Since you're probably far more interested in the picture than the commentary, you can safely read the final paragraph of this article.
If you haven't heard, Justice Files is a good resource for finding public information about those who are paid to protect you. The purpose of the site is to aide in research which may question the authority of these individuals. One such case was a police officer who was previously convicted of a felony. Felons are not allowed to own guns, so the fact that he was a police officer is a felony. The site made the obvious conclusion that he ought to be a two-strike felon instead of a police officer. The use of this site for this purpose is an advantage to our society. People have expressed their concern that the information can be used by a person who wishes to do ill will to an officer or by a person to perpetrate identity theft [Goldstein] [timothy]. However, since these files are public, the same thing could happen without this website. This website has the only added function that it is able to aide in research by collecting information.

As a hacker, this subject is quite dear to me, though. Had the records not been public already, I would still want these records to be made public to aide in research and to promote an open society. In an open society, people are allowed access to any information that they can technically obtain (whether that requires purchasing, downloading, or reading, etc). The benefits of a open society are: freedom to innovate, freedom to understand, and freedom to think among many other things. These freedoms I hold above the privacy of public action.

Yet I do respect the privacy of persons to privately do and say what they will. John Ashcroft will agree with me. He said so right here. You can see that he uses the word big brother, so he is not ignorant of the role that government can play as a totalitarian dictatorship. However, the Patriot Act which he enforces as Attourney General does exactly what he called Big Brother. But there's a subtle difference. The Patriot Act does not have a key escrow (which he likened to Big Brother), so the government cannot decrypt messages which have been encrypted with technologies such as GPG. However, GPG is currently only used by foil hat hackers, most of whom do not trust that the NSA has not broken the encryption. I myself wouldn't trust that the FBI haven't made a no-knock intrusion to steal my private key.

So why do I believe in privacy at all if I believe in the total freedom of information? The reason that I promote privacy is that government abuses power of information. For example, DARPA's new program to track automobiles with cameras (I predicted this in 1999, btw) can easily be subverted by a government official to spy on political opponents. It can be easily used by police who will use selective enforcement to only arrest those that they find displeasing while not enforcing laws on citizens they feel are friendly. This goes on already without video cameras in the form of a police state. African Americans know this all too well as racial profiling. Protestors see this quite clearly when jaywalkers are cited when going to a political rally whereas millions of people jaywalk, speed, and honk their horns uncontrollably every day.

I believe in the freedom of information so that we can do the same to the government. With enough tenacity, a person can get ahold of a significant portion of information that the government holds as sensitive. This information details the abuses of the authority that taxpayers and citizens of this nation have given to their government. I believe with enough of this information made public, people will change their apathetic attitude toward totalitarian governments. Beyond my petty squabble with the totalitarian government of Seattle, King County, Washington State, the United States, and the United Nations, I believe that all people will use information to their advantage which will help all people. I believe "that one day people might lay down their various prejudices not only here on Earth, but against life on other planets." [Stranges]

On a totally off topic, I was listening to the really good band, Anti-Flag. There is a song called, "Seattle was a Riot." It was about the protests and subsequent injustice that happened. Their song includes a voiceover that says "Sitting in what was designated the cooperation zone by Seattle Police Sargent Richard Goldstein, they sat heads bowed, listening as the police methodically shot pepper spray one eye at a time. Into the eyes of our passive brothers and sisters. Whore-like police playing judge, jury, and executioner for the pimp-like bosses of the world bank and WTO. This is not justice. This is not the role of the servants of the people. Such tyrrany bring ruling classes crashing to the ground and contemporary societies to an end." But anyone who was there knew that the Police Chief was Stamper. Maybe they were talking about a Police Sargent who was taking orders from Stamper because Stamper resigned immediately after. By the way, he didn't resign for the police brutality, no... It was for not being able to maintain a police state in which we perpetually live.

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Works Cited
Goldstein, Emmanual. Off the Hook. WBAI 07/16/2003

timothy et al. Slashdot.org 07/17/2003 http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/03/07/12/1242218.shtml?tid=103&tid=153&tid=99

Stranges, Frank. "Interview with Frank Stranges." Art Bell. ~1995

This is Javantea, of course. It was rendered using Linux OpenGL C++, Gimp, etc. If you want to get more specific, I used the following lights to generate the shades in AltSci3d Manga Director:





Of course, knowing that, you'll need to know the position of Javantea. No problem: Javantea's rotation and the camera's position are not very important unless you want to completely reproduce the exact thing. But I'll leave it to you to find your own values. Of course, you cannot reproduce this experiement because the code only resides on my computer. It isn't even published to SourceForge.net yet. But this does tell us a little about OpenGL Lighting. I was totally amazed at the lack of information on OpenGL Lighting and sadly, it was a major stumbling block for me. I was able to get lighted objects, but not reproducibly. That's A Bad Thing ™. *shrug* So I went on a website where a person suggested that I needed 1.0 diffuse and 1.0 specular. It didn't make sense because my models were 70% ambient and 30% diffuse and 0% specular. But when I put a lot of ambient light and some diffuse light on them, nothing happened. What was my problem, I guess is that my scales are quite off. The ambient wouldn't register, but neither would the diffuse. What I was saying was that: I have a warehouse that is fifty football fields long, people who are 40 meters tall, and a 100 watt lightbulb. I also have the sun, but we're out here on Pluto. So what does it look like? Darkness, if you ask OpenGL. That's OpenGL for you, truth and speed. But that is what I like about OpenGL as well as Linux: truth, speed, and minimalist architecture. When I say minimalist, I mean: command prompt that can do 40% of data operations but only takes 32 MB of RAM. I mean being able to run the fricking operating system with a full GUI with 128 MB of RAM! Do that with Windows XP and you'll end up with a dog of a system. How do I know? Someone gave me a Windows XP 700 MHz Sony Vaio Laptop with 128 MB of RAM. It's slower than my 200 MHz with 32 MB of RAM running Linux Console. That's what I mean. If you run a 400 MHz computer with 64 MB of RAM, I can tell you that Linux is the best Operating System for that computer without a flinch because I know it will perform better than Windows 98 or ME. You can't even run Windows XP on that computer. If you run a 1700 MHz computer with 256 MB of RAM and you have a passion for programming and high performance media, I can tell you that the best operating system for that machine is Linux. I know because that's what I run. If you run a top of the line server for enterprise solutions, I can tell you that running Linux will be the best way you can possibly utilize that machine. Some people may say that Linux will never come to the desktop. I know that Linux has a learning curve, but that curve is better than Windows XP or 98. How do I know? Because people ask me for help getting their drivers untangled. They ask me for help to get their files back when they are reinstalling XP for the third time. Well, let me tell you, I have installed Linux on a half dozen boxes and am confident that it is the solution. For the past 9 months, I have cheered every day that I work on Linux and my cry is: "NO MORE BLUE SCREENS!" I have crashed Linux three times in 9 months compared to three times per day with Windows 98. And I know that as Windows gets worse, Linux will get better. How can I say this? 1) Linux has a reasonable memory management system. 2) Linux has a huge world-wide, devoted, distributed developer base. 3) I still have not paid a penny for Linux, but that is about to change.

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