--Although, there was a Slashdot story a couple of days ago on room temperature superconductors which would provide the kind of technological leap necessary to make such a controller possible, (that is, if my understanding of sci-fi technology is correct, i.e. Brainstorm) --And, if according the article, the superconducting medium can be pressurized to about ten million atmospheres. (Don't hurl your headset to the floor in frustration, or you might crack a gasket and blow up/flash-freeze your house.)
I think a more realistic trick would be to use eyeball tracking glasses. Not quite the same as mind-reading, but certainly a decent hands-free input device. And possibly cooler yet, was the technology described in a Slashdot story from a couple of weeks back whereby a neckband can read from the vocal nerves in your neck which combined with a voice recognition system could presumably allow for voice actuated commands. --That would make more sense for a Harry Potter game, I'd think, where spells need to be spoken before they work.
With all the real tech available, I wonder why silly ideas like EEG readers which don't have a chance of working as advertised are being developed. Of course, I don't mind so much. --The idea of people wearing goggles to use computers is a bit creepy, and the neck band thing offers such a howler of a metaphor it doesn't bear explaining.
Most nations believe their own propaganda, thinking that "Only our enemies use propaganda on their people". --Until, that is, things starts to get really bad politically. The U.S., in spite of everything, is waking up. It's to the point now that only the slowest of the slow learners don't sigh in disgust when Fox News is mentioned, (though many have yet to recognize just how wide-spread the programming is at this point, but that awareness is coming, albeit slowly).
That being said, China is fskced. I've met some native Chinese who came here to go to school, and the propaganda they carry with them is unreal. "One China" anybody? That freaky film, "Hero" canonizing a butcher pretty much sums that one up. And I've met people who have lived here for over a decade who still hunch up and look frightened when you ask them what they think of the Chinese government. Like abuse victims. I guess the truncheons haven't fully come out yet in the U.S., and real information is still being controlled through ridicule rather than simply being locked down.
I've heard the U.S. described as the largest social experiment on the planet; the objective being to see if it is possible to fully control people without the use of force. Kind of like a beef farmer letting their cattle think they're living happy, free lives when in fact almost every thought and decision is dictated.
1) The Feds bailing out Bear Sterns, using the services of JP Morgan, or 2) Bear Stearns being unable to meet short term cash flows, going backrupt, and completely destroying the economy of the United States and world?
Naturally, I'm all for seeing things steady and stable. It's the larger questions which need to be examined, though.
There is every indication that the various structures now crashing, including Bear Sterns, were planned in back rooms specifically by people hoping to reap benefit from the resulting situation. Bear Stearns was crippled a year back when changes were made to its operating system. I'm not going to get into the details right now, (I'm busy as heck tonight), but take a look at what has been happening over the last twelve months with regard to how Bear Stearns borrows and lends money and certain critical privileges which were revoked; its demise has been nervously expected for quite some time, and the results we are seeing are exactly the sort of thing which people like JP Morgan were able to plan for and almost certainly had a hand in engineering. JP Morgan basically just made a huge, huge power move on the world economic chess board; These are the institutions which make up the Fed, and dictate how the Western economy works, and JP Morgan's power as a central bank, if there still happens to be a world in the next few years, will determine the shape of the Western economy for decades to come.
This kind of stuff doesn't happen without some serious scheming. --And it's apropos to keep in mind that the Great Depression may have seemed like a terrible time of want, but that for those who became the power-brokers of the last ninety years, did so as a direct result of a few small and well-positioned groups setting things up so that they could legally scoop up nearly ALL the property and material wealth in America for themselves. --Before the big crash a century ago, everybody was mortgaged and levied and in debt up to their ears, on both the personal and corporate level, just as everybody is today, and when the market was tipped, those few people ended up owning everything which they were able to re-sell at enormous profit. This is king-making stuff, and we're seeing the same scam happening again, right now. This is history unfolding, and the little people like us are expendable chaff in the wind.
This is just jumping on the "Corporate Executives are Bad" stereotype.
This is JP Morgan we're talking about. They just bought out Bear Stearns for $2.00 per share when it was trading four days ago at $60. AND they managed to do it with the government guaranteeing their purchase through a 300 billion dollar bailout funded by tax payers. The whole shit-parade stinks from the ground up, and it was exactly this kind of dirty stunt JP Morgan pulled during the Great Depression which made them the giant they are today. It's not even a different company pulling the same tactics, making mountainous profit through the engine of deliberate market collapse. We've all heard this song before, we know how the story ends, and they don't even have the decency to use a different cast of characters. So yeah, when evidence of insider trading through loop-hole law surfaces, people are going to jump on the, "Corporate Executives are Bad" stereotype, and that's because those stereotypes didn't come from nowhere, and JP Morgan is the granddaddy of them all.
Is YOUR mortgage paid off? When the banks come to take your house away after the crash and you're living in a Hoover city like the ones springing up today in California, will you be nodding yessir to the fat man in the suit smirking at you from behind tinted glass? Or do believe that your job and lifestyle are somehow secure?
Newsflash: Everybody goes hungry during a real depression except a very small cadre of Bad Executives, and you don't get let into the executive's club simply by defending their evil tactics through these schoolyard debates.
First, you claim it's a lie but put forward nothing to back your claim other than linking to other Slashdot posts
Oh please. You REALLY didn't get the reference? Okay then, I'll explain: The "Lie" was a reference to Hitler's propaganda chief and his well acted upon theory that a lie repeated often enough becomes the truth. --In your case, it was couched safely in the form of an opinion so that calling it a lie becomes an arguable point if you pretend not to know who Joseph Goebbels was. But you do, and the belief system behind your post remains.
Second, when in the hell did I ever say anything Bush has done has helped reduce terrorism? I was discussing the tactics, not their efficacy.
Oh you are SO offended. Dearie me! But arguing that domestic spying was used in good faith and NOT, heavens no, actually effective, doesn't make a lick of difference to the larger point. Stop being sneaky. --Your heart's allegiances, while filtered through some leftist rhetoric which sounds like it came from a field manual, is obvious and foul. Go back to whatever lagoon you slithered from.
Anyway, my concern with things like domestic spying is their long-term application. I'm not concern with what this administration has done because he's on his way out and by and large it's been actually used against terrorism. My fear is what future administrations do with these powers.
What the heck. . ? Do you have a quota or something? If you don't lay down enough astroturf, does the dark lord gouge out your eyes? What's the deal?
Basic lie I'm seeing repeated often enough under several Slashdot accounts. . . "The Democrats are bad, and Bush policy has actually helped to reduce terrorism." --All packaged under vaguely different recipes of socio-political flavor, but that same rotten meat stench just keeps coming through.
And I haven't even read a third of the posts on this story yet. Sigh. Onward.
You know, if you're going to post under multiple accounts, you really need to get a new style sheet. I can't tell which is more pathetic/funny; that you might be all one guy or that so many unimaginative people can all be so hopelessly clueless in exactly the same way.
You've all heard that one. --A very pure example of one of the most insidious and powerful advertising techniques in the biz. It's not about this feature over that feature. It's not even about the perception that one is cool and the other not. Nope.
The true intent of such advertising is never stated or obvious. What is the true intent?
To program people with regard to how they identify themselves to themselves. It's not, "Hi! I USE a Mac." --Which is powerful enough, especially when the human brain is lulled into low revs on the EEG meter as a direct result of gazing at a flickering CRT, Television viewing instantly puts every person into a clinically measurable hypnotic state where suggestion becomes defacto reality to the personality. Even when you know intellectually that owning a PC is no different than owning a can opener, that part of your brain is short circuited and a deeper part of your personality is affected, no matter how strong your personal resolve, by the emotional knowledge that you are not young and hip in whatever way is being provided as the benchmark. (In this case, by a Mac user who uses faux love and respect to deliver demoralizing comments and knife jabs. The latest in a long stream of sick tactics in the game of social power.)
What has this got to do with Time Magazine?
The article in question doesn't report so much as it instructs.
It tells us the abuse and it tells us that we do not care. Humans are social creatures; on an instinctive level we need to belong to the group, and so we will generally adopt whatever behavior is prevailing just to remain in the tribe, to stay part or the pack. Time Magazine is perhaps the top selling magazine in the U.S. Everybody knows this on some level; if Time speaks, it does so as an important voice of our tribe. So when it tells us what we think, on a deep level, we listen and for those who don't actively learn how this kind of programming works, we very often obey.
Abuser to the victim: "I'm going to rape you until you rupture, and you're not going to complain. You're even going to defend me against potential rescuers."
Stockholm Syndrom; When separated from the rest of the world for even a short time, fear and the instinctive desire to survive, causes people to automatically try to learn the rules of the tribe, (in this case the culture of hostages and power keepers), and fit in so that they are not rejected by the tribe leaders. (i.e., shot in the head.) So when the rescuers did arrive, they were actively fought by the hostages themselves. Stupid, but that's the human machine, and advertisers and media conglomerates know this fact well.
If Time Magazine wanted to serve humanity, it would not tell us what we think with endless polls and such. It would tell us what is happening in the world and would remain unbiased at all times. You know. Responsible journalism. Instead we get the popular kid telling us what all the cool people think.
There hasn't been any indications that information gained by illegal surveillance has been used in an attempt to prosecute someone.
What about the course of U.S. government since its inception?
The whole point of blackmail is that it exists in the shadows. The stage production of justice is a silly thing to point at when trying to downplay the impact of domestic spying, because the whole point of that kind of leverage is that both the abuser and the victim fight in their own ways to keep it out of the justice system.
McCarthy had dirt on almost everybody of any influence, and he certainly knew the value of it. Nothing has changed, except the expansion of the existing system. Despite the spin being layered on this issue, the true battle has little to do with the specter of abusive public arrests by cops using illegal wiretaps.
For the record, I'm actually more or less on the side of the Dems on this one, as much as it pains me to agree with the Dummycrats, albeit for different reasons. However...
I'm not on the side of either party. Unless any of their representatives are willing to take a stand on such issues as Israel which don't include support for the genocide of the Palestinians, then they're just a bunch of worthless stage puppets. --But that's a fairly small point. There are so many important forces moving in the world which are simply and deliberately ignored by the collective dream of American politics. You've no doubt heard it before, but it bears repeating; The whole set of arguments between Right and Left, Anti and Pro, For and Against, ad infinitum are prompted, fueled and even invented just, I really think, as a way to bring Machiavellian divide and conquer tactics into the game in order to keep people mired in the dream state. --So that the real issues go ignored. The collective power of an informed populace is greatly feared by the slave masters.
The government doesn't want to listen to your phone calls either. Your private phone calls aren't that interesting.
Not true. The moment somebody slips into the danger zone of perhaps waking up from the above mentioned infernal argument and dream state, is when the forces move to squash dissent, to re-direct energies and keep you running in circles. This is not really done via phone calls, etc., but the control system is metaphorically represented by such human agencies. Acceptance of one is acceptance of all, and these metaphoric battles count for a great deal more than is generally realized. In any case, I think you might be surprised by just who is and is not paid attention to even by those small human agencies. If you ever receive a warning, you'd know it, but given your current stance, I doubt you'd ever be considered a risk. A good sheep. (Sorry to use such a canned analogy, but that's how it is.) Have you ever met anybody in the surveillance game? You might want to get out there and do some meeting and greeting to get better informed. The world is a great deal more insane than the everyday apparent reality suggests.
What power you or I want them to have is irrelevant. What power is given them by the law is all that matters.
The fight is what counts. Your spiritual consent/dissent is of such enormous value that it is downplayed to the point where most don't even know such a thing exists. I'd argue that it is THE only battle which counts in this life.
Don't forget, so long as you're talking about reliable, supportable, relevant 'Facts' which sane people can take as seriously as they take you and everybody else who goes to trouble of including the senator's middle name for reasons only the lowest forms of school-yard life would find important, it must also be mentioned that Barack Obama is also an unruly Astronaut!
To the back of the double-decker bus with him!
Also. . . I just have to point out that anybody who complains about racism while exercising religious intolerance in the very same breath probably wouldn't know what to do with an actual fact if they ever happened to find one.
Took me by surprise when I heard a busker crooning that the other day; I'd not thought about that old song in many years. Brought a tear to my eye. -That part about, "Dragons live forever, but not so little boys."
Fun and profit? Goes well with your morning coffee? Finger on the pulse of the world? Distraction from the boredom of an ultimately meaningless existence?
Why read anything on Slashdot?
Just take comfort in the fact that I'm the one with the hat so you can go about your life in blissful normalcy.
I've been thinking for a while now that, while perhaps on the horizon, peak oil is simply being trumpeted because it happens to be the least insane-sounding of the various real dangers pending. It is convenient, because it provides an unspoken legitimizer for the various wars in the world today. While people are offended and frightened of the idea of war for oil, it is something that they can accept as being within the realm of human possibility and that sort of acceptance goes a long, long way. "Oh, how terrible, but it doesn't contravene the laws of physics as I understand them. I won't quit my job tomorrow to spend time with my loved ones over this."
But building prison camps and rapidly placing systems into being which are designed to manage an enormous and rapid population decline due to global disaster is, I think, the real underlying reason for the current wars and state of political turmoil in the world. Sometimes to fight forest fires, fire fighters will perform controlled burns to prevent outright disaster. I think we are seeing the beginnings of a controlled burn of the human population right now.
The reason for it all will much more likely have to do with comet impacts over the next few years. I've mentioned in years past the twin sun/dark star theory and it's effect upon objects in the Kuiper Belt. --Essentially the un-ignited ball of hydrogen orbiting our sun, the presence of which neatly explains the otherwise weird orbital deviations long noted in the various planets, crashes through the Kuiper asteroid belt out around Pluto and sends a cometary swarm into a lower solar orbit every 300,000 years or so. This has just happened, I suspect, sometime in the 1990's, and we're seeing the early effects of that now. Comet and fireball impacts have risen very sharply over the last year both in size and frequency, with new and significant impacts coming every couple of days, some of which have even made the top layer of the news, but most of which are locally reported events which even the news agencies are not saying are 'a one in a million chance' anymore when the top of somebody's car or house gets a hole punched in it. Plus there's been the interesting phenomenon which should have been expected but I didn't think of it until it started happening. --There's been a dramatic number of new 'moons' being discovered around the gas giants in the last few years, 41 moons discovered since the new millennium, bringing the total number we know of in our solar system to 62, (as of last year, anyway). --One could argue that these discoveries are due to advances in telescope and probe technology, except that the discoveries of many of these new moons have been in descending orbital order on a time scale. Neptune and Uranus first, then the nearer planets. Hmm.
I did say that peak oil was the least insane-sounding of several other theories. Comets are just a part of it. I also think we're in for some curious stuff with regard to aliens, but I'm not sure how many of us will still be standing if/when that comes about. Those who are still un-vaporized and not in prison camps, and not reduced in number through the deliberate 'de-foliation' of the human stocks through disease and bullet distribution, will no-doubt be well programmed to think of the other crazy events in religious terms. (They don't put that much energy into ensuring that most of the globe belongs to one cult or other for no reason!)
When 'Christ' appears, he won't be human and he certainly won't be here to save you. What a great way to defeat a population! --Pre-program them through history/time manipulation via the forward planning committee to think of you as gods so the whole planet will bend at the knee without a fight upon the arrival of your main forces. Think that's nuts? Of course you do! --That's the only way any sane television viewer could think unless they've gone down the rabbit hole like I have. (Keanuuuuu! Where arrrrre you? You didn't tell me wh
One of several thoughts which jumped out upon reading this story was, "How can news about reality be considered subversive?"
Of course, I get it, but seeing the idea of subversiveness from the outside looking in as opposed to how I grew up with it, made me stop and think.
When you break the word 'Subversive' down into its component words, Sub and Verse, it becomes plain; There is a song being sung, and in this case it is the Chinese national anthem. Those who live in China are compelled upon pain of something very painful to sing along. But the song is a lie, so those aware of this fact will sing off-key and drop in new words here and there, placing a sub-verse beneath the official line.
Wow. It's the Slashdot for kids who have a ticket but aren't as tall as the plywood bear.
I was thinking that Chad's friends were completely immature, dangerous assholes, (people DIE from falling in the shower) until I realized the whole thing was a production.
That's what I get for visiting baby-Slashdot.
The gnome video is solid, though. Don't know what that's doing here.
Until, that is, until your False Flag attack is copy-catted by those who get the wrong idea and perpetrate the attacks for real. But that's even better! --'Cuz now you get all the press and none of those nasty embarrassing loose threads leading back to HQ. Works in Gaza for one dippy religion, worked in Washington/New York for another, so why not for Hubbard? They've tried it before.
The only reason the Scientologists aren't getting away with it is that they're small fry; they don't have enough members infiltrated into the media and government to really do any big damage, like. . , throw national elections and start wars, for instance. --Not that they shouldn't be called out for what they are, mind you. Better to nip these things in the bud before they take over the universe. Too bad Christianity, Judaism and Islam weren't invented when there was an internet around to help out in the pruning. --Of course, if they had been knocked out of the game early, the PTB would simply have distributed some fliers with Buddha or somebody on a cross and warped all of his followers until they became the army of gun-toting lunatic sheep you need in order to keep the world inflamed.
This whole planet is like one giant cartoon show with bad punch lines and dead batteries in the channel flipper.
-FL
Re:Remain unknown? What the fsck?
on
Happy Pi Day
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· Score: 1
Bonus: Pi in Pi: the first 50 digits of Pi, after the decimal point, found in Pi: 14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510 occurs at position 200,000,001. An amazingly near-round position.
Oh, that's cool! I'd not heard that one before.
I'd like to know where the code for my great un-written novel is in Pi so that I don't have to type it out.
Who was improperly charged as a result of the requested info? We do know that info gathered in this fashion has helped prevent attacks and tracked terrorists.
1. Improperly charged? That's a very narrow definition of the problems associated with domestic spying. I don't want people listening in on my private phone calls. Other people are not invited to listen to private conversations. It's that simple. I don't care what bullshit excuse is being used. The spooks simply want power over me and everybody else, and I don't want them to have that power. It's not to protect me, and even it it was, I didn't ask for it and I would choose against it if given the option. I am not a child. --And the possibility for abuse is very clear, it has been used before many times; indeed, fear of blackmail as leverage, I know for a fact, is how much of the political world is managed.
2. Info gathered in this fashion has helped prevent terrorist attacks? Who told you that?
The fact is that the government has done a good job of preventing terrorism over the last 6+ years.
How do you measure that, exactly? All I've seen are a couple of trumped up arrests of people who it turned out posed little threat, if any, and who were caught using investigation systems which were fully available before 9-11.
"Mossad agents are caught involved in the recruiting of Palestinians for suicide bombings" Can you please source this?
Nope. The full-story links never last long, and the only ones remaining give very 'spun' versions. Funny about that, eh? It's up to the individual to watch carefully and maintain a memory of events as they unfold. --When truth needs to be sourced for those who don't want to see, or who aren't aware enough to stay vigilant, and the source is subject to take-down notices and threats from a well-funded and persistent nation like Israel, then 'Truth' becomes rather hard to put on a witness stand.
However, the patterns do remain. ..
There seems to be a familiar story relating to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict - see if you can recognise the pattern of:
(1) peace talks/Israeli instability/international pressure on Israel
(2) a suicide bombing
(3) some sort of Israeli action
(4) abandoning of the "peace process" at step (1)
It seems that as soon as some talk of peace or withdrawing West Bank settlers is mentioned, some sort of hostilities take place in this troubled zone.
The following list was mainly compiled using the Guardians excellent Middle East time line available here. It makes for some of the most depressing reading on the web.
JANUARY 2003
January 3 2003 It emerges that Ariel Sharon's Likud party has suffered a sharp drop in support during a corruption and organised crime scandal that has touched senior politicians, including Mr Sharon's son
January 5 2003 A dual suicide bombing in the heart of Tel Aviv kills 25 people, including the two bombers. Many of the victims were migrant workers from Africa, eastern Europe and the Philippines. The slaughter ends a six week lull in attacks on Israel and comes just three weeks before a general election.
January 6 2003 Palestinian officials are barred by Israel from attending a meeting in London to discuss progress towards an independent state. The travel ban was imposed by the Israeli cabinet in direct response to the previous day's suicide bombings.
MARCH-APRIL 2003
March 19 2003 Mahmoud Abbas officially accepts Yasser Arafat's offer of the post of Palestinian prime minister. He is expected to be sworn in after he selects a new cabinet, when the US will publish its long-awaited peace plan.
March 30 2003 A suicide bomber blows himself up in the Israeli coastal town of Netanya, injuring 58 people. The attack, marking Palestinian 'Land Day', is the first suicide bombing in Israel since the start of the war in Iraq.
April 2 2003 Israeli forces launch two days of raids on occupied Palestinian territories, killing six Palestinians, including a 14-year-old, and detaining more than 1,000 boys and men.
APRIL 2003
April 23 2003 Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian prime minister-delegate, Mahmoud Abbas, finally agree on the composition of the new Palestinian cabinet after frantic last-minute negotiations. In response to the move, the US indicates that it will publish its long-awaited road map for peace some time next week. Meanwhile, a Palestinian suicide bomber blows himself up at a crowded railway station in central Israel, killing a security guard who tried to prevent him from entering the building.
April 30 2003 The US releases its long-awaited road map for peace to Israeli and Palestinian leaders hours after the new Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, known as Abu Mazen, and his cabinet are sworn in. But, on the same day that Mr Abbas pledges to take the first step on the road map by cracking down on Palestinian terrorists, a suicide bombing at a bar in Tel Aviv kills three Israelis. Hamas and al-Aqsa claim joint responsibility, but Israeli police say that the suicide bomber and his accomplice, who escaped unharmed, were British.
Some say that the soul is the software and the body just a material robot sort of thing. I tend to agree. Can a computer contain the soul? With enough complexity, I don't see why not. --Actually, I don't even think that the human body and brain are necessary for the soul to exist; that the software exists in a different medium altogether, and that the brain is largely a creation which, without a soul present to interface with it, will run an AI-type simulation which passes plenty of Turning tests every day. I'd guess that only about half of the human monkeys we see walking around every day have real souls linked up with them. --But then, I tend to entertain such unconventional beliefs.
Anyway. . . I've known guys who are aching for the day when they could plug into computers, William Gibson style. One in particular, when I asked him at length about it, saw the appeal as lying in the fact that he felt he had no control of his real life and so a universe where he was god would be one where he could at last feel safe. Problem is, any new layer, once fully established will contain the same corruptions and challenges, bullies and benevolent beings, as the layer we collectively occupy now. Nobody can run from their lessons. So why run? --Not to mention, the simulation we have running now is pretty tight. The graphics are awesome. And anybody can access root if they take the time to learn how to hack, so it's actually quite easy to evade the so-called problem that "bad things happen to good people". So my comment back to my friend was that he might try learning how to hack the program in the present reality. You know, learn some 1337 skillz here and now rather than feel powerless and frightened while waiting around for somebody to install a USB port on the back of his skull, --an 'enhancement' which would certainly not be done for his personal benefit.
Still, I agree with you. If humans were to get such a technology up and running, it would expand our palate of possibilities enormously!
Grow up. This Palestine is always right and Israel is always evil crap is pathetic and nothing more than just the same old Protocols of Zion crap, in a new name...
You got it in one. There's just too much dark force on the Zionist side pushing for and manufacturing continued aggression between the two peoples to see it as anything but a tragedy. The regular Jew is just as much a victim as the regular Palestinian; victims of psychopathic secret government. How can anybody think otherwise when Mossad agents are caught involved in the recruiting of Palestinians for suicide bombings, the building of weapons and even launching rockets against their own country? Anything to keep the fires of aggression burning.
I quickly scanned the comments looking for the string of zeros helpfully provided by some slashdotter. Upon finding none, I grumbled to myself and visited wikipedia.
A zettabyte is 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes, or 10 to the 21st power.
Slashdot Mirror
--Although, there was a Slashdot story a couple of days ago on room temperature superconductors which would provide the kind of technological leap necessary to make such a controller possible, (that is, if my understanding of sci-fi technology is correct, i.e. Brainstorm) --And, if according the article, the superconducting medium can be pressurized to about ten million atmospheres. (Don't hurl your headset to the floor in frustration, or you might crack a gasket and blow up/flash-freeze your house.)
I think a more realistic trick would be to use eyeball tracking glasses. Not quite the same as mind-reading, but certainly a decent hands-free input device. And possibly cooler yet, was the technology described in a Slashdot story from a couple of weeks back whereby a neckband can read from the vocal nerves in your neck which combined with a voice recognition system could presumably allow for voice actuated commands. --That would make more sense for a Harry Potter game, I'd think, where spells need to be spoken before they work.
With all the real tech available, I wonder why silly ideas like EEG readers which don't have a chance of working as advertised are being developed. Of course, I don't mind so much. --The idea of people wearing goggles to use computers is a bit creepy, and the neck band thing offers such a howler of a metaphor it doesn't bear explaining.
-FL
That being said, China is fskced. I've met some native Chinese who came here to go to school, and the propaganda they carry with them is unreal. "One China" anybody? That freaky film, "Hero" canonizing a butcher pretty much sums that one up. And I've met people who have lived here for over a decade who still hunch up and look frightened when you ask them what they think of the Chinese government. Like abuse victims. I guess the truncheons haven't fully come out yet in the U.S., and real information is still being controlled through ridicule rather than simply being locked down.
I've heard the U.S. described as the largest social experiment on the planet; the objective being to see if it is possible to fully control people without the use of force. Kind of like a beef farmer letting their cattle think they're living happy, free lives when in fact almost every thought and decision is dictated.
-FL
1) The Feds bailing out Bear Sterns, using the services of JP Morgan, or
2) Bear Stearns being unable to meet short term cash flows, going backrupt, and completely destroying the economy of the United States and world?
Naturally, I'm all for seeing things steady and stable. It's the larger questions which need to be examined, though.
There is every indication that the various structures now crashing, including Bear Sterns, were planned in back rooms specifically by people hoping to reap benefit from the resulting situation. Bear Stearns was crippled a year back when changes were made to its operating system. I'm not going to get into the details right now, (I'm busy as heck tonight), but take a look at what has been happening over the last twelve months with regard to how Bear Stearns borrows and lends money and certain critical privileges which were revoked; its demise has been nervously expected for quite some time, and the results we are seeing are exactly the sort of thing which people like JP Morgan were able to plan for and almost certainly had a hand in engineering. JP Morgan basically just made a huge, huge power move on the world economic chess board; These are the institutions which make up the Fed, and dictate how the Western economy works, and JP Morgan's power as a central bank, if there still happens to be a world in the next few years, will determine the shape of the Western economy for decades to come.
This kind of stuff doesn't happen without some serious scheming. --And it's apropos to keep in mind that the Great Depression may have seemed like a terrible time of want, but that for those who became the power-brokers of the last ninety years, did so as a direct result of a few small and well-positioned groups setting things up so that they could legally scoop up nearly ALL the property and material wealth in America for themselves. --Before the big crash a century ago, everybody was mortgaged and levied and in debt up to their ears, on both the personal and corporate level, just as everybody is today, and when the market was tipped, those few people ended up owning everything which they were able to re-sell at enormous profit. This is king-making stuff, and we're seeing the same scam happening again, right now. This is history unfolding, and the little people like us are expendable chaff in the wind.
-FL
This is JP Morgan we're talking about. They just bought out Bear Stearns for $2.00 per share when it was trading four days ago at $60. AND they managed to do it with the government guaranteeing their purchase through a 300 billion dollar bailout funded by tax payers. The whole shit-parade stinks from the ground up, and it was exactly this kind of dirty stunt JP Morgan pulled during the Great Depression which made them the giant they are today. It's not even a different company pulling the same tactics, making mountainous profit through the engine of deliberate market collapse. We've all heard this song before, we know how the story ends, and they don't even have the decency to use a different cast of characters. So yeah, when evidence of insider trading through loop-hole law surfaces, people are going to jump on the, "Corporate Executives are Bad" stereotype, and that's because those stereotypes didn't come from nowhere, and JP Morgan is the granddaddy of them all.
Is YOUR mortgage paid off? When the banks come to take your house away after the crash and you're living in a Hoover city like the ones springing up today in California, will you be nodding yessir to the fat man in the suit smirking at you from behind tinted glass? Or do believe that your job and lifestyle are somehow secure?
Newsflash: Everybody goes hungry during a real depression except a very small cadre of Bad Executives, and you don't get let into the executive's club simply by defending their evil tactics through these schoolyard debates.
-FL
Oh please. You REALLY didn't get the reference? Okay then, I'll explain: The "Lie" was a reference to Hitler's propaganda chief and his well acted upon theory that a lie repeated often enough becomes the truth. --In your case, it was couched safely in the form of an opinion so that calling it a lie becomes an arguable point if you pretend not to know who Joseph Goebbels was. But you do, and the belief system behind your post remains.
Second, when in the hell did I ever say anything Bush has done has helped reduce terrorism? I was discussing the tactics, not their efficacy.
Oh you are SO offended. Dearie me! But arguing that domestic spying was used in good faith and NOT, heavens no, actually effective, doesn't make a lick of difference to the larger point. Stop being sneaky. --Your heart's allegiances, while filtered through some leftist rhetoric which sounds like it came from a field manual, is obvious and foul. Go back to whatever lagoon you slithered from.
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What the heck. . ? Do you have a quota or something? If you don't lay down enough astroturf, does the dark lord gouge out your eyes? What's the deal?
Basic lie I'm seeing repeated often enough under several Slashdot accounts. . . "The Democrats are bad, and Bush policy has actually helped to reduce terrorism." --All packaged under vaguely different recipes of socio-political flavor, but that same rotten meat stench just keeps coming through.
And I haven't even read a third of the posts on this story yet. Sigh. Onward.
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You know, if you're going to post under multiple accounts, you really need to get a new style sheet. I can't tell which is more pathetic/funny; that you might be all one guy or that so many unimaginative people can all be so hopelessly clueless in exactly the same way.
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Either I'm mis-reading this stuff, or they're pumping clones out from a machine somewhere. . .
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You've all heard that one. --A very pure example of one of the most insidious and powerful advertising techniques in the biz. It's not about this feature over that feature. It's not even about the perception that one is cool and the other not. Nope.
The true intent of such advertising is never stated or obvious. What is the true intent?
To program people with regard to how they identify themselves to themselves. It's not, "Hi! I USE a Mac." --Which is powerful enough, especially when the human brain is lulled into low revs on the EEG meter as a direct result of gazing at a flickering CRT, Television viewing instantly puts every person into a clinically measurable hypnotic state where suggestion becomes defacto reality to the personality. Even when you know intellectually that owning a PC is no different than owning a can opener, that part of your brain is short circuited and a deeper part of your personality is affected, no matter how strong your personal resolve, by the emotional knowledge that you are not young and hip in whatever way is being provided as the benchmark. (In this case, by a Mac user who uses faux love and respect to deliver demoralizing comments and knife jabs. The latest in a long stream of sick tactics in the game of social power.)
What has this got to do with Time Magazine?
The article in question doesn't report so much as it instructs.
It tells us the abuse and it tells us that we do not care. Humans are social creatures; on an instinctive level we need to belong to the group, and so we will generally adopt whatever behavior is prevailing just to remain in the tribe, to stay part or the pack. Time Magazine is perhaps the top selling magazine in the U.S. Everybody knows this on some level; if Time speaks, it does so as an important voice of our tribe. So when it tells us what we think, on a deep level, we listen and for those who don't actively learn how this kind of programming works, we very often obey.
Abuser to the victim: "I'm going to rape you until you rupture, and you're not going to complain. You're even going to defend me against potential rescuers."
Stockholm Syndrom; When separated from the rest of the world for even a short time, fear and the instinctive desire to survive, causes people to automatically try to learn the rules of the tribe, (in this case the culture of hostages and power keepers), and fit in so that they are not rejected by the tribe leaders. (i.e., shot in the head.) So when the rescuers did arrive, they were actively fought by the hostages themselves. Stupid, but that's the human machine, and advertisers and media conglomerates know this fact well.
If Time Magazine wanted to serve humanity, it would not tell us what we think with endless polls and such. It would tell us what is happening in the world and would remain unbiased at all times. You know. Responsible journalism. Instead we get the popular kid telling us what all the cool people think.
-FL
What about the course of U.S. government since its inception?
The whole point of blackmail is that it exists in the shadows. The stage production of justice is a silly thing to point at when trying to downplay the impact of domestic spying, because the whole point of that kind of leverage is that both the abuser and the victim fight in their own ways to keep it out of the justice system.
McCarthy had dirt on almost everybody of any influence, and he certainly knew the value of it. Nothing has changed, except the expansion of the existing system. Despite the spin being layered on this issue, the true battle has little to do with the specter of abusive public arrests by cops using illegal wiretaps.
-FL
I'm not on the side of either party. Unless any of their representatives are willing to take a stand on such issues as Israel which don't include support for the genocide of the Palestinians, then they're just a bunch of worthless stage puppets. --But that's a fairly small point. There are so many important forces moving in the world which are simply and deliberately ignored by the collective dream of American politics. You've no doubt heard it before, but it bears repeating; The whole set of arguments between Right and Left, Anti and Pro, For and Against, ad infinitum are prompted, fueled and even invented just, I really think, as a way to bring Machiavellian divide and conquer tactics into the game in order to keep people mired in the dream state. --So that the real issues go ignored. The collective power of an informed populace is greatly feared by the slave masters.
The government doesn't want to listen to your phone calls either. Your private phone calls aren't that interesting.
Not true. The moment somebody slips into the danger zone of perhaps waking up from the above mentioned infernal argument and dream state, is when the forces move to squash dissent, to re-direct energies and keep you running in circles. This is not really done via phone calls, etc., but the control system is metaphorically represented by such human agencies. Acceptance of one is acceptance of all, and these metaphoric battles count for a great deal more than is generally realized. In any case, I think you might be surprised by just who is and is not paid attention to even by those small human agencies. If you ever receive a warning, you'd know it, but given your current stance, I doubt you'd ever be considered a risk. A good sheep. (Sorry to use such a canned analogy, but that's how it is.) Have you ever met anybody in the surveillance game? You might want to get out there and do some meeting and greeting to get better informed. The world is a great deal more insane than the everyday apparent reality suggests.
What power you or I want them to have is irrelevant. What power is given them by the law is all that matters.
The fight is what counts. Your spiritual consent/dissent is of such enormous value that it is downplayed to the point where most don't even know such a thing exists. I'd argue that it is THE only battle which counts in this life.
-FL
To the back of the double-decker bus with him!
Also. . . I just have to point out that anybody who complains about racism while exercising religious intolerance in the very same breath probably wouldn't know what to do with an actual fact if they ever happened to find one.
-FL
Took me by surprise when I heard a busker crooning that the other day; I'd not thought about that old song in many years. Brought a tear to my eye. -That part about, "Dragons live forever, but not so little boys."
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Fun and profit? Goes well with your morning coffee? Finger on the pulse of the world? Distraction from the boredom of an ultimately meaningless existence?
Why read anything on Slashdot?
Just take comfort in the fact that I'm the one with the hat so you can go about your life in blissful normalcy.
-FL
I've been thinking for a while now that, while perhaps on the horizon, peak oil is simply being trumpeted because it happens to be the least insane-sounding of the various real dangers pending. It is convenient, because it provides an unspoken legitimizer for the various wars in the world today. While people are offended and frightened of the idea of war for oil, it is something that they can accept as being within the realm of human possibility and that sort of acceptance goes a long, long way. "Oh, how terrible, but it doesn't contravene the laws of physics as I understand them. I won't quit my job tomorrow to spend time with my loved ones over this."
But building prison camps and rapidly placing systems into being which are designed to manage an enormous and rapid population decline due to global disaster is, I think, the real underlying reason for the current wars and state of political turmoil in the world. Sometimes to fight forest fires, fire fighters will perform controlled burns to prevent outright disaster. I think we are seeing the beginnings of a controlled burn of the human population right now.
The reason for it all will much more likely have to do with comet impacts over the next few years. I've mentioned in years past the twin sun/dark star theory and it's effect upon objects in the Kuiper Belt. --Essentially the un-ignited ball of hydrogen orbiting our sun, the presence of which neatly explains the otherwise weird orbital deviations long noted in the various planets, crashes through the Kuiper asteroid belt out around Pluto and sends a cometary swarm into a lower solar orbit every 300,000 years or so. This has just happened, I suspect, sometime in the 1990's, and we're seeing the early effects of that now. Comet and fireball impacts have risen very sharply over the last year both in size and frequency, with new and significant impacts coming every couple of days, some of which have even made the top layer of the news, but most of which are locally reported events which even the news agencies are not saying are 'a one in a million chance' anymore when the top of somebody's car or house gets a hole punched in it. Plus there's been the interesting phenomenon which should have been expected but I didn't think of it until it started happening. --There's been a dramatic number of new 'moons' being discovered around the gas giants in the last few years, 41 moons discovered since the new millennium, bringing the total number we know of in our solar system to 62, (as of last year, anyway). --One could argue that these discoveries are due to advances in telescope and probe technology, except that the discoveries of many of these new moons have been in descending orbital order on a time scale. Neptune and Uranus first, then the nearer planets. Hmm.
I did say that peak oil was the least insane-sounding of several other theories. Comets are just a part of it. I also think we're in for some curious stuff with regard to aliens, but I'm not sure how many of us will still be standing if/when that comes about. Those who are still un-vaporized and not in prison camps, and not reduced in number through the deliberate 'de-foliation' of the human stocks through disease and bullet distribution, will no-doubt be well programmed to think of the other crazy events in religious terms. (They don't put that much energy into ensuring that most of the globe belongs to one cult or other for no reason!)
When 'Christ' appears, he won't be human and he certainly won't be here to save you. What a great way to defeat a population! --Pre-program them through history/time manipulation via the forward planning committee to think of you as gods so the whole planet will bend at the knee without a fight upon the arrival of your main forces. Think that's nuts? Of course you do! --That's the only way any sane television viewer could think unless they've gone down the rabbit hole like I have. (Keanuuuuu! Where arrrrre you? You didn't tell me wh
Of course, I get it, but seeing the idea of subversiveness from the outside looking in as opposed to how I grew up with it, made me stop and think.
When you break the word 'Subversive' down into its component words, Sub and Verse, it becomes plain; There is a song being sung, and in this case it is the Chinese national anthem. Those who live in China are compelled upon pain of something very painful to sing along. But the song is a lie, so those aware of this fact will sing off-key and drop in new words here and there, placing a sub-verse beneath the official line.
-FL
I was thinking that Chad's friends were completely immature, dangerous assholes, (people DIE from falling in the shower) until I realized the whole thing was a production.
That's what I get for visiting baby-Slashdot.
The gnome video is solid, though. Don't know what that's doing here.
-FL
The only reason the Scientologists aren't getting away with it is that they're small fry; they don't have enough members infiltrated into the media and government to really do any big damage, like. . , throw national elections and start wars, for instance. --Not that they shouldn't be called out for what they are, mind you. Better to nip these things in the bud before they take over the universe. Too bad Christianity, Judaism and Islam weren't invented when there was an internet around to help out in the pruning. --Of course, if they had been knocked out of the game early, the PTB would simply have distributed some fliers with Buddha or somebody on a cross and warped all of his followers until they became the army of gun-toting lunatic sheep you need in order to keep the world inflamed.
This whole planet is like one giant cartoon show with bad punch lines and dead batteries in the channel flipper.
-FL
Oh, that's cool! I'd not heard that one before.
I'd like to know where the code for my great un-written novel is in Pi so that I don't have to type it out.
-FL
1. Improperly charged? That's a very narrow definition of the problems associated with domestic spying. I don't want people listening in on my private phone calls. Other people are not invited to listen to private conversations. It's that simple. I don't care what bullshit excuse is being used. The spooks simply want power over me and everybody else, and I don't want them to have that power. It's not to protect me, and even it it was, I didn't ask for it and I would choose against it if given the option. I am not a child. --And the possibility for abuse is very clear, it has been used before many times; indeed, fear of blackmail as leverage, I know for a fact, is how much of the political world is managed.
2. Info gathered in this fashion has helped prevent terrorist attacks? Who told you that?
-FL
How do you measure that, exactly? All I've seen are a couple of trumped up arrests of people who it turned out posed little threat, if any, and who were caught using investigation systems which were fully available before 9-11.
-FL
Nope. The full-story links never last long, and the only ones remaining give very 'spun' versions. Funny about that, eh? It's up to the individual to watch carefully and maintain a memory of events as they unfold. --When truth needs to be sourced for those who don't want to see, or who aren't aware enough to stay vigilant, and the source is subject to take-down notices and threats from a well-funded and persistent nation like Israel, then 'Truth' becomes rather hard to put on a witness stand.
.
However, the patterns do remain. .
Anyway. . . I've known guys who are aching for the day when they could plug into computers, William Gibson style. One in particular, when I asked him at length about it, saw the appeal as lying in the fact that he felt he had no control of his real life and so a universe where he was god would be one where he could at last feel safe. Problem is, any new layer, once fully established will contain the same corruptions and challenges, bullies and benevolent beings, as the layer we collectively occupy now. Nobody can run from their lessons. So why run? --Not to mention, the simulation we have running now is pretty tight. The graphics are awesome. And anybody can access root if they take the time to learn how to hack, so it's actually quite easy to evade the so-called problem that "bad things happen to good people". So my comment back to my friend was that he might try learning how to hack the program in the present reality. You know, learn some 1337 skillz here and now rather than feel powerless and frightened while waiting around for somebody to install a USB port on the back of his skull, --an 'enhancement' which would certainly not be done for his personal benefit.
Still, I agree with you. If humans were to get such a technology up and running, it would expand our palate of possibilities enormously!
-FL
You got it in one. There's just too much dark force on the Zionist side pushing for and manufacturing continued aggression between the two peoples to see it as anything but a tragedy. The regular Jew is just as much a victim as the regular Palestinian; victims of psychopathic secret government. How can anybody think otherwise when Mossad agents are caught involved in the recruiting of Palestinians for suicide bombings, the building of weapons and even launching rockets against their own country? Anything to keep the fires of aggression burning.
-FL
A zettabyte is 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes, or 10 to the 21st power.
--Does this include data stored in landfills?
Okay. Silly article. Moving on now.
-FL