I enjoy it when the editors (deliberately?) put two stories on the same page which suggest a common thought pattern.
With IBM slowing the speed of light with their latest generation of chip technology, and with Microsoft working to engineer a singularity. . . Knowledge is Light, and black holes suck up light as surely as computer-powered DRM and RFID and similar technologies work to track and control and limit. Slowing Light, indeed!
As this reality of ours is little more than a shared holographic dream sequence, (there is no such thing as matter; those atoms divide all the way down to squiggles of energy, and what is energy other than a medium for consciousness to exist within and self-observe?), it is my editorial opinion that metaphor flies thick through this world of ours, and those who pay attention are more able to surf the bumps and rough spots on the ride of Life.
Anakin was a loving, good-intentioned person with a conscience. The film's attempts to drive him to the Dark Side were staged and pushy and contrived and ultimately ridiculous. --You can frustrate a person and make him/her angry, but to become Vader, you have to scramble a person as a child. Anakin was already well past the point of such vulnerability; he had seen and learned love and friendship during his formative years. --His love and selfless good deeds were rewarded with the gratitude and returned love from solid, respectful friends, and thus his belief system and internal compass about how the world can and should be would have been set and anchored deeply. It would have taken a LOT more than a sly Palpatine whispering shit at him to screw up a 20-something year-old Anakin. Heck, even the flying junk-dealer from his childhood spoke of little Anakin with pride. --There are fatherless kids out there in the real world who would do anything for the kind of affection Anakin was shown in Phantom Menace. If you want to create a Vader, you have to start kicking him as a baby and never let up. Anakin should have been the second coming. Vader? No chance.
2. I DID however like the illustration of how a republic can easily turn into a fascist state. We all can take a lesson from that and pack our bags and move to Canada, France or New Zealand. . .
So Lucas gets half marks for insight. Politically, he's got a clue, but otherwise he's still learning. Evil is a tough problem.
I see that I have been trolled, fairly successfully.
If expressing one's thoughts on a relevant subject on a public discussion board is 'Trolling', then I guess every last poster is a 'troll'. Honestly. If you find an idea makes you auto-react or feel uncomfortable, then perhaps you could benefit from doing a little inward searching to find out why, rather than outward labeling to suppress it.
Those who see discussion boards as mechanisms for winning and losing have slipped into the Ego trap. Ideally, Discussion and Learning are what it should all be about.
So, they do get looked at least occasionally. How much energy do you want to waste on things that have been repeatedly demonstrated as mistaken, wishful thinking, placebo effect, or even just plain fraud?
It would only be a waste of energy if you come away with the wrong conclusions. You have collected more than a few of those yourself, I see. All the usual suspects; easily collected and lazily maintained. You have to expend real energy searching if you want to find real data; expecting the media to lay the truth at your lap is simply not going to work in this case. --Looking only at the advertised false positives and the biased reports from researchers who are emotionally incapable of dealing with real phenomenon when they do show up may not waste your energy, but it certainly keeps you locked up tight in a false reality.
1. UFOs 2. Astrology 3. Acupuncture 4. Alternative energy (Cold Fusion, Zero Point Energy, etc.) 5. Alternative medicine (Homeopathy, Reikki, etc.) 6. Cattle Mutilation 7. Crop Circles 8. Energy awareness (Chi) 9. Human history through true archeolgoy 10. The true nature of space and time.
Of course, Science itself and real scientists aren't afraid to examine such areas, and indeed, they have done with spectacular results. But how often do such studies get funded and how often are the findings allowed to affect the status quo or even reach the main stream? This is where the fear is manifest. A room full of biased men in lab coats who go through the motions of research are *not* true scientists. They are frightened men who are willing to observe and measure the Universe only so long as it does not stray outside the comfortable, pre-conceived parameters dictated by society.
Interestingly, those who are not enslaved at the civilian level are allowed to study without restraint.
1. Science and its application is one of the primary foundation stones of Western civilization's perception of reality.
And,
2. While pursuing science, certain findings are ignored in order that funding grants and general nods from authority might be obtained.
And,
3. The desires to falsify or ignore data in order to please funding agents and authority figures stem from social criteria rather than objective scientific criteria.
Therefore. . .
Our perception of reality is being shaped by forces which have chosen to adhere to social forces rather than objective reality, and that this is done with the approval of Authority and under the name of Science.
If this doesn't seem like a big deal, consider. . .
Every assertion that you have ever heard from the sources of authority in our soceity about what is and is not possible in our world has been shaped by those who choose to promote lies as truth and truth as lies.
Consider the pillars of 'fact' which hold up the public perception of reality.
It is reasonable to assume that there are events and forces at work in the world which most people are not willing to recognize.
The things most laughed at by science represent sources of fear; why ridicule something which doesn't bother you on some level?
My personal opinion is that Religion just another arm of this same trap designed to keep people in cages of the mind. With Science and Religion dividing up the masses, Spirituality represents the thin pathway between these two forces of social control and limitation.
Observe those subjects which both Science and Religion unanimously fear, studiously ignore or otherwise distract from, and start there.
It has 300+ hours of batterylife on only 3 AA batteries. How's that work? It only has a four-line monotype display and a keyboard, and it only has memory for ~80 pages types. But, if what you want to do is write, it's a portable word processor for $300 with the best battery life of ANY device on the market.
I had the opportunity to test-drive an AlphaSmart, and I agree, the battery life was a major selling point. It is well-built and the software was smooth. A nice device. The things which put me off, however, were the price tag and the small screen. --Possibly the screen size would be something I could get used to, but I've been brought up on devices where I can see and work with whole pages at a time, so I figured I'd keep looking. The later Aphasmarts do have larger screens, but they also have backlights which drop the battery times down significantly, and without a backlight, I've found that black & white LCD devices to be very aggravating to look at. I hummed and hawed for a couple of weeks before finally deciding against the Alphasmart and similar devices. A tough choice, I can tell you. That 300 hour battery life on AA's was so very alluring!
If the AlphaSmart was only $80, (which if it were sold at "Toys R Us" with a cute mouse sticker and pink keys but no other change to its architecture), I'd have bought one in an instant. It just felt a little rip-offish to me considering it's very old-tech, pennies-per-unit parts.
The device I did pick up (the HP Jornada 820) has more battery life than I can drain in a long sitting, and I bought a second battery just in case I was away from a recharger for a couple of days. Not the ideal solution; I still can't do extended road trips with the thing, but for my immediate needs, (which are not on the road so much as just hiking around town), I am portable enough and very comfortable with the big, bright screen.
Whatever the case, the world needs far greater access to well-designed word-processors which run on AA's!
More importantly, we are only talking about IP blocks, and DNS. Your point is stupid.
No it isn't. Can you build a house without a foundation?
My point is that the essence of the web was originally NOT American. Nor was it intended to be a privately owned medium. This is incontestable, and thus it is not a 'stupid point'.
I don't understand why so many Americans rabidly defend the ownership of something which is held by a dangerous organization, (the American Military Industrial Complex), which has NO INTEREST WHATSOEVER in your well-being. In fact, the MIC has quite the opposite desire. Just look at Louisiana for a working example. --Do you honestly think that the Bush Reich is not fully capable of mis-managing (at best), or out-right abusing their powers with regard to the internet?
"Made in America" doesn't mean "Made FOR Americans", so those of us living in the States might want to back off their rabid nationalistic stance for a moment with regard to this as it has the potential to be very self-destructive.
Now, I am certainly not suggesting that the UN is necessarily a better holding ground for the heart of the internet. What I would be happier seeing is a system of redundant DNS servers dotted all over the globe so that no single power can unilaterally shut down or censor the web.
america, believe it or not, has a tendency to promote free expression and enterprise, and the internet can be seen as that spirit manifested for the world to enjoy, learn from, and advance itself with.
Oh please. Stars and Stripes dogma.
The U.S. is the most controlled social experiment on the face of the Earth. It has one of the very lowest standards of living among all the industrialized nations! --The American media, that bastion of 'free expression', dictates behavior and social norms to such a degree that those it controls are barely even aware of it. It's military arm is down-right evil; what other country regularly destroys new and budding democratic nations to ensure that it stays on top of the economic power game, and does so by funding lunatic right-wing fascists and selling wars to a brainwashed public. Look at what is happening in Venezuela for the latest example of CIA treachery. It happens time and again, and America is going to reap what is has sown. You will learn.
The internet can be shut down at a moment's notice and the Big Switch resides on American soil, where the world's latest, nastiest fascist dictator has already taken power and is growing his dark legions.
The rest of the world has good reason to feel more than a little nervous. --I don't think the UN is the solution; ideally I'd like to see redundant DNS servers in every country on the globe. But that's not going to happen when so many people are drunk on the myth of "America The Good".
"In 1994 a computer program called the Mosaic browser transformed the Internet from an academic tool into a telecommunications revolution. Now a household name, the World Wide Web is part of the modern communications landscape with tens of thousands of servers providing information to millions of users. Few people, however, realize that the Web was born at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, in Geneva, and that it was invented by an Englishman, Tim Berners-Lee.
"This new book, published in the Popular Science list in Oxford Paperbacks, tells how the idea for the Web came about at CERN, how it was developed, and how it was eventually handed over for free for the rest of the world to use. This is the first book-length account of the Web's development and it includes interview material with the key players in the story."
Now, I don't think the UN should necessarily have control over the web. Frankly, I'd like to see redundant DNS servers set up in every country so that nobody can unilaterally turn off the web if it has content they don't like. But this is not an ideal world. This is a world where a psychopathic weenie can shut you down if it doesn't like what you publish. Hasn't happened yet, but it can and probably will.
"In 1994 a computer program called the Mosaic browser transformed the Internet from an academic tool into a telecommunications revolution. Now a household name, the World Wide Web is part of the modern communications landscape with tens of thousands of servers providing information to millions of users. Few people, however, realize that the Web was born at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, in Geneva, and that it was invented by an Englishman, Tim Berners-Lee.
"This new book, published in the Popular Science list in Oxford Paperbacks, tells how the idea for the Web came about at CERN, how it was developed, and how it was eventually handed over for free for the rest of the world to use. This is the first book-length account of the Web's development and it includes interview material with the key players in the story."
Freeplay, an innovative start-up piloted by a couple of hippies with a dream, decided that third world citizens ought to have access to radio communications technology. The idea was to create a wind-up radio for lands where battery and wall power were not feasible.
The finished product rocked. I lived with a room mate who owned a couple of them, and they worked wonderfully. The weird thing, though, was the price-tag.
In the third world, a wind-up radio cost about ten bucks. But here in the West, where money grows on trees and the streets are paved with gold, the average Yuppie had to shell out up to $200 for the gizmo.
I don't know if I agree or disagree with this kind of marketing, but it'd be interesting to see how the story goes with MIT's do-hicky. Not that it'll probably make much difference; from their web-site; "these laptops are not in production. They are not--and will not--be available for purchase by individuals."
For my part, I am partial to the HP Jornada 820 when it comes to small and ultra-portable computers. Word-processing with no moving parts other than the flip-screen and lap-top keyboard means an 8 hour battery life. --It runs on flash cards, and so long as all you want to do is write and store data, you can't do much better. (Forget gaming, though, but I couldn't care less about that.)
I think there should be more devices like this generally available; they're just so useful. Dedicated word-processors with good key-boards and screens are hard to come by and too damned expensive for what you get generally. The Jornada is the exception, which is probably why the plug got pulled on it. --HP stopped making the Jornada 820 back in the late nineties; I got mine off Ebay for about $250, and I use it all the time. I wish it could run on wind-up power. I wonder if there's a charger out there which has a hand-crank. . .
I think there's a subconscious conspiracy to make sure people don't have access to useful tools for writing and creating which don't come armed with severe operating limitations, (the standard lap-top with lame battery life), and a million and one mind-numbing distractions, (DVD players and game and music options. Bah. Writers write, they don't waste time messing around with toys.)
why not just let natural selection take it's course?
What makes you think natural selection isn't taking its course? For example, you will be processed from ignorant animal into meat soon enough by your own government, and you probably won't even realize it until the moment the light goes out.
Honestly, I'm beginning to think that people deserve to live in the hell-pit of Human culture if they can't see how absolutely retarded this kind of fear-based nonsense really is.
You want to stop 'terrorism'? Get the Nixon crew out of the white house and the Zionists out of Isreal.
That's how you stop 'terrorism'.
9-11 was manufactured with the full knowledge and consent of the Bush government. Giving dippy little call buttons to flight attendants is like giving a used bandaid to a combine harvester accident victim.
-FL
So the cringing little moderators couldn't deal with the screamingly obvious and so hammered this post into flame bait? --Well, guess what? The truth doesn't go away just because you ignore it.
Grow up and deal. The psychotic Bush government and the psychotic Zionists in charge of the Jewish and Palestinian populations in Israel are the real terrorists and they are directly responsible for the hijacked planes on 9-11. --And I'm not talking about 'They made the arabs angry with their international policy and thus drove them to do it', I'm talking about a full-fledged, false-flag bit of spymanship using all the modern techniques. Any half-diligent observation reveals this almost instantly. So leave your spineless negative mod points in the play-pen and make an effort to join the waking world, please.
Honestly, I'm beginning to think that people deserve to live in the hell-pit of Human culture if they can't see how absolutely retarded this kind of fear-based nonsense really is.
You want to stop 'terrorism'? Get the Nixon crew out of the white house and the Zionists out of Isreal.
That's how you stop 'terrorism'.
9-11 was manufactured with the full knowledge and consent of the Bush government. Giving dippy little call buttons to flight attendants is like giving a used bandaid to a combine harvester accident victim.
Also, are people really afraid of cards that you can pay for things with? For me, I'm afraid of getting run over by a bus when I'm not paying attention. I'm a little afraid of heights. But cards that you can pay for things with are not a big fear of mine.
In short, are you sure you're not crazy? Your post seems to be the words of a disturbed mind.
Well. . . while I do find these thoughts disturbing, I am afraid to report that my mind is entirely healthy.
Here are three aspects of automatic plastic, (above and beyond being, "cards that you can pay for things with", which you may have not considered and which I think are worth being wary of. . .
1. I was using doors on a mall as a rough example. My point is that it will be possible to charge you for 'services' without you being aware of it. All a company need do is mail out a small-print negative-option agreement which will allow them to legally charge you every time you get within ten feet of their scanner while you walk along unawares. Their service might be as simple as breathing in their air space. --'Negative-option' means that unless you sign the company's form and mail it back to them saying, "NO!", you have 'agreed' to any such charges.
2. The government will be able to track your movements at all times when you are carrying around an RFID tag. If you stray outside the accepted boundaries, the authorities can instantly know it and put you on a watch and harass list. A restricted area might be as simple as an alternative bookshop. --And all of the places you visit to after leaving the bookshop. It's an easy way to spot a 'conspiracy' in the works and pinpoint all the people who need to have their houses watched, their phones rung in the early A.M., and their pets left dead on their front porches. Please reference, "McCarthyism," for more details.
3. When money is all digital, (which is exactly where things are heading), then if you do not comply with the state's wishes, (i.e., Heil Bush with enough vigor), then it is a very simple matter to have your money 'privileges' turned off by way of punishment.
I am aware that some people might think such concerns are the product of delusion. I would recommend to such people that they stop, look and listen for a few minutes every day so as to become better informed as to the nature of the on-going train wreck which is U.S. internal and international policy, and that they do it before they find themselves on the wrong side of the barbed wire in a FEMA detention camp in some otherwise pleasant little mountain retreat. You say you are a little afraid of being run over by a bus when you're not paying attention? I'd suggest that there is little difference.
A standard trip to the mall twenty minutes into the future. . .
1. A ten cent charge for entering the mall doors.
--After all, it takes HARD WORK to make and install doors! Somebody had to design and build them! Do you feel you are so special that you shouldn't have to pay for the privilege of using doors? Jeez, it's just a dime. (Though, that price can change once the populace has been acclimated to being dinged for simply walking. I'm sure that, as per usual, there will be a host of worthy Slashdotters eager to argue on behalf of the corporations; who can be counted on to cry 'Thief' whenever somebody wonders why they can't use doors for free anymore; and who will happily parrot terms like, 'entrance-theft' once such terms have been appropriately astro-turfed into place by the corporate PR monkeys.)
2. People think that RFID is a close-range affair and so are lulled into a false sense of security. While it is true that an RFID chip does need to be within a few feet in order to be charged by a magnetic field, the signal it subsequently transmits can be picked up by satellite.
3. If there is no third element involved in the transference of data, (a pin number held in the user's brain), then any sneaky person with a satellite or closer range receiver can 'over-hear' all the info s/he needs to access an account and make a fraudulent purchase.
4. The big corporations and big government know all of this and are eager to have it all in place. The more base-level fear there is humming in the background, the more easily controlled a population becomes and the better fed the overseers are. Fear is food.
Each survey took about 20 minutes to complete. They were invasive and annoying and the people you called despised you. The office had a central control tower in the middle of the floor with 'listeners' who could tap into your line to make sure you weren't wasting company dollars by skimping on questions. (Callers were paid by the number of completed surveys at the end of a shift.)
The whole set-up was designed to deep-fry human brains from both ends. I didn't last very long. But you know what drove me nuts and bananas the most?
It was some of the other callers.
We had pink and blue sheets of questions. We needed to survey males and females, blue for male, pink for female. The very opening sentences were not scripted because they figured that we could work out on our own how to ask for the lady or the man of the house. Apparently this was a false assumption in this one guy's case. He sat down the aisle from me and would dial a number and say, "Hello. I need to speak to a female."
That made me cringe time and again, particularly when his forehead crinkled with confusion as he dealt with the social fallout of that weird intro and got impatient with the people on the other end.
Another guy sitting nearby was once presumably barked at by the person he had called and hung up on. So he re-dialed the number and shouted back at the person on the other end and then slammed his own reciever down. Then he spun around in his chair and raised his hands in victory. "REVENGE!" he cried.
After about an hour of this bullshit on my second day, (the first day was just a training seminar), I hung up my phone and walked up to the floor manager and told him that I just couldn't do this and that I was leaving. Sorry.
The weird thing was that he and I and one of the ladies from the control tower all sat down in the middle of the aisle on that thin office carpet and talked about how dumb this job was and what we really wanted from life.
Despite claims to the contrary, there are plenty of alternative and highly effective ways to generate electricity which do not involve burning things. We've been doing it for years.
If people stop consuming power like hogs, then there's no real problem here.
I mean, I have a website with over 8000 users, and I wanted to start a drive to collect money for the hurricane relief to donate to the Red Cross, but if I set up an account using PayPal, they'd charge me a bunch of money, taking away from what we would want to donate.
all current events aside, you don't want your policy makers making informed decisions based on what other nations want to keep secret?
You'd rather be in favor of no secrets in our government, which would let other countries walk all over our national concerns, as well completely negate any insight that we may have into things that other countries aren't forthcoming about?
That question is based on a high degree of dogma. You presuppose that governments have our best interests at heart. Just look at Katrina for the latest example of how false that idea is!
And putting all current events aside?
Seeing as we don't live under a theoretical governmental system, what value is there in not looking at objective reality when posing questions about whether government secrets are good or bad? Anybody who does the slightest bit of real digging quickly learns that we are being *shafted* by the current leaders, as well as the ones before them, and the ones before those. The 'informed' decisions made by those policy makers were and are designed to cause chaos and fear, to control us and set us in a reality where we are afraid of "being walked all over by other countries". This is a lie. An enforced stage production perpetrated by the secret keepers. People simply dance (go to war) over the lies sold to them by their social and religious leaders. That's how it works.
The CIA has destroyed the social structures of many countries which were threatening to rise in world power through the development of healthy and democratically elected governments which 'threaten' to offer good social services and fairly traded goods. The CIA does this precisely to keep the US on top of the heavily slanted power and money game. Look at what is happening in Venezuela right now. This is what secrecy leads to.
Once secrets are gone, once people have full knowledge and the willingness to look at and act on that knowledge, corruption will have a much harder time existing.
The only place I see for secrecy is when speaking a truth will endanger or hurt a person or people who are not emotionally or physically ready for such knowledge and who choose to stay ignorant and deal with their issues at their own speed. For instance, you don't share deep government secrets when you know the receiver would be harrassed or murdered for receiving that data.
Slashdot Mirror
With IBM slowing the speed of light with their latest generation of chip technology, and with Microsoft working to engineer a singularity. . . Knowledge is Light, and black holes suck up light as surely as computer-powered DRM and RFID and similar technologies work to track and control and limit. Slowing Light, indeed!
As this reality of ours is little more than a shared holographic dream sequence, (there is no such thing as matter; those atoms divide all the way down to squiggles of energy, and what is energy other than a medium for consciousness to exist within and self-observe?), it is my editorial opinion that metaphor flies thick through this world of ours, and those who pay attention are more able to surf the bumps and rough spots on the ride of Life.
-FL
Anakin was a loving, good-intentioned person with a conscience. The film's attempts to drive him to the Dark Side were staged and pushy and contrived and ultimately ridiculous. --You can frustrate a person and make him/her angry, but to become Vader, you have to scramble a person as a child. Anakin was already well past the point of such vulnerability; he had seen and learned love and friendship during his formative years. --His love and selfless good deeds were rewarded with the gratitude and returned love from solid, respectful friends, and thus his belief system and internal compass about how the world can and should be would have been set and anchored deeply. It would have taken a LOT more than a sly Palpatine whispering shit at him to screw up a 20-something year-old Anakin. Heck, even the flying junk-dealer from his childhood spoke of little Anakin with pride. --There are fatherless kids out there in the real world who would do anything for the kind of affection Anakin was shown in Phantom Menace. If you want to create a Vader, you have to start kicking him as a baby and never let up. Anakin should have been the second coming. Vader? No chance.
2. I DID however like the illustration of how a republic can easily turn into a fascist state. We all can take a lesson from that and pack our bags and move to Canada, France or New Zealand. . .
So Lucas gets half marks for insight. Politically, he's got a clue, but otherwise he's still learning. Evil is a tough problem.
-FL
If expressing one's thoughts on a relevant subject on a public discussion board is 'Trolling', then I guess every last poster is a 'troll'. Honestly. If you find an idea makes you auto-react or feel uncomfortable, then perhaps you could benefit from doing a little inward searching to find out why, rather than outward labeling to suppress it.
Those who see discussion boards as mechanisms for winning and losing have slipped into the Ego trap. Ideally, Discussion and Learning are what it should all be about.
-FL
It would only be a waste of energy if you come away with the wrong conclusions. You have collected more than a few of those yourself, I see. All the usual suspects; easily collected and lazily maintained. You have to expend real energy searching if you want to find real data; expecting the media to lay the truth at your lap is simply not going to work in this case. --Looking only at the advertised false positives and the biased reports from researchers who are emotionally incapable of dealing with real phenomenon when they do show up may not waste your energy, but it certainly keeps you locked up tight in a false reality.
-FL
2. Astrology
3. Acupuncture
4. Alternative energy (Cold Fusion, Zero Point Energy, etc.)
5. Alternative medicine (Homeopathy, Reikki, etc.)
6. Cattle Mutilation
7. Crop Circles
8. Energy awareness (Chi)
9. Human history through true archeolgoy
10. The true nature of space and time.
Of course, Science itself and real scientists aren't afraid to examine such areas, and indeed, they have done with spectacular results. But how often do such studies get funded and how often are the findings allowed to affect the status quo or even reach the main stream? This is where the fear is manifest. A room full of biased men in lab coats who go through the motions of research are *not* true scientists. They are frightened men who are willing to observe and measure the Universe only so long as it does not stray outside the comfortable, pre-conceived parameters dictated by society.
Interestingly, those who are not enslaved at the civilian level are allowed to study without restraint.
-FL
And,
And,
Therefore. . .
If this doesn't seem like a big deal, consider. . .
Every assertion that you have ever heard from the sources of authority in our soceity about what is and is not possible in our world has been shaped by those who choose to promote lies as truth and truth as lies.
Consider the pillars of 'fact' which hold up the public perception of reality.
It is reasonable to assume that there are events and forces at work in the world which most people are not willing to recognize.
The things most laughed at by science represent sources of fear; why ridicule something which doesn't bother you on some level?
My personal opinion is that Religion just another arm of this same trap designed to keep people in cages of the mind. With Science and Religion dividing up the masses, Spirituality represents the thin pathway between these two forces of social control and limitation.
Observe those subjects which both Science and Religion unanimously fear, studiously ignore or otherwise distract from, and start there.
-FL
If this thing was discovered closer to home, people would be a lot more excited rather than crack wise with a bunch of weak jokes.
Human nature, eh?
-FL
It has 300+ hours of batterylife on only 3 AA batteries. How's that work? It only has a four-line monotype display and a keyboard, and it only has memory for ~80 pages types. But, if what you want to do is write, it's a portable word processor for $300 with the best battery life of ANY device on the market.
I had the opportunity to test-drive an AlphaSmart, and I agree, the battery life was a major selling point. It is well-built and the software was smooth. A nice device. The things which put me off, however, were the price tag and the small screen. --Possibly the screen size would be something I could get used to, but I've been brought up on devices where I can see and work with whole pages at a time, so I figured I'd keep looking. The later Aphasmarts do have larger screens, but they also have backlights which drop the battery times down significantly, and without a backlight, I've found that black & white LCD devices to be very aggravating to look at. I hummed and hawed for a couple of weeks before finally deciding against the Alphasmart and similar devices. A tough choice, I can tell you. That 300 hour battery life on AA's was so very alluring!
If the AlphaSmart was only $80, (which if it were sold at "Toys R Us" with a cute mouse sticker and pink keys but no other change to its architecture), I'd have bought one in an instant. It just felt a little rip-offish to me considering it's very old-tech, pennies-per-unit parts.
The device I did pick up (the HP Jornada 820) has more battery life than I can drain in a long sitting, and I bought a second battery just in case I was away from a recharger for a couple of days. Not the ideal solution; I still can't do extended road trips with the thing, but for my immediate needs, (which are not on the road so much as just hiking around town), I am portable enough and very comfortable with the big, bright screen.
Whatever the case, the world needs far greater access to well-designed word-processors which run on AA's!
-FL
No it isn't. Can you build a house without a foundation?
My point is that the essence of the web was originally NOT American. Nor was it intended to be a privately owned medium. This is incontestable, and thus it is not a 'stupid point'.
I don't understand why so many Americans rabidly defend the ownership of something which is held by a dangerous organization, (the American Military Industrial Complex), which has NO INTEREST WHATSOEVER in your well-being. In fact, the MIC has quite the opposite desire. Just look at Louisiana for a working example. --Do you honestly think that the Bush Reich is not fully capable of mis-managing (at best), or out-right abusing their powers with regard to the internet?
"Made in America" doesn't mean "Made FOR Americans", so those of us living in the States might want to back off their rabid nationalistic stance for a moment with regard to this as it has the potential to be very self-destructive.
Now, I am certainly not suggesting that the UN is necessarily a better holding ground for the heart of the internet. What I would be happier seeing is a system of redundant DNS servers dotted all over the globe so that no single power can unilaterally shut down or censor the web.
-FL
Oh please. Stars and Stripes dogma.
The U.S. is the most controlled social experiment on the face of the Earth. It has one of the very lowest standards of living among all the industrialized nations! --The American media, that bastion of 'free expression', dictates behavior and social norms to such a degree that those it controls are barely even aware of it. It's military arm is down-right evil; what other country regularly destroys new and budding democratic nations to ensure that it stays on top of the economic power game, and does so by funding lunatic right-wing fascists and selling wars to a brainwashed public. Look at what is happening in Venezuela for the latest example of CIA treachery. It happens time and again, and America is going to reap what is has sown. You will learn.
The internet can be shut down at a moment's notice and the Big Switch resides on American soil, where the world's latest, nastiest fascist dictator has already taken power and is growing his dark legions.
The rest of the world has good reason to feel more than a little nervous. --I don't think the UN is the solution; ideally I'd like to see redundant DNS servers in every country on the globe. But that's not going to happen when so many people are drunk on the myth of "America The Good".
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Now, I don't think the UN should necessarily have control over the web. Frankly, I'd like to see redundant DNS servers set up in every country so that nobody can unilaterally turn off the web if it has content they don't like. But this is not an ideal world. This is a world where a psychopathic weenie can shut you down if it doesn't like what you publish. Hasn't happened yet, but it can and probably will.
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The finished product rocked. I lived with a room mate who owned a couple of them, and they worked wonderfully. The weird thing, though, was the price-tag.
In the third world, a wind-up radio cost about ten bucks. But here in the West, where money grows on trees and the streets are paved with gold, the average Yuppie had to shell out up to $200 for the gizmo.
I don't know if I agree or disagree with this kind of marketing, but it'd be interesting to see how the story goes with MIT's do-hicky. Not that it'll probably make much difference; from their web-site; "these laptops are not in production. They are not--and will not--be available for purchase by individuals."
For my part, I am partial to the HP Jornada 820 when it comes to small and ultra-portable computers. Word-processing with no moving parts other than the flip-screen and lap-top keyboard means an 8 hour battery life. --It runs on flash cards, and so long as all you want to do is write and store data, you can't do much better. (Forget gaming, though, but I couldn't care less about that.)
I think there should be more devices like this generally available; they're just so useful. Dedicated word-processors with good key-boards and screens are hard to come by and too damned expensive for what you get generally. The Jornada is the exception, which is probably why the plug got pulled on it. --HP stopped making the Jornada 820 back in the late nineties; I got mine off Ebay for about $250, and I use it all the time. I wish it could run on wind-up power. I wonder if there's a charger out there which has a hand-crank. . .
I think there's a subconscious conspiracy to make sure people don't have access to useful tools for writing and creating which don't come armed with severe operating limitations, (the standard lap-top with lame battery life), and a million and one mind-numbing distractions, (DVD players and game and music options. Bah. Writers write, they don't waste time messing around with toys.)
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What makes you think natural selection isn't taking its course? For example, you will be processed from ignorant animal into meat soon enough by your own government, and you probably won't even realize it until the moment the light goes out.
Also, there's no apostrophe in "its".
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So the cringing little moderators couldn't deal with the screamingly obvious and so hammered this post into flame bait? --Well, guess what? The truth doesn't go away just because you ignore it.
Grow up and deal. The psychotic Bush government and the psychotic Zionists in charge of the Jewish and Palestinian populations in Israel are the real terrorists and they are directly responsible for the hijacked planes on 9-11. --And I'm not talking about 'They made the arabs angry with their international policy and thus drove them to do it', I'm talking about a full-fledged, false-flag bit of spymanship using all the modern techniques. Any half-diligent observation reveals this almost instantly. So leave your spineless negative mod points in the play-pen and make an effort to join the waking world, please.
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I like the larger comment boxes and more efficient use of screen space.
Very sharp.
Cheers to you and your continued efforts! Your work here is valuable beyond what most people comprehend.
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Honestly, I'm beginning to think that people deserve to live in the hell-pit of Human culture if they can't see how absolutely retarded this kind of fear-based nonsense really is.
You want to stop 'terrorism'? Get the Nixon crew out of the white house and the Zionists out of Isreal.
That's how you stop 'terrorism'.
9-11 was manufactured with the full knowledge and consent of the Bush government. Giving dippy little call buttons to flight attendants is like giving a used bandaid to a combine harvester accident victim.
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In short, are you sure you're not crazy? Your post seems to be the words of a disturbed mind.
Well. . . while I do find these thoughts disturbing, I am afraid to report that my mind is entirely healthy.
Here are three aspects of automatic plastic, (above and beyond being, "cards that you can pay for things with", which you may have not considered and which I think are worth being wary of. . .
1. I was using doors on a mall as a rough example. My point is that it will be possible to charge you for 'services' without you being aware of it. All a company need do is mail out a small-print negative-option agreement which will allow them to legally charge you every time you get within ten feet of their scanner while you walk along unawares. Their service might be as simple as breathing in their air space. --'Negative-option' means that unless you sign the company's form and mail it back to them saying, "NO!", you have 'agreed' to any such charges.
2. The government will be able to track your movements at all times when you are carrying around an RFID tag. If you stray outside the accepted boundaries, the authorities can instantly know it and put you on a watch and harass list. A restricted area might be as simple as an alternative bookshop. --And all of the places you visit to after leaving the bookshop. It's an easy way to spot a 'conspiracy' in the works and pinpoint all the people who need to have their houses watched, their phones rung in the early A.M., and their pets left dead on their front porches. Please reference, "McCarthyism," for more details.
3. When money is all digital, (which is exactly where things are heading), then if you do not comply with the state's wishes, (i.e., Heil Bush with enough vigor), then it is a very simple matter to have your money 'privileges' turned off by way of punishment.
I am aware that some people might think such concerns are the product of delusion. I would recommend to such people that they stop, look and listen for a few minutes every day so as to become better informed as to the nature of the on-going train wreck which is U.S. internal and international policy, and that they do it before they find themselves on the wrong side of the barbed wire in a FEMA detention camp in some otherwise pleasant little mountain retreat. You say you are a little afraid of being run over by a bus when you're not paying attention? I'd suggest that there is little difference.
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1. A ten cent charge for entering the mall doors.
--After all, it takes HARD WORK to make and install doors! Somebody had to design and build them! Do you feel you are so special that you shouldn't have to pay for the privilege of using doors? Jeez, it's just a dime. (Though, that price can change once the populace has been acclimated to being dinged for simply walking. I'm sure that, as per usual, there will be a host of worthy Slashdotters eager to argue on behalf of the corporations; who can be counted on to cry 'Thief' whenever somebody wonders why they can't use doors for free anymore; and who will happily parrot terms like, 'entrance-theft' once such terms have been appropriately astro-turfed into place by the corporate PR monkeys.)
2. People think that RFID is a close-range affair and so are lulled into a false sense of security. While it is true that an RFID chip does need to be within a few feet in order to be charged by a magnetic field, the signal it subsequently transmits can be picked up by satellite.
3. If there is no third element involved in the transference of data, (a pin number held in the user's brain), then any sneaky person with a satellite or closer range receiver can 'over-hear' all the info s/he needs to access an account and make a fraudulent purchase.
4. The big corporations and big government know all of this and are eager to have it all in place. The more base-level fear there is humming in the background, the more easily controlled a population becomes and the better fed the overseers are. Fear is food.
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The logic of greed.
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Each survey took about 20 minutes to complete. They were invasive and annoying and the people you called despised you. The office had a central control tower in the middle of the floor with 'listeners' who could tap into your line to make sure you weren't wasting company dollars by skimping on questions. (Callers were paid by the number of completed surveys at the end of a shift.)
The whole set-up was designed to deep-fry human brains from both ends. I didn't last very long. But you know what drove me nuts and bananas the most?
It was some of the other callers.
We had pink and blue sheets of questions. We needed to survey males and females, blue for male, pink for female. The very opening sentences were not scripted because they figured that we could work out on our own how to ask for the lady or the man of the house. Apparently this was a false assumption in this one guy's case. He sat down the aisle from me and would dial a number and say, "Hello. I need to speak to a female."
That made me cringe time and again, particularly when his forehead crinkled with confusion as he dealt with the social fallout of that weird intro and got impatient with the people on the other end.
Another guy sitting nearby was once presumably barked at by the person he had called and hung up on. So he re-dialed the number and shouted back at the person on the other end and then slammed his own reciever down. Then he spun around in his chair and raised his hands in victory. "REVENGE!" he cried.
After about an hour of this bullshit on my second day, (the first day was just a training seminar), I hung up my phone and walked up to the floor manager and told him that I just couldn't do this and that I was leaving. Sorry.
The weird thing was that he and I and one of the ladies from the control tower all sat down in the middle of the aisle on that thin office carpet and talked about how dumb this job was and what we really wanted from life.
Then I wished them well and left the building.
The end.
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Why assume that creator 'gods' were omnipotent?
We can create microbes in a dish, so why not alien scientists/breeders from a society a million years older than ours?
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Step 2. Install generators.
Step 3. Observe the magic of gravity.
Step 4. Proft.
Despite claims to the contrary, there are plenty of alternative and highly effective ways to generate electricity which do not involve burning things. We've been doing it for years.
If people stop consuming power like hogs, then there's no real problem here.
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Yeah, or they'd block your account altogether.
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You'd rather be in favor of no secrets in our government, which would let other countries walk all over our national concerns, as well completely negate any insight that we may have into things that other countries aren't forthcoming about?
That question is based on a high degree of dogma. You presuppose that governments have our best interests at heart. Just look at Katrina for the latest example of how false that idea is!
And putting all current events aside?
Seeing as we don't live under a theoretical governmental system, what value is there in not looking at objective reality when posing questions about whether government secrets are good or bad? Anybody who does the slightest bit of real digging quickly learns that we are being *shafted* by the current leaders, as well as the ones before them, and the ones before those. The 'informed' decisions made by those policy makers were and are designed to cause chaos and fear, to control us and set us in a reality where we are afraid of "being walked all over by other countries". This is a lie. An enforced stage production perpetrated by the secret keepers. People simply dance (go to war) over the lies sold to them by their social and religious leaders. That's how it works.
The CIA has destroyed the social structures of many countries which were threatening to rise in world power through the development of healthy and democratically elected governments which 'threaten' to offer good social services and fairly traded goods. The CIA does this precisely to keep the US on top of the heavily slanted power and money game. Look at what is happening in Venezuela right now. This is what secrecy leads to.
Once secrets are gone, once people have full knowledge and the willingness to look at and act on that knowledge, corruption will have a much harder time existing.
The only place I see for secrecy is when speaking a truth will endanger or hurt a person or people who are not emotionally or physically ready for such knowledge and who choose to stay ignorant and deal with their issues at their own speed. For instance, you don't share deep government secrets when you know the receiver would be harrassed or murdered for receiving that data.
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