I guess if you are in middle- or high-school, this could be a nice service for storing your homework and such. But if you are a business, or your files need to stay confidential for some other reason? I don't think Google Drive can be trusted with that kind of material. Even if it is encrypted or such. Just saying...
If major Universities required their faculty to publish facsimiles of any papers they submit to various journals on a _free_access_ "academic papers repository" section of the University's webpage, then we'd have the best of worlds. Those willing to pay for academic journals could still do so. Those hunting for a particular academic paper, not knowing in advance whether its contents are actually useful or not, could simply look it up on the University's _free_access_ academic papers section. Problem solved.
At the bottom of his blog it says: "I am not a doctor, dietitian nor nutritionist in fact I have no medical training of any kind. If I can figure this out so should they if it wasn’t for their
A) Intellectual Laziness
B) Willful ignorance
C) Greed
D) All of the Above:)"
... tends to catch a cold as well. This isn't just true for Economics, where the phrase originated. If America borks up the "legal protections" that protect the "right to communication privacy", the rest of the world - developing or developed - is also bound to bork up its own "communications privacy" laws. So to America: Please don't set a super-fucked-up example in this matter, that the rest of the world then tries to follow or emulate (because if America does it, you know, its OK to do the same, too...). Please keep communications data private, please keep strong legal "privacy protections" in place, or else we who are outside America will also loose our "communication privacy", due in no small part to the bad example America sets in this matter. If you proclaim yourself the "Leader of the Free World", there is a certain responsibility that comes with that - to lead by "good example", not "bad example".
When the Saudi, Bahraini or Qatari governments buy "mass-surveillance technology" by the million-load, that lets them spy on all of their citizens, its perfectly "OK". After all, the Saudis provide the U.S. with cheap oil, Bahrain is another important oil-producer, and the Qataris provide military bases from which the U.S. can launch convenient wars against "rogue states" like Iraq. But when Iran & Syria do the exact same thing - buying snooping gear from the free market to keep their population in check - they are suddenly "evil", and "decisive sanctions" have to be imposed on them, and the companies. ------ Obama, either be fair and impose those sanctions on ALL surveillance tech vendors and ALL of their middle eastern clients (and perhaps the U.S. too?), or give your Nobel Peace Prize back, and let someone take office who isn't such a "double standards wielding" hypocrit. ------- The best solution to all of this would be to ban the creation, marketing and selling of mass-surveillance systems across the entire world. But where is the leader-class that could pull this off? Nowhere. The politicians who currently lead the "free world" seem to be far too fascinated by being able to "listen to" and "track" everybody within their state borders, to ever think about abolishing this practice in the first place.
While Dubya was in office in the U.S., Iran had a President named Mohammed Khatami. Unlike Ahmedinejad, Khatami was a moderate cleric in favor of womens' rights, political reforms, greater freedoms for Iranians, and other moderate ideals. Khatami also was no opposed to political cooperation with the United States, or at least the restoration of diplomatic relations. Bush could easily have reached out a (limited) hand of friendship, and Khatami might very well have shaken it. Relations between Iran and the U.S. could have improved markedly. What happened instead? Bush's Neocon advisers wanted no cooperation/relationship whatosever to develop with Iran. They wanted to maintain Iran's status as an "Enemy of the United States" (perhaps because Israel was also adamant that things be so, and Iran stay politically isolated). So Dubya never reached out to Khatami politically, and actually did the diametric opposite: Iran was included in post 9/11 America's new, and somewhat stupid concept of a "Axis of Evil" that's messing up everything for everyone. No relationship between the U.S. and Iran whatsoever flourished as a result. Not even a limited one. And what happened to Khatami? The moderate Iran President was eventually overruled by Iran's religious hardliners for being too "moderate" or "modern", and his post went to Mahmoud Ahmedinejad. The window of opportunity for improving relations between Iran and the U.S./West to some degree was there. But the Neocons wanted Iran to stay on the "Enemies of the U.S." list, and did their best to ensure that no rapprochement with Iran would take place. -------- That brings us to today. Iran and the U.S. are currently enemies. Neither side sees any value in engaging in serious talks or toning down the jingoistic rhetoric. The Iran situation could, at any point, turn into another "Hot War" (Israel in particular seems to like that idea a lot). And all this because Dubya's advisers told him not to shake Khatami's hand. The situation could have been very, very different if the West had engaged in even "limited relations" with Khatami's vision of a more moderate Iran.
For example, Nvidia and ATI could have agreed - in secret - that neither company shall surpass the other's current flagship 3D card by a speed improvement greater than 5%. They could also have agreed that the most speed gain to be put on the 3D card market, in any one year, shall be no greater than 15% higher than the previous year. What about realtime hardware raytracing for games? Both companies may already have prototype 3D hardware capable of this. But they may have agreed amongst themselves - again in secret - that nobody will put a realtime raytracing based 3D card on the market before 2018. ------- Given what little we, the public, know about "secret agreements" between these supposedly "competing" companies, there may very well be a graphics card or CPU prototype in some lab somewhere that runs 2 - 5 times faster than the fastest hardware currently on the market. But, by honoring a "secret agreement" between competitors, nobody would release that hyperfast graphics card or CPU into the market before the year 2020. That would buy these companies "8 years" worth of steady profiteering from releasing incrementally improved hardware (i.e. each time you buy a new CPU or gfx card, you only get a 15 - 25% speed improvement, rather than a 200 - 500% improvement). Does this sound like a Conspiracy Theory? Of course it does. But could it actually be true? Yes, I believe that there is a chance that precisely this kind of "lets all take it slow with hardware speed improvements" agreement between competitors could be real.
Write your letter on a computer. Print it out. Sign it with blue ink. Then fold the letter carefully, and mail it via registered mail. Make sure you have your contact details like your email address in the top part of the letter. Chances of your letter being read are now dramatically better than if writing an email. Remember that these people get hundreds of thousands of emails a day. And that only a few - maybe with a heading that stands out from the crowd - actually get read. Good luck.
The IP Nazis know that fighting a battle against the entire internet is difficult, costly and unpopular (not that they care the least bit about that last point). So they resort to a much cheaper, age-old, yet highly effective scare-tactic instead: Making "examples" of people. They try to identify high-profile Super-Nodes amongst the filesharers - like the guy who ran MegaUpload dot com. They then put into effect a "America will fuck you up bad regardless of where you may be in the World, pirate-boy" tactic. The message it sends to ordinary people is clear: "We don't care who you are. We don't care where you are. If you pirate our corporate IPs, we will land some law enforcement muscle in your location, and fuck you in the ass with an electrified baton". --------- This is one - probably illegal - way to fight against piracy. Unfortunately, it will eventually backfire on the MAFIAA's asses, and with it also on America. Everybody who watches movies or plays games these days is pretty aware that the quality of said products is going in one direction with each year that passes - down, down, and down more. Everybody knows that the people who produce this stuff don't give a shit about anything but profit, and that they are crooked enough to buy good reviews for bad produce. So eventually, sales of the latter will collapse not because people were pirating so much of it, but rather because people don't want to spend their hard-earned money on it anymore. Its time for functional alternatives to Hollywood and GameWood to arise. I personally believe that will actually happen eventually, when people discover that there are viable alternatives to U.S. made movies and games. As for Kim Dotcom... even if he's not extradited and sentenced to hard prison, people who run operations similar to his are scared of becoming "the next Kim Dotcom". ------- But scare strategies rarely work sattisfactorily in the long run. In the long run, the Movie and game industries will have to try to create a better product sold at a fair price (not the case currently). Or they will eventually face the same fate as MegaUpload - here and thriving today, gone and bankrupt(ed) tomorrow.
Do you mean by this that Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo & friends willingly turn millions of emails over to the NSA and other 3 letter agencies? If so, you are probably right... The question is, just how long has this been going on, and how do we sue the f__k out of these email providers for what they are doing?
Last time I checked, there were plenty of reports of malicious iOS apps clandestinely hoovering up your private data/contacts, and sending that bundle to the app's developers, who will use it for Lord-knows-what-nefarious-purpose. With this being the case, how can anyone possibly claim that iOS is "secure & malware free". The malware doesn't have to be a Trojan or Virus. It can also be a nasty little app that secretly sends your private data to a server somewhere that you don't even suspect exists. ----- I don't understand why Apple fans need to maintain a strange belief into the "infallibility" of Apple's ecosystem. Apple is plenty fallible in my humble opinion. And this is just another snide attempt to advertise the "Extra-Special-Specialness" of using Apple products.
So if those of us who live outside the U.S. use an American service - any American service - like Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, Windows Messenger or perhaps mobile kit like an iPhone, are our messages thrown into the NSA Ueber-Surveillance-Database as well? If this is the case, the U.S. is breaking dozens and dozens of national/regional laws. Let me get this straight... You advertise a "free", supposedly "reliable" and also supposedly "private" service like say Gmail, and when I use it to communicate with my friends, acquaintances or business clients, all of my confidential messages get intercepted and funnelled into some huge NSA datacenter in Utah, or wherever it is that these spooks keep their pile of intercept-data. How can this be legal under any definition of any law? If my emails include confidential business documents - like confidential business strategy documents lets say - then "intercepting" and "evaluating" these messages is nothing short of "illicit industrial espionage". That's a serious crime that carries a prison-sentence in many countries. ------- More brave people need to come forward with what they know about clandestine "surveillance centers" being built by various governments, because if they don't, there will be no public outcry, and all these "regional efforts" will eventually be combined into one huge, powerful, global "surveillance grid" that nobody can escape from anymore.----- There is also International Law to consider. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, quoted in my signature, makes it very clear that it is illegal to arbitrarily invade someone's privacy. So these large-scale efforts to gather as many emails or phone conversations as possible, are actually a super-violation not just of regional or country laws, but of human rights treaties most countries signed years ago, and with that, a serious and eggregious violation of internation law. ----- Somebody needs to put a stop to all this nonsense. Not only do these snooping systems not contribute to a safer world in any serious capactiy, but they also threaten to create a future where everyone is watching by someone or some system in everything they do. What precisely are we supposed to tell future generations about this, for example? Are we supposed to tell them "We are sorry, but you will have to grow up and live in a world where everything you do is being watched and evaluated. We could have protested against this stuff when it first appeared on the world scene, but we were daft enough not to do that. Again, sorry for having to live in a f_cked future! Have a nice life..."
Here's what the Conservative/LibDem Coalition apparently promised before they were elected: (copy-pasted from http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20100919110641/http://programmeforgovernment.hmg.gov.uk/civil-liberties/index.html)
We will implement a full programme of measures to reverse the substantial erosion of civil liberties and roll back state intrusion.
We will introduce a Freedom Bill.
We will scrap the ID card scheme, the National Identity register and the ContactPoint database, and halt the next generation of biometric passports.
We will outlaw the finger-printing of children at school without parental permission.
We will extend the scope of the Freedom of Information Act to provide greater transparency.
We will adopt the protections of the Scottish model for the DNA database.
We will protect historic freedoms through the defence of trial by jury.
We will restore rights to non-violent protest.
We will review libel laws to protect freedom of speech.
We will introduce safeguards against the misuse of anti-terrorism legislation.
We will further regulate CCTV.
We will end the storage of internet and email records without good reason.
We will introduce a new mechanism to prevent the proliferation of unnecessary new criminal offences.
We will establish a Commission to investigate the creation of a British Bill of Rights that incorporates and builds on all our obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights, ensures that these rights continue to be enshrined in British law, and protects and extends British liberties. We will seek to promote a better understanding of the true scope of these obligations and liberties.
The last few Tech Bubbles popped when the U.S./World Economy was doing alright. And even then they did tremendous damage. If this one pops, it will pop in the middle of an already quite severe Global Economic Crisis. And that won't help make things better. As for Facebook & Twitter... I'll eat my hat if by 2015 either one is worth 1/5th of what it is currenly valued at. Both are places where lots of people with time to ki hang out because they are Free & Social & Trendy. If the World Economy manages to get back on its feet in the next 3 years, I doubt that so many people will hang out at these free "Social Hangouts". Facebook is seriously boring. Twitter is a mere novelty that may go out of fashion, globally, within a span of a mere few weeks. I wonder what will replace FB&Twitter 3 years down the road. As for "Instagram", only a terrifically stupid person (like the Zuck?) would pay 1 Billon for a company whose greatest achievement is throwing a few nice looking photo filters togethers and letting users post images online. 1 Billion Dollars invested differently would buy - litterally - thousands of unique, custom-developed Photo Filters. Its Bubble-Time, all right, judging by what is happening. And its going to burst eventually. My bet is on mid-to-late 2013, or maybe early 2014. It all depends on how the Zeitgeist changes in the next 12 - 18 months.
Some day in the future people will look back at the 2010s and be shocked/surprised: "People had to pay a lot of money to simply make a few voice-calls over long distances back then? Really? And they also paid money to go on the internet? How weird! OMG, people back then also had to pay money to watch a few low-resolution TV-streams of some movies... The world must have been sooo backward back then... Thank God we were born long after that peculiar time." This requires a future, of course, where society is advanced enough to grant new rights, like "The right to communicate over long distances. The right to access the internet. The right to access popular audio-visual cultural products that are broadcast or streamed." Our backward capitalist societies will likely strike these future people as "Backward, brutal, mean". =)
Youtube is a site in severe decline. Every time I go to Youtube.com, the Frontpage - which has a horrible layout - features a seemingly random selection of videos. Some are genuinely popular with a few 100K views (like SexyPhil, FPS Russia, MyFavoriteMartian and a few other regulars). Quite a few, on the other hand, are random new videos that - always - have been watched by exactly 302 Viewers. For mysterious reasons, the view counter on these videos stays stuck at 302 Views until the video gets a few 100K views. And these videos seem to hang around the frontpage for 1 - 2 days, with no explanation whatsoever as to why they are frontpage material. Does the Youtube staff pick them? Are they selected by an algorithm of some sort? Nobody knows, nobody tells. Oh, then there is the viewer statistics that Youtube offers for your videos. Works sometimes. Refuses to work at all at others.-------- The whole of Youtube sometimes seems to be a patchwork of functions that barely hang together to make a working videosharing site. ---------- And then there is the old Youtube-Future Conspiracy Theory: That Google is growing Youtube's viewer count patiently, until so many video afficionados visit the free site daily, that it becomes feasible to start putting non-free Pay-Per-View content like Hollywood films and popular TV Shows on it. Youtube would partially transform into a kind of online "Blockbuster Video Store" or plain "Online Video Rental Service", where you pay to view premium content like recent Hollywood Blockbusters. The community aspect of Youtube - teens going online to -OMG- watch the latest Justin Bieber/Rihanna/Katy Perry - would deliver a steady stream of willing-to-pay customers to Youtube's premium service. Youtube may currently be a visually cluttered semi-mess, without a good business model, or good management. But that may change one day, and Youtube may either require payment to watch certain things, or stop interrupting free videos with video advertising.
London 2012 is going to be a farcical affair for start to finish. London traffic is already heavily congested without a major event taking place. With London 2012, its going to be nearly impossible to get around the Capital without getting stuck, stuck, stuck everywhere. Then, there's going to be a ridiculous amount of security all over the Olympics. Thousands of policemen. Helicopters in the sky. Boats out on the Thames. B-sniffing dogs. Biometric (face-recognizing) CCTV cameras anywhere.
Then there's the hullaballoo about taking pictures. London 2012 security has been harrassing anyone who takes pictures of Olympics facilities, even from a far distance away (like a Kilometer or Mile), and from public land. Now there's this whole nonsense about only official Olympic sponsors being able to reference the 2012 Olympics, Olympic athletes being banned from tweeting or commenting about the competitions, people watching the Olympics not being allowed to share pictures or videos online. The whole thing is a big, stinking mess before it has even started. Good luck, London. With organizers like these, you'll need it.
The Sun is Rupert "Iraq/Afghanistan War" Murdoch's social/political engineering tool for ensuring that a sizeable chunk of the "not too educated", and likely school-dropout British Working Class votes "Right/Conservative" in elections, regardless of what Britain's Conservatives may actually be up to, politicially speaking, at that particular point in time. It is a cheap, cheap "Celebrity-Sports-WeirdNews" type "tabloid newspaper" that deliberately sensationalizes things like celebrity-scandals, dumbs everything newsworthy down intentionally, and only uses very simple English sentences and vocabulary, so even the most stupid person can understand it. A favorite trick of the Sun is using working-class slang words in a targeted way, with a supposed "wink-wink" to Blue Collar working class Brits who read it (The Sun always calls Scientists "Boffins" in articles about science for example, never actually "Scientists"). The Sun has been known to report completely made-up and untrue idiocy like "Windturbine hit by UFO" or "One of our readers has found Atlantis on Google Maps" on its front page. It regularly features voluptuous topless Page 3 "titty girls" picked from British hinterland stock, Mystic Meg (who looks into the Universe, to tell you what your Stars/Zodiac have in store for you today), and other assorted stupidities that target the undereducated and gullible. Oh, funny coincidence, the same Rupert Murdoch who publishes naked Page 3 "titty girls" in the Sun in Britain every day, also publishes hardcore-conservative Christian books in the U.S., under the publishing label "Zondervan". Who'd have thought something like that was possible? =) For those who don't know "the Sun" at all (do look it up on the web... its often unintenionally hilarious), it is roughly what would happen if you dumbed-down FoxNews U.S.'s news reporting by another factor-of-five, added strippers & pornstars, but also sports betting, astrologists, UFO/supernatural conspiracy crap, daily celebrity scandals, papparazzi pictures of famous nude people on beach holliday and such into the mix, and published this mix-o'-crap as a tabloid newspaper each day. Actually, come to think of it, the Sun has a toned-down sister-newspaper in the U.S.. Its the almost equally crappy New York DailyNews, which is kind of like "the Sun America", but without the Page 3 titty girls, Dear Deidre and Mystic Meg, and with a more American layout. The Sun is widely recognized as being one of the most dumbed-down reading experiences in news journalism anywhere in the World. But, very sadly, it also sells more copies a day (several million) than just about any other newspaper in the world.
The Netherlands is an important battleground, because 1) the Dutch are strong believers in individual freedoms and rights, and 2) because what happens in the courts in the Netherlands may affect what happens in other EU Zone courts. The Dutch are usually very liberal/libertarian in their political outlook. Its unlikely that the Dutch Public would ever back the Copyright/IP Lobby politically. Dutch Politicians/Bureaucrats, and perhaps also Dutch Courts, sadly, may be a different beast. The "Legal Right to Protect Intellectual Property" may win over the politicos/bureaucrats/judges. Its going to be interesting to see which way this court battle ultimately swings, and how the Dutch Public will react to the results. I personally can't see the Dutch Public backing the IP lobbyists at all. The country is too freedom-loving by nature for the IP Lobbyists to be able to make much of a dent, politically speaking.
Its a tad sad to see Discovery gutted and turned into a (oversized) museum piece. The Space Shuttles were an inspiring symbol of successful manned spaceflight when I was growing up. Lots of little boys around me wanted to be "Astronauts" or "Pilots" when they grew up, and wanted to visit Cape Canaveral some day, because the Space Shuttle launces were a beautiful and exciting spectacle. RIP Discovery. Symbol of science beating the odds. At least museum visitors will get to take up-close pictures of her now.
There were many, many opportunities during the 20th Century to deliver sorely needed aid to Afghanistan, and put some money into helping the country modernize and industrialize. Under Western Cold War Political Doctrine, however, that simply wasn't seen as being "necessary" or a "priority". So after the Soviets were defeated in Afghanistan by the Western-armed Afghan Mujahedeen, Afghanistan was left to its own devices (= the country was left to rot in abject poverty). With the bone-crunching poverty, and political-abandonment by the Developed World came support for the Taliban. With the Taliban came a particularly hateful, denigrating view of women (women should cover at all times, girls should not go to school, girls should be married to older men by arranged-marriage). ----- Here we are many decades later, wondering why Afghanistan is an underdeveloped s__thole of place, where someone can so pissed at girls being educated, that he poisons their drinking water. Afghanistan should have been helped decades ago. The West, at the time, was too cheap to commit money to such a project. And now we have a genuinely "failed state" to deal with. "You reap what you sow", as they say.
It seems to work much the same way Google Maps/Earth, except that you can dial in different data overlays like : Fishmaps, Geological maps, Hazards (Tsunamis, Earthquakes, Volcanoes). Quite neat. And probably very useful if you are a scientist/academic studying this kind of data.
The industry is busily building new reactors in developing countries like Turkey - even though the local population there really, really doesn't want to live near a nuclear reactor (not that that has ever stopped the shady N-Industry). For every Japan reactor they loose, they'll build 3 - 4 new ones in developing countries eager to join the "prestigious club" of developed nations that use nuclear power. And then we'll probably see brand new Fukushimas/Tchernobyls happening in countries that could have - and should have - invested in renewables like Wind and Solar Energy instead.
For Cyberwarfare to be able happen to begin with, critical IT systems on both sides would have to be connected to the Internet, right? Question: Why are those critical IT systems connected-to/reachable by Internet to begin with? Wouldn't you keep those systems AWAY from the Internet, and connect them together using some custom-laid fiberoptic WAN or something? Wouldn't you - for security's sake - maybe use custom CPUs/OSs on those systems that aren't even available on the free market? (i.e. having Intel or AMD or ARM manufacture a few thousand non-X86 compatible custom CPUs for you... running a custom-flavour of Linux on them that isn't compatible with the original Linux at all).
Slashdot Mirror
I guess if you are in middle- or high-school, this could be a nice service for storing your homework and such. But if you are a business, or your files need to stay confidential for some other reason? I don't think Google Drive can be trusted with that kind of material. Even if it is encrypted or such. Just saying...
If major Universities required their faculty to publish facsimiles of any papers they submit to various journals on a _free_access_ "academic papers repository" section of the University's webpage, then we'd have the best of worlds. Those willing to pay for academic journals could still do so. Those hunting for a particular academic paper, not knowing in advance whether its contents are actually useful or not, could simply look it up on the University's _free_access_ academic papers section. Problem solved.
At the bottom of his blog it says: "I am not a doctor, dietitian nor nutritionist in fact I have no medical training of any kind. If I can figure this out so should they if it wasn’t for their A) Intellectual Laziness B) Willful ignorance C) Greed D) All of the Above :)"
... tends to catch a cold as well. This isn't just true for Economics, where the phrase originated. If America borks up the "legal protections" that protect the "right to communication privacy", the rest of the world - developing or developed - is also bound to bork up its own "communications privacy" laws. So to America: Please don't set a super-fucked-up example in this matter, that the rest of the world then tries to follow or emulate (because if America does it, you know, its OK to do the same, too...). Please keep communications data private, please keep strong legal "privacy protections" in place, or else we who are outside America will also loose our "communication privacy", due in no small part to the bad example America sets in this matter. If you proclaim yourself the "Leader of the Free World", there is a certain responsibility that comes with that - to lead by "good example", not "bad example".
When the Saudi, Bahraini or Qatari governments buy "mass-surveillance technology" by the million-load, that lets them spy on all of their citizens, its perfectly "OK". After all, the Saudis provide the U.S. with cheap oil, Bahrain is another important oil-producer, and the Qataris provide military bases from which the U.S. can launch convenient wars against "rogue states" like Iraq. But when Iran & Syria do the exact same thing - buying snooping gear from the free market to keep their population in check - they are suddenly "evil", and "decisive sanctions" have to be imposed on them, and the companies. ------ Obama, either be fair and impose those sanctions on ALL surveillance tech vendors and ALL of their middle eastern clients (and perhaps the U.S. too?), or give your Nobel Peace Prize back, and let someone take office who isn't such a "double standards wielding" hypocrit. ------- The best solution to all of this would be to ban the creation, marketing and selling of mass-surveillance systems across the entire world. But where is the leader-class that could pull this off? Nowhere. The politicians who currently lead the "free world" seem to be far too fascinated by being able to "listen to" and "track" everybody within their state borders, to ever think about abolishing this practice in the first place.
While Dubya was in office in the U.S., Iran had a President named Mohammed Khatami. Unlike Ahmedinejad, Khatami was a moderate cleric in favor of womens' rights, political reforms, greater freedoms for Iranians, and other moderate ideals. Khatami also was no opposed to political cooperation with the United States, or at least the restoration of diplomatic relations. Bush could easily have reached out a (limited) hand of friendship, and Khatami might very well have shaken it. Relations between Iran and the U.S. could have improved markedly. What happened instead? Bush's Neocon advisers wanted no cooperation/relationship whatosever to develop with Iran. They wanted to maintain Iran's status as an "Enemy of the United States" (perhaps because Israel was also adamant that things be so, and Iran stay politically isolated). So Dubya never reached out to Khatami politically, and actually did the diametric opposite: Iran was included in post 9/11 America's new, and somewhat stupid concept of a "Axis of Evil" that's messing up everything for everyone. No relationship between the U.S. and Iran whatsoever flourished as a result. Not even a limited one. And what happened to Khatami? The moderate Iran President was eventually overruled by Iran's religious hardliners for being too "moderate" or "modern", and his post went to Mahmoud Ahmedinejad. The window of opportunity for improving relations between Iran and the U.S./West to some degree was there. But the Neocons wanted Iran to stay on the "Enemies of the U.S." list, and did their best to ensure that no rapprochement with Iran would take place. -------- That brings us to today. Iran and the U.S. are currently enemies. Neither side sees any value in engaging in serious talks or toning down the jingoistic rhetoric. The Iran situation could, at any point, turn into another "Hot War" (Israel in particular seems to like that idea a lot). And all this because Dubya's advisers told him not to shake Khatami's hand. The situation could have been very, very different if the West had engaged in even "limited relations" with Khatami's vision of a more moderate Iran.
For example, Nvidia and ATI could have agreed - in secret - that neither company shall surpass the other's current flagship 3D card by a speed improvement greater than 5%. They could also have agreed that the most speed gain to be put on the 3D card market, in any one year, shall be no greater than 15% higher than the previous year. What about realtime hardware raytracing for games? Both companies may already have prototype 3D hardware capable of this. But they may have agreed amongst themselves - again in secret - that nobody will put a realtime raytracing based 3D card on the market before 2018. ------- Given what little we, the public, know about "secret agreements" between these supposedly "competing" companies, there may very well be a graphics card or CPU prototype in some lab somewhere that runs 2 - 5 times faster than the fastest hardware currently on the market. But, by honoring a "secret agreement" between competitors, nobody would release that hyperfast graphics card or CPU into the market before the year 2020. That would buy these companies "8 years" worth of steady profiteering from releasing incrementally improved hardware (i.e. each time you buy a new CPU or gfx card, you only get a 15 - 25% speed improvement, rather than a 200 - 500% improvement). Does this sound like a Conspiracy Theory? Of course it does. But could it actually be true? Yes, I believe that there is a chance that precisely this kind of "lets all take it slow with hardware speed improvements" agreement between competitors could be real.
Write your letter on a computer. Print it out. Sign it with blue ink. Then fold the letter carefully, and mail it via registered mail. Make sure you have your contact details like your email address in the top part of the letter. Chances of your letter being read are now dramatically better than if writing an email. Remember that these people get hundreds of thousands of emails a day. And that only a few - maybe with a heading that stands out from the crowd - actually get read. Good luck.
The IP Nazis know that fighting a battle against the entire internet is difficult, costly and unpopular (not that they care the least bit about that last point). So they resort to a much cheaper, age-old, yet highly effective scare-tactic instead: Making "examples" of people. They try to identify high-profile Super-Nodes amongst the filesharers - like the guy who ran MegaUpload dot com. They then put into effect a "America will fuck you up bad regardless of where you may be in the World, pirate-boy" tactic. The message it sends to ordinary people is clear: "We don't care who you are. We don't care where you are. If you pirate our corporate IPs, we will land some law enforcement muscle in your location, and fuck you in the ass with an electrified baton". --------- This is one - probably illegal - way to fight against piracy. Unfortunately, it will eventually backfire on the MAFIAA's asses, and with it also on America. Everybody who watches movies or plays games these days is pretty aware that the quality of said products is going in one direction with each year that passes - down, down, and down more. Everybody knows that the people who produce this stuff don't give a shit about anything but profit, and that they are crooked enough to buy good reviews for bad produce. So eventually, sales of the latter will collapse not because people were pirating so much of it, but rather because people don't want to spend their hard-earned money on it anymore. Its time for functional alternatives to Hollywood and GameWood to arise. I personally believe that will actually happen eventually, when people discover that there are viable alternatives to U.S. made movies and games. As for Kim Dotcom... even if he's not extradited and sentenced to hard prison, people who run operations similar to his are scared of becoming "the next Kim Dotcom". ------- But scare strategies rarely work sattisfactorily in the long run. In the long run, the Movie and game industries will have to try to create a better product sold at a fair price (not the case currently). Or they will eventually face the same fate as MegaUpload - here and thriving today, gone and bankrupt(ed) tomorrow.
Do you mean by this that Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo & friends willingly turn millions of emails over to the NSA and other 3 letter agencies? If so, you are probably right... The question is, just how long has this been going on, and how do we sue the f__k out of these email providers for what they are doing?
Last time I checked, there were plenty of reports of malicious iOS apps clandestinely hoovering up your private data/contacts, and sending that bundle to the app's developers, who will use it for Lord-knows-what-nefarious-purpose. With this being the case, how can anyone possibly claim that iOS is "secure & malware free". The malware doesn't have to be a Trojan or Virus. It can also be a nasty little app that secretly sends your private data to a server somewhere that you don't even suspect exists. ----- I don't understand why Apple fans need to maintain a strange belief into the "infallibility" of Apple's ecosystem. Apple is plenty fallible in my humble opinion. And this is just another snide attempt to advertise the "Extra-Special-Specialness" of using Apple products.
So if those of us who live outside the U.S. use an American service - any American service - like Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, Windows Messenger or perhaps mobile kit like an iPhone, are our messages thrown into the NSA Ueber-Surveillance-Database as well? If this is the case, the U.S. is breaking dozens and dozens of national/regional laws. Let me get this straight... You advertise a "free", supposedly "reliable" and also supposedly "private" service like say Gmail, and when I use it to communicate with my friends, acquaintances or business clients, all of my confidential messages get intercepted and funnelled into some huge NSA datacenter in Utah, or wherever it is that these spooks keep their pile of intercept-data. How can this be legal under any definition of any law? If my emails include confidential business documents - like confidential business strategy documents lets say - then "intercepting" and "evaluating" these messages is nothing short of "illicit industrial espionage". That's a serious crime that carries a prison-sentence in many countries. ------- More brave people need to come forward with what they know about clandestine "surveillance centers" being built by various governments, because if they don't, there will be no public outcry, and all these "regional efforts" will eventually be combined into one huge, powerful, global "surveillance grid" that nobody can escape from anymore.----- There is also International Law to consider. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, quoted in my signature, makes it very clear that it is illegal to arbitrarily invade someone's privacy. So these large-scale efforts to gather as many emails or phone conversations as possible, are actually a super-violation not just of regional or country laws, but of human rights treaties most countries signed years ago, and with that, a serious and eggregious violation of internation law. ----- Somebody needs to put a stop to all this nonsense. Not only do these snooping systems not contribute to a safer world in any serious capactiy, but they also threaten to create a future where everyone is watching by someone or some system in everything they do. What precisely are we supposed to tell future generations about this, for example? Are we supposed to tell them "We are sorry, but you will have to grow up and live in a world where everything you do is being watched and evaluated. We could have protested against this stuff when it first appeared on the world scene, but we were daft enough not to do that. Again, sorry for having to live in a f_cked future! Have a nice life..."
Here's what the Conservative/LibDem Coalition apparently promised before they were elected: (copy-pasted from http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20100919110641/http://programmeforgovernment.hmg.gov.uk/civil-liberties/index.html) We will implement a full programme of measures to reverse the substantial erosion of civil liberties and roll back state intrusion. We will introduce a Freedom Bill. We will scrap the ID card scheme, the National Identity register and the ContactPoint database, and halt the next generation of biometric passports. We will outlaw the finger-printing of children at school without parental permission. We will extend the scope of the Freedom of Information Act to provide greater transparency. We will adopt the protections of the Scottish model for the DNA database. We will protect historic freedoms through the defence of trial by jury. We will restore rights to non-violent protest. We will review libel laws to protect freedom of speech. We will introduce safeguards against the misuse of anti-terrorism legislation. We will further regulate CCTV. We will end the storage of internet and email records without good reason. We will introduce a new mechanism to prevent the proliferation of unnecessary new criminal offences. We will establish a Commission to investigate the creation of a British Bill of Rights that incorporates and builds on all our obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights, ensures that these rights continue to be enshrined in British law, and protects and extends British liberties. We will seek to promote a better understanding of the true scope of these obligations and liberties.
The last few Tech Bubbles popped when the U.S./World Economy was doing alright. And even then they did tremendous damage. If this one pops, it will pop in the middle of an already quite severe Global Economic Crisis. And that won't help make things better. As for Facebook & Twitter... I'll eat my hat if by 2015 either one is worth 1/5th of what it is currenly valued at. Both are places where lots of people with time to ki hang out because they are Free & Social & Trendy. If the World Economy manages to get back on its feet in the next 3 years, I doubt that so many people will hang out at these free "Social Hangouts". Facebook is seriously boring. Twitter is a mere novelty that may go out of fashion, globally, within a span of a mere few weeks. I wonder what will replace FB&Twitter 3 years down the road. As for "Instagram", only a terrifically stupid person (like the Zuck?) would pay 1 Billon for a company whose greatest achievement is throwing a few nice looking photo filters togethers and letting users post images online. 1 Billion Dollars invested differently would buy - litterally - thousands of unique, custom-developed Photo Filters. Its Bubble-Time, all right, judging by what is happening. And its going to burst eventually. My bet is on mid-to-late 2013, or maybe early 2014. It all depends on how the Zeitgeist changes in the next 12 - 18 months.
Some day in the future people will look back at the 2010s and be shocked/surprised: "People had to pay a lot of money to simply make a few voice-calls over long distances back then? Really? And they also paid money to go on the internet? How weird! OMG, people back then also had to pay money to watch a few low-resolution TV-streams of some movies... The world must have been sooo backward back then... Thank God we were born long after that peculiar time." This requires a future, of course, where society is advanced enough to grant new rights, like "The right to communicate over long distances. The right to access the internet. The right to access popular audio-visual cultural products that are broadcast or streamed." Our backward capitalist societies will likely strike these future people as "Backward, brutal, mean". =)
Youtube is a site in severe decline. Every time I go to Youtube.com, the Frontpage - which has a horrible layout - features a seemingly random selection of videos. Some are genuinely popular with a few 100K views (like SexyPhil, FPS Russia, MyFavoriteMartian and a few other regulars). Quite a few, on the other hand, are random new videos that - always - have been watched by exactly 302 Viewers. For mysterious reasons, the view counter on these videos stays stuck at 302 Views until the video gets a few 100K views. And these videos seem to hang around the frontpage for 1 - 2 days, with no explanation whatsoever as to why they are frontpage material. Does the Youtube staff pick them? Are they selected by an algorithm of some sort? Nobody knows, nobody tells. Oh, then there is the viewer statistics that Youtube offers for your videos. Works sometimes. Refuses to work at all at others.-------- The whole of Youtube sometimes seems to be a patchwork of functions that barely hang together to make a working videosharing site. ---------- And then there is the old Youtube-Future Conspiracy Theory: That Google is growing Youtube's viewer count patiently, until so many video afficionados visit the free site daily, that it becomes feasible to start putting non-free Pay-Per-View content like Hollywood films and popular TV Shows on it. Youtube would partially transform into a kind of online "Blockbuster Video Store" or plain "Online Video Rental Service", where you pay to view premium content like recent Hollywood Blockbusters. The community aspect of Youtube - teens going online to -OMG- watch the latest Justin Bieber/Rihanna/Katy Perry - would deliver a steady stream of willing-to-pay customers to Youtube's premium service. Youtube may currently be a visually cluttered semi-mess, without a good business model, or good management. But that may change one day, and Youtube may either require payment to watch certain things, or stop interrupting free videos with video advertising.
London 2012 is going to be a farcical affair for start to finish. London traffic is already heavily congested without a major event taking place. With London 2012, its going to be nearly impossible to get around the Capital without getting stuck, stuck, stuck everywhere. Then, there's going to be a ridiculous amount of security all over the Olympics. Thousands of policemen. Helicopters in the sky. Boats out on the Thames. B-sniffing dogs. Biometric (face-recognizing) CCTV cameras anywhere. Then there's the hullaballoo about taking pictures. London 2012 security has been harrassing anyone who takes pictures of Olympics facilities, even from a far distance away (like a Kilometer or Mile), and from public land. Now there's this whole nonsense about only official Olympic sponsors being able to reference the 2012 Olympics, Olympic athletes being banned from tweeting or commenting about the competitions, people watching the Olympics not being allowed to share pictures or videos online. The whole thing is a big, stinking mess before it has even started. Good luck, London. With organizers like these, you'll need it.
The Sun is Rupert "Iraq/Afghanistan War" Murdoch's social/political engineering tool for ensuring that a sizeable chunk of the "not too educated", and likely school-dropout British Working Class votes "Right/Conservative" in elections, regardless of what Britain's Conservatives may actually be up to, politicially speaking, at that particular point in time. It is a cheap, cheap "Celebrity-Sports-WeirdNews" type "tabloid newspaper" that deliberately sensationalizes things like celebrity-scandals, dumbs everything newsworthy down intentionally, and only uses very simple English sentences and vocabulary, so even the most stupid person can understand it. A favorite trick of the Sun is using working-class slang words in a targeted way, with a supposed "wink-wink" to Blue Collar working class Brits who read it (The Sun always calls Scientists "Boffins" in articles about science for example, never actually "Scientists"). The Sun has been known to report completely made-up and untrue idiocy like "Windturbine hit by UFO" or "One of our readers has found Atlantis on Google Maps" on its front page. It regularly features voluptuous topless Page 3 "titty girls" picked from British hinterland stock, Mystic Meg (who looks into the Universe, to tell you what your Stars/Zodiac have in store for you today), and other assorted stupidities that target the undereducated and gullible. Oh, funny coincidence, the same Rupert Murdoch who publishes naked Page 3 "titty girls" in the Sun in Britain every day, also publishes hardcore-conservative Christian books in the U.S., under the publishing label "Zondervan". Who'd have thought something like that was possible? =) For those who don't know "the Sun" at all (do look it up on the web... its often unintenionally hilarious), it is roughly what would happen if you dumbed-down FoxNews U.S.'s news reporting by another factor-of-five, added strippers & pornstars, but also sports betting, astrologists, UFO/supernatural conspiracy crap, daily celebrity scandals, papparazzi pictures of famous nude people on beach holliday and such into the mix, and published this mix-o'-crap as a tabloid newspaper each day. Actually, come to think of it, the Sun has a toned-down sister-newspaper in the U.S.. Its the almost equally crappy New York DailyNews, which is kind of like "the Sun America", but without the Page 3 titty girls, Dear Deidre and Mystic Meg, and with a more American layout. The Sun is widely recognized as being one of the most dumbed-down reading experiences in news journalism anywhere in the World. But, very sadly, it also sells more copies a day (several million) than just about any other newspaper in the world.
The Netherlands is an important battleground, because 1) the Dutch are strong believers in individual freedoms and rights, and 2) because what happens in the courts in the Netherlands may affect what happens in other EU Zone courts. The Dutch are usually very liberal/libertarian in their political outlook. Its unlikely that the Dutch Public would ever back the Copyright/IP Lobby politically. Dutch Politicians/Bureaucrats, and perhaps also Dutch Courts, sadly, may be a different beast. The "Legal Right to Protect Intellectual Property" may win over the politicos/bureaucrats/judges. Its going to be interesting to see which way this court battle ultimately swings, and how the Dutch Public will react to the results. I personally can't see the Dutch Public backing the IP lobbyists at all. The country is too freedom-loving by nature for the IP Lobbyists to be able to make much of a dent, politically speaking.
Its a tad sad to see Discovery gutted and turned into a (oversized) museum piece. The Space Shuttles were an inspiring symbol of successful manned spaceflight when I was growing up. Lots of little boys around me wanted to be "Astronauts" or "Pilots" when they grew up, and wanted to visit Cape Canaveral some day, because the Space Shuttle launces were a beautiful and exciting spectacle. RIP Discovery. Symbol of science beating the odds. At least museum visitors will get to take up-close pictures of her now.
There were many, many opportunities during the 20th Century to deliver sorely needed aid to Afghanistan, and put some money into helping the country modernize and industrialize. Under Western Cold War Political Doctrine, however, that simply wasn't seen as being "necessary" or a "priority". So after the Soviets were defeated in Afghanistan by the Western-armed Afghan Mujahedeen, Afghanistan was left to its own devices (= the country was left to rot in abject poverty). With the bone-crunching poverty, and political-abandonment by the Developed World came support for the Taliban. With the Taliban came a particularly hateful, denigrating view of women (women should cover at all times, girls should not go to school, girls should be married to older men by arranged-marriage). ----- Here we are many decades later, wondering why Afghanistan is an underdeveloped s__thole of place, where someone can so pissed at girls being educated, that he poisons their drinking water. Afghanistan should have been helped decades ago. The West, at the time, was too cheap to commit money to such a project. And now we have a genuinely "failed state" to deal with. "You reap what you sow", as they say.
It seems to work much the same way Google Maps/Earth, except that you can dial in different data overlays like : Fishmaps, Geological maps, Hazards (Tsunamis, Earthquakes, Volcanoes). Quite neat. And probably very useful if you are a scientist/academic studying this kind of data.
The industry is busily building new reactors in developing countries like Turkey - even though the local population there really, really doesn't want to live near a nuclear reactor (not that that has ever stopped the shady N-Industry). For every Japan reactor they loose, they'll build 3 - 4 new ones in developing countries eager to join the "prestigious club" of developed nations that use nuclear power. And then we'll probably see brand new Fukushimas/Tchernobyls happening in countries that could have - and should have - invested in renewables like Wind and Solar Energy instead.
For Cyberwarfare to be able happen to begin with, critical IT systems on both sides would have to be connected to the Internet, right? Question: Why are those critical IT systems connected-to/reachable by Internet to begin with? Wouldn't you keep those systems AWAY from the Internet, and connect them together using some custom-laid fiberoptic WAN or something? Wouldn't you - for security's sake - maybe use custom CPUs/OSs on those systems that aren't even available on the free market? (i.e. having Intel or AMD or ARM manufacture a few thousand non-X86 compatible custom CPUs for you... running a custom-flavour of Linux on them that isn't compatible with the original Linux at all).
I read that as "underpants" while I was scrolling... yuck... =)