that small feature and possibly other bug fixes, they just re-release the same god damn model in to the market, leaving everyone with an already purchased Viewty in the cold.

I hate LG. And I go on record with that.

* I am not easily impressed by American Idol contestants, but Josiah was the shit. He was not just a singer, he was a musician. Someone who knows how to write music, and good music that is. Other than him, that Janis Joplin-wannabe was not too bad either. But Josiah was the real deal.

* Some speculations about future Lost episodes: some of the Oceanic Six members who will make it back to the island, will probably make it with Penny Widmore’s help. Too bad that there won’t be over 8 episodes this season. Hopefully the rest 8 will be shown in Autumn.

* I’ve got 5 PCs to sell at CraigsList. About $80 each. I need to format them and install Ubuntu on them… Lots of work ahead.

* I hope Obama wins today. Hillary ain’t bad, but I think Obama is better. Although my first choice is actually Mike Gravel. That’s a man with a vision for real constitutional changes.

* My main landline phone’s ringer seems to be dead. I need to buy a new one…

* I hope JBQ has enough food, water, clothes and blankets with him. He’s currently camping on a mountain full of bears and pumas along with other Google employees.

I was astonished to see on various polls and discussions online that most viewers would have taken Locke’s side instead of Jack’s on Lost’s 4th season opener. I wonder if these people are actually sane or if they understand what the hell they are viewing on TV.

Locke’s role on “Lost” is to be a sidekick. He is actually the main ‘villain’ on the series, not the Others, but he is portrayed in a way that people don’t realize it. Locke simply does what he thinks it’s right, without taking other people’s wishes into account, without even having enough information himself about the things he stands for. He is insane, as Jack very well put it. Sure, he is able to walk after he crash landed, but that doesn’t mean that everyone shares his wish to stay on the island.

Locke’s is the magician of the clan. He acts purely on superstition and subjectiveness. Jack on the other side is the hero, who takes logical steps according to available information to him, to save his people. The fact that Locke sees an apparition of Walt while he’s almost dead, doesn’t mean that it’s a true vision, but it could be tricks of the mind while bleeding to death. But instead of thinking straight that he is hallucinating (no matter if WE, the viewers, know that the island has special powers or not), he embarks on his way to stop the freighter people. Just because a vision told him so. I am pretty sure that after the blown up of the submarine, communication station, implosion of the hatch and the killing of Naomi, he will make sure to sour the freighter people’s opinions for the survivors, resulting in them deciding taking them hostage or something, and only save 6 of them.

Locke is not a friendly character. He is a cool character, but he is not the hero. Jack is. Locke is here just to make things difficult for the hero from the “inside”, in a similar way to Dr. Zachary Smith in 1965’s “Lost in Space“. Dr Smith was not a bad person, just like Locke is not a bad person, but he is selfish, and most of all, misguided.

So why the hell would I ever follow Locke? I don’t follow the Pope either. Instead, I would follow a scientist-turned-leader who thinks hard before taking an ultimately, rational, decision.

As someone put it on Blogger:

“If i were a lostie who has been trapped in a creepy island for 3 months eating only mangos, fish and boar meat, running and hiding from a smoke monster, witnessed a lot of deaths, hearing some creepy voices coming from the woods, kidnapped or watched my friends kidnapped by some ppl who call themselves the others, i would try my chance to get off the island and go with team jack no matter who was coming to the island… At least they have a boat and a helicopter! and who says “not penny’s boat” means they are coldblooded murderers who are coming to the island to kill them all… Oh yeah Ben and Locke say they are coming to kill them all… At least we are sure that 6 of them are alive in the future.”

“The FBI is gearing up to create a massive computer database of people’s physical characteristics, all part of an effort the bureau says to better identify criminals and terrorists. But it’s an issue that raises major privacy concerns — what one civil liberties expert says should concern all Americans” writes CNN.

This is exactly like the comic I linked the other day. You remove personal privacy in order to bolster overall security. I liked a response at Digg by user Bangor:

“I’m just old enough to remember how many people used to get made fun of for suggesting that eventually every product would have a UPC code. People used to laugh at that! And then, of course, all the ‘crazy’ people who believed in RFID and retina scanning, etc. It’s sad. If I wanted a group of people to totally control, I’d go for the group whose mantra has always been, ‘our government would never do THAT!’ Little by little, year by year, the pot begins to boil. I still say that this is just the beginning. But how do you convince a group of people who didn’t even believe that every product would contain a UPC symbol for tracking purchases? We’re all slowly dying because they’re trying to ‘protect’ us.”

The next step is rice grain-sized chips on your arm. Yes, laugh at it now, call me a wacko, and say that this would never happen because the people would revolt. No, they WON’T revolt. People don’t care. They don’t care enough to go picket outside of the White House. They don’t care enough to give a call to their representative. Just like the British didn’t revolt about the thousands of cameras recording their every move. People just want to live their lives with as few inconveniences as possible. Having a chip in them, would be as inconvenient as taking a flu shot.

Now, cataloging people like you do for your sheep herd is not good or bad. It all depends on how the data is used or misused. The real question is this: Do you completely and utterly trust your government with your information? How sure are you that your government, or a future government, eventually doesn’t transform to a 1984-like surveillance and totalitarian society? Or even exchange data with corporations for the “good of the people”? By that time, when you would want to revolt, it would be too late, because they would come and put a bag on your head before you even pick up that picket. Because they would know that you are a threat before you even yourself realize it and decides to do something about it. How else do you think that they can effectively establish order on a planet of 7 billion people, each with his/her own agenda, other than having huge supercomputers that analyze every individual’s habits and actions? The Echelon system for years was laughed at as a “conspiracy theory”, until it proved 100% true. Think of Echelon, only better.

The question above is not asked just for Americans. USA might be among the few first countries in the world going towards such a policed system (I bet UK will be there faster) but your near-third world country will eventually get there too. Give it 50 or 100 years, it will have no other option. So the question posed here is global, not US-specific.

Personally, I don’t trust people, let alone a lot of people together that are calling themselves “the government”. I am by nature a pessimist too. So for me, loss of my freedoms is a deal breaker. What about you?

It was nice to have Kino’s maintainer Dan Dennedy around today for lunch. We talked about all things Linux and video editors.

Also, here are some videos that I liked recently. Click their titles to view or download their HD versions.

“Maria Shriver endorsed Democrat Barack Obama’s White House bid today at a Los Angeles rally. Shriver is married to California’s Republican Gov… Arnold Schwarzenegger, who endorsed GOP presidential hopeful John McCain on Friday”, reports CNN.

That can’t happen in Greece. You would never see the wife of the prime minister, or the wife of any mayor publicly supporting a different person (from the opposite party, no less) than her husband would. In Greece that would be a scandal, and jokes would fly about how the mayor can’t control his wife. That’s a part of Greece that I dislike.

All I can say is this: Shame on you, both Sony and Toshiba.

My parents in law were leaving for France today and they asked me to burn a DVD for them with some of my video clips. I burned a PAL DVD (out of NTSC HD sources), and I tried it on the PS3’s Blu-Ray. Error: no PAL support. I turn ON the Toshiba A2 HD-DVD player and I got another error about PAL support. Apparently you have to literally hack the A2’s firmware using a hex editor to get PAL support. At the end, JBQ had to hook up our 6 year old Philips DVD player to be able to successfully test the PAL DVD.

Remember, we are just talking about a region-free, unlocked home DVD here. And yet, these two expensive devices will refuse to playback the DVD even if the ability IS there. That’s something that most DVD players of years ago would do anyway, as long as the disc was unlocked.

FAIL. Go burn in hell, Sony and Toshiba.

“Lost”’s premiere managed over 16 million viewers last night, a good record for the show which has seen some decline last year. But “Lost” is back in full strength and it’s becoming more violent, if I am to believe some of the spoilers online. I bet this half-season will be huge.

Check this deleted scene (.flv format) from the first episode of the 4th season. Partial transcript below:

(While rescue is very close, Juliet digs some graves, and Sawyer drinks a beer near by. Juliet is not one of the survivors of the plane crash but she wishes to be rescued as well.)
Sawyer (sarcastic): So what are you gonna tell’em?
Juliet: Sorry?
Sawyer: The cavalry comes here and some yahoo from Oceanic Airlines shows up with a little clipboard looking to tick off your name. What are you gonna tell’em?
Juliet: …You have some blood on your cheek.
(Sawyer cleans up his right cheek with his hand.)
Juliet: The other one.

Pure genius dialog. You gotta see Sawyer’s face.

“Organizations using Python will be affected in a major way by changes in store for the language over the course of the next twelve months, Linux.conf.au attendees were told this morning”, reports ITNews.com.au.

I hate it when this happens. The fact that you might be able to install Python 2.x in parallel does not make this any better. It’s just stupid when developers break compatibility — even if they have a good reason for it. As a user, I just plain hate the consequences.