Slashdot Mirror

For a very graphic, but eye-opening look at what domestic abuse can be like, take a read though this book. Disclaimer: I am a friend of the author, but I had no idea it could be as bad as this book makes it out to be. It's written by someone who deals with domestic abuse situations every day, and says that the book is toned down compared to what really goes on.

I agree with Armstrong - scrapping the Moon project is not just bad for America, it hurts the entire human race http://paullevinson.blogspot.com/2010/04/armstrong-lovell-and-cernan-are-right.html

I am aware of US history since the Great Depression, but I don't think you are.

Here's a chart of income inequality since World War I. Note that it begins to rise in the 1970s. Here's a chart of top marginal tax rates since the income tax was introduced. Note that the top tax on earned income drops precipitously in the 1970s.

So, yes, the current tax code is creating stratification of wealth (and therefore, societal breakdown), because it's insufficiently progressive. Your proposals make it even worse.

The U.S. government needs to learn to live on a lot less money, just like everyone else does when the economy goes sour, get it?

No. No, this is absolutely wrong. Basic macroeconomics states that the government can, when things go bad, take on debt and add money to the economy when it "goes sour", as you put it. The idea is that boom/bust cycle is smoothed out by the government filling its coffers during booms and emptying them during busts, spending against the cycle. (This is why blowing the early-2000s surplus on tax cuts for very, very rich people was a particularly bad idea.)

This is out of the Norquistian playbook--funnel cash to the very wealthy to empty out the treasury, then talk about how excessive government spending is and claim that the only solution is to cut services. An extra zero on a balance sheet is, clearly, more important than starving old people.

(as an aside, they also *massively* overestimate the impact they can have on the web, hilariously of the belief that Firefox making a stand will somehow stem the tide of H.264 video on the web... it'd be funny if it weren't so sad)

I think you massively underestimate the impact Mozilla had and continues to have on the web. You should look at browser user agent strings sometime. IE, Safari, and Chrome and Opera all claim to be Mozilla implementations.

Ultimately, you're on the losing end of this debate. Open video is where it's at. Google is the biggest video provider on the Internet and Google is all about the open web. In this regard, Mozilla and Google are in perfect alignment:

http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2010/04/interesting-times-for-video-on-web.html
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/meaning-of-open.html
http://www.mercurynews.com/business-headlines/ci_14847976
http://www.0xdeadbeef.com/weblog/2010/01/html5-video-and-h-264-what-history-tells-us-and-why-were-standing-with-the-web/

This is how important Internet companies like Mozilla and like Google think. This is why YouTube will move to open video sooner rather than later. Join the 389 million people who have downloaded Firefox 3.6 so far:

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/firefox.html

Use open video and be happy.

(as an aside, they also *massively* overestimate the impact they can have on the web, hilariously of the belief that Firefox making a stand will somehow stem the tide of H.264 video on the web... it'd be funny if it weren't so sad)

I think you massively underestimate the impact Mozilla had and continues to have on the web. You should look at browser user agent strings sometime. IE, Safari, and Chrome and Opera all claim to be Mozilla implementations.

Ultimately, you're on the losing end of this debate. Open video is where it's at. Google is the biggest video provider on the Internet and Google is all about the open web. In this regard, Mozilla and Google are in perfect alignment:

http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2010/04/interesting-times-for-video-on-web.html
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/meaning-of-open.html
http://www.mercurynews.com/business-headlines/ci_14847976
http://www.0xdeadbeef.com/weblog/2010/01/html5-video-and-h-264-what-history-tells-us-and-why-were-standing-with-the-web/

This is how important Internet companies like Mozilla and like Google think. This is why YouTube will move to open video sooner rather than later. Join the 389 million people who have downloaded Firefox 3.6 so far:

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/firefox.html

Use open video and be happy.

I agree. The problems with flying cars for the masses are many, well-known and insurmountable. The use of any propulsion technology that pushes a propellant at high speed is not only wasteful of energy but also unhealthy (lots of dust in the air) and highly dangerous (you can't stop or turn quickly enough).

Having said that, it does not mean that we'll never have flying vehicles. A new analysis of the causality of motion reveals that good old Aristotle was right to insist that inertial motion is caused. As a result, we are immersed in an immense lattice of energetic particles. No lattice => no motion. Soon, we'll be able to tap into this energy field for both energy production and transportation. We'll have vehicles that have no need of wheels, travel at tremendous speeds and negotiate right angle turns without slowing down and without incurring any damage due to inertial effects. How much energy is there, you ask? Lots and lots of it, more than we'll ever need, enough to float entire cities in the sky if we so desire. New York to Beijing in minutes, earth to Mars in hours; that's the future of energy and transportation.

Read Physics: The Problem with Motion for more on this exciting development.

I can confirm gdamore's authorship of the parent post. Anyone trying to understand his statement on ogb-discuss that was linked should read the preceding messages in the thread. A transcript of IRC discussion of this article is available here (search for "slashdot"): http://echelog.matzon.dk/logs/browse/opensolaris/1271368800

For Bank of America customers, fraud is the least of their worries.

Let's see. His treatment of prisoners has been ruled unconstitutional on multiple occasions. He has raided an office of his own county without a warrant of any kind in order to seize emails that are to be used against him in court. His destruction of records has netted him a contempt sanction, and the FBI is investigating him for civil rights violations, intimidation of witnesses, etc.

These aren't idle accusations. They're at least serious enough to get the justice department involved. Even judges aren't immune from this mans corruption.

And it worked.

In fact, the Bush ad I linked is just a recycle of Reagan's Bear in the Woods commercial from 20 years previous. Fear always works.

Simon's original article is now back online at the Guardian website, where it was originally published. Many many more people will read it, or have read about it, than originally read it. More people will know that chiropractic adjustments have killed people. Due to BCA's actions, people looked at the advertisements of chiropractors and reported those claiming to treat colic. One in four chiropractors are being investigated, including senior members of the BCA. The GCC, who are legally required to investigate have had to hire 6 new members of staff to investigate.

This is well beyond the Streisand effect, this is into Scientology levels of foot bulletry.

Oh, that talkback is referring to a post on the Israel Matzav blog.

Try 70, from last year alone. And, really, is anyone going to roll out the trope that the police would have actually used a firearm on these people if it wasn't for their electrocution compliance devices?

In related news, Google is making their own copy of the archive of all tweets searchable: Official Google Blog: Replay it: Google search across the Twitter archive

We have tribunals and judges well-versed in case law and guidelines in order to interpret whether or not an utterance or written item can be considered hateful...this determination is made by looking for the motivational intent of the item in question.

For example:

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20081010/muslim_complaint_081010/20081010?hub=Canada

The tribunal ruled against a group of Muslim complainants in regards to a Macleans article essentially warning people about the potential for a Muslim-ruled world.

The cartoons themselves were also brought before a tribunal:

http://newatheism.blogspot.com/2008/01/mohammed-cartoons-and-civil-rights-in_28.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezra_Levant#Jyllands-Posten_Muhammad_cartoons_controversy

The complaints generated by this were dismissed or withdrawn. There is some sanity here.

http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2008/03/youtube-videos-in-high-quality.html

... We're making these streams available on certain videos, based upon the source file uploaded to us, and over time you'll find a greater percentage of the library is available to view in higher quality. This feature applies to all eligible videos uploaded from the YouTube community ...

Some portion of eligible videos had higher quality options show up when those options launched on yt. Without source files that would be impossible / pointless. Besides, format even for "standard, lowest resolution" yt videos chamged (around a year ago, from H.263 + mono MP3 to H.264 + stereo AAC), which wouldn't fit with yt help strongly warning against excessive reencoding.

And sucky audio is there because of sucky uploaded files...

...There are too many rumors flying around to actually know who's in the right here. It's easy to bet on the big corporation being greedy / evil / stupid. But *if* these guys did start talking to EA or other potential partners while still on Activision's payroll, they could be in breach of contract (at least if I understood industry expert Keith Boesky correctly).

Either you're behind the times, or I'm falling for a troll...

Google Stops Censoring China's Search Services

No one is forcing you to provide video in Theora. The idea is that you provide Theora as a fallback, the last resort. It doesn't matter if it's out dated or if H.264 is better quality. It's suppose to be the last resort. The video tag gives you the ability to specify different videos in case the browser can't load the first one you provided.

H.264 is CPU intensive compared to Theora. Theora doesn't need hardware support because it's a simple codec which can be run in software even on mobile devices. Google is already sponsoring an effort to get the Theora codec running on ARM which makes this more practical. Theora even runs on IE via a java applet so it's widely supported compared to H.264.

3D shutter lenses (sometimes used for modern 3D films) will cause headaches/nausia in some people because of the flickering.

I heard it was because you have to stare at Sam Worthington's face the whole time: http://saikurisuto.blogspot.com/2009/12/how-to-watch-avatar-in-3d.html

Yes, 3D is a gimmick. We're in for some hype-packed years ahead, if this list of upcoming 3d movies is correct.

http://marketsaw.blogspot.com/2007/04/list-of-upcoming-3d-movies.html

While I really enjoyed Jaws 3D and Poltergeist 3D as a kid (saw as a double feature). I'm interested in actual stories and characters now that I'm older.

I'm not looking forward to those upcoming movies that are looking to add 3D as a replacement for writing a good script or having a director with real vision.

However I must disagree with you about Avatar. I thought the 3D effects were just as integrated into the storyline as everything else, and I was amazed how well they were done.

Unfortunatly it looks like we can expect a well-done 3d movies only every few years.

Photoshop CS5 is a game-changer if this feature works half as well as it did in the demo.

Yeah, just wait until you see how it works in the wild.

I cannot wait until poor applications of puppet warp show up on magazine covers and movie posters! http://photoshopdisasters.blogspot.com/

It only takes a few killer apps that can't reach the iPhone due to Apple's control-freakness to tip the balance away to some other platform.

Steve Jobs should know, of all people. Apple was once so dominant in the field of personal computers it could laugh at IBM, much like the iPhone in smartphones today. Well, guess what? A few years down the road, IBM's presence in the Macintosh core market was no longer laughing matter.

Expanded comment at http://grenouille-bouillie.blogspot.com/2010/04/steve-jobs-and-iphone-lockdown.html

This is one of those situations where people will vote with their wallet, if allowed. But even when municipalities try to set up their own broadband, they get sued by the incumbents or would-be incumbents for their trouble. Google is mooting the roll-out of very high speed connectivity in limited cities, and recently asked for volunteers via an essay contest. Their bandwidth could be the perfect vehicle to return to the older broadcast satellite model of multiple broadcasters bundling and selling channels ala carte. I don't think Comcast is as likely to sue Google as Monticello, Minnesota.

... and targeted ads are trying to change that, mostly, yet people rage against them.

Ad companies: Hey guys, we'd like to use some information to make the ads you see more relevant to you.
People: OH GOD NO THAT WOULD BE TERRIBLE DON'T DO THAT

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_D_Z-D2tzi14/S7-Y_ENECiI/AAAAAAAACoQ/I9s1cpAlbGk/s320/adpost2.png

From a slightly older article on the same blog:

The load time data is derived from aggregated information sent by users of your site who have installed the Google Toolbar and opted-in to its enhanced features.

So this isn't quite as susceptible to people playing games with Googlebot as it might appear.

"What about Ad Block Plus? That keeps me on Firefox" - by EvilBudMan (588716) on Friday April 09, @03:24PM (#31793466)

Adblocks' NOT bad (especially considering that adbanners have been shown MORE THAN JUST A FEW TIMES NOW TO HOUSE MALSCRIPTED CONTENT IN THEM, see list below (only PARTIAL too, mind you)):

HOSTS FILES ARE ADBLOCK'S SUPERIOR ON SEVERAL GROUNDS (& in combination/together? Pretty much the best "browser level" security, in "layered security fashion" you can do currently)!

----

1.) HOSTS files eat A LOT LESS CPU cycles than browser addons do no less (since browser addons have to parse each HTML page & tag content in them)!

2.) HOSTS files are also NOT severely LIMITED TO 1 BROWSER FAMILY ONLY... browser addons, are. HOSTS files cover & protect (for security) and speed up (all apps that are webbound) any app you have that goes to the internet (specifically the web).

3.) HOSTS files allow you to bypass DNS Server requests logs (via hardcoding your favorite sites into them to avoid not only the TIME taken roundtrip to an external DNS server, but also for avoiding those logs OR a DNS server that has been compromised (see Dan Kaminsky online, on that note)).

4.) HOSTS files will allow you to get to sites you like, via hardcoding your favs into a HOSTS file, FAR faster than DNS servers can by FAR (by saving the roundtrip inquiry time to a DNS server & back to you).

5.) HOSTS files also allow you to not worry about a DNS server being compromised, or downed (if either occurs, you STILL get to sites you hardcode in a HOSTS file anyhow in EITHER case).

6.) HOSTS files are EASILY user controlled, obtained (for reliable ones -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosts_file [wikipedia.org] ) & edited too, via texteditors like Windows notepad.exe or Linux nano (etc.)

7.) HOSTS files aren't as vulnerable to "bugs" either like programs/libs/extensions of that nature are, OR even DNS servers, as they are NOT code, & because of what's next too

8.) HOSTS files are also EASILY secured well, via write-protection "read-only" attributes set on them, or more radically, via ACL's even.

9.) HOSTS files are a solution which also globally extends to EVERY WEBBOUND APP YOU HAVE - NOt just a single webbrowser type (e.g. FireFox/Mozilla & its addons exemplify this, such as ADBLOCK)

10.) AND, LASTLY? SINCE MALWARE GENERALLY HAS TO OPERATE ON WHAT YOU YOURSELF CAN DO (running as limited class/least privlege user, hopefully, OR even as ADMIN/ROOT/SUPERUSER)? HOSTS "LOCK IN" malware too, vs. communicating "back to mama" for orders (provided they have name servers + C&C botnet servers listed in them, blocked off in your HOSTS that is) - you might think they use a hardcoded IP, which IS possible, but generally they do not & RECYCLE domain/host names they own, & this? This stops that cold, too! Bonus...

Still, it's a GOOD idea to layer in the usage of BOTH browser addons for security like adblock, &/or NoScript (especially this latter one, & in FireFox (because Opera for example, allows a site by site setting on scripting @ least, where FF natively by itself, doesn't) as NoScript covers FF in what HOSTS files can't, in javascript, which is the main deliverer of MOST attacks online & SECUNIA.COM can verify this for anyone really by looking @ the past few years of attacks nowadays), for the concept of "layered security")

----

To keep "ontop of the latest known malicious sites" online? See these sites (1 I mentioned here already, this is the rest of the list I use, & others too):

START OF WEBSITES & SOURCES + TOOLS I USED TO POPULATE THIS LIST + MY ORIGINAL LIST OF BLOCKED ADBANNERS SERVERS

http://ddanchev.blogspot.com/
http://www.malwareurl.com/listing-urls.php

Firstly, they haven't stolen your identity, they have copied some information relating to you. It could be that to do so they have done something illegal (data protection, etc), but you have still not lost anything.

In my case, I was lucky. I caught the ID Theft early and took preventative measures to ensure it won't happen again. Other people aren't so lucky though. Some have thousands rung up under their name and only find out when collections agencies (who don't care that you're not the one who bought a boat in Florida a day after you opened a charge account in California) come knocking. These people can find themselves having to spend a lot of time and money to clear up the mess. That's time and money they don't get back, so yes, they've lost something quite substantial. In addition, until it is cleaned up, their credit might be ruined so they won't be able to buy a car, house, etc when they otherwise would have been able to.

Still others find themselves as criminal suspects because some crook somewhere gave a stolen identity to the police. He hasn't updated in over 2 years, and hopefully that's because he's cleared it all up finally, but I'd read through what happened to Todd Fennell over at http://g27radio.blogspot.com/index.html . I'd say he lost something very important (job, home, life pre-ID Theft, money, time, friends, etc).

This isn't like simply copying a file and saying "well, that file's still on your hard drive too." The data can be used to ruin lives and when it is used like that the victims have lost something big.

While am interested in running Linux on my PS3, I bought a slim so I never had the option anyway (according to Geohot his hack could possibly restore the OtherOS option on the slim as well).

I am much more interested to see how this plays out, if Amazon is handing out $ to end-users because of SONY'S decision to remove a feature. This could have huge impacts on any future company that things about removing an established feature from a popular product. Everyone should be watching this turn of events carefully, whether you care about the OtherOS option or not.

The Apple store is full of spyware, Apple validating it with their own API will make it even worse
, with the inability of the user to install a firewall or control it makes it a security nightmare

this guy figured it out
http://i-phone-home.blogspot.com/

Japan has about 127 million people. Has the US increased to 12.7 billion some time recently?

That's just Verizon Math at work. As long as you're within a factor of 100 then that's close enough for Verizon.

Look at the GWT blog: http://googlewebtoolkit.blogspot.com/2010/04/look-ma-no-plugin.html. Here is a webkit browser running Quake II in JavaScript at 60 fps. This is what they will be competing with. Again MS is starting from behind and falling further behind. When I measure Javascript performance in IE9, I can't see a difference form IE8, not sure if this is debug code in IE9 or just the JS I'm using, but so far, not particularly impressed.

PS3 is a GAME CONSOLE, not a COMPUTER.

Funny how Sony directly contradicts that statement, get your facts right before making stupid statements. Specifically this quote from Phil Harrison:

"The Playstation 3 is a computer. We do not need the PC."

From his blog:

Here is a video demoing my "custom firmware". It's not any sort of version string change; I would have added something showing off the new features of 3.21, but oh wait, there aren't any.

http://geohotps3.blogspot.com/

They could easily edit their robots.txt and keep Google out,

Murdoch may be evil, but can we at least understand what he wants? The 'problem' isn't with being indexed, it's about how it works with a paywall.

Google insist that, to be indexed, you show visitors clicking through the same page that their crawler sees. So they won't index stories that users will have to pay to see. (In fact, they make an exception if you can get the first few pages for free.) Sites using a paywall have often quietly allowed a 'back door', whereby visitors coming from google can see the page without paying, just so that it gets indexed. Murdoch would like to do away with that system, so that he can charge anyone who wants to see his news.

Even if he gets his way, it probably won't make much difference. Pagerank is based on links to your content, and there simply won't be so many links to content that needs a subscription. So his paywalled sites will sink down the results.

Sadly Linux is still stagnated and more users can lead to more stagnation, as I clarify in Portuguese: http://jorl17.blogspot.com/2010/04/linux-uma-causa-perdida.html
Of course that's my view.

This probably does not answer your questions, but it covers a bit more details than the original post. Also, if you click on the title, you will link to the source article.

http://thedragonstales.blogspot.com/2010/04/anaerobic-metazoans.html

I didn't see this in any of the comments, if it's there please excuse this post... http://geohotps3.blogspot.com/

I found a link that gives a pretty good rundown of this sad day for the Man of Steel.

Different kind of warfare. The British, Germans, and even the Soviets basically come from the same set of values we do- and thus their spies followed the unwritten rules (get military secrets only, don't attack civilians, etc).

The Islamics don't come from a Judaeo-Christian background; and the advent of the Dogma of Sola Jihad among the Muwahiddun sect of Islam has resulted in a a war we have already lost.

This results in only TWO viable solutions: closed borders or genocide. Unfortunately our for-profit military is taking a third, unsustainable, option instead: eternal war.

And there's your reason for ripping up the Constitution. The Constitution was designed to protect the country against enemies domestic and foreign that basically followed our same values and respected human life. For a time it also worked against enemies that didn't. But the dogma of Sola Jihad is a major game changer. Civilians aren't off limits. An attacker doesn't even need a huge supply chain behind him; a single individual can declare war on an entire nation. And most scary of all- is the hardest form of attack to stop- the attack where the attacker is willing to *trade his life* to take the lives of *multiple or important targets*.

The Nazis had NOTHING on the Muwahiddun- even their genocide of the Jews didn't come close to the monster of adolescent and oppressed middle age rage they've unleashed.

Different kind of warfare. The British, Germans, and even the Soviets basically come from the same set of values we do- and thus their spies followed the unwritten rules (get military secrets only, don't attack civilians, etc).

The Islamics don't come from a Judaeo-Christian background; and the advent of the Dogma of Sola Jihad among the Muwahiddun sect of Islam has resulted in a a war we have already lost.

This results in only TWO viable solutions: closed borders or genocide. Unfortunately our for-profit military is taking a third, unsustainable, option instead: eternal war.

And there's your reason for ripping up the Constitution. The Constitution was designed to protect the country against enemies domestic and foreign that basically followed our same values and respected human life. For a time it also worked against enemies that didn't. But the dogma of Sola Jihad is a major game changer. Civilians aren't off limits. An attacker doesn't even need a huge supply chain behind him; a single individual can declare war on an entire nation. And most scary of all- is the hardest form of attack to stop- the attack where the attacker is willing to *trade his life* to take the lives of *multiple or important targets*.

The Nazis had NOTHING on the Muwahiddun- even their genocide of the Jews didn't come close to the monster of adolescent and oppressed middle age rage they've unleashed.

Only 36 percent of security issues from Microsoft Products are caused by faulty security settings. See this blog post for more info.

Power Source: EROEI(actual)
Hydro: 50, 43 and 205
Nuclear (centrifuge): 18.1, 18.4, 14.5, 13.6 and 14.8
Nuclear (diffusion): 6.0, 6.7, 5.8, 7.9, 5.3, 5.6 and 3.9
Coal: 12.2, 7.4, 7.32, 3.4 and 14.2
Gas (piped): 16
Gas (piped a lot or liquefied): 3.4, 3.76 and 4
Solar: 10.6
Solar PV: 12-10, 7.5 and 3.7
Wind: 12, 6, 34, 80 and 50

As you can see, the estimates vary widely, there's a lot of guesswork involved in making these estimates. Overall the renewables don't fare that badly, especially wind and hydroelectricity.

In case you were wondering, here's the CO2 emissions:

g/kWh CO2 Japan Sweden Finland UK: SDC EU ExternE WNA
coal 990 980 894 891 815
gas thermal 653 1170* -
gas combined cycle 450 472 356 362
solar photovoltaic 59 50 95 53
wind 37 5.5 14 6.5
nuclear 22 6 10 - 26 16 19.7 17
hydro 18 3 -

So yes, even with all the intensive energy requirements for renewables, they still are better than fossil fuels. The problems with widespread use of renewables are political (i.e. Republicans and conservatives don't like them), require intensive upfront capital costs, and infrastructural (the power grid is not designed to carry power where likely wind generation sites are).

Practically, no one believes that the government should just be obeyed and never questioned, at least in the US.

That statement is only true if you redefine "practically" to mean "in theory" and "no one" to mean "US Judiciary, including appeals courts.

Please post more citations on Meowing Nuns.

Here you go! Meowing Nuns.

online videos: algebra + calculus
http://justmathtutoring.com/
http://www.mathtutor.ac.uk/
http://www.khanacademy.org/
http://www.graderocket.tv/index.php

Uni Maths Videos
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Mathematics/
http://press.princeton.edu/video/banner/
http://academicearth.org/subjects/mathematics
http://freescienceonline.blogspot.com/2009/01/calculus-video-lectures-bonus-basic.html
http://www.apple.com/education/itunes-u/ (requires iTunes download)

Resources from Universities
http://www.germanna.edu/tutor/helpful_handouts.asp?menuchoice=Helpful%20Handouts (wow)
http://mathforum.org/

Free online books:
http://www.jamesbrennan.org/algebra/systems/solution_set.htm
http://cnx.org/content/m18205/latest/?collection=col10624
http://www.jirka.org/diffyqs/ (Differential eqns)
http://www.purplemath.com/
http://tutorial.math.lamar.edu/

PowerPoints
http://www.online.math.uh.edu/HoustonACT/

Tutoring services
http://www.nutshellmath.com/

Collections of Links
http://math.about.com/od/mathhelpandtutorials/Math_Help_and_Tutorials_by_Subject_and_or_Topic.htm
http://pathstoknowledge.net/

Problems
http://projecteuler.net/

Some computer Resources
http://www.graphmatica.com/
http://archives.math.utk.edu/visual.calculus/

UK & US (Texas) doctors compare notes in a meeting. How many shootings does your hospital get? UK: 1-2 a year. US: 2-3 per night. We win, eh!?

http://northern-doc.blogspot.com/2010/02/couple-of-old-chestnuts-001-trauma.html

Abstract Beliefs blog goes into my own experiences and investigations.

Start at the first blog entry and read up.

When the void became aware of itself it split into two, Consciousness and Existence.
In understanding this, there is nothing supernatural going on, but this does not exclude what we don't yet understand as living within existance.

What is past the "light" is the void.

No religion has it right, nor do the Atheist. But all in existence is in part, for it is the splitting of the void (breaking into parts) where all comes from.

It shouldn't be difficult to understand that in death of the body, the sequence is going to use what is of existence in the process, including brain and body chemical reactions. For it is chemical reaction that much changes in existence.

From Science POV, the observer effect proves that we will never prove there is a god, and the true meaning of teh science short hand of "can't prove a negative" catches the other end. And in the hierarchy of how things developed, we are no more able to prove god exist or not, than a 2D creature would be able to prove the existence of a 3d creature.

After I explained many of the miracles of communicated in the bible, in common sense manner, one person responded that god would not break the rules of physics and nature that god created. As that woudl be something of a double standard.

So though science maybe able to establish a chemical change taking place during death, so was there chemical changes taking place at conception, and all through life.

And none of this explains or proves there is of not existence after life.

VDM Publishing itself specializes in print of demand of various people's theses. Something like a vanity press, but as a bonus the authors don't have to pay anything, and VDM takes 80% of the earnings. These are sometimes weak offerings, and often available to download for free, but the practice itself is nothing out of the ordinary. So VDM Publishing's authors really are authors, but of theses and similar.

Alphascript and Betascript Publishing (and Fastbooks, in German) are the Wikipedia-aggregation publishers, imprints of (i.e., marketing names for) VDM Publishing. They entirely avoid the expense of looking around for theses and approaching authors, instead simply sucking related articles from Wikipedia. The book titles are goofy as a result, there are no authors, but the costs are miniscule. With a pool of a few hundred million unsuspecting customers exposed via Amazon and others, it just takes one out of every thousand to misstep to make for a profitable business, one that basically makes money off of people's ignorance. At least cigarettes offer nicotine in addition to lung cancer. To the people who argue, "well, you should just be aware of the problem", this sounds to me like smug "I'd never get fooled, I'm so smart" blather to me. Would you say the same if you were the one who bought such a book? Maybe you would, maybe you're the type of person who blames themselves for getting conned, but I blame the con man.

Speaking of blather, I'm sad that no one's commented on one of the Betascript "editors" names is Lambert M. Surhone, which the Internet Anagram Server turns into "Blather Summoner" as the first match, a great fit for the products offered. My original article on VDM mentions this and other fine anagrams.

One ray of sunshine is that giving these books 1-star ratings on Amazon does kick them down the lists. For example, I gave 1-star ratings to a number of their so-called books on Transnistria on Amazon. 3 of their books were the top three books listed on this subject on Amazon before I rated them, now they appear further down the list.

As far as other firms go, AbeBooks indeed sells Alphascript Publishing (45333) and Betascript Publishing (953) books. Oddly, they are all the same price (vs. those on Amazon, which appear to be priced by the pound), from a few different shops. Borders, to their credit, does not carry any Alphascript or Betascript books. Barnes and Noble does.

I will say one thing for VDM, they do add a tiny bit of value (beyond the wacked titles) in their choices of covers, e.g. this peculiar one for a book on legal disputes about Harry Potter.