If you don't care, they don't care.
on
VoIP Wiretapping
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
I think the real problem with this battle is that there is no battle. We are fighting ourselves.
Accepting the idea that the government is somehow a separate population from the people is what starts making that idea truth. WE ARE THE GOVERNMENT.
I am not afraid of the people who make and enforce the laws because I know that there are more of us than them, and there always will be. I trust society will do what's in it's own best interests to ensure justice is met. I realize that I might have to face injustice during the interim. But I'm not going to change what I do, or do it more secretly under the shroud of codes and encryption.
Open communications are the key to an open and free society. If you want society to be closed and secretive, then by all means, encrypt your illegal activities.
The real freedom fighters are out there in the open, are not afraid to do things that they know are illegal because they know that what they are doing is morally right, and damn the law. They know that if they get arrested or something, 4 more people will fill their place.
I don't give a damn about government bureaucrats getting their jollies listening to my conversations. Go right ahead. But if they try to take my freedom away, the fight will be public because people will miss me. If you're living in the shadows, shrouded in codes and secrecy, no one will miss you when you one day disappear.
I think the real important thing about privacy is feeling you have it. That is, having the freedom to do whatever you want without some secret police force coming to your door and taking you to the gulag.
Open communications are the key to furthering open society (freedom). Closed communications of any kind our the bretheren of closed society. If you're going to do something illegal, take responsibility for your actions and say something. If everyone did that, no one could be arrested because everyone would be arrested.
In my mind, there is no use for secrecy because secrecy is a farce. Secrecy is what people use to exclude others, to hide, etc. I don't understand why people in America get so worked up about hiding stuff and their privacy from the government. The government is us. So rather than doing that illegal thing you like to do in private, share it with the world, find all the other people who do that same illegal thing and celebrate it.
Don't pretend that you are normal and law abiding if you aren't. Then, see how society changes around you to accept your behavior. Society is the sum of all parts, and if you are keeping your embarassing/illegal life under the covers, such things will only become more illegal and unacceptable. You see, it's not the behavior, but the fact that you're sneaking around that makes people not accept your behavior.
If what you are doing is truely morally OK, then a lot of people will be doing it also. And if they aren't already, then they will start doing it. If it's not morally ok, you will go to jail.
It's the grey areas, the fringe, that most of the privacy advocates fight for. I understand. The idea is that freedom walks a razor line and each side is constantly trying to tip it down the slope of the other person. I'm telling you though, if you don't ACT free, the people who are against freedom have already won. If you have to encrypt all of your communications, you have LOST and they have WON. Sure, your shit is secure and no one is reading it. But you are living a life shrouded in secrecy, a life that is not free.
Apple could probably do it right away, just put a little cam in where the apple thing is on the top cover. Even if it wasn't lined up, it could just average the color and display it on the desktop (like a chameleon). Thus the laptop would look "good" whereever it sat. Which is why people buy Macs.
I don't think the purpose was to hinder outside developers, as clearly MS needs as much software available on their platforms as they can get (hence the need to be as backwards compatible as possible). However, undocumented or poorly documented APIs have allowed them to leverage in-house products, if not outright do harm to certain key competitors. Remember the Dr.DOS fiasco?
That's what I was really getting at. Little secret integrations between their office suite and the OS, the media system, undocumented fast drawing interfaces, etc.
You look in that/web folder in the OS root and you see that all the explorer stuff is just script running in IE. The magic happens in those long hex named "objects".
Now, I'm not saying there's a huge conspiracy, but definitely beta API's and stuff were used in house with their other application teams long before they are released to the general public and the dev community. How many times have you put in an office update and had it update windows also? Every time. And then office all of a sudden shows some clever new tricks that no one knows how to do because the API doc isn't out on MSDN yet. Then, in a few months, once they've established their forward momentum as an innovator yet again (which is all they really need), everyone else can get in with sloppy seconds.
Again, I'm not saying it's a conspiracy, just symptomatic of their monolithic stature.
'IE is part of the Windows Operating System so that parts of the OS and other applications can rely on the functionality and APIs being present. To be clear there are no Operating System APIs that IE uses that are not documented on MSDN as part of the platform SDK and available to other browsers and any other software that runs on Windows..'
But was this case 7 years ago when Win98 came out with the integrated browser? NO. Only now that they've faced anticompetitive presures have they been willing to document certain "secret" api's.
Most of the best software available between 98 and 2002 (when they started releasing api's to the public) was designed by former microsoft alumni or other big companies working in close collaboration with MS. What little information that was available was only available in the "Microsoft Press" books.
This is just another case of Microsoft newspeak, ie: Documentation for most of our API's is available for free, (implying) Documentation for most of our API's has ALWAYS been available for free.
I think they are coming out with some sort of implantable chip that has a blood sugar sensor in it and it is powered by a corresponding RF reader... Email adsx.com and ask them about it..
It's a bad idea. I could see maybe a small small very high speed turbine that you could like, blow into (like those old spinny whistle things) and it turns a generator and charges the battery. 2 or 3 good exhalations could give you a few minutes of talk time.. I should patent that, now that I think about it.
I know what you mean. I think the professor is out for some publicity and a television spot.. What the savant in question says really has nothing to do with what is going on in his mind when he does the calculations. He can merely say what comes to his conscious mind while the calculating is happening. But in the way in which he just "blurts out" the correct answer seems to indicate to me that some sort of subconscious processing is occuring. Whereas most of us have to sit there and think about the concept of the number and it's quantity, and how the operator affects the numbers, he is unencumbered by this process. We normal people are quite talented though; We are able to drive a car, for instance, without thinking, or while talking or eating a hamburger or whatever. Some things he cannot do. So maybe mathematics is to him like driving is to us--something that's been pushed into the subconscious and just sort of happens. I view savants like programmable microprocessors; specialized purpose high speed devices that excel at one sort of operation. It's much harder to be a great all around general processor of everything, something that we all should strive for. Still, I welcome the exploitation of these savants as they provide a potential goldmine of untapped computational resources for the betterment of humanity, be it through new language design (which is crucial to a peaceful global culture) or other such tasks that really have to be done by one person rather than a committee, lest it get bogged down by difficulties in agreeing on protocol, etc. Ego gets in the way and I think a savant could be the key to developing a lot of new communication methods for the future of society as we know it.
Now, don't get the wrong idea when I say exploitation, because I don't mean it how you think. I mean it in the way of them fulfilling a role in society, just as you and I are exploited resources, either at our jobs or otherwise. Or, as opposed to them being relegated to the mental wards as they have in the past. I believe such publicity could allow that to happen.
As far as testing is concerned, I think you would find that the cognitive/motor times would be the bottleneck, just as it is in normal people. I believe that the brain has a lot of untapped power that you can't consciously expose, it just has to happen.
Savants that suffer damage to the conscious section of their minds increasingly utilize the other sections of the mind, even if they are not connected with the senses. It's probably some sort of survival skill, like how a blind person can hear a lot better than people with sight.
I think that it's possible for a "normal" person (and I've been using normal lightly thru this article, and there is by no means a definite definition of it) to expose some of these powers through a number of well studied techniques, such as meditation, music, hypnotism, certain chemical additives, etc.
I think that you might find some of the answers to your questions if you look inside yourself, as this person's brain is likely very similar to yours (except for the damage). In the end, I agree with you that viewing mathematics in some fundamentally different way is unsettling, and I think it's unsettling because it's not really possible. The human brain is simply remarkable, and it shouldn't be that surprising to anyone what it can or will do.
SEOUL, South Korea - A large explosion occurred in the northern part of North Korea, sending a huge mushroom cloud into the air on an important anniversary of the communist regime, a South Korean news agency reported Sunday.
The South Korean government said it was trying to confirm the report.
The Yonhap news agency, citing an unidentified diplomatic source in Seoul, said the explosion happened at 11 a.m. local time Thursday in Yanggang province near the border with China. The blast in Kim Hyong Jik county left a crater big enough to be noticed by a satellite, the source said.
"We understand that a mushroom-shaped cloud about 2.2 miles to 2.5 miles in diameter was monitored during the explosion," the source said. Yonhap described the source as "reliable."
Thursday was the anniversary of the 1948 foundation of the communist regime. Leader Kim Jong Il uses the occasion to stage performances and other events to bolster loyalty among the impoverished North Korean population.
Experts have speculated that North Korea might use a major anniversary to conduct a nuclear-related test, though there was no immediate indication that the reported explosion on Thursday was linked to Pyongyang's efforts to develop nuclear weapons.
"It remains unclear whether it was a deliberately planned nuclear test or it was just an accident," the source in Seoul told Yonhap. "But it doesn't seem to be an ordinary explosion."
The source said the explosion took place "not far" from a military base that holds North Korea's Taepo-dong ballistic missiles. North Korea, which has a large missile arsenal and more than a million soldiers, is dotted with military installations.
The damage and crater left by the explosion in Kim Hyong Jik county was big enough to be noticed by a satellite, a source in Beijing told Yonhap.
North Korea was founded on Sept. 9, 1948. Leader Kim Jong Il uses the anniversary to stage performances and other events to bolster loyalty among the impoverished North Korean population.
South Korea's Unification Minister Chung Dong-young said the government was trying to confirm the report about the explosion.
"I am not aware of details such as the size of the damage," he was quoted as saying by Yonhap after a National Security Council meeting.
On Saturday, North Korea said recent revelations that South Korea conducted secret nuclear experiments involving uranium and plutonium made the communist state more determined to pursue its own nuclear programs.
The South Korean experiments, conducted in 1982 and 2000, were likely to further complicate the already stalled six-nation talks aimed at dismantling the North's nuclear development. South Korea has said the experiments were purely for research and did not reflect a desire to develop weapons.
On April 22, train wagons at a railway station exploded in the North Korean town of Ryongchon, killing 160 people and injuring an estimated 1,300, according to some estimates. The blast was believed to have been sparked by a train laden with oil and chemicals that hit power lines.
The explosion on Thursday was bigger than the Ryongchon train explosion, which devastated a wide area, Yonhap said.
Article Date: Saturday, September 11, 2004 (9:26pm)
BTW, people should archive more news on their own hard drives.
The best way to secure a job in IT is to make sure they get rid of the other employees before they get rid of you. For more information, consult the "BOFH" Series of educational manuals, which offer hundreds of tips which will help you on your way. Cheers. BZZZRRRT!
Sorry Fanboys, Google is a public corporation now. Gone are the days of just doing things because "they're cool" or "useful". Now it's about the bottom line. The almighty dollar. *sigh* And don't think they'll be any different than the others. SCO used to be a cool company too. Move on. This is only the beginning of the repression of internal opinion, the hostile takeovers, the illegitimate patents. All part of business. The shareholders have to make money.
But that funding will have to be cut or will be worthless due to the massive increase in inflation that's around the corner since it's what we like to call "Deficit Spending" or "printing money to fund projects rather than increasing productivity".
Sure, you can spout all this stuff out but it's no different than a hillbilly with a Big Screen TV. It's fun to act rich but sooner or later you have to pay for it.
That said, I am for Tax Cuts but the money we've spent in IRAQ and on the "War" on "Fear" to the alarming benefit of Private Military Companies (PMC's) (wiki) would be better spent in my eyes on the furthURing of the knowledge of humanity. Alas, I'm sure they have plans into the future for such things, I just wish we could have it today. And I wish Bush and Co. could convince me that we're doing the right thing, rather than reiterating the same buzzwords (freedom, liberty, terror, fear, Iraqi "people", evil, etc.)/rant
Looks like it also gets pretty close to Venus. There has to be some way to use the thing, drop a telescope or dish on it and use it to triangulate stuff using the diameter of the orbit as a base. Would possibly lead to some new developments because you'd actually be able to do it almost real time, rather than in a model like now..
According to the story, the guy not only called the fire dept, he PUT THE FIRE OUT with his garden hose. I mean, how is it arson if the guy puts out the fire? And the guy was just "charged", not arrested. He has been working the whole time. Who cares about the story really.
The interesting tidbit is that they can and will get your shopping records from merchants, and those club cards and ID numbers are the key. I'm sure they store purchases by Debit/Credit card number also. You used to be able to pay cash, but now all-cash transactions are quickly becoming less numerous and even unusual to a certain extent, thus causing suspicion at the time of the transaction, resulting in the recording of your ID or face or perhaps the clerk remembering that you did this unusual thing.
There is no privacy. Freedom is slavery. War is peace. Fear doesn't have a name people, it's a feeling. It's all inside. Remember to laugh. I can't believe it's "horrifying" to make a joke about suicide bombers (VW Polo Bomber commerical (google it)). How are we to live if we can't look at things less seriously. Humans have always managed to tolerate extraordinary situations, not thru our strength or honor but through our sense of humor. London, for instance, would not have made it though the blitz if people didn't constantly look at the bright side, used humor. Everyone is so serious, it's stupid. It actually makes me mad, because the same people listen to "emenim" albums where the rapper speaks about beating his ex-girlfriend and someone like me disliking that is ALSO horrifying to them. We have a strong double standard in effect and it doesn't make sense to me. People don't make sense. It doesn't make sense to censor humor when it's the best hope we have to win the war on "fear". FEAR DOESN'T HAVE A NAME. FEAR IS NOT SOMEONE OR A GROUP OR ANYTHING. And that's where they have you fooled America. They have you convinced that fear is a person. But, my friends, it lives inside you and the only way it can be defeated is though love and laughter--Humor.
Slashdot Mirror
You Michigan home will become a frozener wasteland.
See this.
I think the real problem with this battle is that there is no battle. We are fighting ourselves.
Accepting the idea that the government is somehow a separate population from the people is what starts making that idea truth. WE ARE THE GOVERNMENT.
I am not afraid of the people who make and enforce the laws because I know that there are more of us than them, and there always will be. I trust society will do what's in it's own best interests to ensure justice is met. I realize that I might have to face injustice during the interim. But I'm not going to change what I do, or do it more secretly under the shroud of codes and encryption.
Open communications are the key to an open and free society. If you want society to be closed and secretive, then by all means, encrypt your illegal activities.
The real freedom fighters are out there in the open, are not afraid to do things that they know are illegal because they know that what they are doing is morally right, and damn the law. They know that if they get arrested or something, 4 more people will fill their place.
I don't give a damn about government bureaucrats getting their jollies listening to my conversations. Go right ahead. But if they try to take my freedom away, the fight will be public because people will miss me. If you're living in the shadows, shrouded in codes and secrecy, no one will miss you when you one day disappear.
I think the real important thing about privacy is feeling you have it. That is, having the freedom to do whatever you want without some secret police force coming to your door and taking you to the gulag.
Open communications are the key to furthering open society (freedom). Closed communications of any kind our the bretheren of closed society. If you're going to do something illegal, take responsibility for your actions and say something. If everyone did that, no one could be arrested because everyone would be arrested.
In my mind, there is no use for secrecy because secrecy is a farce. Secrecy is what people use to exclude others, to hide, etc. I don't understand why people in America get so worked up about hiding stuff and their privacy from the government. The government is us. So rather than doing that illegal thing you like to do in private, share it with the world, find all the other people who do that same illegal thing and celebrate it.
Don't pretend that you are normal and law abiding if you aren't. Then, see how society changes around you to accept your behavior. Society is the sum of all parts, and if you are keeping your embarassing/illegal life under the covers, such things will only become more illegal and unacceptable. You see, it's not the behavior, but the fact that you're sneaking around that makes people not accept your behavior.
If what you are doing is truely morally OK, then a lot of people will be doing it also. And if they aren't already, then they will start doing it. If it's not morally ok, you will go to jail.
It's the grey areas, the fringe, that most of the privacy advocates fight for. I understand. The idea is that freedom walks a razor line and each side is constantly trying to tip it down the slope of the other person. I'm telling you though, if you don't ACT free, the people who are against freedom have already won. If you have to encrypt all of your communications, you have LOST and they have WON. Sure, your shit is secure and no one is reading it. But you are living a life shrouded in secrecy, a life that is not free.
Apple could probably do it right away, just put a little cam in where the apple thing is on the top cover. Even if it wasn't lined up, it could just average the color and display it on the desktop (like a chameleon). Thus the laptop would look "good" whereever it sat. Which is why people buy Macs.
You smoke marijuana, don't you?
How could having a web browser bundled with the OS be a selling point when they're already out on the market?
Peace.
Uh, I tried, but I didn't have the heart to continue. I can't be that guy this time.
A..........Beowulf.......
*sigh*
I guess I'm just a tired old whore.
I don't think the purpose was to hinder outside developers, as clearly MS needs as much software available on their platforms as they can get (hence the need to be as backwards compatible as possible). However, undocumented or poorly documented APIs have allowed them to leverage in-house products, if not outright do harm to certain key competitors. Remember the Dr.DOS fiasco?
/web folder in the OS root and you see that all the explorer stuff is just script running in IE. The magic happens in those long hex named "objects".
That's what I was really getting at. Little secret integrations between their office suite and the OS, the media system, undocumented fast drawing interfaces, etc.
You look in that
Now, I'm not saying there's a huge conspiracy, but definitely beta API's and stuff were used in house with their other application teams long before they are released to the general public and the dev community. How many times have you put in an office update and had it update windows also? Every time. And then office all of a sudden shows some clever new tricks that no one knows how to do because the API doc isn't out on MSDN yet. Then, in a few months, once they've established their forward momentum as an innovator yet again (which is all they really need), everyone else can get in with sloppy seconds.
Again, I'm not saying it's a conspiracy, just symptomatic of their monolithic stature.
'IE is part of the Windows Operating System so that parts of the OS and other applications can rely on the functionality and APIs being present. To be clear there are no Operating System APIs that IE uses that are not documented on MSDN as part of the platform SDK and available to other browsers and any other software that runs on Windows..'
But was this case 7 years ago when Win98 came out with the integrated browser? NO. Only now that they've faced anticompetitive presures have they been willing to document certain "secret" api's.
Most of the best software available between 98 and 2002 (when they started releasing api's to the public) was designed by former microsoft alumni or other big companies working in close collaboration with MS. What little information that was available was only available in the "Microsoft Press" books.
This is just another case of Microsoft newspeak, ie: Documentation for most of our API's is available for free, (implying) Documentation for most of our API's has ALWAYS been available for free.
You could always use an Unlicensed Hydrogen-Based Device, but don't try to get on a plane without proper documentation.
Yeah, thank god Google is a private company run by PhD's and not a publically traded company just trying to make a profit.
I think they are coming out with some sort of implantable chip that has a blood sugar sensor in it and it is powered by a corresponding RF reader... Email adsx.com and ask them about it..
THEY'VE GONE PLAID!
With different "conclusions" you can "jump" to. Get it? It's a "Jump to Conclusions" mat.
It's a bad idea. I could see maybe a small small very high speed turbine that you could like, blow into (like those old spinny whistle things) and it turns a generator and charges the battery. 2 or 3 good exhalations could give you a few minutes of talk time.. I should patent that, now that I think about it.
Hi, my name is Robert Beck and you might call me a "savant". I'm currently working at the NSA and `(@#&&!^^#!@!>>~~NO CARRIER
I know what you mean. I think the professor is out for some publicity and a television spot.. What the savant in question says really has nothing to do with what is going on in his mind when he does the calculations. He can merely say what comes to his conscious mind while the calculating is happening. But in the way in which he just "blurts out" the correct answer seems to indicate to me that some sort of subconscious processing is occuring. Whereas most of us have to sit there and think about the concept of the number and it's quantity, and how the operator affects the numbers, he is unencumbered by this process. We normal people are quite talented though; We are able to drive a car, for instance, without thinking, or while talking or eating a hamburger or whatever. Some things he cannot do. So maybe mathematics is to him like driving is to us--something that's been pushed into the subconscious and just sort of happens. I view savants like programmable microprocessors; specialized purpose high speed devices that excel at one sort of operation. It's much harder to be a great all around general processor of everything, something that we all should strive for. Still, I welcome the exploitation of these savants as they provide a potential goldmine of untapped computational resources for the betterment of humanity, be it through new language design (which is crucial to a peaceful global culture) or other such tasks that really have to be done by one person rather than a committee, lest it get bogged down by difficulties in agreeing on protocol, etc. Ego gets in the way and I think a savant could be the key to developing a lot of new communication methods for the future of society as we know it.
Now, don't get the wrong idea when I say exploitation, because I don't mean it how you think. I mean it in the way of them fulfilling a role in society, just as you and I are exploited resources, either at our jobs or otherwise. Or, as opposed to them being relegated to the mental wards as they have in the past. I believe such publicity could allow that to happen.
As far as testing is concerned, I think you would find that the cognitive/motor times would be the bottleneck, just as it is in normal people. I believe that the brain has a lot of untapped power that you can't consciously expose, it just has to happen.
Savants that suffer damage to the conscious section of their minds increasingly utilize the other sections of the mind, even if they are not connected with the senses. It's probably some sort of survival skill, like how a blind person can hear a lot better than people with sight.
I think that it's possible for a "normal" person (and I've been using normal lightly thru this article, and there is by no means a definite definition of it) to expose some of these powers through a number of well studied techniques, such as meditation, music, hypnotism, certain chemical additives, etc.
I think that you might find some of the answers to your questions if you look inside yourself, as this person's brain is likely very similar to yours (except for the damage). In the end, I agree with you that viewing mathematics in some fundamentally different way is unsettling, and I think it's unsettling because it's not really possible. The human brain is simply remarkable, and it shouldn't be that surprising to anyone what it can or will do.
SEOUL, South Korea - A large explosion occurred in the northern part of North Korea, sending a huge mushroom cloud into the air on an important anniversary of the communist regime, a South Korean news agency reported Sunday.
The South Korean government said it was trying to confirm the report.
The Yonhap news agency, citing an unidentified diplomatic source in Seoul, said the explosion happened at 11 a.m. local time Thursday in Yanggang province near the border with China. The blast in Kim Hyong Jik county left a crater big enough to be noticed by a satellite, the source said.
"We understand that a mushroom-shaped cloud about 2.2 miles to 2.5 miles in diameter was monitored during the explosion," the source said. Yonhap described the source as "reliable."
Thursday was the anniversary of the 1948 foundation of the communist regime. Leader Kim Jong Il uses the occasion to stage performances and other events to bolster loyalty among the impoverished North Korean population.
Experts have speculated that North Korea might use a major anniversary to conduct a nuclear-related test, though there was no immediate indication that the reported explosion on Thursday was linked to Pyongyang's efforts to develop nuclear weapons.
"It remains unclear whether it was a deliberately planned nuclear test or it was just an accident," the source in Seoul told Yonhap. "But it doesn't seem to be an ordinary explosion."
The source said the explosion took place "not far" from a military base that holds North Korea's Taepo-dong ballistic missiles. North Korea, which has a large missile arsenal and more than a million soldiers, is dotted with military installations.
The damage and crater left by the explosion in Kim Hyong Jik county was big enough to be noticed by a satellite, a source in Beijing told Yonhap.
North Korea was founded on Sept. 9, 1948. Leader Kim Jong Il uses the anniversary to stage performances and other events to bolster loyalty among the impoverished North Korean population.
South Korea's Unification Minister Chung Dong-young said the government was trying to confirm the report about the explosion.
"I am not aware of details such as the size of the damage," he was quoted as saying by Yonhap after a National Security Council meeting.
On Saturday, North Korea said recent revelations that South Korea conducted secret nuclear experiments involving uranium and plutonium made the communist state more determined to pursue its own nuclear programs.
The South Korean experiments, conducted in 1982 and 2000, were likely to further complicate the already stalled six-nation talks aimed at dismantling the North's nuclear development. South Korea has said the experiments were purely for research and did not reflect a desire to develop weapons.
On April 22, train wagons at a railway station exploded in the North Korean town of Ryongchon, killing 160 people and injuring an estimated 1,300, according to some estimates. The blast was believed to have been sparked by a train laden with oil and chemicals that hit power lines.
The explosion on Thursday was bigger than the Ryongchon train explosion, which devastated a wide area, Yonhap said.
Article Date: Saturday, September 11, 2004 (9:26pm)
BTW, people should archive more news on their own hard drives.
The best way to secure a job in IT is to make sure they get rid of the other employees before they get rid of you. For more information, consult the "BOFH" Series of educational manuals, which offer hundreds of tips which will help you on your way. Cheers. BZZZRRRT!
Sorry Fanboys, Google is a public corporation now. Gone are the days of just doing things because "they're cool" or "useful". Now it's about the bottom line. The almighty dollar. *sigh* And don't think they'll be any different than the others. SCO used to be a cool company too. Move on. This is only the beginning of the repression of internal opinion, the hostile takeovers, the illegitimate patents. All part of business. The shareholders have to make money.
One billion ain't shit. See here.
But that funding will have to be cut or will be worthless due to the massive increase in inflation that's around the corner since it's what we like to call "Deficit Spending" or "printing money to fund projects rather than increasing productivity".
/rant
Sure, you can spout all this stuff out but it's no different than a hillbilly with a Big Screen TV. It's fun to act rich but sooner or later you have to pay for it.
That said, I am for Tax Cuts but the money we've spent in IRAQ and on the "War" on "Fear" to the alarming benefit of Private Military Companies (PMC's) (wiki) would be better spent in my eyes on the furthURing of the knowledge of humanity. Alas, I'm sure they have plans into the future for such things, I just wish we could have it today. And I wish Bush and Co. could convince me that we're doing the right thing, rather than reiterating the same buzzwords (freedom, liberty, terror, fear, Iraqi "people", evil, etc.)
Looks like it also gets pretty close to Venus. There has to be some way to use the thing, drop a telescope or dish on it and use it to triangulate stuff using the diameter of the orbit as a base. Would possibly lead to some new developments because you'd actually be able to do it almost real time, rather than in a model like now..
According to the story, the guy not only called the fire dept, he PUT THE FIRE OUT with his garden hose. I mean, how is it arson if the guy puts out the fire? And the guy was just "charged", not arrested. He has been working the whole time. Who cares about the story really.
The interesting tidbit is that they can and will get your shopping records from merchants, and those club cards and ID numbers are the key. I'm sure they store purchases by Debit/Credit card number also. You used to be able to pay cash, but now all-cash transactions are quickly becoming less numerous and even unusual to a certain extent, thus causing suspicion at the time of the transaction, resulting in the recording of your ID or face or perhaps the clerk remembering that you did this unusual thing.
There is no privacy. Freedom is slavery. War is peace. Fear doesn't have a name people, it's a feeling. It's all inside. Remember to laugh. I can't believe it's "horrifying" to make a joke about suicide bombers (VW Polo Bomber commerical (google it)). How are we to live if we can't look at things less seriously. Humans have always managed to tolerate extraordinary situations, not thru our strength or honor but through our sense of humor. London, for instance, would not have made it though the blitz if people didn't constantly look at the bright side, used humor. Everyone is so serious, it's stupid. It actually makes me mad, because the same people listen to "emenim" albums where the rapper speaks about beating his ex-girlfriend and someone like me disliking that is ALSO horrifying to them. We have a strong double standard in effect and it doesn't make sense to me. People don't make sense. It doesn't make sense to censor humor when it's the best hope we have to win the war on "fear". FEAR DOESN'T HAVE A NAME. FEAR IS NOT SOMEONE OR A GROUP OR ANYTHING. And that's where they have you fooled America. They have you convinced that fear is a person. But, my friends, it lives inside you and the only way it can be defeated is though love and laughter--Humor.
MOD -5 OFF TOPIC