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Annoyingware
I want to experiment with the format a little bit. I hope you will enjoy it.
Chloe just entered the room where Sheiny was sitting all alone and typing away at her laptop. Sheiny was too occupied with her movie-script to notice the presence of Chloe in the room. Chloe was scratching her head. She just didn't know how to explain why certain programs are bad for Ivan even if they are not strictly malware. He understood why being careful is important. After that day when the vigilante almost murdered him, he never ever questioned the importance of being safe. Privacy was at most important for him. But Free Software? That is far beyond what's needed for just privacy.
"He is stupid again!" - exclaimed Chloe throwing herself angrily onto the sofa. Sheiny looked back at her for an instance, trying not to break concentration from the movie-script. "What's now?" - she said.
Chloe murmured something indecipherable to herself. Then she angrily breathed for a little bit. And then she decided to ask - "But really, what if something is not malicious and you double-checked it, and you know that it's not... It's just not Free Software? Why get rid of it?"
Sheiny stopped typing. She looked at Chloe with a penetrating, sharp look. She said - "But everything non-free is malware!". She started preparing herself back to typing, but she didn't type a single word before Chloe interrupted her thoughts again - "What do you mean? Those are two different things! Malware. What's the official definition of the word?". For a second there Chloe looked at Sheiny as if remembering the official definition. She held her hand in front of her as if any second what she wants to say will come out of her brain. But it didn't. She said - "Sheiny, what's the definition of Malware?".
Sheiny couldn't type anymore. Her brain was an evil genius trying to find any reason for procrastination. And here Chloe gave it one very good one. But before I will tell you what Sheiny told Chloe as the definition of malware. Let's first dive into another story, where I will tell you something about it's progress.
_________
For the last week or so I was slowly making the shots from the sequence where Moria and Dani are driving a race-car on water. There is no religious symbolism in it. At least not that I'm aware of. Perhaps in the future, as there is now Dudeism, there will be Morism ( or Dolphinism ) Or something stupid along those lines. But I have nothing like this planned. Honest!
The biggest news for me came from sudden increase in viewership. There are a bit more people on the streams. There are some people actively discussing the film project on a forum. And it seems like a few people are actually kind of looking forward to seeing it. Which is good.
Technically though the movie got problems. Technical problems. In some, already rendered shots for example, there is a glitch with Moria's hair. I think it means that after the animation will be done, I will have to do a much more tedious, 2D pass on the whole movie. It will be more like visual effects compositing. Where I will figure out how to deal with various little annoyances in the frames of Moria's Race. Basically - polishing the turd.
... COME TO THE LIVESTREAM !!! ...
Click on my dumb face to get to the livestream
___________
"Wikipedia says, malware is any software intentionally designed to cause disruption to a computer, serv..." - Sheiny was stopped by Chloe interrupting her - "Software designed to interfere with a computer's normal functioning.". Sheiny looked at her with violence in her eyes. There was an awkward silence for a little bit. Then Sheiny continued - "...server, client, or computer network, leak private information, gain unauthorized access to infor...". "Merriam-Webster" - interrupted Chloe again.
"Merriam-Webster's definition is bullshit!"
"Well, they seem to be some cool heads in the definitions field."
"So what? Listen to what they have to say. 'designed to interfere with a computer's normal functioning?' Normal?"
"Is it normal to spy on people?"
This question filled the room with slight unease. Sheiny was about to say "Yes", but she needed to formulate it in such a way that she will not end up sounding like endorsing this fact. She said - "I'm not saying that it ought to be normal, but it surely is. Today it's rather normal to spy on people. And Merriam-Webster definition then, excludes Google's or Facebook's malware."
Chloe scratched her head - "But spying on people is not normal". "It should not be normal" - Sheiny corrected her - "But it is.". Chloe got even more confused - "How is something should not be normal, but normal? Normal is whatever is good. And spying is not good.".
"No normal is whatever is in common sense."
"And common sense is what's good. Right?"
"No, common sense is what's common. It has nothing to do with good or bad."
Chloe's jaw dropped open. She stood up from the sofa and started moving around the room to and fro. Her eyes popped out of their sockets and she felt this weird feeling of excitement of figuring something out for the first time. She sang - "Waaaait... Right! We are not normal. The way we do money considered not normal at all. I was always looked at as a strange girl at school. Now I understand... So if most people believe in something stupid and you are not believing it because you are smart. They are still the normal ones. And you are the crazy. Unless you make everyone believe what you believe... I'm depressed!" - and on this note she sunk back into the sofa.
Sheiny put her finger on her chin and said - "Well, common is not necessarily 'most common'. It's just common. There could be more than one common at a time. And I think it's like this, due to people not really knowing how much other people believing a certain thing to be true. So don't be too crushed. There are other people that are just like we are. And they are quite common. Maybe not as common as we would like them to be but common enough...". This speech brought some life into Chloe, but not all of it. Sheiny continued - "What I was trying to say... It's common enough for big companies to stalk people. And they do it through their malware. But using the definition that Merriam-Webster provides, we cannot call big company's malware malware anymore."
"So what is malware? Any software that's bad for the user?"
"Well, for this you will have to define bad. And it's subjective."
"Bad is bad... Or you are going to tell me that bad is not bad and it's in fact good sometimes?"
"No, I'm trying to tell you that bad is subjective."
Chloe made a "Hm..." sound to sound smart and pretend to think about what Sheiny just said. Meanwhile what she really did, was to wait until Sheiny will get back to typing. So she did. As Sheiny typed Chloe took her phone and tried, in a such a way that Sheiny wouldn't see, to look up the definition of "subjective". As she read it's definition and let her mind wonder about what the definition itself meant, she arrived at something resembling "subjective" in her mind. And using this new concept she tried to understand what Sheiny said.
"You don't like Ubuntu!" - said Chloe finally.
"What?"
"I like Ubuntu, you prefer Debian." - said Chloe in an attempt to confirm her understanding of "subjective".
"Debian is better" - said Sheiny, typing off.
"For you!" - affirmed Chloe with a smile.
"What do you want from me?" - asked Sheiny half confused.
"It's better, it's good, for you. While for me it's bad. For me Ubuntu is good. Subjective..."
Sheiny thought about it. She leaned back and thought. At this point she caught herself on a thought that she is thinking about it and that it's a kind of procrastination. Then she thought that Chloe doesn't know that she thinks it's procrastination, so it could work to procrastinate a little without being caught procrastinating. Then she thought that maybe Chloe doesn't even know what "to procrastinate" means. Then a scene from the movie-script came to her mind. It was about a door with a window in it. Fire on one side, water on another. She thought about how cool of a symbolism it was. Then she thought that she doesn't know what it symbolizes. And then she thought that she procrastinates from her procrastination. Then she looked at Chloe wondering if she knows that she thinks about something unrelated. And that's where she caught herself on a thought that she doesn't know anymore what they were talking about.
"What were we talking about?" - asked Sheiny betraying half-shame.
For Chloe this brought her own crazy train of thought. But it was a bit more organized and few seconds later she arrived at a very good answer. She said - "Ivan, he doesn't care about Free Software. He cares only about privacy.".
"Well, tell him that Malware is subjective." - said Sheiny and started typing again. Chloe thought about it. Malware is subjective? She looked at the Merriam-Webster's definition again. Then she thought that it's not a good definition and she looked at the Wikipedia's definition. Malware is any software intentionally designed to cause disruption... "Subjective to whom?" - asked Chloe finally.
"To you, of course. To the user."
"But it should be intentionally designed to be malicious. So it's subjective to the programmer."
"What if it was a mistake? A mistake that sent your data into some server. It's not something the programmer intended. But for your it's bad."
"Well, then it's a bug..."
"Hm..." - said Sheiny with a slow and thorough thought. She opened her mouth a little bit, looked with her eyes to and fro and finally said - "So... Malware is something like, intentionally making software... ah... in such a way that the user will... might not like.".
Chloe nodded with approval but Sheiny didn't stop, she continued - "However, bugs are an interesting beast then. Bug is something the user doesn't like, but it's not intentional. Also sometimes the program simply misses a feature. This is not a bug and it's not intentional. Interesting!"
Chloe tried to summarize everything - "So there is Malware - something they made knowing that I might not like it, bugs - mistakes that I don't like, and not features?"
"Limitations..." - Sheiny corrected.
"Limitations? Ah... Malware, Bugs and Limitations. But I don't like non of them! And somebody else might like some of them."
"That's the point!" - said Sheiny with a smile and satisfaction.
Chloe looked up, said - "Oh... of course!" - and went to the door to talk to Ivan again. She understood that Free Software is not only about dealing with malware. But rather about dealing will any kind of annoyance. With source code, ability to make forks and good plugin support a user can fix any slight frustration with any aspect of the program. Not only deal with the most nasty of the aspects. Furthermore Free Software lets users fix their subjective issues too. Without imposing those "fixes" to those who don't consider them fixes. As Chloe was reaching the door itself she suddenly stopped! She looked at Sheiny with a huge smile on her face and said - "Annoyingware!".
Sheiny was disrupted once again - "Annoyingware? Yeah... sounds good." - this affirmation from Sheiny gave a bit more smile to Chloe's smile. And she run out of the door screaming - "Annoyingware!"
Happy Hacking!
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