Domain: miningco.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to miningco.com.
Comments · 35
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Terrorism isn't the only issue
Interesting, yet so Cold War oriented. This will stop terrorists, how?
Terrorism, state-sponsored or otherwise, isn't the only military issue in the world. The Cold War is long over--but in its place have appeared a number of smaller-scale regional conflicts. Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq are three that spring to mind. North Korea is certainly another potential threat that any responsible military commander will consider.
Do you have a world atlas handy? No? Click this link, it will take you to a small map showing North Korea--with a handy map scale in the lower left hand corner. You'll note that the entire Korean peninsula is less than 200 miles wide--meaning that a small handful of U.S. Navy destroyers armed with these railguns could effectively put incredible firepower onto practically any spot in either country. In practice (because there is a range of high mountains running like a spine down the eastern side of the peninsula) you'd have to position 2-3 destroyers on either side, and you'd have 100% fire cover.
That changes all sorts of equations. It lessens aviation requirements in the Korean theater, it lessens troop requirements in theater, and it is a technology that is easy to demonstrate--but well beyond the technological reach of the North Koreans (first because they have limited metalurgical assets to develop the guns, and second because they have very limited ability to find and thus target a ship far out at sea).
The effect may indeed impact anti-terrorism
The ability to inexpensively drop heavy-duty firepower onto the Korean peninsula raises the very real prospect that the U.S. would not need to keep 35,000 combat troops, and thousands of Air Force troops, not to mention planes, ships, and other equipment, focused on North Korea. Some of those forces could be put to better use--such as tracking, identifying, and killing terrorists. -
Re:Wow
Not merely historical - Latin words and word components are used in medical and scientific terminology. Greek components are more commonly used, though.
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Re:Papa knows best.....
Seriously though, a little lobbying is just fine in my book as long as that lobbying is truly an education of lawmakers on the issues and solutions to problems. The problem becomes when individual companies have such power and control as to dominate the lobbying process with money and resources so as to eclipse all other concerns.
I agree with you, if lobbying was just people attempting to talk to, inform, and educate etc lawmakers about whatever than I would have no problem with lobbying. However, I believe that now almost all lobbying is they type that you describe as a problem; the type where people are simply...lets be frank... buying decisions of law makers.
A "democracy" where money = votes (where he/she who can make the highest bid or has the most money gets what he/she wants) is not a true democracy at all, it's an oligarchy.
I personally feel, that until there is some sort of law that completely outlaws giving money by individuals (corporations counting as individuals) to elected officials the oligarchy will continue; real democracy will only be talked about in intellectual circles, and money = votes "democracy" will continue to be a placebo of the masses.
Just FYI here is some figures to show just what elected officials in the US make each year, I have no idea what UN officials make, so I think they could get by with out taking more money form the wealthy.
President of the US (Clinton was the last to make 200,000 Bush is the first to get this much.) $400,000
Rank and File Senators and Rep's $154,700
Senate Leadership Majority Leader - $171,900 Minority Leader - $171,900
House Leadership Speaker of the House - $198,600 Majority Leader - $171,900 Minority Leader - $171,900
Above info from usgovinfo and how stuff works -
Re:Eighth deadly sin
Congressmen having the same retirement plan and health care as the rest of us
Their retirement plan is tolerable. Other retirement plans have more attractive terms (multipliers higher than 1.0% in the benefits formula), but a lot of workers in the private sector are losing defined-benefit pensions and having to rely more heavily upon defined-contribution plans like 401k's (201k's after the Y2K equity bust:).
Their compensation is beyond what appears on the GS charts, though.
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Re:Funny, I just got this e-mail about SHIT
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MS evil? That's news to me
We all knew this would happen. The only question was when and if anybody noticed. Unfortunately, one of MS defences has always been ignorance. They can claim that they are so big that they don't know sometimes what each section of the company is doing. Take for example the iLoo fiasco. Cynics like me think that the negative public reaction forced them to retract their statements. Billy G has always had a firm grasp of his company. Even though publicly he isn't running the company, as the major stockholder, he would be stupid not to be in charge. MS is still doing business as usual, now they are not so blatant about it.
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Re:Please be respectful on this topic
Gee, for someone with ADHD, you sure managed to focus long enought to write that long post
;p
anyway, jokes aside. Lighten up! Seriously, do you think that Famanoran didn't expect all those jokes? Furthermore, just because Famanoran has ADHD and asked us about possible treatments doesn't mean that the /. community can't have a little fun. Honestly, do you want to wade through 200 comments about what drugs work for them? HELL NO! This site is more about entertainment than anything else. You shouldn't mod people down for not being politically correct. If you don't like such jokes, then why are you still reading /.?
Learn to laugh at yourself, you'll be a better person for it. Humorous AD(H)D stories -
Return to Gold
Gold, it's a lot harder to conterfiet. And when you do, it's radioactive.
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Weapons against Spammers:Some useful links for reducing spam income:
For People with an *nix Account:
- Spamassassin ruleset-based mail analizer. Detects spam quite well, especially if you enable access to Razor and Realtime-Blacklists. Newest release includes a bayesian filter.
- bogofilter My favourite bayesian spam filter. Pro: Very good detection rates after training properly. Con: Needs to be trained.
- Use Mozilla Mail The up-to-date Mozilla release includes a bayesian spam filter which can be easily trained by marking spam messages. Very good detection rate after resonable low training effort.
- Find your favourite bayesian filter here
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Re:A Way Out?I saw a rail map once of northeastern LP of Michigan, it staggered the mind how much rail used to be up in that sparsely populated area.
Yes. It was built to carry iron ore from the Mesabi Range. It was often cheaper to distribute the raw ore to the steel mills in Ohio and Pennsylvania via rail after a short boat ride accross upper Lake Michigan/Lake Huron rather than making the long barge journey down the Great Lakes.
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Not true!This seems to be a hoax. See here
Dont panic!
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Re:Bloated laws.Have to agree. If we paid Congresswhores to trim and compress, find and repeal redundant and plain dumb laws we might actually have a usable, FAIR system.
If you wrote zillions of Lines of Code, much of it having nothing to do with the program you were assigned, would your boss pat you on the back and say, "Great job, Ted! I really like the way you slipped in the Beos port of 'Outpost 2: Back in the Habit' in the TPS Report Generator software. I see you taking my place some day..."
Yet that is just what we have in the hallowed halls of Congress. A bunch of shitty programmers, eating all of our pizza.
.
LOOK!
Real congresswhores subscribe to http://www.govexec.com!
Because we're not Public Servants, we're EXECUTIVES! -
Re:How could this happen?According to the author, theme parks are one on his obsessions, along with boredom thresholds and transhumans.
What Disney doesn't tell you about is all the kids who disappear there after a haircut and change of clothes. Walt wasn't frozen, he's undead and hungry! For more proof, search here
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Re:Foriegn policy debate not so boring after all..Oh, and try to get all the arabs against Saddam Hussein (Iraq has no oil, just Mecca)
Uh, Mecca is in Saudi Arabia, not Iraq. And Iraq is sitting on a shitload of oil. What do you think US was doing cozying up to Iraq 20 years ago? To get Iraqi oil of course. Only Saudi Arabia has more oil than Iraq, and that's just what we know, which, seeing as we haven't been there exploring in a while, is probably greatly understated.
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Okay, Okay . . .Hey there, the perfessor here. I sent that info in for exactly the reasons that I said and analog_line explained. They were a part of the old school legacy and I'm sad to see them go. Personally, even though I, as it happens, am the owner of a 5300 that only just flaked this year, yeah, I think that they were overprices and rude. But, then again, where else could you find Radius monitors and Apple ][ add-ons as of last year without completely gambling on reliability? Other than one of their famed 99-dollar 7200 mobos, I haven't bought from them in *years* but I truly will miss dropping by and looking at the silly goodies.
Okay, so enough sentiment. Y'all are bitchin' too much about lack of places to get goods. You want a frickin' ad? Here's a frickin' ad!
Perfessor Multigeek's Guide to Mac Stuff Sites
(incomplete 'cause otherwise you'll never drop by my site when I put up my new Mac links next month)
Guide to Mac CPUsThis is Apple's own site for detailed specs on all their machines ever. I'm starting you off on the page for older machines to remind you that a well-configured 1996 Mac w/ a USB/Firewire card can run OSX just fine, thank you very much.
Mac of All TradesGetcher used macs here! Pretty visuals, delicious prices, detailed info. Selection could be better and there's no old stuff at all but I can deal with that. Have I bought from them yet? Nope. Am I likely to in the future? Yep.
MacResqThe best place I've found overall to pick up gear. Even the guys in that article figured that out.
Focus of Mac Hardware good workaday resource for doing mods. No cool toys. Considerable good data.
Missoula Mac User Group, Yeah, I know that you haven't heard of them; neither has anybody else outside of Montana AFAIK. Best place for overall newbie resources.
Powermax Cheesy setup, improving selection, good prices.
ResExcellence In the old days I would have suggested MacFixit, but these guys have taken their place. If you've been in the Mac world for a while you'll recognize them as the old-time source extraordinaire of ResEdit hacks.
Small Dog Shrinking selection, great quality, excellent service, annoying interface. Bottom line, these are the guys to turn to for premium service, support, and savvy. Been around quite a while and, hey, they enclose coupons for Ben and Jerry's.
applefritter. They've built Macs into everything from 1930's radios to LEGO people to ziplock bags. You can't buy anything there, but still much fun.
Think Secret Nice little rumor site. Some cool moments.
Of course, for those of us in the New York City area, there's always TekServe, an Apple and media gear mecca. You want to know what Lou Reed, Jam Master Jay, or Oliver Pratt are using? Ask them. You want toys? They got 'em. Ten cent cokes, vintage radios, serious testing gear, and a massive knowledge base. Hell, I once even applied for a job there when it would have meant giving up a far-better paying sysadmin gig. If they're good enough for Steve J., then they're worth a look.
Oh, by the way, the last time that I posted this list I included Shreve. What did I say?
ShreveExpensive, distracting, but the best place to get weird low-end stuff like Mac Plus manuals and Daystar cards.
There. You all feeling better now?
Rustin
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No, cancer-boy was..
I'm sure most of the other old fogeys will remember the name Craig Shergold...
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Re:It's Canadian TerritoryIt's arguably Canadian territory. The major straits and passages between islands are wider than 6 miles across: whether they lie entirely within Canadian territorial waters depends on whether you follow the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. Last I checked, the US and several other nations had not signed this treaty.
And in any case, the UNCLOS exclusively permits all ships the right of "innocent passage" through territorial waters. The right of ships to pass through "choke points" such as the Bosporus or the Straits of Gibraltar is expressly protected.
I'm not saying that I think the Northwest Passage doesn't belong to Canada. But that claim is open to interpretation, and Canada can't do much to limit the passage of cargo ships (and even nonbelligerent warships) through it.
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Hatred, Violence, and Christianity
More
/. posters should be as considerate.
No. More /. posters should feel unrestrained to attack belief systems which:
1) are responsible for large amounts of documented hatred, intolerance, and violence, and
2) fail to prove the existence of a deity which their hatred, intolerance, and violence is committed in the name of.
I'll start you off with one link:
Hatred, Violence, and Christianity
It's trivial to find more cases of how Christianty in the past and present continues to preach from texts which call for the killing of women, homosexuals, etc. by the command of a deity whose existence and authority cannot be demonstrated.
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Re:Price...I wholeheartedly agree.
Man oh man.
In the old days /. just simply refused to acknowledge Macs at all so I guess that this sort of thing should be considered progress. Still no grasp of the obvious but better than the previous invisibility. Still . . .
OK, children, gather round for today's bowl of clue.
First of all, if you're gonna talk Apple mods, then start at applefritter. They've built Macs into everything from 1930's radios to LEGO people to ziplock bags.
Next, (I can't believe that I'm doing this twice in one day!), let's get the vendors and refs out of the way:
Mac of All Trades Getcher used macs here! Pretty visuals, delicious prices, detailed info. Selection could be better and there's no old stuff at all but I can deal with that. Have I bought from them yet? Nope. Am I likely to in the future? Yep.
MacResq The best place I've found overall to pick up gear. Even the guys in that article figured that out.
Powermax Cheesy setup, improving selection, good prices.
Shreve Expensive, distracting, but the best place to get weird low-end stuff like Mac Plus manuals and Daystar cards.
Small Dog Shrinking selection, great quality, excellent service, annoying interface. Bottom line, these are the guys to turn to for premium service, support, and savvy. Been around quite a while and, hey, they enclose coupons for Ben and Jerry's.
Guide to Mac CPUsThis is Apple's own site for detailed specs on all their machines ever. I'm starting you off on the page for older machines to remind you that a well-configured 1996 Mac w/ a USB/Firewire card can run OSX just fine, thank you very much.
Focus of Mac Hardware good workaday resource for doing mods. No cool toys. Considerable good data.
Missoula Mac User Group, Yeah, I know that you haven't heard of them; neither has anybody else outside of Montana AFAIK. Best place for overall newbie resources.
ResExcellence In the old days I would have suggested MacFixit, but these guys have taken their place. If you've been in the Mac world for a while you'll recognize them as the old-time source extraordinaire of ResEdit hacks.
Think Secret The only rumor site I like that I forgot to mention yesterday.
Okay, moving right along. CPUs. Those yahoos think that the only option is to start from scratch. Get a clue. The last pre-Jobs big boxes kicked almighty ass. Amelio may not have been a gifted businessman but he was a much better heavy gear guy. As far as I'm concerned your best bet for DIY is to buy an 8600. It'll be $230, tops. You get a great case, big power supply, floppy drive, cables, and so on. Probably also a Zip, for which I will pity you as that model of Zip just LOVED to come down with the Click o' Death. Even if you flat throw out all the electronics you're still way ahead of starting from a place like Tom's.
Next, processor speed. When will those yahoos figure it out? Before you get obsessed with latest and greatest ask yourself, "what exactly will I be DOING with this machine?" If you're running stuff like BBEdit (ah, my one true love!) or Photoshop for still work then any 400MHz box with fast drives and plenty of RAM will be, for all intents and purposes, instantanteous. Buying anything faster just means that you're acting like the small-donged dimwits who buy $20K stereos to get fidelity five times better then they can hear.
Drives. I'm always amazed at how terrified Windoze-damaged (let alone *nix) folks are at the thought of external drives. Get over it, already. On a Mac all that driver clash claptrap is a distant and not very credible folktale. Get a basic little 6 Gig internal and invest your money in external Firewire devices. You think this LAN party stuff is cool? On a Mac pretty much any well configured boot drive will boot any similar recent Mac. Stop carrying your entire box with you; stick to drives. Even better, get two or three smaller ones instead of one big one and, short of FBI seizures and vast fires, you become crash proof. Mac dies? Plug your drive (you did remember to back up your core data, right?) into another Mac and you're up and running again in minutes.
The future. If you're such an almighty techie that you just *need* to build a new cooler world every year or so, then remember, Mach kernel plus gigabit ethernet equals mongo shared resources. Even if you're too lazy to set up a formal Beowolf system, it's pretty damned easy to just keep adding machines and splitting the jobs between them. Instead of buying a whole new box, maybe you should just buy a second one and start spreading load to it.
OSes. Yup. No question, Jaguar is pretty spiffy. But almost every vendor site above (as well as eBay and co.) will sell you older legit disks and serial num.s for about fifty bucks. If you buy from a place like Small Dog you'll even be clearing out some of that famed Apple back inventory.
That's it. You want more? Then go to my site already (though best to wait a few weeks for my next redesign). Want more then that? Then pay me and I'll think about it.
Promising to not ever again use up time posting tutorials on /.,
Rustin -
Re:Idiot? Ummm, no.
"Do you have any idea how many people live in Chinese cities? Hundreds of millions."
Mind if I move your bong, Sherlock?
The largest city in the world only (Tokyo) contains about 28 million people, followed by New York with about 20 million, not the "hundreds of millions" you're hallucinating about.
Here, ride the snake with some stats, ya moron:
Top 10 Most Populated Cities On Earth -
Interesting Robotics Links
http://ai.about.com/library/weekly/aa072099.htm
http://www.forbes.com/2001/02/13/0213robot.html
http://www1.cnn.com/TECH/9612/11/interactive.robot s/
http://www.daily.umn.edu/daily/1999/12/07/news/new 2/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1 112000/1112411.stm
http://internet.cybermesa.com/~haddrill/robots.htm l
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/97lega cy/robot.html
http://www.it.umn.edu/inventing/98fall/cover/
http://slashdot.org/articles/99/06/21/1934206.shtm l
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.03/robots.htm l
http://ai.miningco.com/library/weekly/aa072099.htm -
Does the Military have Tiny Robots up it's sleeve?
I can just hear Jack Nichelson's voice: "Where does he get all of those toys?"
http://ai.about.com/library/weekly/aa072099.htm
http://www.forbes.com/2001/02/13/0213robot.html%20
http://www1.cnn.com/TECH/9612/11/interactive.robot s/
http://www.daily.umn.edu/daily/1999/12/07/news/new 2/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1 112000/1112411.stm
http://internet.cybermesa.com/~haddrill/robots.htm l
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/97lega cy/robot.html
http://www.it.umn.edu/inventing/98fall/cover/
http://slashdot.org/articles/99/06/21/1934206.shtm l
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.03/robots.htm l
http://ai.miningco.com/library/weekly/aa072099.htm -
Re:Hawking is loosing his mental edge
In actuality, Alan Turing said "If a person was unable to tell the difference between a conversation with a machine and a human, then the machine could reasonably be described as intelligent." This is a very basic description of the Turing test, which is a measure of the level of artificial intelligence of a computer system.
The Artificial Intelligence Enterprises located in Tel Aviv are working on a computer system, which they hope will be able to be mistaken for a 5-year-old child. They claim to have made a breakthrough. It is just a short step from a 5-year-old child to a thinking adult. In addition, you must consider mental illness and even the potential for envy, greed, rage, and hatred once you reach that plateau
You can find more AI news at The Mining Co AI pages -
Amtrak Breaking Canadian Law?
Depending on how they do this, Amtrak could be in trouble in Canada.
Most recently, in Lebron, the Supreme Court relied on the confluence of a number of factors to conclude that Amtrak, a federally chartered for-profit corporation, is "part of the government"{114} for "the purpose of individual rights guaranteed against the Government by the Constitution."
-- http://www.law.miami.edu/~froomkin/articles/reinv
e nt.htmThis would suggest that for tests outside of this area, Amtrak continues to be a private corporation, as the United States Congress stated it's intent to be.
Now - there are Amtrak trains that run in Canada. They pick up passengers, and (presumably) gather some personal information on them. The difference would be that federal Canadian legislation covers train transportation, and thus any personal information gathered will be protected by Canadian privacy legislation.
There is a nice article on this at http://law.miningco.com/newsissues/law/library/br
i efs/ucanadaprivacy.htm, which quite correctly raises more questions than it answers. However - it seems possible that Amtrak is opening itself to legal liability by disclosing this information without a specific request from a law enforcement official (which should include a warrant).And just to cover one item quickly - the Canadian legislation covers Canadians even outside of Canada. They don't lose the protection when they leave the country.
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Re:Where where?
Here's a few, mostly virus-related links (some are a little outdated):
www.quackwatch.com
hoaxbusters.ciac.org
urbanlegends.miningco.com/library/blhoax.htm
korova.com/virus/hoax_index.htm
www.vmyths.com -
Don't buy dot-com monopoly
buy "Ant i-M onopoly"
(or at least read about another nasty lawsuit involving a billion dollar corp and anti-trust law)
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Reading Comprehension
The company is offering them royalties if they put their games under contract, and the authors aren't sure they want their games sold like that, since they're used to giving them away.
A few years ago, the interactive fiction community started doing annual competitions. This, combined with the availability of a language called INFORM, has helped to generate a variety of game s of exceedingly high quality. (There are, of course, some real stinkers.) I've seen a few comments to the effect that "Infocom is all anyone needs". The people who believe that haven't examined the current crop. The only thing Infocom (or Magnetic Scrolls, or Scott Adams
:-) has on some of the current games is nostalgia.These games have been available for free for years from here. This company wants to make these games available through their service, and pay the authors royalties. What should the authors watch out for? What should they keep in mind? Does
/. have any real input for them?If you're interested in this sort of thing:
- rec.arts.int-fiction
- rec.games.int-fiction
- textfire.com
- SPAG
- Stephen Granade's IF Page
That should get you started. There's a LOT of good stuff out there.
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Re:Directories
That's the problem. Obsure is all I ever deal with. You are right about heirarchies, however. miningco is a pretty nice one as well. Oh, and what became of newhoo also....Just thought I'd point them out because I had almost completely forgotton about dmoz, and I keep stumbling across miningco pages from other searches, and they sem worth mentioning...
mcrandello@my-deja.com
rschaar{at}pegasus.cc.ucf.edu if it's important. -
That's the beale cypher
There's a famous cryptogrophy code out there, I forget the name of it, but the story is this: someone discovered it (it came in three pieces), and supposedly cracked the second piece, which explained the first and third pieces of the code would tell him where some rich treasure was. The second piece of the code was coded by using numerical values standing for the number of letters into a document, in this case the document (he claimed he discovered) was the US Constitution (so, the 10th letter in "We the people of the United States..." would be 'l').
That's the beale cyphers you're talking about. There are three sections, saying where it was buried, what it was, and who it belonged to. To date, only the second has been solved, and it was based on the declaration of independence in the same way as this cyper. It is thought that the other two sections are based on similar documents or the same document in different ways. (Or they could be a hoax)
A couple of URL's I found for it are:
http://einste in.et.tudelft.nl/~arlet/puzzles/sol.cgi/cryptology /Beale
http://tre asurehunt.miningco.com/hobbies/pastimes/treasurehu nt/blcd1.htm
They are also mentioned in the sci.crypt FAQ
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Re:Zork
Activision kinda blew it when they bought Infocom. And BTW, there is still quite a cult following for those games. The Z-Machine (Zorks VM) has been reverse engineered. There is a language called Inform. For a plethora of information, go here
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crash of '87
OTOH, by the late 80's, we also were well into a recession big enough that many wanted to classify it as a depression, including one of the largest stock market crashes in history.
"Analog" is presumably thinking of the October 1987 crash. The Mining Company has an article about it that starts as follows:Once again, not true. There was no recession in the late 80s while Reagan was president.
The magnitude of the 1987 stock market crash was much more severe than the 1929 crash - a drop of 22.6% versus 12.8%. The loss to investors amounted to $500 billion. Over the four day period leading up to the October 19th crash the market fell by over 30%. By today's level's this represents a 2,200 point drop in the Dow. However, while the 1929 crash is commonly believed to have led to the Great Depression, the 1987 crash seemed to have no lasting effect on the real economy.
So he was partially right about the crash. Regarding the "it hurt the poor" tone, my guess is that Analog is glomming together the "Reagan-Bush years" and thinking of them as the same thing. Lots of liberal commentators have done that in the past. For the record: Reagan generally cut taxes (but not spending) but Bush raised taxes back to where they were. So fiscal conservatives generally loved Reagan and hated Bush. Reagan served in office from 1980-1988. However much credit you choose to give the president, the poor probably did a lot better in the low-inflation Reagan era than the high-inflation Carter era, but growth rates dropped a lot (and spending and taxing increased a lot) during the Bush years.(Side note: don't blame me, I vote Libertarian)
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Mining the Web
I rely on Slashdot to keep me informed day by day, but if I had more time I'd use The Mining Company more. They "mine" the Web for useful nuggets. It's broken down by topic.
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Send them thisGullibility Virus Warning Posted as a Public Service by Robert Harris
Southern California College
Version Date: February 27, 1998___________________________________
Forwarded Message
Subj.: Virus Warning!
From: HOONOZE
To: All@msn.com
To: Jake5551212@aol.com
To: President@whitehouse.gov
To: Pope@vatican.va
To: 007@MI5.com
To: Flounder@fish.net
To: Etal@etc.com*************************************************
* ****************
WARNING, CAUTION, DANGER, AND BEWARE!
Gullibility Virus Spreading over the Internet!
************************************************** ****************WASHINGTON, D.C.--The Institute for the Investigation of Irregular Internet Phenomena announced today that many Internet users are becoming infected by a new virus that causes them to believe without question every groundless story, legend, and dire warning that shows up in their inbox or on their browser. The Gullibility Virus, as it is called, apparently makes people believe and forward copies of silly hoaxes relating to cookie recipes, email viruses, taxes on modems, and get-rich-quick schemes.
"These are not just readers of tabloids or people who buy lottery tickets based on fortune cookie numbers," a spokesman said. "Most are otherwise normal people, who would laugh at the same stories if told to them by a stranger on a street corner." However, once these same people become infected with the Gullibility Virus, they believe anything they read on the Internet.
"My immunity to tall tales and bizarre claims is all gone," reported one weeping victim. "I believe every warning message and sick child story my friends forward to me, even though most of the messages are anonymous."
Another victim, now in remission, added, "When I first heard about Good Times, I just accepted it without question. After all, there were dozens of other recipients on the mail header, so I thought the virus must be true." It was a long time, the victim said, before she could stand up at a Hoaxees Anonymous meeting and state, "My name is Jane, and I've been hoaxed." Now, however, she is spreading the word. "Challenge and check whatever you read," she says.
Internet users are urged to examine themselves for symptoms of the virus, which include the following:
- the willingness to believe improbable stories without thinking
- the urge to forward multiple copies of such stories to others
- a lack of desire to take three minutes to check to see if a story is true
T. C. is an example of someone recently infected. He told one reporter, "I read on the Net that the major ingredient in almost all shampoos makes your hair fall out, so I've stopped using shampoo." When told about the Gullibility Virus, T. C. said he would stop reading email, so that he would not become infected.
Anyone with symptoms like these is urged to seek help immediately. Experts recommend that at the first feelings of gullibility, Internet users rush to their favorite search engine and look up the item tempting them to thoughtless credence. Most hoaxes, legends, and tall tales have been widely discussed and exposed by the Internet community.
Courses in critical thinking are also widely available, and there is online help from many sources, including
- Department of Energy Computer Incident Advisory Capability at http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/CIACHoaxes.html
- Computer Virus Myths page at http://www.kumite.com/myths
- IBM's Hype Alert web site at http://www.av.ibm.com/BreakingNews/HypeAlert
- Symantec Anti Virus Research Center Hoax Page at http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/hoax.html
- Network Associates Virus Hoax Listing at http://www.nai.com/services/support/hoax/hoax.asp
- Dr. Solomons Hoax Page at http://www.drsolomon.com/vircen/vanalyse/va005.ht
m l - The Urban Legends Web Site at http://www.urbanlegends.com
- Urban Legends Reference Pages at http://www.snopes.com
- Mining Company Urban Legends Page at http://urbanlegends.miningco.com
- Datafellows Hoax Warnings at http://www.Europe.Datafellows.com/news/hoax.htm
Those people who are still symptom free can help inoculate themselves against the Gullibility Virus by reading some good material on evaluating sources, such as
- Evaluating Internet Research Sources at http://www.sccu.edu/faculty/R_Harris/evalu8it.htm
- Evaluation of Information Sources at http://www.vuw.ac.nz/~agsmith/evaln/evaln.htm
- Bibliography on Evaluating Internet Resources at http://refserver.lib.vt.edu/libinst/critTHINK.HTM
Lastly, as a public service, Internet users can help stamp out the Gullibility Virus by sending copies of this message to anyone who forwards them a hoax.
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This message is so important, we're sending it anonymously! Forward it to all your friends right away! Don't think about it! This is not a chain letter! This story is true! Don't check it out! This story is so timely, there is no date on it! This story is so important, we're using lots of exclamation points! For every message you forward to some unsuspecting person, the Home for the Hopelessly Gullible will donate ten cents to itself. (If you wonder how the Home will know you are forwarding these messages all over creation, you're obviously thinking too much.)
************************************************** ****************ACT NOW! DON'T DELAY! LIMITED TIME! NOT SOLD IN ANY STORE!
Home Page of Robert Harris | SCC Home Page
Robert Harris is Professor of English at Southern California College. RHarris@sccu.edu
I keep it around for just this purpose
Mark -
don't be so naiveFor some reason I felt it necessary to log out to make this comment. Like it really matters.
They do it because the big aerospace co's make their hardware. They protect or help out these co's by telling them the European's competitor's bid, and then the US co. bids lower to get the job.
Intercepting international communications
Privacy Rights: Echelon and the UKUSA
go and do a search in your favorite search engine and type in the 3 letter acronym and echelon. See what you get. Very educational.
just don't say the word echelon out loud.
but hey they're only covering "foreign" non-domestic communications right? um. uh. hmm.
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UN supports censorship!Black helicopters? Please. There's other reasons to dislike the UN, such as their support of censorship.
I found this on civilliberty.miningco.com. Basically, the UN is strongly against the idea of legalized drugs. So much that their INBC (International Narcotics Control Board) feels that any inducement to take drugs, even calls for legalization, are illegal and should be punished by prosecution. The relevant article is right here.
And yeah, as soon as I'm 18, I'm registering with the Libertarian Party. Not one of my friends, even the Democratic ones, are going to vote for that putz Gore. Blame his wife, censorious puritan that she is, blame his wacko environmental ideas, but he's dead meat.