Yeah, I wanted more vacation too, but they weren't going to let it happen. So I decided to shoot for the moon. I told my boss that I (truthfully) would be more productive if I could work from home several days a week. They said, "OK".
I disagree however with the idea that one should only vote for parties that 'have a chance' of winning or anything like that
In America the Democrats and Republicans are both part of a larger group, a power monopoly. They take "sides" in order to make it seem like there's a choice. The last several elections were almost exactly 50-50 divided. The media and the politicians like to say this means the country is "Strongly" divided. I say that it means the two "sides" are closer together than ever, so it doesn't really matter which side you pick, you are voting for people who are part of a single group, the power monopoly.
Voting for some wierd outsider would be great for the country. We need to get 2 or 3 totally weird outsiders into the senate and congress. These weirdos would not necessarily have any influence with their few votes, but you know for a fact they are going to:
1. Attend every vote 2. Read and understand every bill 3. Debate every pork barrel/hidden law/etc etc. 4. Generally put all the other people on the spot.
Those people up there are supposed to represent our states and help to make the country a better place also. Instead, they all live in Washington, DC, go to the same parties, and rarely if ever come back to their states to find out what's really going on. And if they do talk to someone from the state, it'll be some rich millionaire or business that probably does more than it's own share of subverting the will and freedom and comfort of the residents.
A weirdo elected would
1. Not be invited to those parties 2. Would not be able to find a place to live in Washington DC 3. Would not know any millionaires
Therefore he would probably come back to his house in the state he's from during the recess and actually talk to people and find out what's going on.
The only real problem is that he would shake things up so much that the power monopoly would hire one of their many hit squads and he would die in a tragic "accident".
I want to see some Henry Clay style beatings in congress though. Put someone like a Jessie Ventura in and have him PHYSICALLY BEAT people like Tom Delay (not just a clever name), Orrin Hatch, John Kerry, etc. BEAT THEM INTO SUBMISSION like the frail moneyed frat boys they are. Instead, it's just getting more aristocratic up there, because the American people think they have to go with a sure winner--when really going with the weirdest person running would be the best for everyone.
This is incorrect, the 'Convention on the Rights of the Child' article 12, states:
According to your link:
"According to UNICEF, the Convention has been ratified by 192 countries. Only Somalia and the United States have not ratified the CRC. Somalia is currently unable to proceed to ratification as it has no recognized government."
I'm making one of these for my automatic restaurant picker. See, we had a hard time deciding where to go to lunch so I compiled a list of nearby restaurants in a table in mysql and used a simple php script to generate a random one. Then it was determined that there are some places that are "essentials", the cheap coffee shop on the corner with the lunch special, etc. that you'd want to go to more often than other restarants.
So now what it's going to do is pick a restaurant, email it to the lunch group, then after lunch when they come back they'll have an email asking them to rate certain aspects of the experience. Also, around 11, it will email everyone and ask what they are in the "mood" for and then use that in weighing the pick.
See, I think you need input from the user beyond "consumer data"; people have moods, sometimes you just want to get crazy and do something totally weird. A computer can't help you with that, if it's taking averages of your habits (like amazon or something). If you only provide people with an average reality it will only increase their sense of alienation from choice...
Now, in the system described in TFA, I guess you are getting opinions from your social network. But really, what they want to do is provide you and your friends with a minimal value while gathering lots of data on how groups of people influence each other's choices, who makes the decision for the group (ie, the leader), etc. Then guess what, why waste money advertising to the followers when they are going to do what the leader does? Just advertise to the leader.
Of course, then the NSA will come along and harness the list of all the "leaders" out there or something privacy invading like that..
You could just have a separate account to use with your ebay. I have 2 bofa accounts and so I just transfer my money into Account #1, and then use BofA's online transfer to move it into my business account. Thus, any unsavory individuals have no access to my funds but I can stay "verified"...
Banks are pretty much giving accounts away, there's no reason to have all your eggs in "one basket".. Plus having an account at each of the major national banks (and a few local ones) means never having to wait for funds to come "available".
Uh, cars are shipped with defects all the time. If you don't like it, you return the car. Sometimes, when public safety is at risk, they recall the cars (thanks Ralph Nader).
Sometimes your burger at McDonald's doesn't have exactly what you want on it. You get a new one.
So they ship software with defects. Windows probably has 50-100 million lines of code written by thousands of different people. There's NO WAY to test stuff. They would never release software if they waited to fix all the bugs. At least they fix them, with the updates. Granted, it has felt in the past like they took advantage of having the updates as an excuse to get to the bugs later..
But stuff ships with defects all the time. Perfection is impossible. Often, when I release code, there is some special case that's not handled that should be but chances are it's not going to happen. Why waste time on something that's probably not ever going to happen? If it does happen, you can fix it. If it turns out to happen too often, you fix it.
However, they are a monopoly, so they have a certain responsibility to make sure their product is good because people may not have another choice. But I think they've done a reasonable job. Windows has really improved over the years and once you learn about the registry and know all the modules and dlls and kernel stuff it's really pretty fun to work with. It's a lot like a girl you have to get to know. There's hidden secrets that aren't told, aren't known, just like a woman. Unlike linux, which is like getting to know a math book.
The best part is that it doesn't really run very good out of the box, but if you set up a domain controller and do all the normal tweaks it really gets smooth. So people have jobs to set it up. And they don't have to be crazy to get it working reasonably well. But if you want to make it run really great, you can get crazy. It only starts to suck when you run into something it can't do yet. But there aren't that many.
Of course, I have the linux box in the corner, running all the time. I've never had to reboot it because I don't really use it for anything (caching DNS and apache for my personal drivers web page and stuff). I think I have it just so that when the regular windows guys come into the office, I have a different looking KDE desktop and I show them how it uses text mode when you boot up. Wee, look at all the technical looking jargon! Oh, and I use it to sniff packets. I just setup the dns server to resolve the AIM servers to that box's IP and then it has a simple routing table that copies off the packets. WEEE, they get excited when they see that and say "hey, can you teach me linux", and I sit back and say, "no, you really have to learn for yourself". Recalling the WEEKS spent figuring out httpd.conf, scouring hundreds of contradictory and out of date websites. Yep, everyone has an opinion.
With microsoft stuff, you just go to the fascist "MSDN" knowledgebase and get a nice official answer for every question ever asked. Yeah, and go ahead and mention #linux HAHAAA. Like I want to waste 3 hours kissing ass to get a simple answer.
Of course, I went through all this like 8 years ago so now I just look at it as a sort of rite of passage to use Linux.
Linux is to dunebuggy as Windows is to Toyota as IBM Mainframe is to 18-wheeler
One is for the weekends, one is for the regular day to day stuff and one gets the real work done. Webserving isn't work. Amazon.com would like you to think so, but most REAL (non software) businesses have people doing work, creating data, manufacturing stuff and that all needs to be tracked. If you are making 15000 network cards an hour, you need some serious accounting.
Think about a CASINO, 10000 machines x hundreds of 5, 10, and 25 cent transactions per hour. And if the db stops, you stop making money. Oh, and amazon runs on IBM. So does ebay.
Here's my take, after reading the entry. He was talking about free speech.
But people under 18 are NOT PEOPLE, therefore free speech does not apply to people under 18. That's why the public school system ends at 18. Because you become a person and then you get those rights such as voting, free speech, etc. Until you are 18, you are your parents and if you want to talk, you have to do it through them.
I was under 18 once (a while ago) and I felt the same way this kid did, and I got suspended and I got in trouble because I was smart and thought I knew the law. But the bottom line is that you are NOT a person until you are 18. You are a child, a sub-person. You have human rights but you are not a full citizen of the United States.
The school has a legitimate argument because the kid was advertising breaking the law, which is not illegal per se, but could be viewed as disruptive. It IS illegal in most states to advocate breaking the law, subverting the government, creating anarchy, etc. The school system has a legitimate complaint if they believe that this local post may cause other students to break the law.
But, I don't think the student should be punished. I think the parents should be punished for raising such a dumbass.
They won't have to force people because every application just uses the jpg decoder in MSHTML.dll or the viewer DLL and getting it into that is just a "Security Update" away.....
People like Adobe will have it because they want to be definitive.
In addition, I believe Microsoft owns Corbis, which has been quietly buying up most great photos. They are primed to be the leading supplier of photos to print and web industry. Granted, there are other players, but as Microsoft rises into professional desktop publishing, with professional software (they'll probably buy Quark or something), they are going to want their standards with DRM in place so they can charge for fonts, photos, media, everything. It's all part of the pay per use model. Imagine, rather than buying Quark for $2K, stock art for hundreds of dollars, a computer system, etc. you can just rent it for a set price, based on the number of copies you want to distribute. Or pay based on web impressions. That way you only have to invest based on the success you actually get and you're not limited by investment capital (bootstrapping). It's pretty brilliant, and I have always said that Microsoft is not just the largest software company; they are the largest publishing company in the world.
By controlling media from top to bottom, from the creation (input) to the viewer (output), nipping pennies off each time, they stand to make a shitload of money while at the same time making it easier and cheaper for providers to create, and lower the risk and initial investment dollars in return for taking some of the inevitable rewards.
Interesting concept, I hope it goes somewhere. Too bad the emphasis will not initially be on quality--I'm sure like everything microsoft does it will be a basic model that evolves with patches over time.
Colin is a small melon-sized flying security robot which Ford Prefect enslaves to aid in his escape from the newly re-organized Guide offices in Mostly Harmless. Ford captures Colin by trapping the robot with his towel and re-wiring the robot's pleasure circuits.
Ford uses Colin's cheerfulness to break into the Guide's corporate accounting software in order to write a piece of software that will automatically pay his expense account. Colin also saves Ford's life when the Guide's new security force, Vogons, blow up one of Ford's irreplaceable shoes with a rocket launcher.
Colin was named after a dog belonging to Emily Saunders, an old ex-girlfriend of Ford's.
Appears in: Mostly Harmless
In the radio series, he is played by Andrew Secombe.
Yeah, it's probably directly in proportion to the solar wind velocity in all directions. Which varies. We're currently at solar minimum right now in the 11 year cycle which means the field does not go out as far. See also Space Weather.
Well, gathering from the article and a few other posts:
There are two sides of the brain, the conscious and the subconscious, with a sort of database in the middle. The conscious mind is associated with meaning, emotion, deep thoughts. The subconscious is associated with motor skills, communication, and logical thoughts.
There's a collection layer that handles getting data from your senses (eyes, ears, nose, etc.). The conscious mind is what you use for memories. It handles tagging data with meaning before it's inserted into the database. If there is no meaning, it cannot be retrieved from the database. More on this in a second.
The subconscious is the section that's responsible for acting on things. You know how sometimes you just "get that feeling"? That's when you are sort of aware of your subconsious working. Your subconscious has read access to the database, so it can draw on all the stuff in there to run your body, even if you are no longer learning (conscious tagging and assigning meaning to sense data).
Ambien turns off the conscious mind and actually stimulates the other sections. So you hear stories of people on Ambien running tractors or cooking breakfast in their sleep and then having no recollection of it. Their subconsious mind is easily capable of performing these tasks, it can just refer back to the thousands of other times you've walked or driven or cooked eggs.
So, in people who's brain is damaged in such a way that their subconscious faculties are still working somewhat, if you stimulate what is still working, you can get a reasonable facsimile of a healthy person's behavior, as far as logical tasks are concerned.
But all this really does is explain why Ambien is a really really bad choice for a sleeping medication. I mean, it activates your mind and body but turns off it's ability to record. You are, in essence, a zombie.
This result is surprising because excess activation of GABA receptors is typically sedative, and zolpidem (trade name Ambien) enhances GABA action a type of GABA receptors that are thought to be particularly involved in sedation, so this result is the opposite of what would be expected from a simple point of view.
Maybe that's why you get stories of people talking in their sleep, walking in their sleep, or operating heavy machinery in their sleep while on Ambien. Their conscious mind is asleep but their eyes are open, the real control functions of the brain are working, it's just not being "recorded".
Scary scary stuff, specially when you see how many prescriptions of that crap they write, and think about how many people are actually asleep at the wheel on your commute home. The real rise of that drug was right after "9-11" when doctors were prescribing pretty much anything you wanted if you "were having trouble sleeping" or "anxiety". Nice.
The potential solution, tested at an experimental reactor in San Diego, US, could make the next generation of fusion reactors more efficient, saving hundreds of millions of euros a year.
I didn't realize so many Europeans sacrificed their lives for fusion.
And judging by the shit we've been saying on Slashdot, we're gonna get picked up one of these days:) Think about it: if they can collect information illegally, what's stopping them from illegally arresting us? Or KILLING us, for that matter. I mean, let's be realistic--we're all just numbers. Yeah, I might matter to my family but really, who's going to miss me?
I'm a philosopher though, not a formentor of rebellion. I'm more likely to watch Fox News than participate in a public protest. But what if something I said fits in some computer model they have somewhere? What if they just start developing "patterns" and "signatures" of people who behave in an "undesirable way". It IS possible in America, it happened during the 50's, when everyone was afraid of communists (read it) (which I think was as artificially hyped up as this terrorism thing today). It later involved Edward R. Murrow, the rise of the Kennedys (who were of course killed), the whole youth and civil rights movements, burning colleges, a draft and a pointless war. Ask any grandmother and she'll tell you the 60's were not a good time for this country. The people had to fight back. I think a lot of current policies are as nutty as some of the stuff going on in the 50's...
Where are all those people who were around then who helped change the world? Why aren't they talking? Their former nemesis' such as Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Poindexter, etc etc are all still in the game. Where are they? What will it take to get the American people to wake up? A war with Iran? There will surely be a draft; Iran has over 60 million people! SE Asia (N Korea), I think we know where that will go.. Abortion ban? Maybe. Who knows what it will be. Maybe everyone out there is drugged up on their Paxil and Xanax and Ambiene and wine enough to not care anymore.
No, sorry... No one is bothering to say "this isn't true", they're saying "we can't let this come out because it will damage national security". To me, that's pretty much admitting the program exists and does what is alleged, probably more (which is why they're willing to fight so hard to keep the details secret).
And how could it be considered to harm national security now? I mean, any self respecting terrorist would know to like, use a different phone or something. Plus, because this thing is based on harvesting light waves from fiber optics, there's no real way to circumvent it. Literally all communications are going through the system. What could that possibly have to do with national security? It's not a war plan, or some type of strategy. This is only confidential because it's ILLEGAL.
Maybe there's something even messier underneath this project that they REALLY don't (CAN'T) let people find out about because it would be so damaging, so degrading to the American way of life that we couldn't possibly continue with the same people running the show after we found out about it...I don't know, it's scary.
Or anti-globalists or anyone with over 100 IQ who might try to change things. The current power structure has proven they will take everything as far as they can until someone does something to stop them. They are not stopping within the boundaries of the law.
Does this mean that I can break the law? Can I claim personal security if I go and shoot everyone I THINK might be a threat to me someday? Can I open my neighbor's mail because I think they might want to rob my house? It doesn't make sense. Surely my personal security is more important than that of the state. What is the state but a lot of ME'S. I think it's coming to the point where the sum of all parts is NOT greater than the one.
And so we go, on with our lives We know the truth, but prefer lies Lies are simple, simple is bliss Why go against tradition when we can Admit defeat, live in decline Be the victim of our own design The status quo, built on suspect Why would anyone stick out their neck?
Or the judge will order it halted, in which case they will keep doing it anyway because they are already blatantly breaking the law. It will just move to the "more secret" cabinet in the basement or across the street.
This is off topic, but I thought it might be relevant within a degree:
Join thousands of other Americans by calling Congress on Wednesday, May 17 to demand they investigate this government intrusion immediately. ADC, the BORDC, the ACLU, People For the American Way, and other organizations have declared the week of May 15 "National Call-in to Congress Week" and are asking their constituents to call their members of Congress on a specific day. Let's keep those phones ringing in the Congressional halls all week long! Call the Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121 and ask the operator to connect you.
The snooping into your phone bill is just the snout of the pig of a strange, lucrative link-up between the Administration's Homeland Security spy network and private companies operating beyond the reach of the laws meant to protect us from our government. You can call it the privatization of the FBI -- though it is better described as the creation of a private KGB....You should be more concerned that they are linking this info to your medical records, your bill purchases and your entire personal profile including, not incidentally, your voting registration.
Dossiers. Remember when the Soviets fell and people started buying their dossiers (this was in the 90's). It was crazy, business people would see that the KGB had a detail synopsis of their daily life, where they worked, who they hung out with, etc. in case they could turn a double agent, etc. On Soviet citizens, they had complete records of phone conversations (transcripts), photos, fingerprints, hair, everything. This is just the beginning. And with so much of our personal business being handled over the 'net (taxes, banking, bills, not to mention email and personal communications, entertainment, and now VoIP phone calls...), it's easier than ever for them to compile a dossier on people.
But yes, you're right, the fact that the company makes a network recorder is not news. Mainly because there was a Narus story on Slashdot like last month..
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, I wanted more vacation too, but they weren't going to let it happen. So I decided to shoot for the moon. I told my boss that I (truthfully) would be more productive if I could work from home several days a week. They said, "OK".
I disagree however with the idea that one should only vote for parties that 'have a chance' of winning or anything like that
In America the Democrats and Republicans are both part of a larger group, a power monopoly. They take "sides" in order to make it seem like there's a choice. The last several elections were almost exactly 50-50 divided. The media and the politicians like to say this means the country is "Strongly" divided. I say that it means the two "sides" are closer together than ever, so it doesn't really matter which side you pick, you are voting for people who are part of a single group, the power monopoly.
Voting for some wierd outsider would be great for the country. We need to get 2 or 3 totally weird outsiders into the senate and congress. These weirdos would not necessarily have any influence with their few votes, but you know for a fact they are going to:
1. Attend every vote
2. Read and understand every bill
3. Debate every pork barrel/hidden law/etc etc.
4. Generally put all the other people on the spot.
Those people up there are supposed to represent our states and help to make the country a better place also. Instead, they all live in Washington, DC, go to the same parties, and rarely if ever come back to their states to find out what's really going on. And if they do talk to someone from the state, it'll be some rich millionaire or business that probably does more than it's own share of subverting the will and freedom and comfort of the residents.
A weirdo elected would
1. Not be invited to those parties
2. Would not be able to find a place to live in Washington DC
3. Would not know any millionaires
Therefore he would probably come back to his house in the state he's from during the recess and actually talk to people and find out what's going on.
The only real problem is that he would shake things up so much that the power monopoly would hire one of their many hit squads and he would die in a tragic "accident".
I want to see some Henry Clay style beatings in congress though. Put someone like a Jessie Ventura in and have him PHYSICALLY BEAT people like Tom Delay (not just a clever name), Orrin Hatch, John Kerry, etc. BEAT THEM INTO SUBMISSION like the frail moneyed frat boys they are. Instead, it's just getting more aristocratic up there, because the American people think they have to go with a sure winner--when really going with the weirdest person running would be the best for everyone.
Yeah, they should call it Slackdot.
This is incorrect, the 'Convention on the Rights of the Child' article 12, states:
According to your link:
"According to UNICEF, the Convention has been ratified by 192 countries. Only Somalia and the United States have not ratified the CRC. Somalia is currently unable to proceed to ratification as it has no recognized government."
So, this is not relevant.
I'm making one of these for my automatic restaurant picker. See, we had a hard time deciding where to go to lunch so I compiled a list of nearby restaurants in a table in mysql and used a simple php script to generate a random one. Then it was determined that there are some places that are "essentials", the cheap coffee shop on the corner with the lunch special, etc. that you'd want to go to more often than other restarants.
So now what it's going to do is pick a restaurant, email it to the lunch group, then after lunch when they come back they'll have an email asking them to rate certain aspects of the experience. Also, around 11, it will email everyone and ask what they are in the "mood" for and then use that in weighing the pick.
See, I think you need input from the user beyond "consumer data"; people have moods, sometimes you just want to get crazy and do something totally weird. A computer can't help you with that, if it's taking averages of your habits (like amazon or something). If you only provide people with an average reality it will only increase their sense of alienation from choice...
Now, in the system described in TFA, I guess you are getting opinions from your social network. But really, what they want to do is provide you and your friends with a minimal value while gathering lots of data on how groups of people influence each other's choices, who makes the decision for the group (ie, the leader), etc. Then guess what, why waste money advertising to the followers when they are going to do what the leader does? Just advertise to the leader.
Of course, then the NSA will come along and harness the list of all the "leaders" out there or something privacy invading like that..
If Iraq and Saddam were innocent , why then the elaborate deceptions, intimidation, hauling top soil away...
They wanted us to invade?
You could just have a separate account to use with your ebay. I have 2 bofa accounts and so I just transfer my money into Account #1, and then use BofA's online transfer to move it into my business account. Thus, any unsavory individuals have no access to my funds but I can stay "verified"...
Banks are pretty much giving accounts away, there's no reason to have all your eggs in "one basket".. Plus having an account at each of the major national banks (and a few local ones) means never having to wait for funds to come "available".
Heh, Windows "ME".
I can just see it now. White suits, Ferarris, Cubans on coke. Shakira's belly button.
Now if they'd just do a Magnum P.I. movie, we'll be set.
Uh, cars are shipped with defects all the time. If you don't like it, you return the car. Sometimes, when public safety is at risk, they recall the cars (thanks Ralph Nader).
Sometimes your burger at McDonald's doesn't have exactly what you want on it. You get a new one.
So they ship software with defects. Windows probably has 50-100 million lines of code written by thousands of different people. There's NO WAY to test stuff. They would never release software if they waited to fix all the bugs. At least they fix them, with the updates. Granted, it has felt in the past like they took advantage of having the updates as an excuse to get to the bugs later..
But stuff ships with defects all the time. Perfection is impossible. Often, when I release code, there is some special case that's not handled that should be but chances are it's not going to happen. Why waste time on something that's probably not ever going to happen? If it does happen, you can fix it. If it turns out to happen too often, you fix it.
However, they are a monopoly, so they have a certain responsibility to make sure their product is good because people may not have another choice. But I think they've done a reasonable job. Windows has really improved over the years and once you learn about the registry and know all the modules and dlls and kernel stuff it's really pretty fun to work with. It's a lot like a girl you have to get to know. There's hidden secrets that aren't told, aren't known, just like a woman. Unlike linux, which is like getting to know a math book.
The best part is that it doesn't really run very good out of the box, but if you set up a domain controller and do all the normal tweaks it really gets smooth. So people have jobs to set it up. And they don't have to be crazy to get it working reasonably well. But if you want to make it run really great, you can get crazy. It only starts to suck when you run into something it can't do yet. But there aren't that many.
Of course, I have the linux box in the corner, running all the time. I've never had to reboot it because I don't really use it for anything (caching DNS and apache for my personal drivers web page and stuff). I think I have it just so that when the regular windows guys come into the office, I have a different looking KDE desktop and I show them how it uses text mode when you boot up. Wee, look at all the technical looking jargon! Oh, and I use it to sniff packets. I just setup the dns server to resolve the AIM servers to that box's IP and then it has a simple routing table that copies off the packets. WEEE, they get excited when they see that and say "hey, can you teach me linux", and I sit back and say, "no, you really have to learn for yourself". Recalling the WEEKS spent figuring out httpd.conf, scouring hundreds of contradictory and out of date websites. Yep, everyone has an opinion.
With microsoft stuff, you just go to the fascist "MSDN" knowledgebase and get a nice official answer for every question ever asked. Yeah, and go ahead and mention #linux HAHAAA. Like I want to waste 3 hours kissing ass to get a simple answer.
Of course, I went through all this like 8 years ago so now I just look at it as a sort of rite of passage to use Linux.
Linux is to dunebuggy as Windows is to Toyota as IBM Mainframe is to 18-wheeler
One is for the weekends, one is for the regular day to day stuff and one gets the real work done. Webserving isn't work. Amazon.com would like you to think so, but most REAL (non software) businesses have people doing work, creating data, manufacturing stuff and that all needs to be tracked. If you are making 15000 network cards an hour, you need some serious accounting.
Think about a CASINO, 10000 machines x hundreds of 5, 10, and 25 cent transactions per hour. And if the db stops, you stop making money. Oh, and amazon runs on IBM. So does ebay.
IBM RUNS LINUX! Pft
Here's my take, after reading the entry. He was talking about free speech.
But people under 18 are NOT PEOPLE, therefore free speech does not apply to people under 18. That's why the public school system ends at 18. Because you become a person and then you get those rights such as voting, free speech, etc. Until you are 18, you are your parents and if you want to talk, you have to do it through them.
I was under 18 once (a while ago) and I felt the same way this kid did, and I got suspended and I got in trouble because I was smart and thought I knew the law. But the bottom line is that you are NOT a person until you are 18. You are a child, a sub-person. You have human rights but you are not a full citizen of the United States.
The school has a legitimate argument because the kid was advertising breaking the law, which is not illegal per se, but could be viewed as disruptive. It IS illegal in most states to advocate breaking the law, subverting the government, creating anarchy, etc. The school system has a legitimate complaint if they believe that this local post may cause other students to break the law.
But, I don't think the student should be punished. I think the parents should be punished for raising such a dumbass.
They won't have to force people because every application just uses the jpg decoder in MSHTML.dll or the viewer DLL and getting it into that is just a "Security Update" away.....
People like Adobe will have it because they want to be definitive.
Everyone else doesn't really matter.
In addition, I believe Microsoft owns Corbis, which has been quietly buying up most great photos. They are primed to be the leading supplier of photos to print and web industry. Granted, there are other players, but as Microsoft rises into professional desktop publishing, with professional software (they'll probably buy Quark or something), they are going to want their standards with DRM in place so they can charge for fonts, photos, media, everything. It's all part of the pay per use model. Imagine, rather than buying Quark for $2K, stock art for hundreds of dollars, a computer system, etc. you can just rent it for a set price, based on the number of copies you want to distribute. Or pay based on web impressions. That way you only have to invest based on the success you actually get and you're not limited by investment capital (bootstrapping). It's pretty brilliant, and I have always said that Microsoft is not just the largest software company; they are the largest publishing company in the world.
By controlling media from top to bottom, from the creation (input) to the viewer (output), nipping pennies off each time, they stand to make a shitload of money while at the same time making it easier and cheaper for providers to create, and lower the risk and initial investment dollars in return for taking some of the inevitable rewards.
Interesting concept, I hope it goes somewhere. Too bad the emphasis will not initially be on quality--I'm sure like everything microsoft does it will be a basic model that evolves with patches over time.
Source at Wikipedia
Yeah, it's probably directly in proportion to the solar wind velocity in all directions. Which varies. We're currently at solar minimum right now in the 11 year cycle which means the field does not go out as far. See also Space Weather.
Well, gathering from the article and a few other posts:
There are two sides of the brain, the conscious and the subconscious, with a sort of database in the middle. The conscious mind is associated with meaning, emotion, deep thoughts. The subconscious is associated with motor skills, communication, and logical thoughts.
There's a collection layer that handles getting data from your senses (eyes, ears, nose, etc.). The conscious mind is what you use for memories. It handles tagging data with meaning before it's inserted into the database. If there is no meaning, it cannot be retrieved from the database. More on this in a second.
The subconscious is the section that's responsible for acting on things. You know how sometimes you just "get that feeling"? That's when you are sort of aware of your subconsious working. Your subconscious has read access to the database, so it can draw on all the stuff in there to run your body, even if you are no longer learning (conscious tagging and assigning meaning to sense data).
Ambien turns off the conscious mind and actually stimulates the other sections. So you hear stories of people on Ambien running tractors or cooking breakfast in their sleep and then having no recollection of it. Their subconsious mind is easily capable of performing these tasks, it can just refer back to the thousands of other times you've walked or driven or cooked eggs.
So, in people who's brain is damaged in such a way that their subconscious faculties are still working somewhat, if you stimulate what is still working, you can get a reasonable facsimile of a healthy person's behavior, as far as logical tasks are concerned.
But all this really does is explain why Ambien is a really really bad choice for a sleeping medication. I mean, it activates your mind and body but turns off it's ability to record. You are, in essence, a zombie.
This result is surprising because excess activation of GABA receptors is typically sedative, and zolpidem (trade name Ambien) enhances GABA action a type of GABA receptors that are thought to be particularly involved in sedation, so this result is the opposite of what would be expected from a simple point of view.
Maybe that's why you get stories of people talking in their sleep, walking in their sleep, or operating heavy machinery in their sleep while on Ambien. Their conscious mind is asleep but their eyes are open, the real control functions of the brain are working, it's just not being "recorded".
Scary scary stuff, specially when you see how many prescriptions of that crap they write, and think about how many people are actually asleep at the wheel on your commute home. The real rise of that drug was right after "9-11" when doctors were prescribing pretty much anything you wanted if you "were having trouble sleeping" or "anxiety". Nice.
The potential solution, tested at an experimental reactor in San Diego, US, could make the next generation of fusion reactors more efficient, saving hundreds of millions of euros a year.
I didn't realize so many Europeans sacrificed their lives for fusion.
And judging by the shit we've been saying on Slashdot, we're gonna get picked up one of these days :) Think about it: if they can collect information illegally, what's stopping them from illegally arresting us? Or KILLING us, for that matter. I mean, let's be realistic--we're all just numbers. Yeah, I might matter to my family but really, who's going to miss me?
I'm a philosopher though, not a formentor of rebellion. I'm more likely to watch Fox News than participate in a public protest. But what if something I said fits in some computer model they have somewhere? What if they just start developing "patterns" and "signatures" of people who behave in an "undesirable way". It IS possible in America, it happened during the 50's, when everyone was afraid of communists (read it) (which I think was as artificially hyped up as this terrorism thing today). It later involved Edward R. Murrow, the rise of the Kennedys (who were of course killed), the whole youth and civil rights movements, burning colleges, a draft and a pointless war. Ask any grandmother and she'll tell you the 60's were not a good time for this country. The people had to fight back. I think a lot of current policies are as nutty as some of the stuff going on in the 50's...
Where are all those people who were around then who helped change the world? Why aren't they talking? Their former nemesis' such as Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Poindexter, etc etc are all still in the game. Where are they? What will it take to get the American people to wake up? A war with Iran? There will surely be a draft; Iran has over 60 million people! SE Asia (N Korea), I think we know where that will go.. Abortion ban? Maybe. Who knows what it will be. Maybe everyone out there is drugged up on their Paxil and Xanax and Ambiene and wine enough to not care anymore.
I gave 25$ to the EFF.
No, sorry... No one is bothering to say "this isn't true", they're saying "we can't let this come out because it will damage national security". To me, that's pretty much admitting the program exists and does what is alleged, probably more (which is why they're willing to fight so hard to keep the details secret).
And how could it be considered to harm national security now? I mean, any self respecting terrorist would know to like, use a different phone or something. Plus, because this thing is based on harvesting light waves from fiber optics, there's no real way to circumvent it. Literally all communications are going through the system. What could that possibly have to do with national security? It's not a war plan, or some type of strategy. This is only confidential because it's ILLEGAL.
Maybe there's something even messier underneath this project that they REALLY don't (CAN'T) let people find out about because it would be so damaging, so degrading to the American way of life that we couldn't possibly continue with the same people running the show after we found out about it...I don't know, it's scary.
Or anti-globalists or anyone with over 100 IQ who might try to change things. The current power structure has proven they will take everything as far as they can until someone does something to stop them. They are not stopping within the boundaries of the law.
Does this mean that I can break the law? Can I claim personal security if I go and shoot everyone I THINK might be a threat to me someday? Can I open my neighbor's mail because I think they might want to rob my house? It doesn't make sense. Surely my personal security is more important than that of the state. What is the state but a lot of ME'S. I think it's coming to the point where the sum of all parts is NOT greater than the one.
And so we go, on with our lives
We know the truth, but prefer lies
Lies are simple, simple is bliss
Why go against tradition when we can
Admit defeat, live in decline
Be the victim of our own design
The status quo, built on suspect
Why would anyone stick out their neck?
NoFX, The Decline
Or the judge will order it halted, in which case they will keep doing it anyway because they are already blatantly breaking the law. It will just move to the "more secret" cabinet in the basement or across the street.
So now we finally know where President Bush comes from.
I guess now all your base really do belong to us.
This is off topic, but I thought it might be relevant within a degree:
Join thousands of other Americans by calling Congress on Wednesday, May 17 to demand they investigate this government intrusion immediately. ADC, the BORDC, the ACLU, People For the American Way, and other organizations have declared the week of May 15 "National Call-in to Congress Week" and are asking their constituents to call their members of Congress on a specific day. Let's keep those phones ringing in the Congressional halls all week long! Call the Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121 and ask the operator to connect you.
Bill of Rights Defense Committee Page
The snooping into your phone bill is just the snout of the pig of a strange, lucrative link-up between the Administration's Homeland Security spy network and private companies operating beyond the reach of the laws meant to protect us from our government. You can call it the privatization of the FBI -- though it is better described as the creation of a private KGB....You should be more concerned that they are linking this info to your medical records, your bill purchases and your entire personal profile including, not incidentally, your voting registration.
Dossiers. Remember when the Soviets fell and people started buying their dossiers (this was in the 90's). It was crazy, business people would see that the KGB had a detail synopsis of their daily life, where they worked, who they hung out with, etc. in case they could turn a double agent, etc. On Soviet citizens, they had complete records of phone conversations (transcripts), photos, fingerprints, hair, everything. This is just the beginning. And with so much of our personal business being handled over the 'net (taxes, banking, bills, not to mention email and personal communications, entertainment, and now VoIP phone calls...), it's easier than ever for them to compile a dossier on people.
But yes, you're right, the fact that the company makes a network recorder is not news. Mainly because there was a Narus story on Slashdot like last month..