Moblock traffic blocker

Moblock (moblock-deb) is a so called traffic blocker. It prevents connections from certain IP numbers (defined in block lists) to gain access to your computer. The whole purpose is that the blocked IP numbers usually belongs to this or that organization that wishes to find out more about your Internet habits and other information they have no reason to get their noses into.

Moblock has a big brother called Peerguardian by Phoenixlabs but development on this program seems to have been discontinued, and unfortunately at a stage where the program doesn’t work (at least for me it doesn’t). I am also sure there are some Windows variants of an IP-blocker (I’m guessing Bluetack is the right place to go).

Installing Moblock on Ubuntu turns out to be a very simple affair. Mainly do two things: Add moblock’s repository to your repository list, and run an apt-get command. (Here’s an even better instruction for installing Moblock on Ubuntu).

The installation takes care of setting up cron-jobs to update your block lists every day, installs moblock as a service started every time the machine is started, and makes the first download, after which the program (or in fact, demon) is started and you are safe.

The above link is a very good instruction on installing moblock, and it even have instructions on how to perform some simple troubleshooting.

If you run linux I suggest you take a look at moblock’s home page, or you can check out it’s project page on sourceforge.

BasKet Note Pads – note-taking application

BasKet is a very nice application I just stumbled across. It is a kind of OneNote for Linux.  In Ubuntu (probably Debian and others as well) it can be managed as a regular package.

I’m using it mostly when writing and ordering ideas and the like, but I can see myself doing much more with it…. once I’ve made sure it’s stable enough. Let me get back on that with a more proper review later.

The Selfish Gene

Richard Dawkins discusses in his book “[amazon asin=0199291144&text=The Selfish Gene]” if we are using our genes to propagate ourselves, or if maybe our genes are using us to propagate themselves.

According to Dawkins life may very well have begun a long time ago, in the primeordial soup, when simple clumps of amino-acids became self replicating. This self replication started a kind of war between competing replicators and who was on top (in majority) in the soup probably changed many times until one kind of replicators using a protective layer of materia came out the winner (one cell organisms).

Soon the replicators became so complicated they needed to share the different types of work needed to be done between several cells (or as Dawkins calls them, survival machines[1]) and thus multi cell organisms were born.

The reson the book is called “the Selfish Gene” is among other things (there is a whole theory called “Selfish Gene Theory”) Dawkins debunking of Group Selection. In the Selfish Gene Theory groups are not selected, but genes are. Then if several different kinds of genes happen to be successful (reproduce a lot) when working together, then that is simply because each gene in itself earn from the cooperation with other genes, not because they are selected as a group.

The Selfish Gene Theory causes some dilemmas for anyone that wishes to believe in the inner good of mankind, after all, how much inner good can there be if everyone of us are genetically programmed to be selfish?

Dawkins actually answers this question with Game Theory. Simply put, there are selfish reasons for cooperating with others. (Some one, I think it may even have been Dr. Phil, said — or if it was Dr. Phil, then I think he wrote it — that everybody has a selfish reason for what they do, it may not be the only reason but there is at least a little bit of selfishness behind all actions in the world).

I feel that the Selfish Gene Theory may work in explaining the behavior of simple animals, but I believe it could be potentially dangerous to look at humans in the sense of being controlled only by selfish genes. When I studied psychology I learned one thing, all kinds of behavior have the following three main influences: psychology — what happens in your head, thoughts, expectations, prejudices; biology — how your head is constructed, transmittor substances, perception abilities, reaction speeds, cognition capabilities; and finally environment — what’s going on around you, perceptions of vision, sound, influences from the outside, other people, customs, traditions, culture.

If we were to explain the whole world with Selfish Gene Theory alone, we would lean very heavily on the biological leg without taking the psychological and environmental into consideration, and in my book, that would be a halting explanation for the world. On the other hand, if Dawkins are right and we’re here today because our genes have been selfish from the first time they started replicate in that primordial soup some billions of years ago, then we might have to be aware we might need some training before we can become altruistic, and we may also be able to understand that altruism is not an integral part of human behavior, but something one has to learn.

And then again, I think even such great people as Ghandi or Mother Theresa had at least a little bit of selfish motives to what they did. The difference between them and people like Hitler and Stalin was that they, in a contrary to Hitler and Stalin, found helping others rewarding.


[1] Actually he calls both single cells and whole bodies (like yours and mine) the genes’ survival machines.

Other books of interest:

  • [amazon asin=0192880519&text=The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene], 1999, Richard Dawkins
  • [amazon asin=0393326950&text=Why We Do it: Rethinking Sex and the Selfish Gene], 2005, Niles Eldredge
  • [amazon asin=1840462388&text=Dawkins and the Selfish Gene (Postmodern Encounters)], 2001, Ed Sexton
  • [amazon asin=0195179668&text=The Bridge to Humanity: How Affect Hunger Trumps the Selfish Gene], 2005, Walter Goldschmidt