Here's where sellouts come from. . .
on
L0pht And The FBI
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Very simply. . .
When you are a kid, you have skills and powers and the fire in your gut. And Mom & Dad pay for more than half your stuff. You don't worry about how you'll take care of yourself. You don't care about owning property and about how you will take care of your family. --You don't have kids yet, and probably don't plan to. Money is interesting and sexy, but it's not vital. In fact, it's kind of funny. It seems so many people take it far too seriously. It's fun to mock.
And so you hack. Or paint. Or busk. Or drink and smoke, or whatever young people do with their time and their fire and the money Mom & Dad gave them. --Or the few bucks earned from some lousy retail job.
And life is pretty good for about five to ten years. Rough and kinky and friendly around the edges. You can live on beer and pizza and Playstation and hope for a good romance/fuck with that girl you like, and maybe get some D&D in on every second Tuesday, cuz, you know, everybody has so little time these days, now that college is over.
But then. . .
You get the first of your grey hairs. Your body starts to do funny things. The mad fire of enthusiasm starts to flicker and you realize that your river of power is really NOT going to last forever!
And worse, you realize that true love has an unexpected price tag; one which is somewhat higher than the cruddy IKEA furnished room-mate situation you lived in when you were 25. Wives and families need proper bedspreads and New Car Smell purring from the AC. --And it always kind of sucked, but now you find yourself thinking more and more that working the Blockbuster counter just isn't as cool in your late twenties as it was when you were sixteen. And fuck! You're going to be thirty next year!
So you start to get scared, but this time you can't put off finding a solution. It's getting late. So what skills do you have? What can you turn into a lot of cash? The gun-wielding asshole at the border or in the patrol car or wherever, isn't going to let you get away with your stupid young shit just because you flash that caught-in-the-headlights "but I'm just a student," look at them anymore. You need credit cards and a fucking haircut buddy, or you're no place.
Sure, it's selling out. Sure it is. Hell, you had about 10 whole years to find a proper solution! And hell, if you were smart and diligent, you could have come up with something which would have steered you to financial comfort and self-reliance without darkening your soul; without caving in to the siren call of corporate slavery. But if you are like the other 99% of the spent sperm out there which never even found the road map to the lovely egg, then you're fucked like everybody else. Youth is powerful and wonderful and intoxicating, but then it's gone, and that's the way of things. It's not even sad. It's just how it is.
And this is one of the places where FBI sell-outs come from.
The rest is just stupidity and grandstanding. Cuz, you know, kids, eh?.
-Fantastic Lad
(Sorry. I'm painting a very negative picture of life here. You can change any of the above at any time. Corporate slavery can be left behind and moral high ground reached very easily any time you choose. But tonight, I've got the techno-ambient MP3's playing and I'm in a bad mood, so this is what I wrote. The sun'll come out tomorrow. ..)
My mistake. The book is only $14.95 on Amazon. (And they have about 20 used copies for between $6.95 and $10) There's no excuse.
I've been researching EM radiation on my own for about two years now, and I've got files upon files of great information. Becker, however, was in the thick of it since the sixties, conducting his own epidemiological studies with access to proper medical research resources. SO much is known, but a study, no matter how well done it is, is worth very little if you can't market it.
Robert O. Becker's book IS 10 years old now, but the information within is an excellent presentation of what I've been trying to figure out how best to share with people. Here's an MD's review:
Reviewer: Dr Peter J McKenzie from Oxford, "Others have summarised this astonishing book. It is most unfortunate that the title and cover imply a sensationalist book. It is sensational - but in the sense of new knowledge unknown to most of the Medical fraternity and I write as aa senior MD! This is the most important medical book I have read and I nearly ignored it because of its lurid presentation."
I know that story is about ELF radiation, HOWEVER, there have been conclusive studies which demonstrate that it's not high frequency which affects the body so much as it is low frequency, and pulse and amplitude modulation of high frequency carriers which cause the negative effects biochemists and behavioralists complain of.
In non-iodizing power levels and at the right frequencies, cancer cells speed up their rate of division by as much as 100 times. Sorry. No links, but if I'm around in the next hour or so and people are interested, I'll key in some quotes from Robert O. Becker's book, "Cross Currents."
The reason engineers and physicists have such a problem accepting that EM is dangerous is that they can't find any mechanical way for EM to cause any kind of effect on cells other than heating and ionization, neither of which are the causative agents.
Well. . .
Guess what? There IS a simple and accepted system by which cells are easily affected by EM. I recommend that book I linked to. It's only $20 and it's very well written by a respected non-quack. Give it a look if you think of yourself as well-informed.
Anybody who still does as they're told by the big corporate media manipulation, (i.e., believes there is no danger in EM radiation), should also probably take up smoking, because as you have surely heard from similar big-money interests, there's no danger in that, either.
There's another cool film called, "Way Downtown" which is very much in the same vein, though a little grungier around the edges.
Shot in downtown Calgary, where the doozer habitrails are so advanced that, between interconnected malls, eateries, apartment high-rises and office blocks, it is entirely possible to NEVER go outside. (Presumably something to do with harsh Canadian winters. ..)
The film is filled with dark-humor about what happens when a group of co-workers make a three pay-check bet to see who can stay indoors the longest. A rather bent film, with weird-ass hallucinogenic scenes which I can entirely relate to. --Basically, take your time in such fluorescent, filtered air environments, and multiply by 100. Makes you double-think space travel, and that's a fact!
Hm. Until I read the article, I was all set to poo-poo a poorly executed study. And after having read it, I am certainly inclined to stick with that plan!
First off. . .
The group studied 240 people in three groups. -Heavy game players, moderate and abstainers. That puts 80 people into each group. Among that 80, were people aged from 6 to 29. --Right there, I'm concerned. Different aged people have different things going on with their brain chemistry. Puberty alone introduces all kinds of chemical changes which could throw off the study. What was the gender division? Were all the participants playing the same game? Were the particpants using a CRT or a thin-screen? (different levels of EM and different kinds of visual stimulus affect the nervous system in different ways.) Heck, the various occupations of the participants could easily make a difference;
For instance, how many of the participants work 8 hours a day in front of a VDT, and how does that affect the study?
A study like this, which sounds to me as though it applied virtually no environmental controls on its subjects, would have to use a MUCH larger sample of people before any statistical analysis could become properly convincing. 3000 people would be a good number, with sub-groups where such things as age, gender, and type of occupation are taken into account.
Now, granted, this article was light on details, and maybe the study was done with strict controls and measures, but until the actual paper is released this Fall, we won't know. Until then, based on the posted article, I am going to have to suspend judgement, because it seems to me that this study might easily have been poorly executed.
That being said, however. . .
Just because the science may have been poor, I would not be surprised in the least to see that there IS some kind of correlation between video game playing and altered mind states. It would be very interesting if somebody were to do a proper study to find out what the effects might really be.
There is no media filtering going on. If there was, we wouldn't see this story here (nor would I have seen it in major US media outlets several times already)
Hairsplitting, and you know it. There is a huge difference between minimal exposure alternative press and CNN.
Anyway, that wasn't my point. --Indeed, if there wasn't any media filtering, your thought that child-prostitutes enjoy their 'paid' work could not have existed, but the fact was you were not given the whole story, even from the "major US media outlets" where you have seen the story "several times already".
The general mass consumption media sources MUST filter their stories, otherwise that most effective form of mind-numbing and propaganda, the 'Sound Bite,' could not possibly exist.
Hmmm... OK, I admit I almost believed you. Then I read the article you pasted and didn't see the word "American" or "US" used anywhere. So, maybe it isn't true?
I'm not really concerned which country the rich international community representatives come from who do the exploiting. It doesn't matter, really. The point is that the events going on in the world and the material reported are rarely connected properly, if at all.
If you want to know and live with that which is real, (and if you don't mind my being frank, it doesn't sound like you do), but IF you are at some point interested, then you're not going to learn it from anything I post here in an attempt to 'Proove' what I see. When it comes to personal knowledge, you're going to have to get down and dirty and do your own searching and thinking. Contrary to popular mis-conception, because YOUR mind is your own, and what you believe is always YOUR choice, the burdon of proof always, always remains on you.
Guess what else, I saw the story about the defense contractor, via the web. Its sad to see 12 year old prostitutes, but it is a bit of an exaggeration to say "ignore 12 year old Bosnian girls being raped by Americans" when they are paid for what they do. (who's to say they didn't enjoy it more than the men;^)
I seriously doubt that any child, given the free choice, would decide to sell their bodies for sex. Girls and women of these war-torn and disadvantaged countries are kidnapped and forced on threat of violence and death to perform. This is well documented. Do some reading. They are not paid. They are kept locked like animals in their rooms. In the words of one kidnapped prositute interviewed , "We are not even treated as well as dogs; you at least feed dogs. They starve us of water so that we will drink the beer customers buy for us." These people are thought of as commodity by the traders and bar-opperators who own them. It is one of the few situations in which I would be willing to murder in order to rectify.
Your mis-understanding of the situation is a direct result of the media filtering going on in the Western world.
Gee, maybe it's ignored because... it's not true? Nah, that couldn't be. Heck, if the Jews can all call in sick on 9/11, then they certain can mastermind something like this.
No, unfortunately, this is real, and it is covered by the international press.
Here's a clip from an article I saved from last year. The actual web page is gone now, but you can certainly do some searching if you really want to know about this stuff.
UN, SFOR Involved in Bosnian Prostitution
SARAJEVO, May 19, 2000 -- (Reuters) UN police in Bosnia and one member of a NATO-led force have been involved in prostitution and a trade in women that the Balkan country should do more to prevent, a UN report said on Thursday.
The report accused the authorities of going after the victims of trafficking rather than the true culprits. It said the women are often denied basic legal rights when detained.
"Bosnia-Herzegovina has emerged as a significant destination point for women trafficked from Eastern Europe," said the report released by the UN mission in Bosnia and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
The two agencies said they had dealt with 40 cases of suspected trafficking of people in the year to March, involving 182 women.
Most were in their 20s but five were under 18.
"The women in these cases were almost all foreign nationals, hailing from five countries - Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Romania and the Ukraine," it said.
"In approximately 14 cases...there was evidence of complicity by police, mostly local police but also some international police, as well as foreign military (SFOR troops)," the report said.
"All these groups were implicated as clients, though only local police and one SFOR member were apparently involved in buying and selling the women," the report said.
The UN International Police Task Force (IPTF) oversees the restructuring of Bosnia's police while the 20,000-strong NATO-led Stabilization Force (SFOR) safeguards the peace.
SFOR MEMBER INVOLVED IN TRAFFICKING
The report said that an international civilian member of SFOR reportedly paid 7,000 German marks ($3,200) in November 1999 to a bar owner in the eastern Serb-held town of Vlasenica for one woman from Romania and another from Moldova.
"As a member of SFOR, the man was immune from prosecution by local authorities. For unstated reasons, NATO declined to waive that immunity," the report said.
"On the basis of his misconduct the man was relieved of his duties and a few days later was barred from the SFOR area of operations. He left Bosnia and no further action was taken."
SFOR was not immediately available for comment.
In 1998, NATO dismissed allegations by the Spanish newspaper El Mundo that its soldiers were involved in child prostitution and drug trafficking in Bosnia.
UN spokesman Douglas Coffman told Reuters it could not prove allegations against officers of the international police force. "Had we been able to prove the allegations we would have punished them severely," he said.
The UN report said that most of the suspected trafficking was reported in or near the country's Serb republic - which with the Moslem-Croat federation makes up Bosnia - in some federation cantons and the neutral northern Brcko district.
A significant part of the trade was reported at the vast, unregulated "Arizona Market" which has several brothels. It is in northern Bosnia, on the boundary between the federation and Serb Republic and near Croatia and Yugoslavia.
"In general, government authorities do not fully understand the complexities of the trade in human beings nor do they comprehend its scope. Law enforcement is often complicit, either overtly or by silence and failure to act," the report said.
Yes, this poster got some facts wrong, but that does not invalidate his frustration.
Case in point: CNN running bits on the wedding bombing doesn't provide the justification to ignore 12 year old Bosnian girls being raped by Americans and other international UN representatives, for which there is very little broad coverage.
I tend to think, however, that the reason for spotty news coverage stems from a somewhat more devious source than simple greed, as Katz appears to believe.
In a related thought. . . Based on the conspiracy theorist's assumption that Nothing Major Happens In The News Without A Reason, my guess is that we're going to be seeing a movement towards a softening of perspective regarding Islamic Fundamentalists; That is, the public will be herded into a state where, while by no means forgiving or loving people from the Middle East, thinking of them as pathetic & savage dupes manipulated into performing for greater corrupt forces.
(i.e., "Somebody should step in and control those poor, stupid savages!")
I also tend to think that the current trend towards increasing world-wide anti-Semitism isn't going to let up until it reaches the point where when the next Holocaust begins, the world community will be willing to look the other way. "Serves them right!", or some such.
This, I must think, would require that at some point, the U.S. find itself 'forced', (through public pressure?), to pull its 3 billion per annum funding out of Israel. It'll be interesting to see how this feat is pulled off! Probably it'll be much more convoluted and infinitely more convincing a production.
While your view is remarkably egalitarian and trusting, (both of which are warm & nice things), the truth of the matter is that it's entirely the responsibility of the manufacturer/production company to work out how to best sell their stuff. I, as the end consumer, have NO responsibility in this regard. It's not my problem if they can't figure out how to capture my dollar.
That being said, if they ASK nicely for information about me in order to better service my needs, (Or some such), and give me an opportunity to voluntarily fill out an information form, then perhaps I'll do this. After all, I want my local news source to know what region and issues most affect me when they deliver their information.
But to make it a forced, no-option requirement? Well, guess what? I'll not be buying that company's product, because I consider that just plain rude.
Frankly, in this day and age of totalitarian authorities looming large, it's just plain stupid to broadcast your likes, dislikes, political views, etc., through what you consume, when you consume and how you consume. For instance. ..
Drink Jolt Cola? Live night-owl hours? Buy computer parts and Kraft Dinner? Don't buy diapers or tampons for dependants?
Well, guess what? You just profiled yourself. A check on credit, recent travel, phone records, web pages most often visited. . . Well, buddy, that sort of track record may well have you being percieved as a 'low grade threat' in an increasingly paranoid society, and you can count on being bookmarked.
Psych profiling is a refined art. Heaven forbid, should you rate better than a 50% chance of ever actually thinking of doing anything which might threaten the Homeland. . . Well, I wouldn't want to be in your shoes in five year's time when the white vans start making their collections. ..
-Fantastic Lad --18 months and counting 'till total ecconomic collapse of the U.S. Have you got your canned food and hunting rifle?.
Magnetic storage is of such a nature that it can be blanked at a distance by a relatively low power EM weapon. Holographic storage would, presumably, stand a higher chance of surviving.
Is this something to consider, or am I way off on this?
It's not as though there isn't technology available yet to store all the data you could ever want stored quickly cheaply. Whatever became of holographic and fluorescent read/write CD technology?
They had working models of those machines, for crying out loud! They had manufacturers lined up to produce the various chemicals and parts to make it a go. I was reading emails from a fellow who was running a demo of a desk-top version nearly five years ago.
And let's face it; even the top of the line computer which even makes a brief ice-berg appearance in the standard news forums is ancient technology by any number of arbitrary standards.
Or NOT arbitrary, I mean.
--We're a bunch of consumer monkeys bouncing around waiting for the next big thing, but we'll only get it when the powers that be decide we're good and ready. --Wouldn't want people to have computers which didn't waste a billion otherwise useful hours per year. Oh no! Computers which don't suck up attention by the gallon might allow people to use their time NOT being distracted by all the insane shit going down around their ears these days! Between television, computers and game boxes, people are pretty much doped up right-smart-good! Opiate of the masses, indeed. Bah.
I wonder what made them change their tune. Perhaps they didn't bother shutting down their R&D departments; you can always still rent out your tech to other companies, I suppose.
I know this one fellow who edits and stores video material, films and television shows in his spare time. I assure you from having seen him work; 20Gb is just about enough to make you want to pull your hair out!
As for myself. . . Using pseudo-careful space management, I've never hit a wall with my trusty old 10 Gb drive. --And I regularly use my machine to do significant high-graphics print publishing jobs. Basically, computers have already hit the point where I no longer care how they advance, (just so long as they don't get any more 'user friendly'!). --PC's finally achieved a level of functionality about six years ago where they could do everything I needed quickly, easily at chump-change prices.
And that's the future, baby!
-Fantastic Lad --When is the Phantom Editor going to make a Clone of Clones? I'd love to see that film done right!
That annoying sound-maker box which, (on all the stations where this might be an issue), spews the following percentages:
35% Irritating as hell advertising. 25% Irritating as hell DJ chatter and monster truck promotions. 10% Music, (if you're lucky). 30% Over-produced, dumb-ass noise, (best suited for attention-deficit hampster people who are permanently wrapped up in an artificial state of love-related angst.)
--And nearly all of which is mind-programming nonsense anyway, designed to fill people with misery-inducing behavior patterns. And these days it's so obvious. "Hit me baby, one more time." --I mean, for crying out loud!
With a very few exceptions, most stations which run on the commercial system are pretty crumby. Those stations which don't suck are run by sensible people who don't play the payola game. Canada's CBC Radio 1 kicks major ass, has NO advertising, and won't melt your brain. Actual, "I laughed, I cried, I was informed and entertained," content. Try it, and you'll realize just how fried your brain was on that other shit.
People don't realize McDonnald's food and the rest of the consumer crap they inhale is actually of extremely poor quality until they treat themselves to something good for a few weeks. --The other day, out of a desperation for fluids, I drank some Coke for the first time in over two years and was dumbfounded by just how awful it tasted. And I'm not just saying that; The stuff actually left a powerful petro-chemical after-taste in my mouth for half an hour. I couldn't believe that I used to consider the stuff a treat when I was younger. Honestly; have the changed the formula, or something?
All this nonsense about spying and power in our 'control reality' is tiresome and annoying and even scary if you haven't been dulled to the point of apathy by it all. --But it has all been pointed to before. ..
Here's one you're all sure to love. ..
Let's take an alternative look at world history. --After, that is, one manages to overcome the dogma and social shyness people are imbibed with regarding any stepping outside the bounds of the 'Official Story' with which we were all hammered during our childhoods, (that time of our lives when we were most vulnerable and least capable of examining ideas critically due simply to our innocence and the pressure to please the adult world, to "fit in"). --After one honestly takes the time to recognize, examine, research and generally wade through the sea of new-age crap to do some proper cross referencing of the more reliable information, theories and material evidence, one will be surprised to discover just how quickly the story takes on dimensions of plausibility. It 'Feels' right, once you shed the media & social conditioning.
And what the heck am I talking about here. . ? What alternative history? Well, let me throw one of the most charged and outrageous words in the world at you, (a quality, btw, which is often a strong indicator of just how feared such ideas are by those who recognize the truth in them but who would most certainly not benefit from broad acceptance thereof).
"Atlantis." --And no, Not a lost island. Not a magic place of wonders. That's the standard disinfo. Atlantis was no more a place than NATO may be considered a place. It was a period of history; the lost civilization was more an ideology which spread itself across the globe. It was an empire. And it was a part in a cycle. (One of the concepts you will run across is that 'Time' as it is commonly accepted, doesn't work the way as described in the manuals they handed out. Time is cyclical in a sense. This has all happened before; it is the cycle itself which evolves, hitting all the same landmarks, but changing and mutating in how it responds to the same bumps in the road.)
To be very brief: Atlantis, (the counterpart to the current United States), made a massive bid for domination and power, and in doing so, self-destructed. Comet showers devastating the planet were partly to blame. The internal power structure weakened by corruption was partly to blame. And the rise of the rest of the world against Atlantis took care of the remainder. And that's how the behemoth fell. -Mind you, a few billion lives were lost in great suffering during the whole process, --and that's perhaps one of the most important aspects to consider. There are forces which benefit from such things in a big way.
So, (and these are not really predictions; this is happening, has happened, will happen. . ), the particulars to look for are:
1) Nazi Germany was a dry run. For some reason, the Big Game seems to always be preceded by a dress rehearsal. Power, (and that's power as described by Don Juan), always tells you in advance exactly what it is going to do to you before the lesson commences. Typcially, people will not see this until afterwards, and this in itself is part of the lesson.
2) Comets are coming. The Twin Sun theory works like this: a large, binary star which never got quite large enough to ignite, is on an approximately 360,000 year orbit. (I could be wrong on that. You can check up the figures yourself). At it's closest point to the Sun, it passes harmlessly just in the neighborhood of Pluto, at which point it becomes visible for a short time due to the Sun's light. Then it goes away a short while later, (a few years.) No big deal, except that it passes through the Kuiper belt, disturbing matter there. This matter then falls out of orbit, and is launched through interaction with the dark star at high, high speed toward the inner parts of the solar system.
This group of asteroids typically then achieves a new orbit and cycles around the sun on a 3600 year period. We are in fact seeing the old remnants of the last one which was instigated 360,000 years ago with the last visit of the twin star. --All the 'near-miss' asteroids recently are not a coincidence, and indeed, if you study history, you will discover that there is evidence of massive, civilization destroying strikes on Earth every 3600 years or so. That makes for exciting research! Go search for that stuff. Check out ice core samples. Very cool!
Anyway, that old grouping is thin and used up. We're in for a brand new hammering from the new grouping within the next ten years or so. So watch the skies, (and watch the policy makers. Those in power know about all this. --Though their wishfull thinking, which generally dominates all greed-related power lust, has them actively believing they can out-wit nature. Mountain hide-out retreats, indeed!)
Anyway. ..
3) Economic collapse. --The economy has been fabricated into a means of population 'herding' and control. When the time for a massive power grab comes, one of the methods proposed by those in power, is to collapse the economy. --Those in power seem to shift the planned time of this around, but we should expect it within the next few years, if it's still on the books, that is. (I'm not part of the 'Brotherhood' so all my info is pretty severely filtered and unreliable. But the patterns always hold. Nobody can prevent that.)
2012, give or take a couple of years, (time is elastic, and all specific predictions and forecasting should be avoided as close-up details are self-evolving, and are easily changed depending on what people do and do not expect. Only the broad patterns are reliable), is about the deadline when the really big shit really hits the fan. The current, old cycle is ending, and a new one is set to begin.
Okay. That's a hefty amount of difficult info for one post. Take it as you will.
People often think, "Hm, I can buy a pretty good system for about the same as it would cost to build my own PC. So why bother with the hassle, and no warranty, etc.?"
Two problems here. ..
1. You actually CAN"T buy a "pretty good system" for the same price as it would cost to build your own PC, because all those bargain systems cut corners like crazy, using the absolute cheapest parts possible; somebody was buying up all those shoddy, low RPM Indian hard drives three years back, and it certainly wasn't the build-it-yourselfers!
You might spend about the same money building your own system, but you won't be using crap components. This is a big consideration.
2. As for the giant retailers getting discounts for buying OEM products in bulk and passing on the savings. . , well, guess where computer parts shots get their stuff? --Where I live, in Toronto, (which I understand, is in fact one of the best places on the planet for buying computer parts cheaply), the small computer shops will band together to purchase whole shipping palates of hardware at the manufacturer's discount. --Plus, they have a limited staff compliment so their operations are often about as expensive to opperate in the long run.
3. Warranty is not so big a deal. Your busted CD Burner, by virtue of your having bought it, comes with some kind of support. If your computer breaks down and you drag it into the place you purchased it to have it repaired, (And thank goodness you bought that $70 warranty!), all the technicians do is pull out the broken part and ship it to the manufacturer to have it replaced or refunded. If they're nice, they'll put in a new working part and send you home then and there, or otherwise, they'll wait until the replacement part ships back to them. One way or another, though, they're just taking you $70 to do exactly what you could do for yourself, minus the fifteen bucks to UPS a CD Burner to its maker. Granted, this is a hassle, but you can certainly do it yourself if things break.
Indeed, all of this stuff is fairly easy to do on your own. Plus, for some, building computers and various projects like that is FUN! I know that I enjoy it very much. There's nothing like tweeking your own system. (And if you put together a box which doesn't work, you can always haul it into a repair place and have them make it go for about $20)
The final thing comes from Carlos Castaneda. ..
Carlos was taught by his master to be a hunter before he was taken on to more advanced studies. A hunter always has more power than a normal man; he need not fear where regular people do, because no matter what happens, he knows he can always return to the land and live there with ease and grace.
If you are in the position to build your own computer and learn/exercise your skills, then you will become more powerful than the next guy who cannot do these things. --If you apply this practice to more aspects of life than just computers; if you use it not as an escape but rather as a means to building yourself, then you are not a geek; you are a more whole man.
Good idea, except sealed envelopes have never stopped aggressive spy activity before, and it certainly won't start now. Indeed, as somebody already mentioned, encrypting a document is like sending up a signal flare crying, "Open me!! I might be important!!"
Further, the better the encryption, the more likely your mail will be examined.
Wow. I annoyed you so much that you actually went sifting through all my recent posts in an effort to figure out what kind of animal I was. --Presumably in order that you could better attempt to hurt me. That's pretty sad, dude; That your buttons are so visible and easily pushed, and your responses, (even with prep-time), are so thoroughly lackluster in effect.
You are young, dim-witted and boring. Come back in five years when you've learned something about the world, and then maybe we'll spar. Until then, you are a gnat. Now, be off with you.
However, IE is a decent browser, not the best but it does most of what people expect it to do.
And more!
Having my desktop re-organized in terrible ways by IE 6, allowing Windows to make unauthorized connections to the web even when I don't have my browser fired up. . , well that just pisses me off.
I don't like to be a shill in some corporate control ploy.
Mozilla 1.0 is like a breath of fresh air! It does what I ask, it gives me power over simple things IE does not, such as turning off pop-ups, "unrequested windows" in the preferences, among many basic, sensible features. --Features which would only ever be written by non-corporate, private individuals who want a good browser.
IE is for the uninitiated, the unaware, the manipulated consumer sheep of the world.
Does the ownership of stuff bring happiness? We are told so by the media. But the chasing after it is endless. Having stuff only leaves the true consumer dissatisfied and aching for more with which to fill the bottomless gap. Does one ever reach happiness, or is it just a temporary high which only lasts as long as "New Car Smell"? (Which is engineered to last only 3-4 months. True.)
Happiness is the carrot. A happy consumer has little worth, because s/he has realized that low level, sustainable consumption is all which is required to live comfortably. This leads to spending less time in the rat race, and allows one to realize that happiness is more easily and more effectively sought in other places than the accumulation of commercial products.
This view is, of course, frowned upon by Wall Street.
-Fantastic Lad
Okay. Here's WHY Lucas dropped the ball.
on
The Empire Stumbles
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· Score: 3, Informative
Alright. ..
I'll get into it.
First off. ..
While it's always interesting to look at the broad socio-cultural dynamics in mass media, I think perhaps Katz is searching rather too deeply here for a reason. Aside from the fact that Spiderman is a decade or so older than even the first Star Wars film, (which makes it anything but a youthful rebellion against convention), the reason Sam Raimi's film is making more than George's is that it was a better movie. This has been pointed out several times already.
What hasn't been successfully pointed out is why. People seem to be a little confused as to why the latest entry in the Star Wars franchise didn't ring any bells. Yes, they say things like, "Bad Dialogue" and "Bad Acting," but that's somewhat off the mark. And I sympathize. Such a lumbering monstrosity as AOTC, which worked on some levels, looked good, and generally entertained for nearly three hours despite it's being riddled with flaws, makes it difficult to see exactly where and how it went wrong.
I'd like to offer that the fact George didn't have a completed script before he started shooting as the prime culprit. That, and George has forgotten how to direct. --I refuse to put the actors at fault for what ended up on the screen. That's silly. I don't care how talented you are as an actor, You try pulling off some of the things they were required to say with integrity, a straight face and weak directing!
Take a look at the website for the Matrix, Reloaded. Look at the interviews and artwork done by the concept and story board artists. Every single scene of that film was worked out and adjusted with the director's approval, penciled and inked on paper in excruciating detail. The story board for the first film was VERY complete. Certain sections were even animated just to work out how they should look. And why? Because only if you do it this way can you be certain of what your finished product will look like on the big screen. This is a way of 'beta-testing' your film.
And it works. The first Matrix film was wonderfully done. There were very few kinks in the mix, and the pacing was wonderful.
However, the system by which the latest Star Wars films were made is entirely different.
George has basically invented a new way of movie making. Rather than shooting the all the footage, inserting the effects, and then sitting down with the finished film to edit everything into a finished product, The Phantom Menace and Clones were shot, edited and treated all at the same time. The daily video which came off the set or from location, was digitally sent to the editors that afternoon to be spliced together with the rest of the scenes in the 'master' copy of the film. At certain points, the master copy was made up from some scenes which were just green screens with actors talking, or a hand drawn animated sequences of a space fight or what have you, but the whole film was essentially right there on the non-linear editor. As new scenes, effects, etc., became available, they were spliced in to replace less finished scenes. And the film grew like this.
This allows, potentially, for increased efficiencies in production and for problems to be caught early on. It allows for massive flexibility. Unfortunately, it also clearly has the power to fool a director into thinking that just because he can create on the fly, that he should try to do so. --George clearly wanted to make the actual writing part of this non-linear process, which I feel, was a huge mistake.
The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles were produced using an earlier version of this process. They looked ten times more expensive than they actually were, thanks to the efficiencies provided by the digital system. They told fun, sophisticated stories which on the whole, were highly entertaining. The difference between them and the last two Star Wars films were that each episode of Chronicles was first written by a respected and accomplished writer and then carefully edited into shape before being stamped with approval to be shot. And when they were shot, it was done by a skilled director. (Not Lucas.) Planning and directing. These two items make all the difference in the world!
The ironic part is that the super precision with which the Matrix was written, planned and story boarded was not something new. The Wachowski brothers were simply following George Lucas's lead. Back in the days when The Empire Strikes Back was being made, every shot and scene was meticulously planned in pencil and ink. Some scenes were even fully hand animated. Nobody was going to waste an inch of expensive film or a minute of expensive production time shooting something which they weren't pretty damned certain was work.
So yes, Video non-linear editing and the wonderfully efficient system Lucas has managed to create over the last fifteen years is an amazingly powerful and ingenious contraption. It makes error and experimentation fairly inexpensive. But in the final analysis, perhaps this is not such a good thing. Perhaps that much creative freedom only encourages laziness.
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When you are a kid, you have skills and powers and the fire in your gut. And Mom & Dad pay for more than half your stuff. You don't worry about how you'll take care of yourself. You don't care about owning property and about how you will take care of your family. --You don't have kids yet, and probably don't plan to. Money is interesting and sexy, but it's not vital. In fact, it's kind of funny. It seems so many people take it far too seriously. It's fun to mock.
And so you hack. Or paint. Or busk. Or drink and smoke, or whatever young people do with their time and their fire and the money Mom & Dad gave them. --Or the few bucks earned from some lousy retail job.
And life is pretty good for about five to ten years. Rough and kinky and friendly around the edges. You can live on beer and pizza and Playstation and hope for a good romance/fuck with that girl you like, and maybe get some D&D in on every second Tuesday, cuz, you know, everybody has so little time these days, now that college is over.
But then. . .
You get the first of your grey hairs. Your body starts to do funny things. The mad fire of enthusiasm starts to flicker and you realize that your river of power is really NOT going to last forever!
And worse, you realize that true love has an unexpected price tag; one which is somewhat higher than the cruddy IKEA furnished room-mate situation you lived in when you were 25. Wives and families need proper bedspreads and New Car Smell purring from the AC. --And it always kind of sucked, but now you find yourself thinking more and more that working the Blockbuster counter just isn't as cool in your late twenties as it was when you were sixteen. And fuck! You're going to be thirty next year!
So you start to get scared, but this time you can't put off finding a solution. It's getting late. So what skills do you have? What can you turn into a lot of cash? The gun-wielding asshole at the border or in the patrol car or wherever, isn't going to let you get away with your stupid young shit just because you flash that caught-in-the-headlights "but I'm just a student," look at them anymore. You need credit cards and a fucking haircut buddy, or you're no place.
Sure, it's selling out. Sure it is. Hell, you had about 10 whole years to find a proper solution! And hell, if you were smart and diligent, you could have come up with something which would have steered you to financial comfort and self-reliance without darkening your soul; without caving in to the siren call of corporate slavery. But if you are like the other 99% of the spent sperm out there which never even found the road map to the lovely egg, then you're fucked like everybody else. Youth is powerful and wonderful and intoxicating, but then it's gone, and that's the way of things. It's not even sad. It's just how it is.
And this is one of the places where FBI sell-outs come from.
The rest is just stupidity and grandstanding. Cuz, you know, kids, eh?.
-Fantastic Lad
(Sorry. I'm painting a very negative picture of life here. You can change any of the above at any time. Corporate slavery can be left behind and moral high ground reached very easily any time you choose. But tonight, I've got the techno-ambient MP3's playing and I'm in a bad mood, so this is what I wrote. The sun'll come out tomorrow. . .)
I've been researching EM radiation on my own for about two years now, and I've got files upon files of great information. Becker, however, was in the thick of it since the sixties, conducting his own epidemiological studies with access to proper medical research resources. SO much is known, but a study, no matter how well done it is, is worth very little if you can't market it.
Robert O. Becker's book IS 10 years old now, but the information within is an excellent presentation of what I've been trying to figure out how best to share with people. Here's an MD's review:
Reviewer: Dr Peter J McKenzie from Oxford, "Others have summarised this astonishing book. It is most unfortunate that the title and cover imply a sensationalist book. It is sensational - but in the sense of new knowledge unknown to most of the Medical fraternity and I write as aa senior MD! This is the most important medical book I have read and I nearly ignored it because of its lurid presentation."
-Fantastic Lad
Weirdly enough, I JUST ran across this item.
I know that story is about ELF radiation, HOWEVER, there have been conclusive studies which demonstrate that it's not high frequency which affects the body so much as it is low frequency, and pulse and amplitude modulation of high frequency carriers which cause the negative effects biochemists and behavioralists complain of.
In non-iodizing power levels and at the right frequencies, cancer cells speed up their rate of division by as much as 100 times. Sorry. No links, but if I'm around in the next hour or so and people are interested, I'll key in some quotes from Robert O. Becker's book, "Cross Currents."
The reason engineers and physicists have such a problem accepting that EM is dangerous is that they can't find any mechanical way for EM to cause any kind of effect on cells other than heating and ionization, neither of which are the causative agents.
Well. . .
Guess what? There IS a simple and accepted system by which cells are easily affected by EM. I recommend that book I linked to. It's only $20 and it's very well written by a respected non-quack. Give it a look if you think of yourself as well-informed.
Anybody who still does as they're told by the big corporate media manipulation, (i.e., believes there is no danger in EM radiation), should also probably take up smoking, because as you have surely heard from similar big-money interests, there's no danger in that, either.
-Fantastic Lad
Shot in downtown Calgary, where the doozer habitrails are so advanced that, between interconnected malls, eateries, apartment high-rises and office blocks, it is entirely possible to NEVER go outside. (Presumably something to do with harsh Canadian winters. . .)
The film is filled with dark-humor about what happens when a group of co-workers make a three pay-check bet to see who can stay indoors the longest. A rather bent film, with weird-ass hallucinogenic scenes which I can entirely relate to. --Basically, take your time in such fluorescent, filtered air environments, and multiply by 100. Makes you double-think space travel, and that's a fact!
-Fantastic Lad
First off. . .
The group studied 240 people in three groups. -Heavy game players, moderate and abstainers. That puts 80 people into each group. Among that 80, were people aged from 6 to 29. --Right there, I'm concerned. Different aged people have different things going on with their brain chemistry. Puberty alone introduces all kinds of chemical changes which could throw off the study. What was the gender division? Were all the participants playing the same game? Were the particpants using a CRT or a thin-screen? (different levels of EM and different kinds of visual stimulus affect the nervous system in different ways.) Heck, the various occupations of the participants could easily make a difference;
For instance, how many of the participants work 8 hours a day in front of a VDT, and how does that affect the study?
A study like this, which sounds to me as though it applied virtually no environmental controls on its subjects, would have to use a MUCH larger sample of people before any statistical analysis could become properly convincing. 3000 people would be a good number, with sub-groups where such things as age, gender, and type of occupation are taken into account.
Now, granted, this article was light on details, and maybe the study was done with strict controls and measures, but until the actual paper is released this Fall, we won't know. Until then, based on the posted article, I am going to have to suspend judgement, because it seems to me that this study might easily have been poorly executed.
That being said, however. . .
Just because the science may have been poor, I would not be surprised in the least to see that there IS some kind of correlation between video game playing and altered mind states. It would be very interesting if somebody were to do a proper study to find out what the effects might really be.
Until then, I am. . .
-Fantastic Lad
Hairsplitting, and you know it. There is a huge difference between minimal exposure alternative press and CNN.
Anyway, that wasn't my point. --Indeed, if there wasn't any media filtering, your thought that child-prostitutes enjoy their 'paid' work could not have existed, but the fact was you were not given the whole story, even from the "major US media outlets" where you have seen the story "several times already".
The general mass consumption media sources MUST filter their stories, otherwise that most effective form of mind-numbing and propaganda, the 'Sound Bite,' could not possibly exist.
-Fantastic Lad
I'm not really concerned which country the rich international community representatives come from who do the exploiting. It doesn't matter, really. The point is that the events going on in the world and the material reported are rarely connected properly, if at all.
If you want to know and live with that which is real, (and if you don't mind my being frank, it doesn't sound like you do), but IF you are at some point interested, then you're not going to learn it from anything I post here in an attempt to 'Proove' what I see. When it comes to personal knowledge, you're going to have to get down and dirty and do your own searching and thinking. Contrary to popular mis-conception, because YOUR mind is your own, and what you believe is always YOUR choice, the burdon of proof always, always remains on you.
-Fantastic Lad
I seriously doubt that any child, given the free choice, would decide to sell their bodies for sex. Girls and women of these war-torn and disadvantaged countries are kidnapped and forced on threat of violence and death to perform. This is well documented. Do some reading. They are not paid. They are kept locked like animals in their rooms. In the words of one kidnapped prositute interviewed , "We are not even treated as well as dogs; you at least feed dogs. They starve us of water so that we will drink the beer customers buy for us." These people are thought of as commodity by the traders and bar-opperators who own them. It is one of the few situations in which I would be willing to murder in order to rectify.
Your mis-understanding of the situation is a direct result of the media filtering going on in the Western world.
Get informed!
-Fantastic Lad
No, unfortunately, this is real, and it is covered by the international press.
Here's a clip from an article I saved from last year. The actual web page is gone now, but you can certainly do some searching if you really want to know about this stuff.
-Fanstastic Lad
Case in point: CNN running bits on the wedding bombing doesn't provide the justification to ignore 12 year old Bosnian girls being raped by Americans and other international UN representatives, for which there is very little broad coverage.
I tend to think, however, that the reason for spotty news coverage stems from a somewhat more devious source than simple greed, as Katz appears to believe.
In a related thought. . . Based on the conspiracy theorist's assumption that Nothing Major Happens In The News Without A Reason, my guess is that we're going to be seeing a movement towards a softening of perspective regarding Islamic Fundamentalists; That is, the public will be herded into a state where, while by no means forgiving or loving people from the Middle East, thinking of them as pathetic & savage dupes manipulated into performing for greater corrupt forces.
(i.e., "Somebody should step in and control those poor, stupid savages!")
I also tend to think that the current trend towards increasing world-wide anti-Semitism isn't going to let up until it reaches the point where when the next Holocaust begins, the world community will be willing to look the other way. "Serves them right!", or some such.
This, I must think, would require that at some point, the U.S. find itself 'forced', (through public pressure?), to pull its 3 billion per annum funding out of Israel. It'll be interesting to see how this feat is pulled off! Probably it'll be much more convoluted and infinitely more convincing a production.
Stay tuned!
-Fantastic Lad
That being said, if they ASK nicely for information about me in order to better service my needs, (Or some such), and give me an opportunity to voluntarily fill out an information form, then perhaps I'll do this. After all, I want my local news source to know what region and issues most affect me when they deliver their information.
But to make it a forced, no-option requirement? Well, guess what? I'll not be buying that company's product, because I consider that just plain rude.
Frankly, in this day and age of totalitarian authorities looming large, it's just plain stupid to broadcast your likes, dislikes, political views, etc., through what you consume, when you consume and how you consume. For instance. .
Drink Jolt Cola? Live night-owl hours? Buy computer parts and Kraft Dinner? Don't buy diapers or tampons for dependants?
Well, guess what? You just profiled yourself. A check on credit, recent travel, phone records, web pages most often visited. . . Well, buddy, that sort of track record may well have you being percieved as a 'low grade threat' in an increasingly paranoid society, and you can count on being bookmarked.
Psych profiling is a refined art. Heaven forbid, should you rate better than a 50% chance of ever actually thinking of doing anything which might threaten the Homeland. . . Well, I wouldn't want to be in your shoes in five year's time when the white vans start making their collections. .
-Fantastic Lad --18 months and counting 'till total ecconomic collapse of the U.S. Have you got your canned food and hunting rifle?.
-Fantastic Lad
Is this something to consider, or am I way off on this?
-Fantastic Lad
It's not as though there isn't technology available yet to store all the data you could ever want stored quickly cheaply. Whatever became of holographic and fluorescent read/write CD technology?
They had working models of those machines, for crying out loud! They had manufacturers lined up to produce the various chemicals and parts to make it a go. I was reading emails from a fellow who was running a demo of a desk-top version nearly five years ago.
And let's face it; even the top of the line computer which even makes a brief ice-berg appearance in the standard news forums is ancient technology by any number of arbitrary standards.
Or NOT arbitrary, I mean.
--We're a bunch of consumer monkeys bouncing around waiting for the next big thing, but we'll only get it when the powers that be decide we're good and ready. --Wouldn't want people to have computers which didn't waste a billion otherwise useful hours per year. Oh no! Computers which don't suck up attention by the gallon might allow people to use their time NOT being distracted by all the insane shit going down around their ears these days! Between television, computers and game boxes, people are pretty much doped up right-smart-good! Opiate of the masses, indeed. Bah.
Terabyte this.
-Fantastic Lad
-Fantastic Lad
As for myself. . . Using pseudo-careful space management, I've never hit a wall with my trusty old 10 Gb drive. --And I regularly use my machine to do significant high-graphics print publishing jobs. Basically, computers have already hit the point where I no longer care how they advance, (just so long as they don't get any more 'user friendly'!). --PC's finally achieved a level of functionality about six years ago where they could do everything I needed quickly, easily at chump-change prices.
And that's the future, baby!
-Fantastic Lad --When is the Phantom Editor going to make a Clone of Clones? I'd love to see that film done right!
That annoying sound-maker box which, (on all the stations where this might be an issue), spews the following percentages:
35% Irritating as hell advertising.
25% Irritating as hell DJ chatter and monster truck promotions.
10% Music, (if you're lucky).
30% Over-produced, dumb-ass noise, (best suited for attention-deficit hampster people who are permanently wrapped up in an artificial state of love-related angst.)
--And nearly all of which is mind-programming nonsense anyway, designed to fill people with misery-inducing behavior patterns. And these days it's so obvious. "Hit me baby, one more time." --I mean, for crying out loud!
With a very few exceptions, most stations which run on the commercial system are pretty crumby. Those stations which don't suck are run by sensible people who don't play the payola game. Canada's CBC Radio 1 kicks major ass, has NO advertising, and won't melt your brain. Actual, "I laughed, I cried, I was informed and entertained," content. Try it, and you'll realize just how fried your brain was on that other shit.
People don't realize McDonnald's food and the rest of the consumer crap they inhale is actually of extremely poor quality until they treat themselves to something good for a few weeks. --The other day, out of a desperation for fluids, I drank some Coke for the first time in over two years and was dumbfounded by just how awful it tasted. And I'm not just saying that; The stuff actually left a powerful petro-chemical after-taste in my mouth for half an hour. I couldn't believe that I used to consider the stuff a treat when I was younger. Honestly; have the changed the formula, or something?
-Fantastic Lad
Here's one you're all sure to love. .
Let's take an alternative look at world history. --After, that is, one manages to overcome the dogma and social shyness people are imbibed with regarding any stepping outside the bounds of the 'Official Story' with which we were all hammered during our childhoods, (that time of our lives when we were most vulnerable and least capable of examining ideas critically due simply to our innocence and the pressure to please the adult world, to "fit in"). --After one honestly takes the time to recognize, examine, research and generally wade through the sea of new-age crap to do some proper cross referencing of the more reliable information, theories and material evidence, one will be surprised to discover just how quickly the story takes on dimensions of plausibility. It 'Feels' right, once you shed the media & social conditioning.
And what the heck am I talking about here. . ? What alternative history? Well, let me throw one of the most charged and outrageous words in the world at you, (a quality, btw, which is often a strong indicator of just how feared such ideas are by those who recognize the truth in them but who would most certainly not benefit from broad acceptance thereof).
"Atlantis." --And no, Not a lost island. Not a magic place of wonders. That's the standard disinfo. Atlantis was no more a place than NATO may be considered a place. It was a period of history; the lost civilization was more an ideology which spread itself across the globe. It was an empire. And it was a part in a cycle. (One of the concepts you will run across is that 'Time' as it is commonly accepted, doesn't work the way as described in the manuals they handed out. Time is cyclical in a sense. This has all happened before; it is the cycle itself which evolves, hitting all the same landmarks, but changing and mutating in how it responds to the same bumps in the road.)
To be very brief: Atlantis, (the counterpart to the current United States), made a massive bid for domination and power, and in doing so, self-destructed. Comet showers devastating the planet were partly to blame. The internal power structure weakened by corruption was partly to blame. And the rise of the rest of the world against Atlantis took care of the remainder. And that's how the behemoth fell. -Mind you, a few billion lives were lost in great suffering during the whole process, --and that's perhaps one of the most important aspects to consider. There are forces which benefit from such things in a big way.
So, (and these are not really predictions; this is happening, has happened, will happen. . ), the particulars to look for are:
1) Nazi Germany was a dry run. For some reason, the Big Game seems to always be preceded by a dress rehearsal. Power, (and that's power as described by Don Juan), always tells you in advance exactly what it is going to do to you before the lesson commences. Typcially, people will not see this until afterwards, and this in itself is part of the lesson.
2) Comets are coming. The Twin Sun theory works like this: a large, binary star which never got quite large enough to ignite, is on an approximately 360,000 year orbit. (I could be wrong on that. You can check up the figures yourself). At it's closest point to the Sun, it passes harmlessly just in the neighborhood of Pluto, at which point it becomes visible for a short time due to the Sun's light. Then it goes away a short while later, (a few years.) No big deal, except that it passes through the Kuiper belt, disturbing matter there. This matter then falls out of orbit, and is launched through interaction with the dark star at high, high speed toward the inner parts of the solar system.
This group of asteroids typically then achieves a new orbit and cycles around the sun on a 3600 year period. We are in fact seeing the old remnants of the last one which was instigated 360,000 years ago with the last visit of the twin star. --All the 'near-miss' asteroids recently are not a coincidence, and indeed, if you study history, you will discover that there is evidence of massive, civilization destroying strikes on Earth every 3600 years or so. That makes for exciting research! Go search for that stuff. Check out ice core samples. Very cool!
Anyway, that old grouping is thin and used up. We're in for a brand new hammering from the new grouping within the next ten years or so. So watch the skies, (and watch the policy makers. Those in power know about all this. --Though their wishfull thinking, which generally dominates all greed-related power lust, has them actively believing they can out-wit nature. Mountain hide-out retreats, indeed!)
Anyway. .
3) Economic collapse. --The economy has been fabricated into a means of population 'herding' and control. When the time for a massive power grab comes, one of the methods proposed by those in power, is to collapse the economy. --Those in power seem to shift the planned time of this around, but we should expect it within the next few years, if it's still on the books, that is. (I'm not part of the 'Brotherhood' so all my info is pretty severely filtered and unreliable. But the patterns always hold. Nobody can prevent that.)
2012, give or take a couple of years, (time is elastic, and all specific predictions and forecasting should be avoided as close-up details are self-evolving, and are easily changed depending on what people do and do not expect. Only the broad patterns are reliable), is about the deadline when the really big shit really hits the fan. The current, old cycle is ending, and a new one is set to begin.
Okay. That's a hefty amount of difficult info for one post. Take it as you will.
-Fantastic Lad
Two problems here. .
1. You actually CAN"T buy a "pretty good system" for the same price as it would cost to build your own PC, because all those bargain systems cut corners like crazy, using the absolute cheapest parts possible; somebody was buying up all those shoddy, low RPM Indian hard drives three years back, and it certainly wasn't the build-it-yourselfers!
You might spend about the same money building your own system, but you won't be using crap components. This is a big consideration.
2. As for the giant retailers getting discounts for buying OEM products in bulk and passing on the savings. . , well, guess where computer parts shots get their stuff? --Where I live, in Toronto, (which I understand, is in fact one of the best places on the planet for buying computer parts cheaply), the small computer shops will band together to purchase whole shipping palates of hardware at the manufacturer's discount. --Plus, they have a limited staff compliment so their operations are often about as expensive to opperate in the long run.
3. Warranty is not so big a deal. Your busted CD Burner, by virtue of your having bought it, comes with some kind of support. If your computer breaks down and you drag it into the place you purchased it to have it repaired, (And thank goodness you bought that $70 warranty!), all the technicians do is pull out the broken part and ship it to the manufacturer to have it replaced or refunded. If they're nice, they'll put in a new working part and send you home then and there, or otherwise, they'll wait until the replacement part ships back to them. One way or another, though, they're just taking you $70 to do exactly what you could do for yourself, minus the fifteen bucks to UPS a CD Burner to its maker. Granted, this is a hassle, but you can certainly do it yourself if things break.
Indeed, all of this stuff is fairly easy to do on your own. Plus, for some, building computers and various projects like that is FUN! I know that I enjoy it very much. There's nothing like tweeking your own system. (And if you put together a box which doesn't work, you can always haul it into a repair place and have them make it go for about $20)
The final thing comes from Carlos Castaneda. .
Carlos was taught by his master to be a hunter before he was taken on to more advanced studies. A hunter always has more power than a normal man; he need not fear where regular people do, because no matter what happens, he knows he can always return to the land and live there with ease and grace.
If you are in the position to build your own computer and learn/exercise your skills, then you will become more powerful than the next guy who cannot do these things. --If you apply this practice to more aspects of life than just computers; if you use it not as an escape but rather as a means to building yourself, then you are not a geek; you are a more whole man.
-Fantastic Lad
Further, the better the encryption, the more likely your mail will be examined.
-Fantastic Lad
You are young, dim-witted and boring. Come back in five years when you've learned something about the world, and then maybe we'll spar. Until then, you are a gnat. Now, be off with you.
-Fantastic Lad
And more!
Having my desktop re-organized in terrible ways by IE 6, allowing Windows to make unauthorized connections to the web even when I don't have my browser fired up. . , well that just pisses me off.
I don't like to be a shill in some corporate control ploy.
Mozilla 1.0 is like a breath of fresh air! It does what I ask, it gives me power over simple things IE does not, such as turning off pop-ups, "unrequested windows" in the preferences, among many basic, sensible features. --Features which would only ever be written by non-corporate, private individuals who want a good browser.
IE is for the uninitiated, the unaware, the manipulated consumer sheep of the world.
And damn it, I AM NOT A NUMBER. . !
*ahem*
-Fantastic Lad
Luckily, your abilities in the arena of public persuasion run at about the same low voltage as your understanding of world affairs.
I normally don't stoop to vulgarity, but in this case, I must point out that you are indeed a massive Fucking Idiot.
-Fantastic Lad
Does the ownership of stuff bring happiness? We are told so by the media. But the chasing after it is endless. Having stuff only leaves the true consumer dissatisfied and aching for more with which to fill the bottomless gap. Does one ever reach happiness, or is it just a temporary high which only lasts as long as "New Car Smell"? (Which is engineered to last only 3-4 months. True.)
Happiness is the carrot. A happy consumer has little worth, because s/he has realized that low level, sustainable consumption is all which is required to live comfortably. This leads to spending less time in the rat race, and allows one to realize that happiness is more easily and more effectively sought in other places than the accumulation of commercial products.
This view is, of course, frowned upon by Wall Street.
-Fantastic Lad
Alright. . .
.
I'll get into it.
First off. .
While it's always interesting to look at the broad socio-cultural dynamics in mass media, I think perhaps Katz is searching rather too deeply here for a reason. Aside from the fact that Spiderman is a decade or so older than even the first Star Wars film, (which makes it anything but a youthful rebellion against convention), the reason Sam Raimi's film is making more than George's is that it was a better movie. This has been pointed out several times already.
What hasn't been successfully pointed out is why. People seem to be a little confused as to why the latest entry in the Star Wars franchise didn't ring any bells. Yes, they say things like, "Bad Dialogue" and "Bad Acting," but that's somewhat off the mark. And I sympathize. Such a lumbering monstrosity as AOTC, which worked on some levels, looked good, and generally entertained for nearly three hours despite it's being riddled with flaws, makes it difficult to see exactly where and how it went wrong.
I'd like to offer that the fact George didn't have a completed script before he started shooting as the prime culprit. That, and George has forgotten how to direct. --I refuse to put the actors at fault for what ended up on the screen. That's silly. I don't care how talented you are as an actor, You try pulling off some of the things they were required to say with integrity, a straight face and weak directing!
Take a look at the website for the Matrix, Reloaded. Look at the interviews and artwork done by the concept and story board artists. Every single scene of that film was worked out and adjusted with the director's approval, penciled and inked on paper in excruciating detail. The story board for the first film was VERY complete. Certain sections were even animated just to work out how they should look. And why? Because only if you do it this way can you be certain of what your finished product will look like on the big screen. This is a way of 'beta-testing' your film.
And it works. The first Matrix film was wonderfully done. There were very few kinks in the mix, and the pacing was wonderful.
However, the system by which the latest Star Wars films were made is entirely different.
George has basically invented a new way of movie making. Rather than shooting the all the footage, inserting the effects, and then sitting down with the finished film to edit everything into a finished product, The Phantom Menace and Clones were shot, edited and treated all at the same time. The daily video which came off the set or from location, was digitally sent to the editors that afternoon to be spliced together with the rest of the scenes in the 'master' copy of the film. At certain points, the master copy was made up from some scenes which were just green screens with actors talking, or a hand drawn animated sequences of a space fight or what have you, but the whole film was essentially right there on the non-linear editor. As new scenes, effects, etc., became available, they were spliced in to replace less finished scenes. And the film grew like this.
This allows, potentially, for increased efficiencies in production and for problems to be caught early on. It allows for massive flexibility. Unfortunately, it also clearly has the power to fool a director into thinking that just because he can create on the fly, that he should try to do so. --George clearly wanted to make the actual writing part of this non-linear process, which I feel, was a huge mistake.
The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles were produced using an earlier version of this process. They looked ten times more expensive than they actually were, thanks to the efficiencies provided by the digital system. They told fun, sophisticated stories which on the whole, were highly entertaining. The difference between them and the last two Star Wars films were that each episode of Chronicles was first written by a respected and accomplished writer and then carefully edited into shape before being stamped with approval to be shot. And when they were shot, it was done by a skilled director. (Not Lucas.) Planning and directing. These two items make all the difference in the world!
The ironic part is that the super precision with which the Matrix was written, planned and story boarded was not something new. The Wachowski brothers were simply following George Lucas's lead. Back in the days when The Empire Strikes Back was being made, every shot and scene was meticulously planned in pencil and ink. Some scenes were even fully hand animated. Nobody was going to waste an inch of expensive film or a minute of expensive production time shooting something which they weren't pretty damned certain was work.
So yes, Video non-linear editing and the wonderfully efficient system Lucas has managed to create over the last fifteen years is an amazingly powerful and ingenious contraption. It makes error and experimentation fairly inexpensive. But in the final analysis, perhaps this is not such a good thing. Perhaps that much creative freedom only encourages laziness.
-Fantastic Lad