Retiring the Stop 114A Pop-Up
Technorati tags: Blog Changes, Stop 114A, Popup Removal, Humanity
Walski has made a decision to retire the Stop 114A Pop-up.
For those who have been coming here with some regularity - and not likely the target audience for the pop-up anyway - you're probably have gotten quite tired of it.
Like most good things in life, the pop-up has served its purpose, and it's now time to put it to rest. The indefinite has been made finite...
(state of online freedom, and more, in the full post)
But has it done any good?
In truth, Walski doesn't really know. Perhaps it has. If nothing else, the outrage over badly written laws has been vocalized/visualized. The reality of it, however, is that this particular bad piece of legislation remains on the books.
He hopes that it will never be used as the sole source of "proof". At least, that's the guarantee that has been given by the authorities. We will certainly hold them to their word.
As has been revealed recently, Malaysia ranks poorly in the promotion of personal freedoms (via The Malaysian Insider), as indicated in Legatum's Prosperity Index.
And no, "personal freedoms" do NOT include stealing the property of others. It also does not include inflicting physical and/or mental harm on others.
Since the tragedy of Walski's PC getting stolen about two weeks ago, he's had some opportunity to reflect on life.
First of all, life is short. Certainly too short to hold on to a grudge, or harp on things that one has absolutely no control over. Like legislations being kept on the books, for instance. Raising awareness - which the pop-up has helped do - is one thing, keeping the pop-up in place longer than a useful timespan is another thing altogether. It's time to move one...
Second, in life nothing is permanent. Getting his PC stolen is proof of that. Never mind that the motherfucker also stole 20 years of Walski's work, both personal and professional, in the form of articles, reports, resumes, presentations, photographs, etc. None of these are easily replaceable. But they can be rebuilt.
Third, the Malaysia we live in right now is going through precarious times, and along with his PC, Walski's unquestioning faith in humanity has been stolen as well. Gone forever.
October 19, 2012 will be a date that Walski will never forget. That's the date of the theft, and that's the date when his life changed. He's certainly more careful, and a lot less trusting. If you find Walski to be more bitter and more spiteful from now on, you now know why.
And you can thank the bastard who stole from him for that. This is not holding a grudge, per se, but reassessing one's outlook in life. Suffice it to say Walski's view of humanity has changed forever.
It appears that Walski's gone on a tangent… so let's return to orbit, shall we?
The pop-up's gone, and this blog may be accessed without having to close the Stop 114A window that shows up.
That's pretty much what Walski wanted to say in this post. The rest is the ramblings of a man embittered by a once-upon-a-time beautiful humanity that's utterly failed him, and shown its true ugly colors...
