The ftp protocol is not encrypted. Your account name and password is transmitted in the clear over the network.
Pleas, by all means, use scp instead of ftp. The scp protocol is covered (encrypted). It is part of the ssh suite of applications. Every Linux system comes with it. There is a suite of tools for Windows called Putty. They also include scp.
They are a very sucessfull agency. They have been providing the 'bread' for the U.S. Government for years.
Mrs. Thompson of McCall Junior High School in Winchester, Massachusetts gave me a D- in English during my eighth grade.
Do I let it bother me?
No!
I am just as happy as I could be.
In fact, I knew someone who was a streight A student. His achievment? The methadone clinic.
As Dr. Norman Paul, or Lexington Massachusetts; my childhood phychiatrist; told me, don't let the little things bother you. You can only be your true self to be happy.
Here goes the furniture. Lets dump the Microsoft stock and buy Steelcase stock. I am assuming the the furniture in Ballmer's office is that from Steelcase!
While you are at it, you might as well buy the stock for the upholstery fabric mills. They will also get a piece of this action!
Once upon a time I went to see a movie at the Strand Theatre on Market Street in San Francisco, California.
I was late; the previews were just ending when I bought the ticket and went in.
In darkness, I had to quickly find a seat.
I sat down. About five minutes later, I noticed this funny gross feeling around my seat.
I reached down. The seat was SOAKING WET. And WARM.
Fearing the worst, I warily sniffed my hand. Yep. Urine.
I ended running out of that theatre and back home. I must have beaten the Boston Marathon during that run. Those pants were in the trash and I as showered in less than three minutes after I entered my apartment.
I never went back to the Strand Theatre after that.
We all know that your body is but a temporary home for your soul or your spirit.
When the body dies, your spirit (**you**) move on. This should be very familiar with you Pagans out there. (Remeber that Sahman; Haloween; is the time when we re-unite with the spirits of our dead ancestors).
Yes, science may be able to resurrect a dead body.
But, what soul will inhabit it at that time? Most likely it will be either someone else or perhaps no soul at all. Perhaps you will end up with a 'living vegstible' with no spirit or soul.
When I move on, I will either still be in the spirit world or will have come back as another being; not necessarily human; I could be a tree, rock, ocean, cloud, or animal.
Heck, when I move on, and someone decides to cryogenically save my body; I may have had my rest in the spirit world and return to our world as a thunder cloud.
I am now in the sky over the university where the research is going on and they are trying to ressurect my former temporary home.
I might feel a bit angry that they think they can ressurect me.
I might need to teach them a gentle little reminder.
As a thunder cloud. I just might reach out with a bolt of lightning and knock out the power to the lab.
And my companion, who is the mighty Oak tree standing next to the emergency power generator for the lab, might fall down and sever the fuel line.
Or, as a thunder cloud, I embrace my sister spirit, the rainbow. I tell the rainbow to give inspiration to the eco-purists who then go in an sabotage the lab and gently return my former home back to the land (yet another sister spirit) where it belongs.
Or picture this. I am in the spirit world; having not returned to your world. I learn of what is about to happen to my former temporary home. I converse with the other spirits and gently suggest that no one transcend to that particular body. They will end up with a vegstible.
What would happen if someone in China opens up a private mailbox service (similar to Mail Boxes Etc or Postal Annex) and take advantage of the China Ebay and their policy of weived fees.
If ebay sees that you hava a China address, would they give you the China rates?
If you are a seller, you don't have to worry about having your China address in your transactions. It's only the buyer who has to have a good shipping address.
Perhaps we here in the U.S. would need to have two ebay accounts. One that we use to sell (with a China address) and the other we use to buy (with a good U.S. shipping address.
Free Geek is a computer recycling and community technology center in Portland Oregon who re-uses old computers and give them to those who cant' afford them and to non-profits. They are an entirely Linux shop as it makes it easier to give computers away if they have Linux on them.
I am the only one allowed to go door to door for Victoria's Secret.
I am a beautiful 40 year old male who love to dress up in full three piece wedding dresses made out of crystal clear plastic and outlined with multi-colored electro-lumenscent wire (Glowire for you Bruning Man folks)
Watch for me comming to your local college campus soon!
When I was a kid, I was able to figure out the locks at North Station in Boston. For those of who who don't know, North Station is the other major train station in Boston.
Back in the 60's, when the world was a little bit more innocent, I was able to fit a master key to all of the locks in North Station, which was also Boston Garden (the arena for the Boston Celtics and the Boston Bruins).
I never used the key; in fact I threw it away once I made it. It was only a proof in concept.
Locksmithing is no longer fun with all of the security paranoia. I buy my own locks to play with. The only fun thing I do in North Station anymore is to prance around in a leather juck strap and a clear plastic raincoat.
What happens when they shoot up a sky pr0n spam from a liberal state and it is seen by a neighboring conservative state?
A sky ad promoting San Francisco's Gay Pride being seen by those in neighboring conservative New Mexico?
Or when I project my famous image of myself wearing my clear plastic wedding dress from an offshore projector and it's seen by the fine folks in South Carolina?
If these things catch on, they will go down in price.
In 10 years or so (just like the digital camera), you may start seeing these at Sharper Image; then Best Buy, and finally on Ebay. You wait.
I have just the perfect project that could make the new Open Source Center literaly the center of the open source universe.
I'm talking about a real, good, solid replacement for Microsoft Exchange. Take a combination of the projects that we already have (openexchange, opengroupware, etc) and use the best components of each one and come up with something that is truly open source, industrial strength, and with as many 'enterprise' features as Exchange.
We already have the backend components this can use; postgresql (or mysql) for the back end database; kerberos or ldap for the authentication (which can be nicely integrated with the likes of postfix and cyrus or courier imap engines, and so on.
If the new center in Beaverton can pull something like this off, it would be on the map for creating a first alternative to the one thing that has prevented many businesses from migrating off of Microsoft.
First thing; Clear security policy. Goes something like this:
Company, customer, and vendor information shall be protected to the
best extent possible:
Confidentiality - Allow only authorized persons visibility
Integrity - Allow only authorized persons ability to change and keep
records and controls on changes
Availability - Ensure that information is maintained despite natural
or man made disaster or hostile event
Provinence - Ensure that information is legitimate; maintain chain
of responsibility for information
Responsibility is shared by employees, vendors, and customers to
ensure that information is safegaurded accordingly.
You get the idea. This master policy shall be clear and simple at the
highest level. Group and organizational policies shall include more detail
as applicable to the group. However, they must all trace back to this master
policy. When possible, the application of industry standards shall be spelled
out as they relate to this policy.
It goes without saying that everyone involved (customers, vendors,
partners, and employees) shall get the appropriate training. The
more clear and concise the policy, of course, the less time would
have to be spent on detailed training.
Idealy, all of this should be established and clearly agreed upon by everyone
within the enterprise before a single piece of equipment is touched or
configured.
Now that you have a clearly written and agreed upon policy, it's time
to impliment it. Here are some suggestions that I like to employ that
can pretty much transcend most security policies:
Firewall off everything except VPN. Don't even trust SSH from
outside your company lan. If you must, trush SSH to a hardened box in
a security island that is a lobby gateway to yet another single
hardened box inside the lan that you can lobby gateway to any other box
on the lan.
Use a colo or managed host for web if possible. If not, definately
put this on a security island with as little as possible (and
tightly controled as possible) access to inside the company LAN.
Use certificates for VPN access. Use a revocation list that can
be accessed by the VPN clients. Have tight restrictions on how often
the revocation lists have to be updated.
Road warrier machines should be set up so that private key is either
smart card based or with a prompt-able password. You dont want to have
your airport laptop thief access to the company VPN.
Impliment (as part of your policy) and ENFORCE a strict no wireless
policy from inside the company without manditory VPN. Enforce the
requirement that all WIFI access points be provided by IT or some
authorized organization. Enforce this by war-walking throughout
facility and conficating unauthorized WIFI sites. Invoke an internal
'fine' if you must to get this message across.
Allow NO vendor, partner, customer, etc. full unrestriced access to your
internal lans. Restrict their access. Partners's networks shall have
VPN access only to those subnets within your network they need to
fulfill their jobs. This can be implemented via VPN and access control
lists. I have done this with the open source VPN solutions and iptables.
Don't claim that it cannot be done without spending $100k's on
equipment. And PLEASE remember to terminate this access when the
contract is completed. You did remember to implement and use that
revocation list, did you?
Do not allow transient vendor access to your company network. If you
need services from a vendor that you have not had a relation with
in the past; you should either drive (YOU having your hands on the
keyboard) while they tell you what to do; or you should be CLOSELY
shoulder surfing while they are doing their thing. I do not allow
any new or temporary vendor unattended access to a system on our
networks.
Have a CLEAR, DOCUMENTED and AGREED policy and procedure of what to
do when someone leavs. This
Can we please shorten this report to two simple words?
Common Sense
My career in computing security; which consisted mainly of securing sites for small companies; taught me that much of what is going on is lack of clear policy and common sense.
Much of what I see missing can be traced back to the lack of a clear, well thought security policy.
This one document (often not more than a simple statement) is the root of all security related activities within an company or organization.
It have collaped and wet my pants while laughing at what I have seen for 'security' at some organizations.
An example: A company with some of the greatest tools and equipment; firewalls, VPN, the whole works. But with no clear documentation on how to configure what. Everything kept between the ears of the lead sysadmins. If they quit or get laid off (which happens); all this information gets lost.
Firewall set nice and tight (nothing in at all except VPN and port 80 to a machine on a security island). However, the VPN was configured with shared passphrase that was 'secret' and with no restrictions on what IP can initiate a connection.
Or VPN's that have proper certificates but with no revocation lists. Road Warrier VPN clients with the passphrase hard coded on the box and not having to be keyed in: Stolen laptop - direct acces to company VPN to inside network.
Or, nice tight firewall and VPN; but with open wireless ports inside (easily reachable from the parking lot or common building lobby or better still, the public cafe on the ground floor).
What realy keels me over laughing is how vendors are allowed free access to the company network. And how that access it not properly terminated upon conclusion of the contract.
Couple this with no clearly written and fully agreed upon (throughout the entire enterprise) security policy. Easy path to desire.
From what I have seen in my travels throughout the country, I think that I have figured out how many of the newer traffic signals are programmed.
In fact, they are quite smart. And they are very integrated with the rest of the systems that we allow to control our lives.
I am talking about databases (credit, DMV, medical, payroll; whatever); POS; Criminal; and whatever else there may be (perhaps even Church membership records).
And don't forget those nasty little RFID tags on merchandise, hospital and nursing home patients, and everything else.
So, here is what is going on.
The system is aware that you have just finished shopping and on the way home with your groceries. It knows that you have some frozen food and ice cream.
It also knows that you have voted for Kerry and that you belong to the Church of the Universal Left Socialist republics. It knows that you have just bought your home which happens to be in a conservative Christian neighborhood. It also knows that you are a transexual flaming radical faeirie (such as myself).
You can be sure that it will do it's darndest to delay you as much as possible so that:
a. The ice cream will melt and and become liquid
b. The frozen food will melt and spoil
c. You will not get home in time enough in order
to go to the doctor's appointment to be checked
on your medication for HIV.
d. You will get frustrated enough to try to go
through a red light and trigger the photo
enforcement system (after further knowing
that your credit cards are maxed out and that
you cannot afford to pay the fine)
Now, if you are like me, and you don't even own and drive a car, then the system is **REALY** going to hate you. You are not a conformist at all. Boy, when you rent a car for that once a year time you need one; better be prepared to stop for at least five minutes at each and every intersection you come across!
Luv
As you know, the products you buy in the stores have RFID sensors.
I strongly feel that this can be an indication of the desire for us to have more participation in what we see and do for our entertainment.
In short, it's about power, companionship, choices, and being in community.
I can relate to my own experiences the drive me to this conclusion.
I find that sitting in front of a TV, being fed stuff totaly at someone else's control, to be very powerless and alone. I can't say anything back (being non-interactive). The only thing that I can do is to turn it off.
Even watching a video tape (rental movie) is more empowering than broadcast TV. There, I can choose the movie, when to play it, and when to have breaks (to eat, go to the bathroom, or even to think and reflect on what was shown.
On top of that, I am finding that I like to do things that allow me to be part of the 'entertainment', if you call it.
Here is where the Internet is the winner. Forums like this one. Email lists. Blogs. These all allow you and me to be part of the show. We are not just watching the show.
Off the net, I find that I like to do things that allow me to be a part more than those that are passive. For example; I like to do group dancing more than going to the theatre or opera. A friday night at a Pagan rap group is far better then one at a movie or show.
Here is the order in which I enjoy various life's activities:
1. Being with family / friends at a social
setting
2. Engaged in my hobbies of sewing and glass
art (both alone and in a group_
3. Performing group spiritual activities such
as spiritual dance, singing, and rituals
I heard this very appropriate phraise during a church service once.
" Are the gifts you bear to you families and
loved ones created by hands guilded by the
creativity generated by the spirit of true
love; or are they put together by hands
driven by the fear of the point of a gun
held by a slave driver obsessed with profits
from a holiday season raped by the money
changers? "
I make all of my gifts for my families. I have been making my own holiday gifts for the past six years. For those of you curious to see the kinds of gifts that I make (and the kinds of gifts that any of you out there can make), go to www.clearplastic.com or www.allyn.com.
Slashdot Mirror
The ftp protocol is not encrypted. Your account name and password is transmitted in the clear over the network.
Pleas, by all means, use scp instead of ftp. The scp protocol is covered (encrypted). It is part of the ssh suite of applications. Every Linux system comes with it. There is a suite of tools for Windows called Putty. They also include scp.
Truly
Cleara
So they get a D-.
Big deal!
They are a very sucessfull agency. They have been providing the 'bread' for the U.S. Government for years.
Mrs. Thompson of McCall Junior High School in Winchester,
Massachusetts gave me a D- in English during my eighth grade.
Do I let it bother me?
No!
I am just as happy as I could be.
In fact, I knew someone who was a streight A student.
His achievment? The methadone clinic.
As Dr. Norman Paul, or Lexington Massachusetts; my
childhood phychiatrist; told me, don't let the little
things bother you. You can only be your true self to be
happy.
I see the IRS as quite happy right now.
Luv
Cleara
Here goes the furniture. Lets dump the Microsoft stock and buy Steelcase stock. I am assuming the the furniture in Ballmer's office is that from Steelcase!
While you are at it, you might as well buy the stock for the upholstery fabric mills. They will also get a piece of this action!
Once upon a time I went to see a movie at the Strand Theatre on Market Street in San Francisco, California.
I was late; the previews were just ending when I bought the ticket and went in.
In darkness, I had to quickly find a seat.
I sat down. About five minutes later, I noticed this funny gross feeling around my seat.
I reached down. The seat was SOAKING WET. And WARM.
Fearing the worst, I warily sniffed my hand. Yep. Urine.
I ended running out of that theatre and back home. I must have beaten the Boston Marathon during that run. Those pants were in the trash and I as showered in less than three minutes after I entered my apartment.
I never went back to the Strand Theatre after that.
We all know that your body is but a temporary home for your soul or your spirit.
When the body dies, your spirit (**you**) move on. This should be very familiar with you Pagans
out there. (Remeber that Sahman; Haloween; is the time when we re-unite with the spirits of our
dead ancestors).
Yes, science may be able to resurrect a dead body.
But, what soul will inhabit it at that time? Most likely it will be either someone else or perhaps
no soul at all. Perhaps you will end up with a 'living vegstible' with no spirit or soul.
When I move on, I will either still be in the spirit world or will have come back as another
being; not necessarily human; I could be a tree, rock, ocean, cloud, or animal.
Heck, when I move on, and someone decides to cryogenically save my body; I may have had my rest
in the spirit world and return to our world as a thunder cloud.
I am now in the sky over the university where the research is going on and they are trying to
ressurect my former temporary home.
I might feel a bit angry that they think they can ressurect me.
I might need to teach them a gentle little reminder.
As a thunder cloud. I just might reach out with a bolt of lightning and knock out the
power to the lab.
And my companion, who is the mighty Oak tree standing next to the emergency power generator
for the lab, might fall down and sever the fuel line.
Or, as a thunder cloud, I embrace my sister spirit, the rainbow. I tell the rainbow to
give inspiration to the eco-purists who then go in an sabotage the lab and gently return
my former home back to the land (yet another sister spirit) where it belongs.
Or picture this. I am in the spirit world; having not returned to your world. I learn of what
is about to happen to my former temporary home. I converse with the other spirits and gently
suggest that no one transcend to that particular body. They will end up with a vegstible.
Luv
What would happen if someone in China opens up a private mailbox service (similar to Mail
Boxes Etc or Postal Annex) and take advantage of the China Ebay and their policy of
weived fees.
If ebay sees that you hava a China address, would they give you the China rates?
If you are a seller, you don't have to worry about having your China address in your
transactions. It's only the buyer who has to have a good shipping address.
Perhaps we here in the U.S. would need to have two ebay accounts. One that we use
to sell (with a China address) and the other we use to buy (with a good U.S. shipping
address.
This person was not afraid of being different. He refused to conform to the 'status quo'.
He has the earmarks of a Radical Faerie.
Why would someone want to go there? I have
a friend who used to work for DHS. He said
that his medical coverage was crummy.
What about the homeless?
Does this mean that the furniture repair company
can take a well deserved vacation?
Free Geek is a computer recycling and community technology center in Portland Oregon who re-uses old computers and give them to those who cant' afford them and to non-profits. They are an entirely Linux shop as it makes it easier to give computers away if they have Linux on them.
I am the only one allowed to go door to door for Victoria's Secret.
I am a beautiful 40 year old male who love to dress up in full three
piece wedding dresses made out of crystal clear plastic and outlined
with multi-colored electro-lumenscent wire (Glowire for you Bruning Man
folks)
Watch for me comming to your local college campus soon!
27 years without tv. Just don't put a broadcast
flag on my sewing machines. www.clearplastic.com
Once upon a time when I was a little boy . . .
We walked 1 mile to school in the morning.
We walked 1 mile home for lunch.
We walked 1 mile to school for afternoon session
We walked 1 mile home at the finish of the day.
We not only had no busses, we did not have
a cafeteria.
It felt great! I always looked forward to those
walks!
Nobody even suggested we take a bus.
The only time mom ever drove me is if she had
to take me to the doctor's on the way to school
or some other errond.
How I long for those innocent, peacefull,
inspirational walks!
I think there is a nice solution right in our
own communities. Walking. Riding a bicycle.
Skating. Skateboarding.
Now that we have cafeterias, we don't need
the trip home for lunch.
If a little boy like me could walk to school
and back twice a day, then I would think that
many of the children today can walk the one
trip per day.
Love
Mrs. Clear Plastic
Replace the game with educational tools such as:
1. The gcc compiler
2. The perl interpreter
3. The PHP interpreter
4. The Python interpreter
5. All of the various libraries
6. The kernel development packages
7. The kernel sources
When I was a kid, I was able to figure out the locks at North Station in Boston. For those of who who don't know, North Station is the other major train station in Boston.
Back in the 60's, when the world was a little bit more innocent, I was able to fit a master key to all of the locks in North Station, which was also Boston Garden (the arena for the Boston Celtics and the Boston Bruins).
I never used the key; in fact I threw it away once I made it. It was only a proof in concept.
The only thins I make are my wearable art (http://www.allyn.com/ and http://www.clearplastic.com/)
Locksmithing is no longer fun with all of the security paranoia. I buy my own locks to play with. The only fun thing I do in North Station anymore is to prance around in a leather juck strap and a clear plastic raincoat.
What happens when they shoot up a sky pr0n spam from a liberal state and it is seen by a neighboring conservative state?
A sky ad promoting San Francisco's Gay Pride being seen by those in neighboring conservative New Mexico?
Or when I project my famous image of myself wearing my clear plastic wedding dress from an offshore projector and it's seen by the fine folks in South Carolina?
If these things catch on, they will go down in price.
In 10 years or so (just like the digital camera), you may start seeing these at Sharper Image; then Best Buy, and finally on Ebay. You wait.
Luv you all!
I have just the perfect project that could make
the new Open Source Center literaly the center of
the open source universe.
I'm talking about a real, good, solid replacement
for Microsoft Exchange. Take a combination of the
projects that we already have (openexchange,
opengroupware, etc) and use the best components
of each one and come up with something that is
truly open source, industrial strength, and with
as many 'enterprise' features as Exchange.
We already have the backend components this can
use; postgresql (or mysql) for the back end database; kerberos or ldap for the authentication (which can be nicely integrated with the likes of postfix and cyrus or courier imap engines, and so on.
If the new center in Beaverton can pull something
like this off, it would be on the map for
creating a first alternative to the one thing that
has prevented many businesses from migrating
off of Microsoft.
Luv
Mrs. Cleara Plastique
This would make a great paint on clear plastic raincoat! Just put a can of this stuff in your
purse before you go out.
When it rains, spray yourself.
Presto! Instant raincoat!
Here is what I did for one of my clients:
First thing; Clear security policy. Goes something like this:
You get the idea. This master policy shall be clear and simple at the highest level. Group and organizational policies shall include more detail as applicable to the group. However, they must all trace back to this master policy. When possible, the application of industry standards shall be spelled out as they relate to this policy.
It goes without saying that everyone involved (customers, vendors, partners, and employees) shall get the appropriate training. The more clear and concise the policy, of course, the less time would have to be spent on detailed training.
Idealy, all of this should be established and clearly agreed upon by everyone within the enterprise before a single piece of equipment is touched or configured.
Now that you have a clearly written and agreed upon policy, it's time to impliment it. Here are some suggestions that I like to employ that can pretty much transcend most security policies:
Firewall off everything except VPN. Don't even trust SSH from outside your company lan. If you must, trush SSH to a hardened box in a security island that is a lobby gateway to yet another single hardened box inside the lan that you can lobby gateway to any other box on the lan.
Use a colo or managed host for web if possible. If not, definately put this on a security island with as little as possible (and tightly controled as possible) access to inside the company LAN.
Use certificates for VPN access. Use a revocation list that can be accessed by the VPN clients. Have tight restrictions on how often the revocation lists have to be updated.
Road warrier machines should be set up so that private key is either smart card based or with a prompt-able password. You dont want to have your airport laptop thief access to the company VPN.
Impliment (as part of your policy) and ENFORCE a strict no wireless policy from inside the company without manditory VPN. Enforce the requirement that all WIFI access points be provided by IT or some authorized organization. Enforce this by war-walking throughout facility and conficating unauthorized WIFI sites. Invoke an internal 'fine' if you must to get this message across.
Allow NO vendor, partner, customer, etc. full unrestriced access to your internal lans. Restrict their access. Partners's networks shall have VPN access only to those subnets within your network they need to fulfill their jobs. This can be implemented via VPN and access control lists. I have done this with the open source VPN solutions and iptables. Don't claim that it cannot be done without spending $100k's on equipment. And PLEASE remember to terminate this access when the contract is completed. You did remember to implement and use that revocation list, did you?
Do not allow transient vendor access to your company network. If you need services from a vendor that you have not had a relation with in the past; you should either drive (YOU having your hands on the keyboard) while they tell you what to do; or you should be CLOSELY shoulder surfing while they are doing their thing. I do not allow any new or temporary vendor unattended access to a system on our networks.
Have a CLEAR, DOCUMENTED and AGREED policy and procedure of what to do when someone leavs. This
Can we please shorten this report to two simple words?
Common Sense
My career in computing security; which consisted mainly of securing sites for small companies; taught me that much of what is going on is lack of clear policy and common sense.
Much of what I see missing can be traced back to the lack of a clear, well thought security policy.
This one document (often not more than a simple statement) is the root of all security related activities within an company or organization.
It have collaped and wet my pants while laughing at what I have seen for 'security' at some organizations.
An example: A company with some of the greatest tools and equipment; firewalls, VPN, the whole works. But with no clear documentation on how to configure what. Everything kept between the ears of the lead sysadmins. If they quit or get laid off (which happens); all this information gets lost.
Firewall set nice and tight (nothing in at all except VPN and port 80 to a machine on a security island). However, the VPN was configured with shared passphrase that was 'secret' and with no restrictions on what IP can initiate a connection.
Or VPN's that have proper certificates but with no revocation lists. Road Warrier VPN clients with the passphrase hard coded on the box and not having to be keyed in: Stolen laptop - direct acces to company VPN to inside network.
Or, nice tight firewall and VPN; but with open wireless ports inside (easily reachable from the parking lot or common building lobby or better still, the public cafe on the ground floor).
What realy keels me over laughing is how vendors are allowed free access to the company network. And how that access it not properly terminated upon conclusion of the contract.
Couple this with no clearly written and fully agreed upon (throughout the entire enterprise) security policy. Easy path to desire.
Luv you all
From what I have seen in my travels throughout the country, I think that I have figured out how many of the newer traffic signals are programmed.
In fact, they are quite smart. And they are very integrated with the rest of the systems that we allow to control our lives.
I am talking about databases (credit, DMV, medical, payroll; whatever); POS; Criminal; and whatever else there may be (perhaps even Church membership records).
And don't forget those nasty little RFID tags on merchandise, hospital and nursing home patients, and everything else.
So, here is what is going on.
The system is aware that you have just finished shopping and on the way home with your groceries. It knows that you have some frozen food and ice cream.
It also knows that you have voted for Kerry and that you belong to the Church of the Universal Left Socialist republics. It knows that you have just bought your home which happens to be in a conservative Christian neighborhood. It also knows that you are a transexual flaming radical faeirie (such as myself).
You can be sure that it will do it's darndest to delay you as much as possible so that:
a. The ice cream will melt and and become liquid
b. The frozen food will melt and spoil
c. You will not get home in time enough in order
to go to the doctor's appointment to be checked
on your medication for HIV.
d. You will get frustrated enough to try to go
through a red light and trigger the photo
enforcement system (after further knowing
that your credit cards are maxed out and that
you cannot afford to pay the fine)
Now, if you are like me, and you don't even own
and drive a car, then the system is **REALY** going to hate you. You are not a conformist at all. Boy, when you rent a car for that once a year time you need one; better be prepared to stop for at least five minutes at each and every intersection you come across!
Luv
As you know, the products you buy in the stores have RFID sensors.
Loved ones . . . .
I strongly feel that this can be an indication
of the desire for us to have more participation
in what we see and do for our entertainment.
In short, it's about power, companionship,
choices, and being in community.
I can relate to my own experiences the drive me
to this conclusion.
I find that sitting in front of a TV, being fed
stuff totaly at someone else's control, to be
very powerless and alone. I can't say anything
back (being non-interactive). The only thing
that I can do is to turn it off.
Even watching a video tape (rental movie) is
more empowering than broadcast TV. There, I
can choose the movie, when to play it, and when
to have breaks (to eat, go to the bathroom, or
even to think and reflect on what was shown.
On top of that, I am finding that I like to do
things that allow me to be part of the
'entertainment', if you call it.
Here is where the Internet is the winner. Forums
like this one. Email lists. Blogs. These all
allow you and me to be part of the show. We
are not just watching the show.
Off the net, I find that I like to do things that
allow me to be a part more than those that are
passive. For example; I like to do group dancing
more than going to the theatre or opera. A friday
night at a Pagan rap group is far better then one
at a movie or show.
Here is the order in which I enjoy various
life's activities:
1. Being with family / friends at a social
setting
2. Engaged in my hobbies of sewing and glass
art (both alone and in a group_
3. Performing group spiritual activities such
as spiritual dance, singing, and rituals
4. Passively watching a live play/opera/concert
5. Passively watching a movie of my own choosing
6. Passively watching network TV
I heard this very appropriate phraise during a church service once.
" Are the gifts you bear to you families and
loved ones created by hands guilded by the
creativity generated by the spirit of true
love; or are they put together by hands
driven by the fear of the point of a gun
held by a slave driver obsessed with profits
from a holiday season raped by the money
changers? "
I make all of my gifts for my families. I have
been making my own holiday gifts for the past
six years. For those of you curious to see the
kinds of gifts that I make (and the kinds of
gifts that any of you out there can make), go
to www.clearplastic.com or www.allyn.com.
The faeries love these. You might try it!