SAVE THE INTERNET


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I love the Internet. Damn, I’m completely addicted to it. I use it to stay in touch with friends and relatives, to double-check information and “Gaah.. what was the name of that dogdragon in the NeverEnding Story movies?”, to stay updated with current events and international affairs, to find new music, gadgets and people – and to procrastinate. Internet has been a huge part of my life since I first got a computer in the late 90’s and waited for my dial-up modem to connect so that I could let Lissa teach me the basics of HTML and understand the lyrics of my favourite songs.

I built my first homepage when I was 12. It was about poodles, it had little blue dogpaws floating around and there was a song playing in the background. It might be incredibly annoying, but illegal?

The internet as we know it is changing, and many of the things we take for granted today might suddenly disappear if the new PIPA and SOPA bills are passed in the US. The legislation endangers not only our freedom of expression, but also our online security and general prosperity. Information is for educating and sharing, restricting that is just insanely contra productive for all sorts of positive and necessary development.

A clip by Fight For the Future explains what PIPA will do if it is passed on the 24th of January. Since then, the bill has been adjusted and the implications will be even worse than said in the beginning – please watch to the end, and please share.

Learn more & act now:
http://sopastrike.com/
http://americancensorship.org/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SOPA_initiative/Learn_more
https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/sopa-pipa/

I’m on a boat, yeah.

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We’re on the ferry to Germany, preparing for the long drive to my grandmother’s place in southern Poland. We used to go by this boat twice a year, but I’ve been flying the last years so I’m really nostalgic right now.

Everything is the way it used to be, it’s just a four hour crossing so people don’t get a room – instead, they sleep all over the place and the race to get the good places (corners and sofas) is both serious and entertaining.

The only difference is that the boat used to seem a lot bigger when I was a kid. It was like a whole world of gambling machines, secret rooms and weird people – all mine to explore.

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Now I see it takes about ten minutes to walk through it all. Maybe I should get my childish spirit back and be like this little girl. I might go exploring after catching up with my old guardian papers at this insane dooleys party. Woohooo!

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Free WiFi on the boat, that’s something new. :)

iBye

We all know I never liked the ethics of Apple, but all the Steve Jobs quotes that have been flooding twitter today have in some way touched me. There is no doubt that the man was a visionary and a doer who changed the ways in which we connect with each other and look at the world. He deserves an iBye.

“It’s more fun to be a pirate than to join the navy.”

(Steve Jobs, 1982)