Slashdot Mirror

If there was involvement, don't you think we would have done something to Saudi Arabia?

I would like to think so. I would like to be able to trust my leadership to make decisions based primarily what is best for the American people and for the rest of the "Free World." However, as you correctly observered, the Bush family is deeply involved in the oil industry. How do you know the lessor President Bush hasn't placed the interests of the oil companies that provide him, his parents, his extended family and just about every high ranking official in his administration tremendous wealth over and above any other? For the same reason you don't put the fox in charge of the sheep, you shouldn't trust oil magnates to provide unbiased leadership in middle eastern matters. Even defense contractors are prevented from hiring former government employees under certain circumstances to avoid just this sort of dangerous conflict of interest.

Since I'm doing all the research here, why don't you dig up some evidence Dick Cheney has complied with the standing request from the General Accounting Office's request for a list of people he consulted while forming the administration's energy policy? You know, the GAO may may need to sue the current administration to get access to this information. These are unprecedented times. I'm sure this information will get frozen using some wartime excuse.

...said they were the nicest guys ever, very respectable and successful in their community.

While we may not be able to blame Manson's parents for his crimes, can we blame George Bush's parents for any possible wrongdoing? Unlike the Mr. and Mrs. Manson, George HW Bush has a healthy history of compromising American policy and American law to the benefit of other, conflicting interests.

Uncle Sam wants you to help fight the war on terrorism. They demonize you and criminalize you and then ask for your help. What's a hacker to do?

Japanese Americans were poorly treated during WWII. They could have complained, and whined, but they volunteered for the military. A famous Army unit was most made up of Japanese Americans. They fought well and heroically on the European front. Their sacrifice and committment helped change American opinion of Japanese Americans.

It's "civilized".

The US is as "modern" as it gets, so you seem confused...

...and a meter is used to tell me how much my next electric bill will be...

The similarity between flagellar and electrical motors is, however, largely illusory. The flagellar motor does not act by using electric current to generate moving magnetic fields; instead it uses the decomposition of ATP to cause changes in the shape of the molecules that, when combined with a sophisticated molecular ratchet, make the protein shaft revolve.

Just before the big crash of the 1980s, a lot of games were produced for multiple systems (Atari, Colecovision, Intellivision, etc). Companies streamlined the process and didn't take advantage of each system's strengths. The result was was generally crappy games.

Check out the history of Kool-Aid Man from Mattel. It describes the battles between marketing and programmers over developing for multiple systems.

Maybe you missed the part about an ancient copy of Lynx... Last time I checked, Lynx has been HTTP 1.1 complient since version 2.5 at least. Anyone know when that was released?

The fact that he took notice of Perl- and Python-using competitors is significant. He views those languages as being nearly as powerful as Lisp; their main deficiency is that their syntax isn't ``easily extensible.'' Both possess means of extending syntax, but the revealed expressive power is handicapped by the languages' definitions.

Lisp macros work directly on Lisp objects, which exist after parsing but before compilation. Perl mostly lacks that middle ground (or rather it has 12004782 different middle grounds, depending on how you look at it), and Python's AST system is terribly difficult to use (and somewhat non-portable). Both of those languages treat syntax extensions as black magic; Lisp makes them everyday tools.

Lisp does have its problems. The package system is slightly obtuse, and the inheritance scheme in standard CLOS is completely busted. And it's only as portable as its implementations. The free Common Lisp implementations that run on many platforms are interpreters. The compilers run on a very restricted number of platforms. And there's no equivalent to CPAN. But it's still worth a look.

SuperID

Free Database Hosting

Spellswell was one of the first commercial products for the BeOS and remains a supported commercial product. I won an honorable mention in the Be Master's Awards for bringing Spellswell to the BeOS.

It wasn't the "path to riches" I was seeking - I knew that a new operating system would need a spellchecker as a standard system service just as you, and I felt that the right thing to do in combating the Microsoft Monopoly was to bring this standard system service to the BeOS because I had access to its source code and Working Software's consent to use it for this purpose.

In choosing to develop on a particular platform you are voting with your brain and the fingers you type with; I was voting for the BeOS with my efforts. I was not trying to get rich; what I didn't expect was to get lied to.

Both Spellswell for the BeOS, and Spellswell for the Mac OS, which was bundled with Eudora, use the Word Services Suite, which allows each of them to communicate with a number of word processors and email clients as if Spellswell were a built-in menu item.

Several other products support Word Services, and I have proposed to bring it to XWindows as well.

The Spellswell bundled with Eudora was not shareware either and Working Software was paid a license fee for each copy of Eudora it was bundled with. I trust you honored your license agreement and did not make unauthorized copies of this supported commercial product.

The difficulties that Working Software has had are typical of the troubles that every developer of commercial software has had as a result of their decision to support the BeOS. But these difficulties stem not from poor quality products, but from trusting folks like Jean-Louis Gassee to live up to their word.

Mike

This was before widespread use of the Internet by the public (although I was using it at the time). I don't know what network his girlfriend was using, but it was some proprietary system like Compuserve or AOL.

Last Resort patched the GetNextEvent trap in the MacOS to save all your keystrokes into a file. The buffer is flushed and the volume flushed too every few keystrokes, so if you're writing the next Great American Novel and lose power, while the text may be a little garbled, you'll at least get your words back.

Unfortunately for this fellow's girlfriend, this editor was an enthusiastic Last Resort user and he discovered her steamy letters to her online lover in his keystroke files.

I was utterly horrified to find this out but the fellow came up to me at the MacWorld trade show and thanked me profusely.

Last Resort was my first shipping commercial software product (now one of many). It was a simple program that took 8 kb of ram during operation, but we were well aware of the privacy implications. It doesn't try to hide itself - it shows up in your control panels under the apple menu and it displays it's "resort logo" with a palm tree by a beach (an early attempt at art by Yours Truly) at startup.

There are numerous more invasize products meant to snoop on your lovers - or capture passwords. For example, I received some spam from someone who was selling software that would hide itself well and save its keystroke files encrypted on a disk, then make an encrypted network connection to a server to upload the keystroke files from the hapless user's machine.

This wasn't your government snooping on you, this guy was looking for a distributor to publish the program.

This MacUser editor later published a novel about the software industry in which many fictitiously named but software applications that were thinly disguised versions of real products (I guess for trademark reasons) played central roles in the plot. I'm proud to say that his thinly disguised clone for Last Resort was responsible for saving the world!

Now if I could remember his name I'd give you a URL to the book...

Mike

With NT, you can hit ctrl-alt-delete and look at the processes. With *nix, you can do "ps".

But really you need a list of all the drivers that are active on the system, and on a modern OS there will be lots of them.

This is particularly pertinent to something like Linux because anything that's installed as a driver runs in the kernel and can basically do anything it wants. Is there even any user id boundaries for a driver, or does a driver effectively have root priveliges?

Really what you'd have to do is make a list of what is there when you get the system configured the way you like and then monitor for changes to this list.

BTW - a common security hole in a lot of Linux installations is that you should have all the kernel source owned by root and do the compile while logged in as root (don't run X as root - su in a shell window). That way no one can tamper with your modules.

If you build your modules as an ordinary user and install them, there's more of a possibility someone could overwrite them with a crack.

Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc

It ran in only 8 kb of memory and we specifically advertised that it would capture:

• Text that was backspaced over
• Text that was typed and then highlighted and deleted
• Text that was typed and never saved
• Text that was saved but lost due to file corruption or accidental file deletion

Last Resort Programmer's edition will save menu key equivalents to aid testing and debugging and tech support. It helps you reconstruct the sequence of events before a crash.

And yes it would capture passwords but we had the option to pause it or disable it entirely.

I wrote the Mac version but it's available also for DOS and Windows (written by other guys).

Although we tried to make it very obvious when Last Resort was installed on a machine, we get occasional email from people asking how they can make it invisible. We don't tell them, but really if you want to make a hidden keystroke recorder it's pretty trivial.

Don't just worry about the FBI doing this to you - worry about your employer or loved ones. Not long after I shipped Last Resort, one of the editors of MacUser Magazine thanked me personally for it because he'd caught his girlfriend having an online affair - her hot and heavy emails were in his keystroke file.

He later wrote a novel that talked about a lot of software products with fictional names but that were obviously taken from real products. I'm proud to say that the faux-Last Resort saved the world in his novel.

Also I get occassional spam from companies selling keystroke recorders that aren't just invisible, but they encrypt the keystroke files and upload them to a location of your choice. They say this is meant for employee monitoring...

Such monitoring, by the way, has been held to be legal by the courts.

Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc

I Asked Jeeves, and found a nifty Mass Conversion Calculator. It claims that 244 grams is approximately 8.6 oz, or a little over half a pound. Hmm, weighs about as much as two quarter pounders from McDonald's (without the cheese, of course, since I'm allergic). It still seems kinda heavy to tote around in one's front pocket, but with that many features, sure! So what if only half of those many features work in my area!

Aciel
aciel@speakeasy.net

Don Harlow has a huge amount of information about Esperanto, including a detailed history of the more successful auxlangs. There's also a debate on auxlangs.

Don Harlow has a huge amount of information about Esperanto, including a detailed history of the more successful auxlangs. There's also a debate on auxlangs.

Mattel was, it appears, the first company to do this; Atari threatened to sue them, but the 2600 contains no copyrightable software (as the Intellivision and Colecovision did) and all off-the-shelf hardware (basically, three chips), so they really had no grounds to sue. Afterwards, other manufacturers began making 2600 clones.

The rest of that site is also very good; it provides some interesting insights into, not only the Intellivision game system, but the people behind it and the dynamics of the early-80's video game market. Recommended.

Eric
--

Mattel was, it appears, the first company to do this; Atari threatened to sue them, but the 2600 contains no copyrightable software (as the Intellivision and Colecovision did) and all off-the-shelf hardware (basically, three chips), so they really had no grounds to sue. Afterwards, other manufacturers began making 2600 clones.

The rest of that site is also very good; it provides some interesting insights into, not only the Intellivision game system, but the people behind it and the dynamics of the early-80's video game market. Recommended.

Eric
--

Esperanto! La lingvo internacia! Simple! Easy to learn! Fits well on western keyboards!

Learn more here.

So if this is true, How come only Clinton was convicted of something ??

Oliver North was convicted. His convictions were thrown out on appeal on the grounds that the evidence was tainted by evidence he gave under immunity.

Check this for a list of convictions, a summary, etc. Bush pardoned six of the convicted government officials.

And in general, what would you rather have your president do: lie about schtupping some floozy, or sell arms to terrorism-sponsoring countries generally hostile to the United States?

The guys at Fat Wreck Chords sent a prompt reply to my e-mail questioning their inclusion on the RIAA list. It goes as follows:

Date: Thu, 03 Aug 2000 14:14:23 -0700
From: Fat Wreck Chords mailbag@fatwreck.com
To: Adam Fogler afogler@---.---.edu
Subject: Re: Fat Wreck Chords a member of the RIAA? Say it ain't so!

Adam,
We our not part of the RIAA. We are a label that uses RED (though not exclusively) as a distributor, hence maybe that is why our name appears on the list. Still we've never signed anything with the RIAA. That being said, FAT WRECK CHORDS does believe in copyright and is against piracy.

Now on a side note, I hope you are running your computer on LINUX or some other open source software?

floyd

So there you have it... interpret as you wish. They recognize the validity of Open Source, which I think speaks volumes.

I'd like to respond to some of the issues brought up in thread thread with regard to punk in general as well as Fat Wreck Chords. It is true, there are some terrible punk bands. Some of them do just scream like "teenage rebels". However you will find terrible groups in any genre you encounter. I listen to punk rock not only for the amount of energy that comes out of the music, but for the message that comes across. I listen to a lot of Good Riddance, and their music (yes, it is music) hits a lot of levels that pop-rock can only dream of. The message conveyed is not "go get a piercing and piss off your parents," but would be better expressed as "don't judge people by their race, tolerate those who are different, be open-minded, stop hurting each other." Some of the bands you might take offense to would be the corporate-bred pop-punk bands released these past couple of years to ride the mainstream "punk" phase. Bands like Blink 182 and Offspring decided it was more cost-effective to let the mainstream teenyboppers call the shots rather that maintain a little integrity. Oh well... to each his own.

With regard to Fat Wreck's practices, up until this little RIAA thing I've had no troubles with them, and haven't heard otherwise from any source. I've read several interviews from bands within the label who are totally satisfied with releasing records on Fat. Consider this snippet from an interview with Russ Rankin, lead singer of Good Riddance:

Rob: How is your relationship with FAT? Do they treat you well?

Russ: Yeah, definitely! It's really good. We had a three-record deal, this is our fourth. They basically told us that as long as we keep making records they'll keep putting them out. They let us do what we want. They give us financial support. Yeah, it's been great.

I know all of this may sound like a lame little commercial, but I've never had trouble with these guys... their prices are decent, the music is great, and a portion of their profits go to charities like Food Not Bombs. Try and weasel that out of the majors.

Anyways, I doubt anyone will bother with this thread anyways... but I've said my piece, and I'll continue to buy stuff from Fat Wreck.

Peace and Punk Rock!

In fact, Magnavox patented the concept of the home video game system. Atari reportedly licensed this patent at a very low fee. Magnavox later realized their mistake, and demanded hefty royalties from Mattel. Mattel's legal department thought the patent would never stand up in court...but it did, leaving Mattel on the hook for a few megabucks in damages.

Incidentally, if you want to talk about limited system resources...the Intellivision used a GI CP1610 16-bit microprocessor running at about 0.9 MHz (no, that's not a typo, less than one megahertz), a display resolution of 160x96 at 16 colors, about 1K of RAM total, and a few K of ROM containing an elementary "operating system." Despite those limitations, they were able to make some very compelling games...

A good source of info about Intellivision is the Blue Sky Rangers page, created by the programmers who wrote many of the Intellivision games. Recommended.

Eric
--

Kierkegaard, maybe? I agree with you, the idea of 'leap of faith' is, that it cannot be based on any reason or logic. It is purely subjective and rests purely on faith.

Maybe you would find Soren Kierkegaard interesting?

Software Industry Issues: Use Tax Information Page

Use Taxes

Most people are familiar with sales taxes. However, most people are not familiar with the concept of a "use tax", indeed use taxes are frequently confused with sales taxes.

The use tax is a tax imposed by states to collect taxes on sales which do not take place in their state. The tax is meant to insure that all purchases are taxed, whether purchased locally or from out of state sellers.

Contrary to some recent press reports, this is NOT a new tax.

Apple had always promoted the use of its new "Apple Event" technology by giving spellcheckers as an example; instead of propriety OEM spellcheckers that are different for every application, the user could have a single speller that is shared among all their applications. Since Working Software published Spellswell we felt we should take the lead in this.

It works really well and in fact can be used for any text operation, such as grammar checkers, address books, HTML verification and the like. Text encryption would work fine and I was working on a text encryptor but never finished it. I since led the binding of it to the BeOS (where is uses BMessages instead of Apple events) which you can read about here and I'd like to make an XWindows version, perhaps using the Corba API's provided by Gnome.

Recently I was contacted by someone who was searching for prior art. It seems someone patented interapplication spellchecking protocols and he has the hope that Word Services was developed early enough to invalidate that patent. I don't know the patent in question or who holds the patent.

What I especially have a gripe about is that I only started working on this method because the idea of it had been promoted for several years by Apple as an obvious application of a new technology they were promoting.

Mike

Pretty cool - I liked the SimCraft better, because he was at least offering plans - but the Rock n' Ride is a clean design (though I can't say much about the web page).

It appears to be a German built product, so it will probably be a quality device - does any of our German /.ers know of the source company?

They do give assembly instructions, so it might be possible to "roll your own" from that - maybe build some PVC air cylinder's ala SimCraft, attach it to a 2x4 frame, a bucket seat and some steel - one PIC - whammo! - instant homebrew Rock n' Ride!

So, for those who would like more sim plans, etc - here are some links:

http://www.senet.com.au/~dunkleyj/
http://www.c adsoftusa.com/~kls/fltsim/
http://www .acesim.com/main.html
http://mypage.direct.ca/b/b simpson/jhbc~1.html

Last but not least, my favorite - Omniscience Futureneering's JoyRider Plans - a homebrew 3-axis flight simulator.

Be sure to check out their other offerings - like the radio controlled, vid-cam rocket...

Pretty cool - I liked the SimCraft better, because he was at least offering plans - but the Rock n' Ride is a clean design (though I can't say much about the web page).

It appears to be a German built product, so it will probably be a quality device - does any of our German /.ers know of the source company?

They do give assembly instructions, so it might be possible to "roll your own" from that - maybe build some PVC air cylinder's ala SimCraft, attach it to a 2x4 frame, a bucket seat and some steel - one PIC - whammo! - instant homebrew Rock n' Ride!

So, for those who would like more sim plans, etc - here are some links:

http://www.senet.com.au/~dunkleyj/
http://www.c adsoftusa.com/~kls/fltsim/
http://www .acesim.com/main.html
http://mypage.direct.ca/b/b simpson/jhbc~1.html

Last but not least, my favorite - Omniscience Futureneering's JoyRider Plans - a homebrew 3-axis flight simulator.

Be sure to check out their other offerings - like the radio controlled, vid-cam rocket...

The link I couldn't find before. It turns out that the info that I remember reading before isn't there anymore. After a bit of research it does apprear that Klingon speakers are rare and there are a fair amount of Esperanto resources on the web. Have never meet anyone that speaks Esperanto I do find the 2 to 10 million mark to be very high but I tend to hang out in countries where English is the offical language.

In ten or twenty years, I may use a filtering program for the sake of efficiency. But I would want to know exactly what kinds of decisions went it to building that filter....

I wore my BeOS Master's Award polo shirt that I won (honorable mention) for porting Spellswell from MacOS to the BeOS

(It uses a protocol called Word Services that links word processors and email clients to spellers and other text services (including text encryption); the award was as much for bringing Word Services to the BeOS as for Spellswell itself. I plan to do the same for Linux soon, possibly through the CORBA techniques they use in Gnome - http://www.gnome.org seems to be down or I'd link to the relevant page there.)

I'm pretty active in the Be developer community.

I'm also pretty critical of Be because of their complete lack of any sense as far as managing the business and handling developer relations and I have no qualms about making my views known to them and other developers, both in public and in private discussions.

I've always been a shy and quiet person but there's something about living through experiences such as I've had that makes such things as speaking up in public about mere work matters pretty easy in comparison.

Remember my sig: Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. Words I live by.

I thought it would provoke quite a lively response to post the link to the Metro article to BeUserTalk and BeDevTalk. I got a couple private responses and one public one. I was very glad to get the responses I did get though.

On the other hand, I submitted this article to Slashdot but figured it wouldn't get posted, considering the dozens of articles I've submitted that I think were more directly relevant to open source programming, privacy, free speech, encryption and so on, but this is the one that gets on.

And my manic depression page, which grew to get 3000 hits last month (it's linked from some bipolar sites and the bipolar category on Yahoo), has gotten 4800 hits in ten hours.

No, I should have worn my Release Your Inner Nerd t-shirt that I bought from the Slashdot booth at the Linuxworld Expo in San Jose a while back.

(Wore it shopping for wedding supplies with my fiance the other day :-) ).

Michael D. Crawford

I wore my BeOS Master's Award polo shirt that I won (honorable mention) for porting Spellswell from MacOS to the BeOS

(It uses a protocol called Word Services that links word processors and email clients to spellers and other text services (including text encryption); the award was as much for bringing Word Services to the BeOS as for Spellswell itself. I plan to do the same for Linux soon, possibly through the CORBA techniques they use in Gnome - http://www.gnome.org seems to be down or I'd link to the relevant page there.)

I'm pretty active in the Be developer community.

I'm also pretty critical of Be because of their complete lack of any sense as far as managing the business and handling developer relations and I have no qualms about making my views known to them and other developers, both in public and in private discussions.

I've always been a shy and quiet person but there's something about living through experiences such as I've had that makes such things as speaking up in public about mere work matters pretty easy in comparison.

Remember my sig: Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. Words I live by.

I thought it would provoke quite a lively response to post the link to the Metro article to BeUserTalk and BeDevTalk. I got a couple private responses and one public one. I was very glad to get the responses I did get though.

On the other hand, I submitted this article to Slashdot but figured it wouldn't get posted, considering the dozens of articles I've submitted that I think were more directly relevant to open source programming, privacy, free speech, encryption and so on, but this is the one that gets on.

And my manic depression page, which grew to get 3000 hits last month (it's linked from some bipolar sites and the bipolar category on Yahoo), has gotten 4800 hits in ten hours.

No, I should have worn my Release Your Inner Nerd t-shirt that I bought from the Slashdot booth at the Linuxworld Expo in San Jose a while back.

(Wore it shopping for wedding supplies with my fiance the other day :-) ).

Michael D. Crawford

Case in point: Americans have this perception of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Claudia Schiffer, and Nina Hagen as being dumb; this perception may or may not be accurate, but much of the perception is due to the fact that these people speak imperfect english, or speak it with an accent. The native speaker always has a psychological edge.

Esperanto has 16 grammatical rules, and no exceptions. It is highly regular, avoids noun genders, and all verbs are conjugated exactly the same way. It is very easy for Westerners to learn, and easier than any Western language for Easterners. There are, at last count, over 2 million Esperanto speakers, although this estimate is admittedly optimistic, as most "Esperanto speakers" have limited experience actually speaking the language. This means that about one in every 3000 people has some working knowledge of Esperanto.

Esperanto needs much wider acceptance before it can became a linga franca; English, at the moment, enjoys that status. However, as most Slashdotters would agree, just because something is the de-facto standard, doesn't mean either that it is the best choice, or that it should remain the standard, eg. Windo[(ws)(ze)].

Esperanto can be learned so rapidly, that if you have any interest at all, I recommend that you check it out. You can get a working knowledge good enough read the usenet groups or participate in the IRC rooms within a couple of weeks of regular study (an hour). There is even a free 10-lesson email course with tutors which provides all of the foundation you need to start communicating. The Esperanto community is, in a lot of ways, much like the Open Source community, and I'm constantly suprised that I don't see more cross-polination between the two groups. You will notice, however, that KDE comes with fairly extensive Esperanto language support.

Even TravelLang has an English/Esperanto translator, and some of their translation software uses Esperanto as the medium language, much as XML can be used as a many-to-many point of translation.

More information can be found at:

• Free Esperanto Course
• Esperanto Access
• Esperanto.com
• Esperanto.net
• Esperanto League for North America (ELNA)
• The FAQ for the Esperanto Beginner's mailing List

I have had only two providers so far to host my site (which, as of now, has yet to actually go online, but that is another story). Both have been great providers, and why I switched from one to the other will become apparent.

My first provider was WebCom, an outfit in Cali (IIRC). Their interface was fast, and they were real easy to set up with. Everything is web based - no need to telnet or FTP or anything (though I think this may be an option). Security is real tight - they don't allow outside developed scripts for CGI, you can only use what they have. If you are setting up an e-commerce site (I don't think you are, but if you want to...), this place is perfect - the CGI they offer is mainly for such a site, with shopping cart CGI and such, plus the option of CC verification. Customer support was great, the best of any provider I have had. They also seemed to have great uptime. Cost for the service was a little high for such hosting (and for what you got), but I think the security of the site and the customer service made up for it. Now, with all these great features, why did I switch?

They were too restrictive.

I _wanted_ to telnet in, FTP in - not as an option, but as the standard way of doing things. I wanted shell access to my account, and I wanted to be able to write my own CGI scripts for my site (hey, if I needed shopping cart software, I could write it myself, or find it on the net). I wanted some kind of *nix for the site. I wanted more space, and any web interface I used, I wanted to be short and to-the-point. I also wanted a place that didn't care too much about what I put on my site, or if I wanted to "rent" a portion of my site for others pages. After a bit of searching, and a banner or two on /. - I found such a site:

Hurricane Electric

I chose them because of these reasons. Their customer service so far has been great. Most questions you have, though, can be answered by reading through the online documentation. This is a site that presumes you know what you are doing - they don't do hand holding here. This is what I wanted (having started using the internet via a dialup shell account back in 1993, I don't have a fear of *nix command lines - in fact, I love them). I have them auto-bill my credit card, so I don't have to mess with billing (they still send out an invoice in my email, so I can see what is happening - and I can check the charges online). I can telnet or FTP in from anywhere, and check my mail with PINE - or I can set up a POP client to read my email. The former is useful for work, if I just want to check up on anything, while I use the latter for home, where I would actually answer my email.

The one thing they don't allow is mailing-list scripts (which is understandable). So, for my future site, which I plan on having a mailing list, I am going to use eGroups, and for my webring, I will use Webring (I could have set up my own private webring, using some PERL script I found on the net, with a little tweaking, but the only reason I was thinking of going that route, was because I didn't know if Webring support Lynx clients - they do, so I didn't feel I wanted to waste time going the custom route). Which brings me to my last point...

It seems like HE understands the net - they don't use glitzy graphics or such for their site - it is fast and efficient HTML - heck, it even looks hand coded (I don't know how true this is), which I like (I detest WYSIWYG editors - VI is your friend!). They understand that information is what makes the net go, that graphics can get in the way, especially when not used properly.

Their prices are competitive, and you get a lot of space for little money per month (not as much as some places, but enough for most sites). But they are not for the faint of heart, or for those who need help setting up a site - go to WebCom for that.

Some anonymous coward dun said:

Thanks for posting. Mixing Christian fundamentalism and politics is like mixing fertilizer and a Ryder truck. One can only imagine the Oklahoma City that these psychopaths have in mind for us if they ever get their way.

Trust me when I say you do not want to find out what they may have in mind. Almost everything points to it being very, very, very bad for the humans of this planet and for other living things...

Specifically, an awful lot of people in the Religious Right seem to think that a fair amount of stuff in Revelation (the Book of Apocalypse for you Catholic/Orthodox folks) points to a worldwide nuclear war. For years, the fundies have claimed Russia would be the one to start it--when this finally became completely untenable, they claimed it was Iraq. In any case, they're firmly convinced that SOMEONE is going to start some kind of nuclear conflict which will erupt worldwide.

There are actually a surprising number of books out in the fundamentalist circles regarding this...some of them even trying to reach out to popular culture (like Hal Linden's books).

The really scary thing about this is a) they are firmly convinced this is a Good Thing because b) they are also firmly convinced that before this happens they are going to be Raptured up and will get the enjoyment of seeing the sinners (and the entire planet) burn in nuclear hellfire from front-row seats in Heaven. (Yeah, there's a rather shocking amount of hate and resentment even in their stories of Eternal Reward. Sick, huh?).

I think I can truthfully say that little would scare me more than a leader of the Religious Right with his finger on The Button. And I can base that on how (before I walked away) I used to see the preacher and darn near the entire congregation nearly jizz themselves when the Cold War threatened to heat up...and later (after I'd walked away but was still forced to occasionally attend) when the Gulf War hit because they were utterly, completely convinced that this was going to be the Big One...and after THAT, Y2K (and in all three cases it was going to be Russia's Fault--these guys STILL aren't out of the Cold War mindset!)...I don't want these guys anywhere NEAR anything remotely resembling a nuclear weapon, thank you. :P

It is interesting you mention Oklahoma City, though. The perpetrators are suspected of being in with Christian Identity groups; Christian Identity is a really warped version of fundamentalism that claims that white folks are the "true Children of Israel" and that the Jews are actually the literal children of Satan--all the "brown" and "yellow" folks are apparently "mud people" in their eyes. In fact, the bombing is thought to have been done to parallel the plot of a book popular in Christian Identity and other racist circles called "The Turner Diaries" which basically depicts these groups committing various terrorist acts and eventually overthrowing the US Government.

Now, I'm sure most of you are wondering just why the hell I'm mentioning Christian Identity when we're talking about (presumably) relatively non-racist fundies. Well, it turns out the two do have some links, especially on the more radical sides of the Religious Right that they never want to show on TV...

First off, the US Taxpayer's Party (the second-largest fundamentalist party in the US [the first is that part of the Republican Party that the Religious Right has effectively hijacked]--it also may be now running under the name "Constitution Party")--which has explicit party platforms calling for the US to essentially establish a theocracy--has links to not only a veritable who's who of the Religious Right (among them--James Dobson of Focus on the Family [a branch group of FoF, Family Research Council, is heavily pushing the censorware drive in Holland] [info here], Senator Bob Smith [info here], Matt Trewhella [who has advocated stuf like bombing abortion clinics, is a Christian Reconstructionist, and his group Missionaries to the Preborn darn near makes Operation Rescue look pacifist in comparison; info here], Pat Buchanan [yes, as in the guy who's now going for the Reform Party nomination and who has almost singlehandedly succeeded in destroying that party--info here], the heads of Operation Rescue, and the Rev. Rushdoony [the "main guy" behind Christian Reconstructionism--the canard that the Founding Fathers somehow meant the US to be a theocracy]) but also a surprising number of links to militia groups and--here's the kicker--Christian Identity groups (info here and here (this one is especially good--it turns out the very leader of the US Taxpayers Party runs a militia and calls for churches to form "Christian Patriot" militias), here, here, here, and here; if memory serves, there's also reference in the ADL's report on militias).

There's some more info here on the politics of the US Taxpayers Party. Keep in mind that this party has gotten big support from the Religious Right and (should the Republican Party ever find its cojones again and tell the Religious Right exactly where to go) it's strongly thought that (at the least) the 35 states in which the GOP party apparatus has been hijacked by the Religious Right would go to the US Taxpayers Party, as well as the majority of the Religious Right supporters of the GOP now. As it is, the US Taxpayers Party got on the ballot in 40 states last Presidential election...which is damned scary enough.

For some more happy links between the "non-racist" bits of the Religious Right and the scary folks making fertiliser bombs...

1) The Arthur S. DeMoss Foundation (a big Religious Right think-tank/bankroller--these are the guys who have the adverts for adoption saying "Choose Life" and the guys who have Jeff Gordon and NFL stars and the lady from "Children of a Lesser God" hawking "Power for Living" on TV ["Power for Living", btw, is basically a guide on how to get involved in coercive fundy groups :P]...) has founded at least one Christian Identity group in past.

2) Larry Pratt, who has worked with Pat Buchanan (among others) has some rather extensive links to militia and outright racist groups (more info, including on links between the Religious Right and the far right, here).

3) It seems that the Coors family (major bankrollers of the Religious Right) and the Heritage Foundation may have links to racist groups (info here).

4) The Free Congress Foundation, a subsidary group of the Heritage Foundation, has links with many racist and fascist groups (info here).

5) Pat Robertson could actually be considered borderline between "non-racist" fundies and the scary guys on the far right. Many of his books have actually contained "code words" common in the racist community, and at times he's been outright overt about it...it's probably best that you look here (thank you, Google, for caching--surprisingly, this is actually a critique from a conservative viewpoint!) or here to hear the guy in his own words...

6) More info here on a funding-group active in California.

This is not to indicate fundamentalists are racists. Most aren't, and I suspect most would be shocked to find what their leaders support...but there ARE links there, sadly. I'd be remiss if I didn't point that out (and for youse in Holland--it turns out that Focus on the Family is the group most consistently associated with the US Taxpayers Party--you may be able to use this to your advantage, possibly).

Back in the early 80s, there was a good deal of competition for videogame programers. Companys were known to poach each other's talent. Mattel Electronics (Intellivision) attempted to avoid this by not listing the names of their developers. Instead, the group was referred to as The Blue Sky Rangers.

30,000 AU = approx .474 light years. The next-nearest star is about 4 light years away I think. So about 1/10 the distance. Pretty damn far!
--

tgd sez:

2) You (at least in the US) revoke your US citizenship (you can't have dual citizenship in the US past the age of 18) and you learn REAL fast what a plus it really is in the world to be a US citizen.

A wee bit of correction on two fronts:

1) It is and has been legal to have dual citizenship in the United States, as long as you were born a citizen of the US, since 1967 (when the Supreme Court ruled the law stating you couldn't be a dual citizen was unconstitutional); it has been expressly permitted by law since 1978. (Mind, the Department of State doesn't encourage it, but they CANNOT legally keep you from doing it now, and anymore unless the US is at war with the other nation you want to be a citizen of it is next to impossible to just lose your citizenship.) There's quite an informative FAQ that provides more info on dual citizenship for US citizens; the author himself is a dual US/Canadian citizen.

There are advantages to being a US citizen, but there are also some distinct disadvantages (as compared to, say, Canada)...for starters, it's next to impossible for private citizens to work on strong encryption if they want to export it outside the US (there are cases where people have literally had to renounce their US citizenship so they could continue to work on encryption-related stuff). Terrorists are considerably more likely to target US citizens than, say, Canadians (to the point the State Department has to issue advisories warning Americans not to go to certain countries; I somehow doubt Canadians have to worry so much). Countries are probably going to be less likely to respect consular agreements regarding prisoners, considering the US has flagrantly violated international law on repeated occasions regarding non-US-citizen prisoners such as required consular access and notification (more info is at Amnesty International's web pages; the only other countries that routinely violate consular access requirements are third-world countries with severe records of human rights abuses...positively shameful if you think about it, and I don't blame other countries for being pissed off at the US for it). US citizens have to be REALLY careful when shopping overseas, because most of the world trades with Cuba while US citizens are actually prohibited from buying anything (even clothes) that are MADE in Cuba on pain of imprisonment (yes, people HAVE been locked up for importing Cuban cigars bought in Canada). There are several countries (including Cuba) that US citizens are NOT allowed to visit without literally filing a request with both the State Department and the Treasury Department--in some cases, requiring a list of family members and the last time you were in the country--on pain of imprisonment, and on the off chance you DO get approved (which is almost never) you can only spend $100/day for ALL needs--food, lodging, etc.--and you cannot bring ANY souveneirs back. Some countries will actually give you a worse time if you are American (as opposed to, say, Canadians). It is hellaciously harder to get citizenship in many countries if you are American than Canadian (most folks in Commonwealth countries can get citizenship in other Commonwealth countries fairly easily; if you aren't from one, you have to take a points test to see if you can even get a visa). Last I heard, embassies of most other "First World" nations with the exception of Israel do not have to be periodically closed down due to threats of terrorism and yahoos attempting to occasionally blow up embassies (and occasionally succeeding at it).

(Yes, I do know what I am talkin' on here, btw. I read travel advisories for kicks. :) I also had a friend of my love's, who is from Belfast, come over...he couldn't believe some of the stuff US citizens routinely put up with, especially with travel restrictions and censorship [he was quite amazed that we cannot legally say "fuck" on the air, and this is why a popular British comedy which involves several priests and naughty language (which is also apparently wildly popular in most of Europe and the rest of the free world) will probably never see the light of day in the US, not even on late-night PBS :P]. And he's from a part of the world we normally associate with a bunch of gits on both sides trying very hard to blow each other up on account of a long-standing religious pissing match. And he says WE'RE fucked up. :P)

From this site:
If I am a dual US/other citizen, is there any way I can lose my US citizenship?

Although current US law forbids the government from taking your citizenship from you against your will, it does permit you to give it up voluntarily. This has placed the US State Department in the complex position of determining whether someone who claims to be a US citizen has, in fact, given up that citizenship by his voluntary statements or actions.

In the early days of court-mandated acceptance of dual citizenship, State Department officials (hostile as most of them were to the whole idea of dual citizenship) tended to play hardball with people who claimed dual status, looking for almost any excuse to revoke US citizenship, and frequently ruling that a person had voluntarily forsaken his US ties despite steadfast protestations or even convincing evidence to the contrary.

On 16 April 1990, though, the State Department adopted a new set of guidelines for handling dual citizenship cases which are much more streamlined and liberal than before.

The State Department now says that it will assume that a US citizen intends to retain (not give up) his US citizenship if he:

is naturalized in a foreign country;

takes a routine oath of allegiance to a foreign country; or

accepts foreign government employment that is of a "non-policy-level" nature.

Apparently, a "routine oath of allegiance" to another country is no longer taken as firm evidence of intent to give up US citizenship, even if said oath includes a renunciation of US citizenship. This represents a dramatic reversal of previous US policy; it used to be that any such statement was taken rigidly at face value (as in the Supreme Court's 1980 Terrazas decision).

This presumption that someone intends to keep US citizenship does not apply to a person who:

takes a "policy-level" position in a foreign country;

is convicted of treason against the US; or

engages in "conduct which is so inconsistent with retention of U.S. citizenship that it compels a conclusion that [he] intended to relinquish U.S. citizenship."

The State Department says that cases of these kinds will be examined carefully to determine the person's intent. They also say that cases falling under the last criterion mentioned above (conduct wholly inconsistent with intent to keep US citizenship) are presumed to be "very rare."

Since this new country makes you have a policy role as part of the constitution you are subject to the loss of U.S. citizenship.

You (at least in the US) revoke your US citizenship (you can't have dual citizenship in the US past the age of 18)

It's not "simple". The INS has a pretty long backlog for citizenship applications, and it's not exactly like getting a driver's license once you do get through the backlog. Even getting a green card isn't exactly trivial.

Use the Web, Luke. The US Dual Citizenship FAQ is out there.

If you got the money, then go here:

Flogiston

or, if you don't, go here:

Omniscience Futureneering Flight Sim Chair

Either way, these are much better devices...

you do realize that the blue sky rangers programmed vectron to be unbeatable, right? Intelivision RULES!!! classicgaming
blue sky rangers
-davek