Freedom of speech.....yeah right

So we are in Day 1 of the Wikileaks site's official shutdown attempts, and I must say that I am EXTREMELY pissed about the situation.

If you don't know what's been happening, then I would like to say 2 things to you:

1. Welcome to Planet Earth, it's nice here, just be careful what you say....
2. It's time you got filled in on the situation:

So Wikileaks has been around for a long time leaking "classified" information about governments and other institutions that Mr Assange an co obtained from who knows where.
Naturally, a lot top ranking government officials and other so called "powerful" people are really embarrassed to see what they thought was their confidential communications splashed all over the interwebs.

I especially liked the ones about our International Relations Minister calling Robert Mugabe a crazy old man. HAHAHAHA! Genius. If only they had the balls to say those types of things to the world...
But instead, they hide behind the quiet diplomacy and smile sweetly in his company. It's disgusting, it's false, and it's SO typically political.

Now, when the worst of the leaks is out, and there are a lot of red faces internationally, the website comes under Denial of Service attacks.
If you don't know what that is, here is a brief description:
Let's say you visit Google.com. Your browser connects to a Google server and downloads the content for you to see. Then, 30 or 40 of you in the same geographical location do the same, and all of you follow the same process.
Effectively, a Denial of Service attack replicates that type of action, multiplied by millions of those hits per minute or per second. It's easily done if you have access to a botnet, which is a vast array of computers at your fingertips with which you can utilise for these types of things.

So, let me ask 2 questions here. Who has access to a botnet? Typically hackers and shady underworld types who have access to the Black Cloud. Don't know what that is? Read this:

http://linuxers.org/article/guess-who-owns-largest-cloud-planet-cyber-criminals

Or large governments with massive IT budgets and the know how to get this done.

Now, I ask you, who do YOU think would gain from running a Denial of Service attack on Wikileaks? Do you think there is even the slightest chance this has anything to do with people who are already anti-government, not bloody likely.
I will leave the rest of the logic to you...

So what is my point? What issues do I have with this incident which makes me angry enough to write a blog about it? It's the age old freedom of speech deal.
America, the land of the free, the people who practically coined the phrase of Freedom of Speech, are the ones that (in my own opinion) are perpetrating this type of censorship. And you can call it what you like, sugar coat it, whatever, in essence it's blatant censorship of the worst kind.

Who the hell do they think they are by deciding what the people of the world can and can't know? Are we friggin children? Why are we all spoon fed candy coated bullshit, and led to a reality that is so far flung from the truth? What's next? Santa really DOES exist? The Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, etc...what other bullshit do you want the world's public (and I mention the world here because of exposure through the internet to the goings on in every country) to digest?

This to me is very simply the same as the proposed Media Tribunal here in South Africa. The ANC feel that they know what's best for us, they are the leaders and we are all just blind sheep who don't need to know the truth.

My persepctive on Wikileaks and the SA Media Tribunal is the same, and that is:
If the truth is so terrible, so bad that it's not fit for public consumption, why did it happen in the first place?
If you have nothing to hide, then what's the problem. And if you have something to hide, then the public, the taxpayers who pay your salary have EVERY right to know what the HELL you are doing behind closed doors. The concept of a transparent government should not be an alien one.
We are paying for services, just as we do with electricity (sorry, bad example), Mobile Phone companies, restaraunts, etc. We pay, therefore we have a RIGHT to know.

The fact that the Wikileaks incident was dealt with in this manner and that it is so blatantly obvious who is behind the attempts to bring the site down is completely shocking to me.
There will be a million excuses about the demise, a million cover-ups and statements made by service providers and big business all shouting down from their ivory towers about how morally wrong this is, but we all know where the pressure comes from.

Clearly there is a LOT more to hide within the Government and Corporate walls of the countries around the world. This we all suspect, as we have from the start, but what Wikileaks has done is expose it, and bring down what I call the "bullshit barrier" that stops people from trying to ignore something so that it supposedly goes away.
I want to know more. I want more accountability and transparency. I want to know what they are REALLY thinking. I feel I have a right, but they don't, and we will continue to get lulled, like infants back into the colourful world they have painted for us.

I hope and pray that 100 more Wikileaks type sites are set up and this continues to be a thorn in the sides of business and government forever. But, I fear that this is simply a hope, and as long as we have governments, the great propaganda machines will continue running and painting bullshit over the reality, so that it's easier for us mere mortals to digest.


I mean, who are we to argue?

Take care of yourself

Brian

Android Adventures...beedee beedee

So I have been wondering what I should write as my first blog in a year, and there's lots to say, but I thought I should leave my first blog as a geek's interesting travels into the world of Android.



I run my own consulting business (no, not a shameless plug, because if I said "Hey, I run my own insanely cool consulting business called Refresh-IT Consulting, and you can contact me at brian@refresh-it.co.za for excellent customer service and a wealth of knowledge into anything you may need" then THAT would be a shameless plug. Now, can we move on please? Thanks)

A month ago my business partner called me and asked how I would fare in getting a 30" touch screen Android phone working for a client of his for a trade show. I said that it shouldn't be a problem, but I would check it out and get back to him.
So I spent the next 2 days doing a little research and it turned out that I was sure I could do it.
I emailed him and said that we could get this done, he confirmed with the client and we were a for away. The minor detail of it having to be finished in 5 days was something that was mentioned a little later, which, I am sure you can imagine was not a pleasant experience, but nevertheless, I found a solution.

So, what was it that I needed to do?
Basically, the client was releasing a new mobile phone, and they wanted me to get the touch screen functionality running for the screen portion. They were going to build a "phone" body around the screen to make it look like a real device.
The initial spec looked like this:

So I downloaded the Android emulator, and got to work on creating the Froyo OS inside the screen.
The irony of the fact that I used Windows 7 to get the emulator running and functional is most certainly not lost on me.
So, anyway, after a lot of tinkering with sizes for the screen, which took me a few days of understanding the layout structure of the emulator Window, I got it looking pretty funky.

The only serious issue was getting the functional buttons as specified on the screen of the new device. The device had not been released, and therefore there was no skin for it in the emulator, or anywhere on the web. The following pic is what the standard Froyo skin looks like with the keyboard, giving you the functionality, but not the same look as the device.

The big issue was the keyboard, or, the lack thereof on the standard screen of the mobile device I was working with.
I needed to get the device to look precisely the same as the mobile, so I could not use the standard skins as supplied by Android in the emulator.
So, I searched the web and luckily found another device with the same navigation buttons (Nexus One), downloaded and installed the skin.
I spent the next few days using Gimp to modify the skin to suit my needs and then set about messing with the layout of the screen again.
This gave me the same look and feel and using the nav buttons on the screen I was able to get the device fully functional.

It's no joke trying to get the nav buttons on the skin I downloaded and the functional layout of the screen working together. I spent many hours moving the x and y axis of the buttons to match the skin, but I got it eventually, and it worked like a charm!



5 days, and a LOT of Red Bull later, we had a functional demo to the client, which looked like this:

I must say that I was very impressed with 2 technologies during my time working on this.

1. Windows 7 Touch  >> WOW! It just works, no issues with drivers, or configuration. Boot up with the screen installed and its go go go. This is why I love Windows.

2. Android Emulator >> Again, this is just so damn easy to use. Once I had my head around the basics of the app, it became so simple to use. Learning to use the layout config file and the sizing was relatively simple. Kudos guys, very good job.


Anyway, we were 1 day from the device being shipped to the show, and I was told of some "minor" details, such as the sizing that they gave me, was wrong. *sigh*
So I spent the next day furiously working on the new sizing and fixing up the look, but once done it was shipped off and the show was done.
All good!
Client happy, me happy. A new geeky adventure had been started, and I think I may tinker a lot more with this, to the point of potentially developing some apps for Android. So watch this space, you may see some gems coming from yours truly.

Here are some pics of the finished product, which looks DAMN FINE if you ask me.