Fortunately, the question is instantly answered the moment he clicks on his bookmark for this site. Until that point, there is no Slashdot. --And I don't know about you, but personally, I find being in a superposition confusing and frustrating because I have things I want to get on with, and I never know when I'm allowed to use the washroom. People should reload more often, just out of courtesy.
--And typically, one of the cooler Star Wars games.
(And yes, I too have wandered down that sunny Day Dream avenue from time to time.)
You have to be about seven or eight years old, about six months after Star Wars came out and the best computer game available is "Pong" which takes up an entire counsel unit and is still pretty cool. Anyway, you have to show up one day at your friend's house or at school; some place where there's a handful of kids but no adults, and you have to have a modern laptop with you. You explain that it's a new Star Wars toy that they're testing but which hasn't "come out" yet, and that your Dad managed to bring one of the test units home from "the office". Nobody's sure if he really let you have it or if you're going to get in trouble when he finds out. Either way, that's incidental, because everybody is jostling to see what the heck it is you have on the table. It looks like it might have actually been IN a Star Wars film, that's for sure.
Then you crack open the lid and power it up, and muck around with the interface for a while. This should be sufficient to blow your audience away since things like GUI's and mouse pointers haven't been invented yet. --Flat screens which have better color and resolution than any TV set around are also new; just the sort of thing you'd expect a really expensive Star Wars toy to have. You might also want to pull the luminescent CD out of the Star Wars game package and put it in the extending CD tray. --Because Walkman-size consumer electronics have also not been invented, so just the size of the mechanics should also blow your friends away. Not to mention the Buck Rogers CD, (I still think the CD is a dead giveaway that we're all actually living in a low budget sci-fi movie of the week, but anyway. ..)
Then you start playing the Star Wars game. Music, sound effects, interface, it all looks better even than the best coin-op video game at the mall. A LOT better. You play this for about five or ten minutes, letting your friends have short tries before you suddenly have to go home because your Dad called and you need to bring the game back. And then it is never seen again. Until thirty years later, that is. --The stories which will circulate will not be taken seriously by parents, and yet a handful of kids will be jazzed beyond belief and will be scoping out Department Store Catalogs for the rest of their natural childhoods.
I had a friend who came back from Japan once with a fold-up robot toy which was lightyears ahead of anything our Western toy makers had ever produced. It was one of the coolest days of my entire life. I just picture that day times ten.
is that the Heavily-Armed-Association-(of)-Retired-Persons?
Ah, you've heard of it, then? --My first encounter was a "Get Off My Snowbanks" incident. (Similar to the "Get off my Lawn" variant, but with snow pants.)
I was scarred for life, truly believing that the old guy really would come after me with a shotgun if he caught me climbing on the snowbanks at the end of his driveway ever again. I was careful to walk a different route home from school from that point on. I can see why McCain is fearful.
An Israeli spy threatened to publish pictures of McCain the pedophile?
An Israeli spy threatened to invent and then publish pictures of McCain the pedophile?
The secret government has the HAARP Array trained on his skull?
There are many ways, some less plausible than others, (and some more plausible than many realize), but I'd say that all of Congress has been affected to some degree. It's far, far easier to control people than they think.
Okay. So something has been confusing me for ages now. --The program propagates itself; spreads copies of itself all over the place. So why doesn't somebody look at the code in one of those copies to determine everything anybody would ever want to know about it thus enabling people to pretty much ignore it?
I know that this is what anti-virus companies do, but the way people talk about Storm and similar bot nets, makes it sound as though there is some elusive quality which allows it to do all these unexpected things. What gives? It's just a program. What's the big deal? Or IS there a big deal? I've never been infected.
A LOT of smart people called Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein names as well, but their efforts resulted in the Nixon impeachment because they took the time to research the subject matter rather than bow to ridicule, lies and threats. --Rather than take the easy way out; to simply go with the flow and believe what they were told; that only 'whackjobs' think that corruption exists.
A little superstistious aren't we. How do people like you get modded up. Go back to reading the astrology section of your newspaper, aligning your crystals, and avoiding ladders.
Newspaper astrology? No thanks. That's pointless. The real thing is actually useful. Of course, you wouldn't know this if you don't explore it first. --The practice of the true skeptic is to examine first and render a decision afterwards. --And if you had looked properly and honestly then you wouldn't be able to dismiss things so easily. This stuff is entirely testable, but it's the kind of testing which is best done for oneself. There's an amazing world out there, far bigger than many realize, and it's open to anybody who bothers to put their boots on and step outside. One of the better sites is this one. --Extremely comprehensive and free. --Though, I find Asian astrology to be often more robust in certain ways.
Interestingly, most who start off with a cynical view are actually incapable of exploring openly. There's a weird knee-jerk auto-response programmed into many people which makes them react with a gut-felt loathing and embarrassment which keeps them from learning how the world really works; from finding their own power. Thus it's a huge challenge to be a real skeptic; most just pretend and use the label to justify allowing their programmed fears to control them. It's easier that way, but self-defeating. It takes work to break out of the bonds, which is why they're called bonds.
Hey, I just spent a forced two hours in a theater crammed with chicks who were rabidly lapping up, "Sex in the City." If that doesn't reinforce your vision of the female stereotype, nothing will. Of course, one theater filled with ditzy women is not ALL theaters filled with ditzy women. I know this in my heart of hearts, and I know numerous women who would never be caught dead in such place. But the girl I happen to be dating isn't one of them. --You can't choose who to love; my sweetie is dear and awesome and brilliant, but she's also a sucker for all the stereotypical mall-culture bullshit. --For her part, she hates how I leave 'shaver bits' in the sink and she'd never read Slashdot, so it all balances out. Humans come packaged with lots of fundamentally silly settings, but they can still be excellent people underneath. Please don't mistake my disrespecting the stereotypical behavior for disrespecting the person. --I'm just as ridiculous as anybody! Heck, we all blow farts, and farts are just plain idiotic.
Sorry. Let me tell you about a hard and fast rule of reality:
The things which I think are cool, either die early or succeed only in limited niche markets with other don't-quite-fit people like myself.
Stuff which I find lame and un-appealing, (like iPods, cellphones, Facebook and instant messaging, for instance), go gangbusters and change the shape of reality as we know it.
I think the eee PC is super-cool, therefore it is doomed to be an awesome device which will enjoy a respected but mediocre public presence at best. --And I can see the pattern emerging already; a massive squirrely investment panic by all the big companies based on early excitement for a market model people are already backing off from. Read the engadget comments under the UMPC's sometime. People are already bitching about the various decisions made by Asus and the new designs put forth. That must-have magic is already kaput, the market force now running on the steam from geeks like myself and that's it. Sure, they've sold a million or so units already. But there are a million or so geeks in the world. I said 'niche'. I didn't say non-existent.
The only way UMPC's will take over on the kind of level the big players are all terrified of missing out on is if the average girlfriend can't live without one. --And they're Oh-So-Almost, what with their lids which beg for stickers and funky colors. Sadly though, Hello Kitty, and Power Puff Girls, and Sailor Moon are old hat and there's nothing new driving sticker sales at the moment. And girlfriends, pardon the sexist broad-stroke generalization, aren't practically minded when it comes to tech gear. They want to talk and squeal and giggle over dramatic fluff with their friends and they want to have what their friends have and they want fashion statements. The UMPC come SOOO close, but sorry. Mini PC's which take half a minute to boot up, and need to be fiddled with and need to be sat down with and don't fit neatly into a purse aren't cool. They're lame. Sitting down and focusing is for when you're at home after work or school, and you already have a PC for that.
The eee PC came close, with their pink 700's, but they've moved in a direction which pleases people like me; better screens, better keyboards, better functionality, etc. I am very happy about this. But take-over the world appeal? Neh.
Now if there was an animated TV series sensation featuring empowered teen-age girls in cute outfits and dippy soap-operatic themes which sported hundreds of brilliant stickers which desperately needed to be affixed to a shiny mini laptop lid, then perhaps AT&T would have a chance to get their evil claws in. But until then, nope. Cell phones do it better, faster, longer, cuter and easier. And you don't have to wait thirty seconds for them to boot up. (Though, hopefully before the other shoe drops and the UMPC market is abandoned, somebody will have worked out the 'instant-on' thing.) --But I do find it wonderfully amusing to see all the big manufacturer's lose money because of catastrophic mis-readings of the market. Frankly, that's the only real way for me to get the device that I want at the price I want; for big companies to mis-read things. Seriously, this is enormously fun to watch, and by the end of it all, I'll have a cool little writing tool with a decent battery life and internet access for maybe $350.
Of course, I could be wrong. It's Mercury Retrograde month, so I probably am, and in directions I can only guess at now even as I reach to click the 'submit' button. . .
While the scifi network mini series, "Tin Man" was painfully stupid, (I'm sorry to all the production people; you worked hard and it looked great, but the writing was horrid. Calling stuff by initials, "The Oh Zee" or calling Dorothy, "Dee Gee" was annoyingly Emm Tee Vee in the extreme), the flash promotional was really cool, creating a tunnel effect of infinite zoom. With sounds and limited animation. Flash at its most 'wow'. Plus it won't crash your browser. Keen.
-FL
The dude ain't a black man. And yet my brain. . .
on
Acer Bets Big On Linux
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has been otherwise functioning all this time despite having carried around that broken fact since Canonical first graced the scene. Man! I just woke up again and that's a helluva thing to get hit with. I could have SWORN the man was black! --I assumed he was the guy on the cover of the Ubuntu disk sets. --Hold on-- Did you feel that? That was my whole personal mythology of the world readjusting itself on a tectonic level.
What a month! You wouldn't believe some of the other crazy stuff I've been making whack errors regarding. It tends to go like this during a Mercury Retrograde; posting anywhere during a period like this is like getting on a broken roller coaster. I actually kind of enjoy it; it's like having your internal hard drive de-fragged and all the errors pointed out so you can fix them. The period only goes on for three or four weeks, (ends June 19th), and since everybody else is going through the same thing, you don't have to feel quite so embarrassed. It's like being drunk at a drinking party. --It IS annoying as hell if you need to meet deadlines or build anything or get your ideas across clearly, so it's best just to kick back and take it easy and not do anything important if you can afford to. And watching the news is fun. --Last period like this was when all those undersea cables got cut.
Acer now? Sheesh; they might just sell a few to the rubes based on the similarity in their company name. How long has it been since they could claim that? But still. . , at the moment, HP is the only company with a chance of contending with the eee. (My opinion). --This because they spent a decade during the 90's making a whole stack of such devices. That kind of experience is golden. --It's too bad the mini-note is such a power-hog with a super-shiny screen and a silly mouse button set-up. And far too expensive. . . Close but no cigar. I guess they were caught with their pants down by Asus as well as everybody else, but just had the chops to illustrate the fact a few months faster than the other players.)
Asus, on the other hand, is already on it's third generation model, the eee 1000, --with a 10" inch screen and now a properly-sized keyboard, the multi-touch pad and the various dumb bugs nicely worked out. (The eee no longer tips over.) --I think they've even got splashtop (instant-on for three key apps) built into the hardware, but that's not confirmed. The eee 1000's projected price is a tad more than the competitors, (around $550), but when compared to the rush-design me-too jobs offered by all the competitors thus far, and an established user community to help with any after-market problems, it might be well worth the extra dough just to know you've got a decent piece of hardware which isn't still dizzy from being ejected into the market place from a cold start four months ago.
(Can you tell I've been watching these things like a hawk?) July is going to be a good month for new toys. I might even go out and buy one of them computer magazines which review all these various devices. Do they still sell computer magazines? You know. The glossy kind with lots of pretty pictures and maybe a disk in a plastic bag? It's been years and years since I cared.
Whatever the case, I can't understand why anybody would want to run anything but the pre-fab linux OS on one of these devices. Specially tuned by the manufacturer to 'just work' means it's about the device and not the OS. I wonder if the user base will be smart enough to recognize that they can have the eee linux os on their desktop if they want it, or if they'll just think of it the same way they think of their cell phone software. --This is where a very simple bit of design could change the course of history. All you need to do is have a little tag on UMPC version of Ubuntu saying, "Ubuntu: For all computers. Free is good." Or something like that.
It's petty, but I'd be happy to see Microsoft become a faded memory. Kinda like Commodore, but with bad mojo.
Hm. Has anybody else noticed that Microsoft and the US military economy have charted almost the exact same course, and are both slipping into destruction? Vista was a giant piece of wishful thinking, as was Bush's war, both total failures which have left their perpetrators sputtering in denial and disbelief. And notice how Asia is rising? Also that both Shuttlesworth and Barak are black guys. Lots of juicy metaphor to be plumbed there, I think! (Hardware = the country, OS = the politics.) Want more? Barak is selling open dialogue rather than centrist thinking, and the UMPC's are entirely designed to expand our communication abilities. UMPC's feature power-saving processors, and the new presidency will feature environmentalist responsibility. Neat-o. I could go on, but I will defer to reason because I'm damned tired right now and all my synapses are doing that lateral fire thing they are apt to do when there's this much old coffee coursing in my veins. I will close with this: Life is a dream and as such, EVERYTHING in the physical world is metaphoric in nature.
Wiretapping? Of COURSE McCain supports wiretapping. That's the pattern. What he'd bring into effect after (if) he got into office is what we should be wondering about!
There is a progression in effect with these evil-doers; these holdovers from the Nixon years, (half of them are the same people, for goodness sake.)
Here's an example of that progression. This disturbing article is current; it's happening right now
Can you say Police State? The Examiner has the scoop on a controversial new program announced today that would create so-called "Neighborhood Safety Zones" which would serve to partially seal off certain parts of the city. D.C. Police would set-up checkpoints in targeted areas, demand to see ID and refuse admittance to people who don't live there, work there or have a "legitimate reason" to be there. Wow. Just, wow.
Some of the words used to describe such a plan by those quoted in the Examiner story include "breathtaking" and "cockamamie," but that hardly begins to scratch the surface. Interim Attorney General Peter Nickles actually said that measures of this sort have "been used in other cities." Which cities are those, Mr. Nickles? Warsaw?
Today's proposal appears to be a desperate attempt by the city to tamp down recent violence that has ravaged the city, especially in Ward 5. The "Neighborhood Safety Zones" would last up to 10 days. It's a struggle to think of words to describe such a plan other than authoritarian or ghettoization.
The full description of this plan from the mayor's press release is below. The Neighborhood Safety Zone initiative has been developed to help increase security for those who live in high-crime areas around the city and to help residents reclaim their communities. The program will authorize the Metropolitan Police Department to set up public safety checks to help safeguard community members and create safer neighborhoods in the District by increasing police presence aimed at deterring crime.
The safety zones will be established only upon request by a District Commander where there is evidence to support the existence of neighborhood violent crime, such as intelligence, violent crime data, police reports and feedback and concerns from the affected community.
Potential Neighborhood Safety Zones must be approved by the Chief of Police, and will be in effect for a maximum of 10 days. Public safety checks will be established along the main thoroughfares of the established neighborhoods. Anyone driving into a designated area may be asked to show valid identification with a home address in that neighborhood, or to provide an explanation for entering the NSZ, such as attending church, a doctor's appointment or visiting friends or relatives. Pedestrians will not be subject to the public safety checks.
"The Neighborhood Safety Zones is just another tool MPD will employ to stop crime before it happens. The Neighborhood Safety Zone initiative will help residents terrorized by violent crime to take back their neighborhoods," said Chief Lanier.
Initiatives such as the Neighborhood Safety Zones have been accepted by federal courts as a legitimate law enforcement practice in keeping with the Constitution's Fourth Amendment. The constitutionality of the NSZ initiative has been reviewed by the D.C. Office of the Attorney General.
The NSZ will be launched next week in the Trinidad area.
Now, here's an article from 2002, New York. The original link is dead, but the Internet Archive had it on file. . . Notice the difference in intensity? The new version of this program doesn't include guys mowing your lawn. What will be the next step in the process?
Correction: McCain Supports Warrantless Surveillance of calls between the United States and overseas involving suspected terrorists.
The problem is that anybody with the wrong skin color is in danger of being a suspected terrorist. That's how it works in airports, at any rate. Heck, you don't even need to be brown to apply these days.
Question: Could somebody provide the names of actual people who have proof (not claims) that their rights have been violated by this policy?
Wiretapping is considered covert surveillance. The only surefire way to know if you've had your rights violated that I can think of would be if somebody were to break into a federal office, (or a corporate one, if the work is being contracted out), and thumb through some files. In other words, no. Of course not. But it's a moot point, because the president himself admitted that it was going on.
One would expect MSNBC to salivate at the prospects and showcase them on their lineup every night if this was the case.
One would expect this only if one also happened to be a naive television viewer. MSNBC is a corporate entity owned by an arms manufacturer which donated 1.1 million to GW Bush for his 2000 election campaign and thus is obviously not salivating at the prospect of attacking the government. Surely you've been following the Mcclellan story and all its offshoot items of note; other people standing up to comment on media complicity. --But that's just the latest indicator of reality as it stands; if you want to learn more, spend some time reviewing such easily available sources as the various Bill Moyers interviews on the subject conducted over the years.
The greater point here, I think, is that some people are intent on maintaining blind faith in the government when it is far from justified.
The war in Iraq right or wrong (personally I think we are doing some good over there, and yes was there myself) is actually dumping money into the economy and has created many jobs. Do a search for defence contracting jobs in the DC or Virgina areas there a ton of them and they pay extremely well.
This is no doubt true; there will be employees and material suppliers of the munition makers who are paid. In the final weeks of the Second World War, there were news headlines in Europe, "Peace Scare!". --The prospect of peace was scary for those who had come to depend on the profits of war. But this is not something to be proud of. It's blood money. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed so far in just this one war. There are far better ways to feed an economy than to make the final product at the end of the supply chain, dead Iraqis. In any case, I'm not in the munitions industry, and I make less today for the same amount of work, and that less buys less thanks to a depreciated U.S. dollar. Clinton was not an angel, but the economy was far healthier before war-time spending.
Spending money on education, sure sounds like a great idea! But we already spend a ton of money on schools (look at your taxes). Maybe we should hold schools accountable for their budgets, starting with spending less on these ultra fancy buildings and football teams and more on decent books and other learning aids. Also support the teachers on maintaining order in their classrooms by allowing them to actually discipline their students. But success at school also requires support at home, do you think a child is going to do good at school if they can get failing grades and face no reprecussions from there parents? A few might yes, but they would be an exception. The fact of the matter is if you want a good education in the United States you will get one. You could spend a million dollars per child but if they don't have the will to learn they won't.
Agreed. --I'd go even further and pull apart the current education system as I think it is deeply flawed for some of the reasons you suggest, among many others. The general problem is that the system is deliberately constructed to create ignorance and trained personality types which make for good workers and willing slaves. This is not theory. There was an amazing talk given by a parent who had spent a few years digging through the system to work out why her kids were being given psych tests designed to train them to be loyal to authority even when they knew the authority was engaged in wrong-doing, and why she wasn't allowed to see the results of those tests. After pulling on that thread, discovered after many battles, that in the twelve states she examined, an elaborate and carefully refined program had been set in place and was directed by private industry in conjunction with the department of labor. It was utterly astonishing, and I just spent an hour trying to dig up the link again with no fruit to bear. In any case, I do believe that in a perfect world, a government-run education system can certainly work, but I don't think it is very likely that we will see such a thing happen. I don't have kids, and I don't know what I would do to tackle this problem. Probably a combination of allowing regular schooling so that my kids would be exposed to other kids and thus socialized, (homeschooling tends to result in some pretty weird kids), while personally teaching my children at around the Jr. High age that marks and scores are meaningless and that the system is manipulative. Perhaps recommending apprenticeship with whatever line of work they feel most excited by. But basically, you have to let kids find their own path.
The health care system is broke because its based on a group policy system. If they went to a indivual based programs like they do with car insurance it would be much easier for everyone to get and much cheaper, especially if your employeer either helped out or paid for all of it. If it was easier to get at an individua
I don't trust the process at all, and I tend to think that Obama must have some kind of dark secret buried in somebody's pocket or he wouldn't have been allowed to progress this far.
But all that aside, I would think that not spending a few hundred billion dollars on a misguided war effort might go some distance in helping out the economy. --Of course, all that tax money wasn't exactly poured into the sand. It was given to a small number of already wealthy American elites who own weapons factories and mercenary armies. Spending that money in more productive ways, on education and health care, can only help everybody else get a leg up. Smart and healthy people can only make things better. Sick and ignorant people are a disaster waiting to happen. --Also, stopping the artificial jacking up of oil prices, (when there is currently a glutted stockpile), might be a way to help everybody who doesn't own an oil company to fare better with their paychecks, (lower transport costs means EVERYTHING is more affordable and thus the economy is un-stifled. Corruption helps only the corrupt, and un-doing it can only help the regular population. Too bad it won't happen. Obama is too good to be true. The military industrial complex simply won't let it go that way.
Back when news agencies actually had lots of journalists in the field, such a device was indeed well loved. --I used to live in a building where a couple of old timer news scribes lived, and they told me their stories and lamented the state of journalism today; that for all intents and purposes, it's dead. I just watched Bill O's little tirade against McClellan, where he complained, "Well, if the Whitehouse and the British government and the New York Times was telling me that there were WMD's, then what was I supposed to believe?" (sic) It's one of those times when you wish you could jump in and point out the obvious. "You're a JOURNALIST! It's your JOB to go find out what to believe. It's your JOB to find out the truth, not to parrot press-releases from people we know are liars and idiots, or to simply repeat what other news agencies are saying!" I find it hard to believe that anybody could be so incredibly far gone as to ask such an infantile and embarrassing question while on air and not even realize how foolish they appear by doing so.
I have a theory, and it's not a conspiracy theory. Conspiracy implies conscious intent, and intent requires awareness which such jokers, and indeed many regular people simply don't posses. That theory goes like this. ..
The state of communications technology is mirrored by public awareness. --That is, the more aware people are, the more likely it is that they'll have at their disposal tools like the Model 100 with which to communicate. Over the last decade, the portable writing tools available to us have been seriously limited. Small, awkward keyboards and small, awkward screens represent a very choked up conduit for thought. We've made huge gains in terms of connectivity in the other direction, through distributed 'experience', but that's about telling people what to think rather than giving people the ability to report on their own thoughts and experiences in a useful manner. (A cell phone conversation is not a good way to get an article to press, or to update your blog).
When you're out in the field and you want to express your findings and thoughts to the world, the available devices became next to worthless despite the fact that we are capable of making stunningly effective and easily affordable machines using today's technology. The Iraq war and the public perception of it is an excellent example of the mirror. People were very, very ignorant, wanting information served to them, (like poor Bill O'), and invested very little into actually trying to divine the truth for themselves. The communication devices broadly available mirrored that head-space perfectly. i.e., there weren't any.
But things are changing! Many more people today DO want to find out the truth for themselves; they are becoming increasingly fed up with the nonsense fluff offered up by the traditional channels. And just look at the mirror. . . We've got a slew of new portable devices coming down the pike.
The Asus eee 1000 has a 10" screen, a full laptop keyboard and the new Atom chip offering up 7 hours of battery life. And it's around the same size, if not smaller, (and certainly lighter), than the Model 100. All for $550, half the price of the original Model 100 of yore.
While I do like a text-only machine for strict writing, the shape of knowledge collection and dissemination today has grown to include the internet. Today, real journalism requires access to the web in a meaningful way. You need to be able to check facts and current events, compare notes with your peers, and update your blog or whatever from the field, and now you can. The Model 100 was an excellent conduit for knowledge in a time when knowledge itself was less robust. The light was dimmer, had less octane. My opinion, and please remember that this is an OPINION, is
I think one of the most intriguing examples I've seen recently was in a documentary (link totally not included here. Sorry. It's too late into my day to go hunting through my browser history), about Nazi Germany.
Apparently, aside from an astonishing level of clerical and managerial chaos which affected every level of the Reich, the reality of SS intelligence, at least in Berlin, was completely at odds with the perception. The offices responsible for monitoring the population and for doling out punishments for those expressing anti-government sentiment or for being friends with jews or for generally not heiling with enough vigor; that office was staffed with only a handful of over-worked clerks surrounded by mountains of un-processed 'reports' filed by nosey neighbors and crafty tattle-tales trying to get in good with the reich for one reason or another. --But the perception was entirely different, and the effect was that the population effectively policed itself into the condition history has made infamous.
The imagination is the most fearsome weapon. Provide a few displays of violent public oppression, and then no matter how wide and large your enforcement net is, the public will imagine something even bigger and meaner. --Thus the mere suggestion that you might be watched and swatted is enough to keep the population in line.
On the one hand, I find it comforting to know that no matter how bad a police state appears, it's true condition is arguably going to be far less than perceived. But on the other hand, the fact that people willingly turn each other, become informants when it is not necessary, work to create hell on earth by becoming their own worst enemy, is truly depressing. --But even in this there is hope; knowledge of the reality spread widely and openly enough should logically be all that is necessary to prevent a horror.
He certainly didn't look long for the world in that video. I remember thinking, "I hope he gets a chance to see through his work before too much more time passes."
TMS induces an electromagnetic current in the underlying cortical neurons, which may explain its therapeutic effects. Repetitive TMS, using varying frequencies and intensities, can increase or decrease excitability in the cortical area directly targeted by the stimulation. Recent studies combining TMS and neuroimaging techniques, such as magnetic resonance imaging, demonstrate that the effects of TMS are not limited to the cortex but spread to functionally related subcortical structures. This finding provides a basis for using TMS to treat the pathologic neural activity that may underlie neuropsychiatric illness.
The military has been aware of this stuff for decades. Look up "Dr. Delgado", (but beware the Rense-style garbage; such nonsense exists solely to look silly and make people drop the subject. Works like a charm unless you recognize it for what it is. Like planting a trouble-maker in a crowd to start a riot thus justifying brutality. Tried and true tactics.) In any case, with the long association of the military and telecom companies, (RF and EM technology comes from the same roots, development money and minds), it becomes impossible to assume that those involved with the introduction of cell phones on the world market had no idea of the secondary effects caused by the technology or what it could be used for. Indeed, it seems very likely that their introduction was predicated on these secondary effects. (Which would, from my perspective, make them the primary effects and easy communication the carrot).
But you must come to your own conclusions. Keep in mind, however, that choosing ignorance these days leads to a buzzy kind of bliss.
The manipulation of the nervous system through the application of electromagnetic fields has been done before, though it rarely seems to be the primary subject of a story, but rather is only mentioned as a secondary point of fact.
[...]In tests, the blind have been able to distinguish basic shapes of objects they cannot see, as well as their orientation and direction of motion. On other occasions a blind person has reported experiencing a "feeling" that an object is present, while not being able to see it.
A number of theories have been proposed to explain "blindsight". Generally, it is suggested that other parts of the brain besides the primary visual cortex respond to nerve messages from the eyes at an unconscious level.
Scientists from the University of Houston in Texas, temporarily blinded a group of 12 volunteers by using an electromagnetic field to shut down the primary visual cortex. Images were then flashed in front of them on a screen[...]
It is for these reasons, among others, that I find the whole mass adoption of cell phones and the resulting soup of EM broadcast transmissions in our cities and homes troublesome, and why I find myself sighing at those who insist on repeating the telecommunications corporate propaganda: that non-ionizing radiation is harmless, (which I suppose might be true if one considers mass manipulation of human awareness 'harmless'), that the sun puts out more EM than any man-made device which therefore means that there is nothing to be concerned about, (a silly argument since life IS affected by the white noise from space, but has adapted to deal with it in some interesting ways, as opposed to deliberate coherent signals which affect cells in a variety of reliable and repeatable ways), and that studies on rats don't mean anything because rats != humans, and other such nonsense arguments.
This is just more fodder for the fire. Ignore at your own risk. (And with EM, the more you ignore, the faster and easier it becomes to ignore. Zombie nation.)
Works the same way dynamite kills fish in a lake. Liquefies your organs. Nasty stuff.
Also, they left out cluster bombs. --The munition which kills and terrorizes civilian populations long after the war is 'over'.
They got the one about crowd control right, though. But the creepiest are the ones you use to screw up the nervous systems of people through the electro-magnetic sphere. (Even though, according to the cell phone companies and half of Slashdot, humans are not affected by non-ionizing EM. Whatever.)
First, Microsoft is forced to backpedal on it's announced kill-off of XP, I suspect precisely because of the introduction of the ASUS eee. (Balmer didn't anticipate a popular move to machines which deliberately sport lower power. Vista was released on the assumption that machines keep getting faster and stronger, and lamer companies like HP were happy enough to oblige by designing their "2133 Mininote" to handle Vista, which is why they're going to fail to achieve any sort of dominance. The hip and trendy market, while usually as silly and as easily misled as a highschool girl, are surprisingly astute when it comes to matters of intent with regard to wanna-be pretenders. (Crocks still sell like hotcakes, but the next factory-formed plastic sandal-thing which is basically identical but made by the wrong company gets the brush-off.) --And who'd have thunk that the next big thing in computers was going to appeal to the iPod user market where what kind of operating system being used is kind of, 'who cares?' (My girlfriend would be happy with a pink eee, and doesn't know a Linux from a Window. It's the device, not the OS which counts.)
So it's damage control time! MS awkwardly announces the extension of the XP life line. But that's not good enough, because ASUS announced the now famous deal, (the eee900 with Linux costs the same as XP but has a bigger drive.) You just know a number of MS employees have had some late nights and stomach troubles over that one. So now they're not just extending the XP life, but actually giving it away just to maintain their hold on the public perception. And I wonder. . . How many Linux-baked eee's does it take to shift the paradigm with regard to OS's? We may not find out as soon as I'd like if this latest desperation move by MS pans out. At least, not this year anyhow. (How far off is the next new Microsoft OS from release? Ha ha. That's Balmer's stress response you can smell in the wind over Redmond.)
Australia also has a test-bed sort of feel to it, but I can't point to anything which confirms this. Just a feeling.
In any case, I find it fascinating how all of these moves have been put together within just a few weeks. There must have been some heated international telephone calls and business meets going on. None of this has had the time to gestate like a normal evil corporate plan. It feels young and fresh and desperate and nobody knows how it will all turn out. Cool! (I'd be happy if ASUS continued to ship another few million eee700's with Linux on them, introducing a new flavor of OS to the public in the form of an easy-to-use and fast booting OS. That'll make them ask when it comes time to buy their next laptop or desktop, "How come it has to come with Windows? Can't you just sell me one with one with something like my eee had? I should get a discount that way, shouldn't I?").
And that's all a fairly grand achievement for ASUS, even if it was unintentional; to make Microsoft dance around in fear of losing its legitimacy with the young & trendy market? That's hilarious!
Anybody else see that video of the two eee700's booting up next to each other, one with Linux and one with XP? Saving an extra 20 seconds of your life every time you hit 'On' is easily worth $50. And so is the extra drive space. It'll be interesting to see how it all pans out over the next few months. For my part, I'm still waiting for that Atom chip. . .
Slashdot Mirror
-FL
(And yes, I too have wandered down that sunny Day Dream avenue from time to time.)
You have to be about seven or eight years old, about six months after Star Wars came out and the best computer game available is "Pong" which takes up an entire counsel unit and is still pretty cool. Anyway, you have to show up one day at your friend's house or at school; some place where there's a handful of kids but no adults, and you have to have a modern laptop with you. You explain that it's a new Star Wars toy that they're testing but which hasn't "come out" yet, and that your Dad managed to bring one of the test units home from "the office". Nobody's sure if he really let you have it or if you're going to get in trouble when he finds out. Either way, that's incidental, because everybody is jostling to see what the heck it is you have on the table. It looks like it might have actually been IN a Star Wars film, that's for sure.
Then you crack open the lid and power it up, and muck around with the interface for a while. This should be sufficient to blow your audience away since things like GUI's and mouse pointers haven't been invented yet. --Flat screens which have better color and resolution than any TV set around are also new; just the sort of thing you'd expect a really expensive Star Wars toy to have. You might also want to pull the luminescent CD out of the Star Wars game package and put it in the extending CD tray. --Because Walkman-size consumer electronics have also not been invented, so just the size of the mechanics should also blow your friends away. Not to mention the Buck Rogers CD, (I still think the CD is a dead giveaway that we're all actually living in a low budget sci-fi movie of the week, but anyway. .
Then you start playing the Star Wars game. Music, sound effects, interface, it all looks better even than the best coin-op video game at the mall. A LOT better. You play this for about five or ten minutes, letting your friends have short tries before you suddenly have to go home because your Dad called and you need to bring the game back. And then it is never seen again. Until thirty years later, that is. --The stories which will circulate will not be taken seriously by parents, and yet a handful of kids will be jazzed beyond belief and will be scoping out Department Store Catalogs for the rest of their natural childhoods.
I had a friend who came back from Japan once with a fold-up robot toy which was lightyears ahead of anything our Western toy makers had ever produced. It was one of the coolest days of my entire life. I just picture that day times ten.
-FL
Ah, you've heard of it, then? --My first encounter was a "Get Off My Snowbanks" incident. (Similar to the "Get off my Lawn" variant, but with snow pants.)
I was scarred for life, truly believing that the old guy really would come after me with a shotgun if he caught me climbing on the snowbanks at the end of his driveway ever again. I was careful to walk a different route home from school from that point on. I can see why McCain is fearful.
-FL
No, I believe you're thinking of the phrase, "It's all so much simpler now. After you get the procedure you'll understand as well."
-FL
An Israeli spy threatened to publish pictures of McCain the pedophile?
An Israeli spy threatened to invent and then publish pictures of McCain the pedophile?
The secret government has the HAARP Array trained on his skull?
There are many ways, some less plausible than others, (and some more plausible than many realize), but I'd say that all of Congress has been affected to some degree. It's far, far easier to control people than they think.
-FL
I know that this is what anti-virus companies do, but the way people talk about Storm and similar bot nets, makes it sound as though there is some elusive quality which allows it to do all these unexpected things. What gives? It's just a program. What's the big deal? Or IS there a big deal? I've never been infected.
-FL
"Whackjob?" Voting machine fraud aside, there are many ways to cheat in a presidential election.
A LOT of smart people called Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein names as well, but their efforts resulted in the Nixon impeachment because they took the time to research the subject matter rather than bow to ridicule, lies and threats. --Rather than take the easy way out; to simply go with the flow and believe what they were told; that only 'whackjobs' think that corruption exists.
-FL
Newspaper astrology? No thanks. That's pointless. The real thing is actually useful. Of course, you wouldn't know this if you don't explore it first. --The practice of the true skeptic is to examine first and render a decision afterwards. --And if you had looked properly and honestly then you wouldn't be able to dismiss things so easily. This stuff is entirely testable, but it's the kind of testing which is best done for oneself. There's an amazing world out there, far bigger than many realize, and it's open to anybody who bothers to put their boots on and step outside. One of the better sites is this one. --Extremely comprehensive and free. --Though, I find Asian astrology to be often more robust in certain ways.
Interestingly, most who start off with a cynical view are actually incapable of exploring openly. There's a weird knee-jerk auto-response programmed into many people which makes them react with a gut-felt loathing and embarrassment which keeps them from learning how the world really works; from finding their own power. Thus it's a huge challenge to be a real skeptic; most just pretend and use the label to justify allowing their programmed fears to control them. It's easier that way, but self-defeating. It takes work to break out of the bonds, which is why they're called bonds.
-FL
Hey, I just spent a forced two hours in a theater crammed with chicks who were rabidly lapping up, "Sex in the City." If that doesn't reinforce your vision of the female stereotype, nothing will. Of course, one theater filled with ditzy women is not ALL theaters filled with ditzy women. I know this in my heart of hearts, and I know numerous women who would never be caught dead in such place. But the girl I happen to be dating isn't one of them. --You can't choose who to love; my sweetie is dear and awesome and brilliant, but she's also a sucker for all the stereotypical mall-culture bullshit. --For her part, she hates how I leave 'shaver bits' in the sink and she'd never read Slashdot, so it all balances out. Humans come packaged with lots of fundamentally silly settings, but they can still be excellent people underneath. Please don't mistake my disrespecting the stereotypical behavior for disrespecting the person. --I'm just as ridiculous as anybody! Heck, we all blow farts, and farts are just plain idiotic.
-FL
The things which I think are cool, either die early or succeed only in limited niche markets with other don't-quite-fit people like myself.
Stuff which I find lame and un-appealing, (like iPods, cellphones, Facebook and instant messaging, for instance), go gangbusters and change the shape of reality as we know it.
I think the eee PC is super-cool, therefore it is doomed to be an awesome device which will enjoy a respected but mediocre public presence at best. --And I can see the pattern emerging already; a massive squirrely investment panic by all the big companies based on early excitement for a market model people are already backing off from. Read the engadget comments under the UMPC's sometime. People are already bitching about the various decisions made by Asus and the new designs put forth. That must-have magic is already kaput, the market force now running on the steam from geeks like myself and that's it. Sure, they've sold a million or so units already. But there are a million or so geeks in the world. I said 'niche'. I didn't say non-existent.
The only way UMPC's will take over on the kind of level the big players are all terrified of missing out on is if the average girlfriend can't live without one. --And they're Oh-So-Almost, what with their lids which beg for stickers and funky colors. Sadly though, Hello Kitty, and Power Puff Girls, and Sailor Moon are old hat and there's nothing new driving sticker sales at the moment. And girlfriends, pardon the sexist broad-stroke generalization, aren't practically minded when it comes to tech gear. They want to talk and squeal and giggle over dramatic fluff with their friends and they want to have what their friends have and they want fashion statements. The UMPC come SOOO close, but sorry. Mini PC's which take half a minute to boot up, and need to be fiddled with and need to be sat down with and don't fit neatly into a purse aren't cool. They're lame. Sitting down and focusing is for when you're at home after work or school, and you already have a PC for that.
The eee PC came close, with their pink 700's, but they've moved in a direction which pleases people like me; better screens, better keyboards, better functionality, etc. I am very happy about this. But take-over the world appeal? Neh.
Now if there was an animated TV series sensation featuring empowered teen-age girls in cute outfits and dippy soap-operatic themes which sported hundreds of brilliant stickers which desperately needed to be affixed to a shiny mini laptop lid, then perhaps AT&T would have a chance to get their evil claws in. But until then, nope. Cell phones do it better, faster, longer, cuter and easier. And you don't have to wait thirty seconds for them to boot up. (Though, hopefully before the other shoe drops and the UMPC market is abandoned, somebody will have worked out the 'instant-on' thing.) --But I do find it wonderfully amusing to see all the big manufacturer's lose money because of catastrophic mis-readings of the market. Frankly, that's the only real way for me to get the device that I want at the price I want; for big companies to mis-read things. Seriously, this is enormously fun to watch, and by the end of it all, I'll have a cool little writing tool with a decent battery life and internet access for maybe $350.
Of course, I could be wrong. It's Mercury Retrograde month, so I probably am, and in directions I can only guess at now even as I reach to click the 'submit' button. . .
-FL
-FL
What a month! You wouldn't believe some of the other crazy stuff I've been making whack errors regarding. It tends to go like this during a Mercury Retrograde; posting anywhere during a period like this is like getting on a broken roller coaster. I actually kind of enjoy it; it's like having your internal hard drive de-fragged and all the errors pointed out so you can fix them. The period only goes on for three or four weeks, (ends June 19th), and since everybody else is going through the same thing, you don't have to feel quite so embarrassed. It's like being drunk at a drinking party. --It IS annoying as hell if you need to meet deadlines or build anything or get your ideas across clearly, so it's best just to kick back and take it easy and not do anything important if you can afford to. And watching the news is fun. --Last period like this was when all those undersea cables got cut.
-FL
Asus, on the other hand, is already on it's third generation model, the eee 1000, --with a 10" inch screen and now a properly-sized keyboard, the multi-touch pad and the various dumb bugs nicely worked out. (The eee no longer tips over.) --I think they've even got splashtop (instant-on for three key apps) built into the hardware, but that's not confirmed. The eee 1000's projected price is a tad more than the competitors, (around $550), but when compared to the rush-design me-too jobs offered by all the competitors thus far, and an established user community to help with any after-market problems, it might be well worth the extra dough just to know you've got a decent piece of hardware which isn't still dizzy from being ejected into the market place from a cold start four months ago.
(Can you tell I've been watching these things like a hawk?) July is going to be a good month for new toys. I might even go out and buy one of them computer magazines which review all these various devices. Do they still sell computer magazines? You know. The glossy kind with lots of pretty pictures and maybe a disk in a plastic bag? It's been years and years since I cared.
Whatever the case, I can't understand why anybody would want to run anything but the pre-fab linux OS on one of these devices. Specially tuned by the manufacturer to 'just work' means it's about the device and not the OS. I wonder if the user base will be smart enough to recognize that they can have the eee linux os on their desktop if they want it, or if they'll just think of it the same way they think of their cell phone software. --This is where a very simple bit of design could change the course of history. All you need to do is have a little tag on UMPC version of Ubuntu saying, "Ubuntu: For all computers. Free is good." Or something like that.
It's petty, but I'd be happy to see Microsoft become a faded memory. Kinda like Commodore, but with bad mojo.
Hm. Has anybody else noticed that Microsoft and the US military economy have charted almost the exact same course, and are both slipping into destruction? Vista was a giant piece of wishful thinking, as was Bush's war, both total failures which have left their perpetrators sputtering in denial and disbelief. And notice how Asia is rising? Also that both Shuttlesworth and Barak are black guys. Lots of juicy metaphor to be plumbed there, I think! (Hardware = the country, OS = the politics.) Want more? Barak is selling open dialogue rather than centrist thinking, and the UMPC's are entirely designed to expand our communication abilities. UMPC's feature power-saving processors, and the new presidency will feature environmentalist responsibility. Neat-o. I could go on, but I will defer to reason because I'm damned tired right now and all my synapses are doing that lateral fire thing they are apt to do when there's this much old coffee coursing in my veins. I will close with this: Life is a dream and as such, EVERYTHING in the physical world is metaphoric in nature.
Have a nice evening!
-FL
There is a progression in effect with these evil-doers; these holdovers from the Nixon years, (half of them are the same people, for goodness sake.)
Here's an example of that progression. This disturbing article is current; it's happening right now
This new program starts in D.C. next week. . .
Now, here's an article from 2002, New York. The original link is dead, but the Internet Archive had it on file. . . Notice the difference in intensity? The new version of this program doesn't include guys mowing your lawn. What will be the next step in the process?
The problem is that anybody with the wrong skin color is in danger of being a suspected terrorist. That's how it works in airports, at any rate. Heck, you don't even need to be brown to apply these days.
Question: Could somebody provide the names of actual people who have proof (not claims) that their rights have been violated by this policy?
Wiretapping is considered covert surveillance. The only surefire way to know if you've had your rights violated that I can think of would be if somebody were to break into a federal office, (or a corporate one, if the work is being contracted out), and thumb through some files. In other words, no. Of course not. But it's a moot point, because the president himself admitted that it was going on.
One would expect MSNBC to salivate at the prospects and showcase them on their lineup every night if this was the case.
One would expect this only if one also happened to be a naive television viewer. MSNBC is a corporate entity owned by an arms manufacturer which donated 1.1 million to GW Bush for his 2000 election campaign and thus is obviously not salivating at the prospect of attacking the government. Surely you've been following the Mcclellan story and all its offshoot items of note; other people standing up to comment on media complicity. --But that's just the latest indicator of reality as it stands; if you want to learn more, spend some time reviewing such easily available sources as the various Bill Moyers interviews on the subject conducted over the years.
The greater point here, I think, is that some people are intent on maintaining blind faith in the government when it is far from justified.
-FL
This is no doubt true; there will be employees and material suppliers of the munition makers who are paid. In the final weeks of the Second World War, there were news headlines in Europe, "Peace Scare!". --The prospect of peace was scary for those who had come to depend on the profits of war. But this is not something to be proud of. It's blood money. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed so far in just this one war. There are far better ways to feed an economy than to make the final product at the end of the supply chain, dead Iraqis. In any case, I'm not in the munitions industry, and I make less today for the same amount of work, and that less buys less thanks to a depreciated U.S. dollar. Clinton was not an angel, but the economy was far healthier before war-time spending.
Spending money on education, sure sounds like a great idea! But we already spend a ton of money on schools (look at your taxes). Maybe we should hold schools accountable for their budgets, starting with spending less on these ultra fancy buildings and football teams and more on decent books and other learning aids. Also support the teachers on maintaining order in their classrooms by allowing them to actually discipline their students. But success at school also requires support at home, do you think a child is going to do good at school if they can get failing grades and face no reprecussions from there parents? A few might yes, but they would be an exception. The fact of the matter is if you want a good education in the United States you will get one. You could spend a million dollars per child but if they don't have the will to learn they won't.
Agreed. --I'd go even further and pull apart the current education system as I think it is deeply flawed for some of the reasons you suggest, among many others. The general problem is that the system is deliberately constructed to create ignorance and trained personality types which make for good workers and willing slaves. This is not theory. There was an amazing talk given by a parent who had spent a few years digging through the system to work out why her kids were being given psych tests designed to train them to be loyal to authority even when they knew the authority was engaged in wrong-doing, and why she wasn't allowed to see the results of those tests. After pulling on that thread, discovered after many battles, that in the twelve states she examined, an elaborate and carefully refined program had been set in place and was directed by private industry in conjunction with the department of labor. It was utterly astonishing, and I just spent an hour trying to dig up the link again with no fruit to bear. In any case, I do believe that in a perfect world, a government-run education system can certainly work, but I don't think it is very likely that we will see such a thing happen. I don't have kids, and I don't know what I would do to tackle this problem. Probably a combination of allowing regular schooling so that my kids would be exposed to other kids and thus socialized, (homeschooling tends to result in some pretty weird kids), while personally teaching my children at around the Jr. High age that marks and scores are meaningless and that the system is manipulative. Perhaps recommending apprenticeship with whatever line of work they feel most excited by. But basically, you have to let kids find their own path.
The health care system is broke because its based on a group policy system. If they went to a indivual based programs like they do with car insurance it would be much easier for everyone to get and much cheaper, especially if your employeer either helped out or paid for all of it. If it was easier to get at an individua
But all that aside, I would think that not spending a few hundred billion dollars on a misguided war effort might go some distance in helping out the economy. --Of course, all that tax money wasn't exactly poured into the sand. It was given to a small number of already wealthy American elites who own weapons factories and mercenary armies. Spending that money in more productive ways, on education and health care, can only help everybody else get a leg up. Smart and healthy people can only make things better. Sick and ignorant people are a disaster waiting to happen. --Also, stopping the artificial jacking up of oil prices, (when there is currently a glutted stockpile), might be a way to help everybody who doesn't own an oil company to fare better with their paychecks, (lower transport costs means EVERYTHING is more affordable and thus the economy is un-stifled. Corruption helps only the corrupt, and un-doing it can only help the regular population. Too bad it won't happen. Obama is too good to be true. The military industrial complex simply won't let it go that way.
-FL
I have a theory, and it's not a conspiracy theory. Conspiracy implies conscious intent, and intent requires awareness which such jokers, and indeed many regular people simply don't posses. That theory goes like this. . .
The state of communications technology is mirrored by public awareness. --That is, the more aware people are, the more likely it is that they'll have at their disposal tools like the Model 100 with which to communicate. Over the last decade, the portable writing tools available to us have been seriously limited. Small, awkward keyboards and small, awkward screens represent a very choked up conduit for thought. We've made huge gains in terms of connectivity in the other direction, through distributed 'experience', but that's about telling people what to think rather than giving people the ability to report on their own thoughts and experiences in a useful manner. (A cell phone conversation is not a good way to get an article to press, or to update your blog).
When you're out in the field and you want to express your findings and thoughts to the world, the available devices became next to worthless despite the fact that we are capable of making stunningly effective and easily affordable machines using today's technology. The Iraq war and the public perception of it is an excellent example of the mirror. People were very, very ignorant, wanting information served to them, (like poor Bill O'), and invested very little into actually trying to divine the truth for themselves. The communication devices broadly available mirrored that head-space perfectly. i.e., there weren't any.
But things are changing! Many more people today DO want to find out the truth for themselves; they are becoming increasingly fed up with the nonsense fluff offered up by the traditional channels. And just look at the mirror. . . We've got a slew of new portable devices coming down the pike.
The Asus eee 1000 has a 10" screen, a full laptop keyboard and the new Atom chip offering up 7 hours of battery life. And it's around the same size, if not smaller, (and certainly lighter), than the Model 100. All for $550, half the price of the original Model 100 of yore.
While I do like a text-only machine for strict writing, the shape of knowledge collection and dissemination today has grown to include the internet. Today, real journalism requires access to the web in a meaningful way. You need to be able to check facts and current events, compare notes with your peers, and update your blog or whatever from the field, and now you can. The Model 100 was an excellent conduit for knowledge in a time when knowledge itself was less robust. The light was dimmer, had less octane. My opinion, and please remember that this is an OPINION, is
Apparently, aside from an astonishing level of clerical and managerial chaos which affected every level of the Reich, the reality of SS intelligence, at least in Berlin, was completely at odds with the perception. The offices responsible for monitoring the population and for doling out punishments for those expressing anti-government sentiment or for being friends with jews or for generally not heiling with enough vigor; that office was staffed with only a handful of over-worked clerks surrounded by mountains of un-processed 'reports' filed by nosey neighbors and crafty tattle-tales trying to get in good with the reich for one reason or another. --But the perception was entirely different, and the effect was that the population effectively policed itself into the condition history has made infamous.
The imagination is the most fearsome weapon. Provide a few displays of violent public oppression, and then no matter how wide and large your enforcement net is, the public will imagine something even bigger and meaner. --Thus the mere suggestion that you might be watched and swatted is enough to keep the population in line.
On the one hand, I find it comforting to know that no matter how bad a police state appears, it's true condition is arguably going to be far less than perceived. But on the other hand, the fact that people willingly turn each other, become informants when it is not necessary, work to create hell on earth by becoming their own worst enemy, is truly depressing. --But even in this there is hope; knowledge of the reality spread widely and openly enough should logically be all that is necessary to prevent a horror.
-FL
He certainly didn't look long for the world in that video. I remember thinking, "I hope he gets a chance to see through his work before too much more time passes."
Sigh.
-FL
-FL
Here's another story on the technology. .
The military has been aware of this stuff for decades. Look up "Dr. Delgado", (but beware the Rense-style garbage; such nonsense exists solely to look silly and make people drop the subject. Works like a charm unless you recognize it for what it is. Like planting a trouble-maker in a crowd to start a riot thus justifying brutality. Tried and true tactics.) In any case, with the long association of the military and telecom companies, (RF and EM technology comes from the same roots, development money and minds), it becomes impossible to assume that those involved with the introduction of cell phones on the world market had no idea of the secondary effects caused by the technology or what it could be used for. Indeed, it seems very likely that their introduction was predicated on these secondary effects. (Which would, from my perspective, make them the primary effects and easy communication the carrot).
But you must come to your own conclusions. Keep in mind, however, that choosing ignorance these days leads to a buzzy kind of bliss.
-FL
Take this story, for example. .
It is for these reasons, among others, that I find the whole mass adoption of cell phones and the resulting soup of EM broadcast transmissions in our cities and homes troublesome, and why I find myself sighing at those who insist on repeating the telecommunications corporate propaganda: that non-ionizing radiation is harmless, (which I suppose might be true if one considers mass manipulation of human awareness 'harmless'), that the sun puts out more EM than any man-made device which therefore means that there is nothing to be concerned about, (a silly argument since life IS affected by the white noise from space, but has adapted to deal with it in some interesting ways, as opposed to deliberate coherent signals which affect cells in a variety of reliable and repeatable ways), and that studies on rats don't mean anything because rats != humans, and other such nonsense arguments.
This is just more fodder for the fire. Ignore at your own risk. (And with EM, the more you ignore, the faster and easier it becomes to ignore. Zombie nation.)
-FL
The Thermobarbaric bomb.
Works the same way dynamite kills fish in a lake. Liquefies your organs. Nasty stuff.
Also, they left out cluster bombs. --The munition which kills and terrorizes civilian populations long after the war is 'over'.
They got the one about crowd control right, though. But the creepiest are the ones you use to screw up the nervous systems of people through the electro-magnetic sphere. (Even though, according to the cell phone companies and half of Slashdot, humans are not affected by non-ionizing EM. Whatever.)
-FL
First, Microsoft is forced to backpedal on it's announced kill-off of XP, I suspect precisely because of the introduction of the ASUS eee. (Balmer didn't anticipate a popular move to machines which deliberately sport lower power. Vista was released on the assumption that machines keep getting faster and stronger, and lamer companies like HP were happy enough to oblige by designing their "2133 Mininote" to handle Vista, which is why they're going to fail to achieve any sort of dominance. The hip and trendy market, while usually as silly and as easily misled as a highschool girl, are surprisingly astute when it comes to matters of intent with regard to wanna-be pretenders. (Crocks still sell like hotcakes, but the next factory-formed plastic sandal-thing which is basically identical but made by the wrong company gets the brush-off.) --And who'd have thunk that the next big thing in computers was going to appeal to the iPod user market where what kind of operating system being used is kind of, 'who cares?' (My girlfriend would be happy with a pink eee, and doesn't know a Linux from a Window. It's the device, not the OS which counts.)
So it's damage control time! MS awkwardly announces the extension of the XP life line. But that's not good enough, because ASUS announced the now famous deal, (the eee900 with Linux costs the same as XP but has a bigger drive.) You just know a number of MS employees have had some late nights and stomach troubles over that one. So now they're not just extending the XP life, but actually giving it away just to maintain their hold on the public perception. And I wonder. . . How many Linux-baked eee's does it take to shift the paradigm with regard to OS's? We may not find out as soon as I'd like if this latest desperation move by MS pans out. At least, not this year anyhow. (How far off is the next new Microsoft OS from release? Ha ha. That's Balmer's stress response you can smell in the wind over Redmond.)
Australia also has a test-bed sort of feel to it, but I can't point to anything which confirms this. Just a feeling.
In any case, I find it fascinating how all of these moves have been put together within just a few weeks. There must have been some heated international telephone calls and business meets going on. None of this has had the time to gestate like a normal evil corporate plan. It feels young and fresh and desperate and nobody knows how it will all turn out. Cool! (I'd be happy if ASUS continued to ship another few million eee700's with Linux on them, introducing a new flavor of OS to the public in the form of an easy-to-use and fast booting OS. That'll make them ask when it comes time to buy their next laptop or desktop, "How come it has to come with Windows? Can't you just sell me one with one with something like my eee had? I should get a discount that way, shouldn't I?").
And that's all a fairly grand achievement for ASUS, even if it was unintentional; to make Microsoft dance around in fear of losing its legitimacy with the young & trendy market? That's hilarious!
Anybody else see that video of the two eee700's booting up next to each other, one with Linux and one with XP? Saving an extra 20 seconds of your life every time you hit 'On' is easily worth $50. And so is the extra drive space. It'll be interesting to see how it all pans out over the next few months. For my part, I'm still waiting for that Atom chip. . .
-FL