First, the government forces you into an agreement with a for profit corporation which is a scam that you will never get your money out of; if the average driver calculated the amount of money they put into the system, and the amount they got out, they'd be better off putting it in a safe. When people complain, the company tells people their insurance rates are high becuase of the "bumblenuts" on the road, and they begin fighting amongst themselves to find such non existant "bumblenuts". Nobody had the statistics accept for the company.
And then, you begin letting them have personal information on you? How do you know that your driving is so great you're going to get any kind of a discount?
Mabye you should think that one through. Do you really want a profiteering insurance company that's mandataed by the state, of which has no moral or ethical code and is bound only by a few loose laws, to collect personal information on you? Mabye I'm being a FUD monger here, but I seriously don't think that's something anyone would want.
Ok, so LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT. Instead of paying $50, you'd rather wait 10 minute inbetween games watching ad's?
WTF?
Because that's where it's going to go. First, they'll put in billboards, and the game companies will build the games so the billboards have to be there. Or they'll replace the flag grabbing sound with some soundbyte, or random popup windows, text messages, ect. Then, they'll say "huh, that isn't justfying our advertising dollars", and they'll want more, and more, and more. Look at what netzero and juno was turned into; spyware ridden advertising spewing processor hogging hellholes of buggy shitty software.
I'm already offended when I see commericals in games and on the internet, it's like they're spitting in my face. When I see too much advertising, I get anxious, and begin thinking of tearing it down in a fit of rage. Why? Because I know it's trying to get inside of my head and make me want things I don't want, and it's there all the time, banging on the doors. These assholes read psychology books to learn how to manipulate children into being buyers for life, they read CIA manuals on torture to learn to incorporate those into their advertising in order to manipulate people. They even target children to turn them into "life buyers".
Tell ya what, go find a old documentary by the name of "the money masters". It's about 4 hours long, but I think your lack of thinking will be corrected by it. I used to believe all the rhetoric they taught us in school, but after looking at that documentary I'm a bit more convinced that bankers are behind it.
If you don't mind the download, www.suprnova.org, look for a file by the name of "good ones".
Re:Old school hackers vs. new school hackers.
on
Good Bad Attitude
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· Score: 1
Heh, I like how you use the term radicalism. Radicalism is "we'll shoot all the p2p users" or "we'll shoot all the intellectual property lawyers". Although, it's often used to define someone who believes something against the law in our society, and somehow this is bad when totalitarian regimes exist to enslave us.
The old guys have a point; the idea of a system that rewards authors for their useful ideas is productive. However, they are outdated in their information. If the system wasn't monopolised to favor those with money, I'd agree with them wholeheartedly. But, if we allow those with the monopolies to have a stranglehold on information, our society is screwed.
Now, what I'd really like to see is the younger hackers educating the older hackers, the older hackers getting the idea, and educating the young hackers so instead of them doing stupid shit, the young and old hackers work to a smart solution. Protesting does nothing, but coding skype takes down the telcom industry. Get the idea?
Then how do you explain that the value of gold hasn't changed in thousands of years? A nice gold coin can buy you a suit and pair of shoes, and 2 thousand years ago, a nice toga and sandals.
Inflation doesn't happen because joe farmer wants more for his corn, and therefor the blacksmith charges more. No, it happens because more money is printed and it trickles out. Why was there no depressions or inflation before the federal reserve system?
Our money is worthless, it's entire value is based on the that we've got the oil countries trading with it and only in it. If they announced they'd switch to euro's, our money would be worthless overnight.
There's a very simple solution; boot the machine into safe mode every night, update, THEN run the anti spyware/antivirus apps. That way it actually removes everything.
Considering they already tap the internet traffic itself, I would imagine they could do it. The problem, however, is filtering that kind of traffic in any timely matter. Telephone conversations are one thing, considering all you need is to tie into the backbone lines, transport the data, hook up some analoge to digital converters, filter for voices and identify them for data (not hard to do with the right filtering, either), do a filter for syllables and beyond that, do whatever else you want to as far as database updating and searching is conserned externally. I certianly wouldn't see them storing every telephone conversation, but I can see them creating massive databases.
Lets just say they could bring in data over the internet. First, you'd have gigabytes upon gigabytes of information, all of which is unrelated accept for the IP and TCP header information. You can tell where packets start and stop, and try to associate files with applications and thus, get some idea of what the data is, based on protocol information, but you sure as hell can't tell what the data is in any reliable manner without a massive, memory based system that could keep track of what internet applications are being run where. I can imagine some form of e-mail filtering (albiet, unreliable if someone wanted to attack it and knew the proper keywords) as well as hooking into large search engines such as google.
Anyone with a bit of technical knowledge can probably figure out where the holes are and use them. As for breaking encryption, I certainly wouldn't be suprised if they could, but it's highly unlikely they've got a bunch of genuses sitting locked up in a bunker somewhere breaking encryption algorithms for them 24/7, much less a system that can efficiently break every heavily encrypted packet that comes through. Considering the level of paranoia these gooks have about not having information, I should think that they'd be pressing for laws and equipment to favor them, but with the internet as it is today, I don't particularily see them being able effectivly spy on a whole lot of jack shit.
While we're at it, mabye we should privatise legislature, and the presidency, as well as the courts, to the eXtreme!!!1
Realistically, there are too many marbles in play right now that are big and money driven. JFK tried screwing around with them, remember the actual money he minted rather than the toy money we use today? 3 guesses why he got killed. Ahh, I'll give it to you; the american government can print off money and spend it, and banks can to (when they give a loan, they only have to have 1/9 of the amount on hand). Additionally, our money is worthless, the only reason it has value is becuase oil countries will only trade in it. Literally, we're getting a free ride. Now, you begin passing around hard currency like silver dollars or something backed up, in contract, by gold, guess what happens to the banks? Banks invest, and indirectly control corporations by forcing them to be greedy tyranical organizations. They also have lots of power considering they have money, and money, entertainingly enough, is power, especially in dire times.
Voting will do jack shit in this situation. They own all the media; airwaves, newspapers, ect. Why is the blackout of other canidates so total? Oh wait, that's right, the CEO gets a call from investors, saying they don't like bush being badmouthed on their media station. The CEO then fires anyone who talks bad about bush, or kerry, or they say "no talking about other canidates" and then kerry and bush are told if they focus on X topics, there'll be no other coverage.
So really, voting will do a whole lot of jack shit in our current situation. Lets just say nader won next election, how quickly do you think he'd dissapear, or be assassinated, or blackmailed into doing bad things?
Frankly, I see this as another way to get the government into the "save us, take away our rights". Seriously, we want them to keep our privacy secure? Ok, we'll make laws that'll effect the little guy (people moving from country to country to evade the law) but decide not to touch the big guy (sony, MS, ect) with a 10 foot pole, and if we do, it'll either be a slap on the cheek or something else. I'v been seeing a lot of that lately, and it's sad that people on slashdot don't quite get it, and even sadder that I'v talked to people who think we should cut the heads off of virus writers infront of their families (for some reason, that seems to be a popular thing).
I'm looking at this thing, and although there's plenty of room for improvising on the ATX case design and PC design in general, to make something that will play on stupid teenagers, the very idea of making a fast PC that's small and in a proprietary format is kinda disturbing. First, lets talk about cooling and power consumption; they're talking about a big fast harddisk, DDR memory, fastest Pentium-M, an radeon 9700 w/ 64 meg of memory, a TV tuner card, a NIC, a CD-R or DVD-RW+CD-RW drive, and a built in LCD. Now, by my counting you'd need about 400 watts of output to run all of that stuff with some headroom for adding in memory. IF they're using laptop parts then that's considerably less. Now, a good 400watt powersupply doesn't come small; you've got a series of BIG caps and BIG transformers in there, all of which get hot, you can do the gateway thing and have something that plugs into the computer, but even then. Then, you're talking a graphics card, pentium processor, and memory, in a small area. I'd like to know how long that can be run for without turning into a molten hip-e, heh (bad joke, heh).
Second, the marketing is unsound. Unless you're in japan and in a room that's 4 by 4, there's plenty of room for a large case. Hell, I'v got 2 PC's (gaming and toy around, both large cases) and a router, a 19 inch moniter, a nice computer chair, and.1km of cabling in my room and it's barely 6x8.
Then, they're asking $1700 for a base model.
For $1700, I could get an aufully nice alienware machine, or a few e-machines, if I was so enclined. Or, If I were dumb, ask a geeky friend to design and build me a comp and pay them $100 to do so and get something comparable or better.
Finally, The idea of a "hip" computer for idiots is simply impracticle. Unless you're upper middle class you aren't going to go for one of these things, and if you're a teen, you certainly aren't going to blow 2 grand of your own money on a computer without consulting the geeks, and anyone who knows computers can spot this shitty deal from a mile away. Then again, never underestemate the power of advertising to arrest the common man's intellegence long enough to take their money.
So, in short, it's soon to be junk-e, ironically, just like many hippie's, heh.
Now, the idea of a all-in-one entertainment system/computer/gaming rig for under a grand, now that'll take off, which this seems to be some of. However, I'd rather see them break that down into a semi-microatx or microitx system with a lot of integrated things in a small desktop or tower.
Look, I don't give a damn how you want to raise your kid until they come to me with a bloody face or saying daddy raped me, inwhich case I get the shotgun and go start some shit. I know how I'd raise mine, and I draw my line where it becomes my business.
You don't want your kid playing games? Then take care of your own business; don't send the cost if your failure to raise your kids onto me without at least asking.
Frankly, you wouldn't have that problem if you'd spend some time raising your kids (instead of letting schools and TV do it for you) and make sure they could come to you with any problem for an explanation.
If I were an undercover agent, I wouldn't be standing ontop of the building with my face out in the open with a camera. Stand behind a window or something you bloody morons.
First, this is a few years old if I remember, mabye I'm off.
Second, many people are quick to judge the paranoia of the tin foil hat croud. Now, listen here. We've had this move to a paperless society for quite some time, at least 30 years; paperless accounting, paperless ordering, paperless mail, paperless addressing. In time, this has replaced non-paper things, and now we've got cellphone networks and VOIP networks to replace phones, Job automation to replace people. All for what? Convienience!
Now, lets say the FDA says "ok, this'll work for medical patients", because, obviously, if you find someone with no ID in a ditch, and they've got a medical RFID in them, then you can tell who they are, what their allergies are, if they're a diabetic. Ok, great application of technology. For a medical situation like in a hospital, it's invasive and people may have allergic reactions to such tags, so I don't think it'll ever go there.
Then sony decides "you know, we don't like this punch in/out system for our factory workers, and these RFID tags are incredibly cost effective at $.20 a pop. Additionally, they allow us to run an automated door access system, an automated computer access system, all without people getting angry about biometrics".
Now we've got sony, with a glowing sucess story, saying how many million they saved by going over to RFID. Now other companies begin thinking the same way, and all begin tagging. All of a sudden, banks say "hey, you know what? We can tag people for quickie cash transactions". Instead of carrying around a wallet, which can be stolen, you carry around a small implanted computer, all of which relates to a central banking system.
Law enforcement gets involved, standards and practices are put into place, centralised servers are established, and finally, in order to "combat crime", paper money is estinguished.
Now, mabye, just mabye, I'm on crack and I still have cognative skills, but that seems like a likely scenario. All that has to happen is for it to become so commonplace that a majority gets it, and the minority has to come along for the ride or be shut out of society.
#1: Europe is different than the US: most people in the US have to commute miles and miles to get to work, in europe it's different. Imagine commuting 100 miles into a city or industrialized area and then back again, every day. Additionally, europe is smaller than the US, and if you look at the european population density and compair it to the US, the US was planned out so that we'd have mass feedlot suburbs and communtes to work. Yes, public transportation can work, but we're talking on a larger scale than europe.
#2: Look, the american lifestyle, the european lifestyle, the japanese lifestyle, the canadian lifestyle, all of these wasteful, toxic lifestyles need to be done away with in favor of ones that are sustainable. You can justify it any way you want because you've grown up with all these nice things, but I'v come to the realization that most people who buy into a good life are idiots and moreso, they're keeping themselves from developing as human beings. We can only throw away so much before the bell curve principle begins to kick in and we've got to go back into the dumps and begin digging stuff out.
#3: No, it really can't. So long as america provides an incentive to it's, and other, companies to bribe governments and move to other countries with less stringint standards and pollute, it won't work.
#4: It only seems that way because america pollutes a bunch, and if it brought itself into line with other countries, it'd lose profits. We've been under the rule of neocons for quite some time here (far too long for my taste) and their political policy is, essentially, that we're in a position to take over the world, and therefore, we shoudl enslave the rest of the worlds populace to ensure we can live the most wasteful, fake lifestyle imaginable. Therefore, they hate the kyoto protocol, becuase it doesn't go along with those plans.
#5: Tell me one thing that's come out of the UN that has been good for people?
Ahh, the perfect example of the perfect excuse that people will buy, probably thought up by a think tank no less. To say such prooves what exactly? It certainly doesn't disprove these scientists and their research, that's for sure, it simply proposes the idea that it is "probably" something else. The scenario that one doesn't cover is, what if we're right? What if our CO2 contamination, among other things we're pumping into the atmosphere, is causing global warming to occur? If these guys have hard, tangable, properly collected evidence that this is occuring, we shouldn't brush it off with "well, it's probably just the natural way our earth has been working for thousands of years, these guys are morons".
The republic of the United States of america is of the people and for the people. Why can't corporations fuck off and stop helping canidates rig elections? Both canidates are skull and bones members, distant cousons, and both canidates, to both sides' dismay and effort to get them to talk about something else, are sticking to BS topics that mean nothing. Mabye, just mabye, if they thought they could beat, then they'd let them have a few words. But then, I don't think bush's vocabulary or kerry's gargantuan capability to lie would be enough to counter half the wit of either of those candates.
The idea that information can be "sensative" is, within itself, requiring the trust of people on the cencorers part. In america, we, by default, do not trust those who censor information; thus the first amendment right to free speech.
It doesn't matter weither that speech leads to violence, protest, insurrection, flower hugging, mass orgies, or whatever; the right to free speech is best understood when you put it in the context of letting people say things you don't like, and respecting their right. Any right you don't let others have is a right you deny yourself.
In any case, the indymedia people were probably viewed in the same light as al-jazeera here. If you go onto suprnova.org and look in the movies, then documentaries section, then look for protesting video's I believe you can find some of their work. When I saw police using pepper spray on people en masse during a protest, unprovoked, and using other tactics to break up protests which were completly legitimate and non-violent (the protesters also placed themselves in good places, and conducted themselves politely, until the cops showed up and began harassing them) I got pretty pissed. Then there's some other stuff on Suprnova.org like alex jones's work, which is a bunch of hyped up stuff as he's trying to run a business off of being a complete nutcase. But he also has video's of people being arrested at road stops after they told them they wouldn't get out of their cars.
So now some very angry people decided to break in and destroy some republican party headquarters and scare the shit out of the people within. The FBI see's that as a loose military command; when your media sways people, you are commanding them, and when that command is bad, you must be eliminated in a non-chalant manner.
In any case, if you put up material that makes people angry, and then give them addresses of senators/representatives, guess what's going to happen? The FBI is going to consider that "inciting violence"; telling people how and where, and giving them a confincing reason to, attack. It's BS IMO, I know the representatives home address in my area, and I'd rather bake him a pizza and give him a few documents/cd's of information politely.
The FBI want us to be calm sheeple and not know the information, but they'll never be able to achieve that. Guess what? You just made their smallish-media outlet get a story on slashdot and on every other nut's webpage. Guess what people are going to do now?
In a nutshell, guerilla warfare with americans who have internet connections is a bitch, ain't it?
Wow, nice debunk; no topics, no use, just pointing out that I don't grammarcheck/spellcheck my posts and have slight dyslexia. A big F: F for FAILURE to get the point, and a FAILURE to add something meaningful to the discussion.
As for being a gaming addict; loud n' proud, but it doesn't take away from me studying or me getting out for walks (which hopefully will turn into running within a few months, heh) every night. Everyone who took salvation in videogames instead of a needle as a teenager has to get out of the videogame reality and into real reality; my solution was computers and nature walks, and learning a fscksum of skills. I still play games to relax and to sulk, and I find it's a good coping mechanism compaired to, say, beer. Even better if some guys are on Ven and we can go fuck shit up on a server. I use slashdot and essaying to give ideas form and think them out, and get people to bitch back.
Mostly, it seems to stem, in most of the addicts I'v talked to, from a combination of state run education and depression. Most techies aren't preppy, and infact most of them have had a lot of bad problems early on in life, especially with social rejection and the realization, subconsciouncly, that things were fucked and had to cope with them.
State run education comes in when it makes learning boring and monotonous compaired to videogames and TV. Really, the kids who play videogames are far better prone to be self-learners than slowed down by everyone else. Lord knows when I switched to learning on my own I started learning 3 or 4 times faster, and that's been steadily increasing over the past 2 years. Kids who watch TV just learn take what they're given and sit there until ordered to do something.
I think, mostly, it's getting them away from the games, advertising, TV and this whole screwey culture for a good 3 or 4 months. You'll notice that the kids who have no TV tend to have fewer social problems and fewer problems in life in general, namely because their identity of reality is based off of something solid. When you spend 6 hours a night watching TV, it becomes part o your reality. When you play games, likewise, it becomes a part of your reality. Gamers tend to become more dependant on their medium, namely becuase it integrates more throughly into their reality. By playing games (not shitty arcade games or football, we're talking the heavy stuff, doom, quake, evercrack, ect, games that require thought to win), you begin to understand intrinsically how a lot of things work and how to think through situations.
The last reason, I believe it happens, is becuase kids get something, psychologically, they don't get from the rest of their reality. If they have no control over their lives, then they may like playing a major RPG game or engauging in something that makes them feel important and in control. Same goes for adults. Some kids get a sense of social acceptance through the internet by playing games with other people. It can also be a heavily spirtual, if even tribal, experience where kids can hit an almost meditative, sublime minerva-type state. I know that, for quite some time, that was why I played games. It's hard to get to that high, but baby when you hit it is it ever so gooooooood (especially when you've got music pumping).
As for that article, it's truely scary. They're equating videogame addiction to crack addiction (which isn't as nearly as bad, imho, the word evercrack is satire afterall), then talking about "guides" to help parents "identify" the problem, from the sound of the article, it's the same thing with school teachers usingdugs to medicate problem kids. Really, it's about learning to like other things. When you're all consuming desire for 13 years is supposed to be slow, boring learning and sleep, games can become the number 1 thing you do. This becomes a problem, because kids just can't develop into real people like that, unless they're in a gaming clan inwhich older people usually talk to em' and help to set em' straight.
There are 3 methods of attacking an opponent with IT devices; one which denies him his communications, the other which changes those communications, and finally those that listen in on those communications. If you know yourself, and you know your enemy, you are garounteed victory. If you know yourself and not your enemy, or you know your enemy but not yourself, you have a 50% chance. Oterwise, you're screwed.
Everyone is paranoid about having their banking records stolen. Nobody is paranoid about NC blackmailing senators.
Mmmmboy, I'd bet you'll be doubly amazed if I pointed out the gigantic ball of plasma in the sky. Actually, it's not the sun, it's the universes largest heat bulb. The liberals had to scrape all of the fillament out of the moon in order to creat it.
However, that unix system was overloaded and wouldn't run on current day software. MS's reps came along, and offered the simple n' easy solution. Sure, a linux or even more recent unix application would be far superior, but far more costly (depending on how you set it up and who you ask); you spend a few grand on linux lisences, or a few grand on a guy to code a custom application for you.
Is an energetic drunk. Usually, drunk people are happy up until the point atwhich they tire out. Now, with this stuff, they can party hard all day, evening, night, morning...for a few days until they either pass out or die...
Slashdot Mirror
First, the government forces you into an agreement with a for profit corporation which is a scam that you will never get your money out of; if the average driver calculated the amount of money they put into the system, and the amount they got out, they'd be better off putting it in a safe. When people complain, the company tells people their insurance rates are high becuase of the "bumblenuts" on the road, and they begin fighting amongst themselves to find such non existant "bumblenuts". Nobody had the statistics accept for the company.
And then, you begin letting them have personal information on you? How do you know that your driving is so great you're going to get any kind of a discount?
Mabye you should think that one through. Do you really want a profiteering insurance company that's mandataed by the state, of which has no moral or ethical code and is bound only by a few loose laws, to collect personal information on you? Mabye I'm being a FUD monger here, but I seriously don't think that's something anyone would want.
Gah, Eh, Uh, Bla, AURHG, *spuck*.
See that? That's me coughing up my lunch.
Ok, so LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT. Instead of paying $50, you'd rather wait 10 minute inbetween games watching ad's?
WTF?
Because that's where it's going to go. First, they'll put in billboards, and the game companies will build the games so the billboards have to be there. Or they'll replace the flag grabbing sound with some soundbyte, or random popup windows, text messages, ect. Then, they'll say "huh, that isn't justfying our advertising dollars", and they'll want more, and more, and more. Look at what netzero and juno was turned into; spyware ridden advertising spewing processor hogging hellholes of buggy shitty software.
I'm already offended when I see commericals in games and on the internet, it's like they're spitting in my face. When I see too much advertising, I get anxious, and begin thinking of tearing it down in a fit of rage. Why? Because I know it's trying to get inside of my head and make me want things I don't want, and it's there all the time, banging on the doors. These assholes read psychology books to learn how to manipulate children into being buyers for life, they read CIA manuals on torture to learn to incorporate those into their advertising in order to manipulate people. They even target children to turn them into "life buyers".
Tell ya what, go find a old documentary by the name of "the money masters". It's about 4 hours long, but I think your lack of thinking will be corrected by it. I used to believe all the rhetoric they taught us in school, but after looking at that documentary I'm a bit more convinced that bankers are behind it.
If you don't mind the download, www.suprnova.org, look for a file by the name of "good ones".
Heh, I like how you use the term radicalism. Radicalism is "we'll shoot all the p2p users" or "we'll shoot all the intellectual property lawyers". Although, it's often used to define someone who believes something against the law in our society, and somehow this is bad when totalitarian regimes exist to enslave us.
The old guys have a point; the idea of a system that rewards authors for their useful ideas is productive. However, they are outdated in their information. If the system wasn't monopolised to favor those with money, I'd agree with them wholeheartedly. But, if we allow those with the monopolies to have a stranglehold on information, our society is screwed.
Now, what I'd really like to see is the younger hackers educating the older hackers, the older hackers getting the idea, and educating the young hackers so instead of them doing stupid shit, the young and old hackers work to a smart solution. Protesting does nothing, but coding skype takes down the telcom industry. Get the idea?
It takes energy to transport materials, ya know.
Then how do you explain that the value of gold hasn't changed in thousands of years? A nice gold coin can buy you a suit and pair of shoes, and 2 thousand years ago, a nice toga and sandals.
Inflation doesn't happen because joe farmer wants more for his corn, and therefor the blacksmith charges more. No, it happens because more money is printed and it trickles out. Why was there no depressions or inflation before the federal reserve system?
Our money is worthless, it's entire value is based on the that we've got the oil countries trading with it and only in it. If they announced they'd switch to euro's, our money would be worthless overnight.
There's a very simple solution; boot the machine into safe mode every night, update, THEN run the anti spyware/antivirus apps. That way it actually removes everything.
Ahh, but where does the value of the money go? How much value did the government and banks get through the federal reserve system?
Considering they already tap the internet traffic itself, I would imagine they could do it. The problem, however, is filtering that kind of traffic in any timely matter. Telephone conversations are one thing, considering all you need is to tie into the backbone lines, transport the data, hook up some analoge to digital converters, filter for voices and identify them for data (not hard to do with the right filtering, either), do a filter for syllables and beyond that, do whatever else you want to as far as database updating and searching is conserned externally. I certianly wouldn't see them storing every telephone conversation, but I can see them creating massive databases.
Lets just say they could bring in data over the internet. First, you'd have gigabytes upon gigabytes of information, all of which is unrelated accept for the IP and TCP header information. You can tell where packets start and stop, and try to associate files with applications and thus, get some idea of what the data is, based on protocol information, but you sure as hell can't tell what the data is in any reliable manner without a massive, memory based system that could keep track of what internet applications are being run where. I can imagine some form of e-mail filtering (albiet, unreliable if someone wanted to attack it and knew the proper keywords) as well as hooking into large search engines such as google.
Anyone with a bit of technical knowledge can probably figure out where the holes are and use them. As for breaking encryption, I certainly wouldn't be suprised if they could, but it's highly unlikely they've got a bunch of genuses sitting locked up in a bunker somewhere breaking encryption algorithms for them 24/7, much less a system that can efficiently break every heavily encrypted packet that comes through. Considering the level of paranoia these gooks have about not having information, I should think that they'd be pressing for laws and equipment to favor them, but with the internet as it is today, I don't particularily see them being able effectivly spy on a whole lot of jack shit.
While we're at it, mabye we should privatise legislature, and the presidency, as well as the courts, to the eXtreme!!!1
Realistically, there are too many marbles in play right now that are big and money driven. JFK tried screwing around with them, remember the actual money he minted rather than the toy money we use today? 3 guesses why he got killed. Ahh, I'll give it to you; the american government can print off money and spend it, and banks can to (when they give a loan, they only have to have 1/9 of the amount on hand). Additionally, our money is worthless, the only reason it has value is becuase oil countries will only trade in it. Literally, we're getting a free ride. Now, you begin passing around hard currency like silver dollars or something backed up, in contract, by gold, guess what happens to the banks? Banks invest, and indirectly control corporations by forcing them to be greedy tyranical organizations. They also have lots of power considering they have money, and money, entertainingly enough, is power, especially in dire times.
Voting will do jack shit in this situation. They own all the media; airwaves, newspapers, ect. Why is the blackout of other canidates so total? Oh wait, that's right, the CEO gets a call from investors, saying they don't like bush being badmouthed on their media station. The CEO then fires anyone who talks bad about bush, or kerry, or they say "no talking about other canidates" and then kerry and bush are told if they focus on X topics, there'll be no other coverage.
So really, voting will do a whole lot of jack shit in our current situation. Lets just say nader won next election, how quickly do you think he'd dissapear, or be assassinated, or blackmailed into doing bad things?
Frankly, I see this as another way to get the government into the "save us, take away our rights". Seriously, we want them to keep our privacy secure? Ok, we'll make laws that'll effect the little guy (people moving from country to country to evade the law) but decide not to touch the big guy (sony, MS, ect) with a 10 foot pole, and if we do, it'll either be a slap on the cheek or something else. I'v been seeing a lot of that lately, and it's sad that people on slashdot don't quite get it, and even sadder that I'v talked to people who think we should cut the heads off of virus writers infront of their families (for some reason, that seems to be a popular thing).
I'm looking at this thing, and although there's plenty of room for improvising on the ATX case design and PC design in general, to make something that will play on stupid teenagers, the very idea of making a fast PC that's small and in a proprietary format is kinda disturbing. First, lets talk about cooling and power consumption; they're talking about a big fast harddisk, DDR memory, fastest Pentium-M, an radeon 9700 w/ 64 meg of memory, a TV tuner card, a NIC, a CD-R or DVD-RW+CD-RW drive, and a built in LCD. Now, by my counting you'd need about 400 watts of output to run all of that stuff with some headroom for adding in memory. IF they're using laptop parts then that's considerably less. Now, a good 400watt powersupply doesn't come small; you've got a series of BIG caps and BIG transformers in there, all of which get hot, you can do the gateway thing and have something that plugs into the computer, but even then. Then, you're talking a graphics card, pentium processor, and memory, in a small area. I'd like to know how long that can be run for without turning into a molten hip-e, heh (bad joke, heh).
.1km of cabling in my room and it's barely 6x8.
Second, the marketing is unsound. Unless you're in japan and in a room that's 4 by 4, there's plenty of room for a large case. Hell, I'v got 2 PC's (gaming and toy around, both large cases) and a router, a 19 inch moniter, a nice computer chair, and
Then, they're asking $1700 for a base model.
For $1700, I could get an aufully nice alienware machine, or a few e-machines, if I was so enclined. Or, If I were dumb, ask a geeky friend to design and build me a comp and pay them $100 to do so and get something comparable or better.
Finally, The idea of a "hip" computer for idiots is simply impracticle. Unless you're upper middle class you aren't going to go for one of these things, and if you're a teen, you certainly aren't going to blow 2 grand of your own money on a computer without consulting the geeks, and anyone who knows computers can spot this shitty deal from a mile away. Then again, never underestemate the power of advertising to arrest the common man's intellegence long enough to take their money.
So, in short, it's soon to be junk-e, ironically, just like many hippie's, heh.
Now, the idea of a all-in-one entertainment system/computer/gaming rig for under a grand, now that'll take off, which this seems to be some of. However, I'd rather see them break that down into a semi-microatx or microitx system with a lot of integrated things in a small desktop or tower.
Look, I don't give a damn how you want to raise your kid until they come to me with a bloody face or saying daddy raped me, inwhich case I get the shotgun and go start some shit. I know how I'd raise mine, and I draw my line where it becomes my business.
You don't want your kid playing games? Then take care of your own business; don't send the cost if your failure to raise your kids onto me without at least asking.
Frankly, you wouldn't have that problem if you'd spend some time raising your kids (instead of letting schools and TV do it for you) and make sure they could come to you with any problem for an explanation.
If I were an undercover agent, I wouldn't be standing ontop of the building with my face out in the open with a camera. Stand behind a window or something you bloody morons.
First, this is a few years old if I remember, mabye I'm off.
Second, many people are quick to judge the paranoia of the tin foil hat croud. Now, listen here. We've had this move to a paperless society for quite some time, at least 30 years; paperless accounting, paperless ordering, paperless mail, paperless addressing. In time, this has replaced non-paper things, and now we've got cellphone networks and VOIP networks to replace phones, Job automation to replace people. All for what? Convienience!
Now, lets say the FDA says "ok, this'll work for medical patients", because, obviously, if you find someone with no ID in a ditch, and they've got a medical RFID in them, then you can tell who they are, what their allergies are, if they're a diabetic. Ok, great application of technology. For a medical situation like in a hospital, it's invasive and people may have allergic reactions to such tags, so I don't think it'll ever go there.
Then sony decides "you know, we don't like this punch in/out system for our factory workers, and these RFID tags are incredibly cost effective at $.20 a pop. Additionally, they allow us to run an automated door access system, an automated computer access system, all without people getting angry about biometrics".
Now we've got sony, with a glowing sucess story, saying how many million they saved by going over to RFID. Now other companies begin thinking the same way, and all begin tagging. All of a sudden, banks say "hey, you know what? We can tag people for quickie cash transactions". Instead of carrying around a wallet, which can be stolen, you carry around a small implanted computer, all of which relates to a central banking system.
Law enforcement gets involved, standards and practices are put into place, centralised servers are established, and finally, in order to "combat crime", paper money is estinguished.
Now, mabye, just mabye, I'm on crack and I still have cognative skills, but that seems like a likely scenario. All that has to happen is for it to become so commonplace that a majority gets it, and the minority has to come along for the ride or be shut out of society.
#1: Europe is different than the US: most people in the US have to commute miles and miles to get to work, in europe it's different. Imagine commuting 100 miles into a city or industrialized area and then back again, every day. Additionally, europe is smaller than the US, and if you look at the european population density and compair it to the US, the US was planned out so that we'd have mass feedlot suburbs and communtes to work. Yes, public transportation can work, but we're talking on a larger scale than europe. #2: Look, the american lifestyle, the european lifestyle, the japanese lifestyle, the canadian lifestyle, all of these wasteful, toxic lifestyles need to be done away with in favor of ones that are sustainable. You can justify it any way you want because you've grown up with all these nice things, but I'v come to the realization that most people who buy into a good life are idiots and moreso, they're keeping themselves from developing as human beings. We can only throw away so much before the bell curve principle begins to kick in and we've got to go back into the dumps and begin digging stuff out. #3: No, it really can't. So long as america provides an incentive to it's, and other, companies to bribe governments and move to other countries with less stringint standards and pollute, it won't work. #4: It only seems that way because america pollutes a bunch, and if it brought itself into line with other countries, it'd lose profits. We've been under the rule of neocons for quite some time here (far too long for my taste) and their political policy is, essentially, that we're in a position to take over the world, and therefore, we shoudl enslave the rest of the worlds populace to ensure we can live the most wasteful, fake lifestyle imaginable. Therefore, they hate the kyoto protocol, becuase it doesn't go along with those plans. #5: Tell me one thing that's come out of the UN that has been good for people?
It means that the apes can kill lions. Apes usually are in groups, while lions tend to run either alone or in herds. Now, take this scenario
Lion: MMM, THAT THING IS HUGE!!! RAAAWWWRRR!!!
*lion rushes ape"
Ape: !@#!#$!@#!$!@#! EEK EEK EKK EKK
*all the other apes look*
*lion nearly tackles ape*
*lion now has 8, 6.5 foot 400 pound gorilla's pounding on it*
Then the locals walk across a bunch of gigantic ape's eating a lion's carcass.
Ahh, the perfect example of the perfect excuse that people will buy, probably thought up by a think tank no less. To say such prooves what exactly? It certainly doesn't disprove these scientists and their research, that's for sure, it simply proposes the idea that it is "probably" something else. The scenario that one doesn't cover is, what if we're right? What if our CO2 contamination, among other things we're pumping into the atmosphere, is causing global warming to occur? If these guys have hard, tangable, properly collected evidence that this is occuring, we shouldn't brush it off with "well, it's probably just the natural way our earth has been working for thousands of years, these guys are morons".
The republic of the United States of america is of the people and for the people. Why can't corporations fuck off and stop helping canidates rig elections? Both canidates are skull and bones members, distant cousons, and both canidates, to both sides' dismay and effort to get them to talk about something else, are sticking to BS topics that mean nothing. Mabye, just mabye, if they thought they could beat, then they'd let them have a few words. But then, I don't think bush's vocabulary or kerry's gargantuan capability to lie would be enough to counter half the wit of either of those candates.
At the very least, they got some press, heh.
The idea that information can be "sensative" is, within itself, requiring the trust of people on the cencorers part. In america, we, by default, do not trust those who censor information; thus the first amendment right to free speech.
It doesn't matter weither that speech leads to violence, protest, insurrection, flower hugging, mass orgies, or whatever; the right to free speech is best understood when you put it in the context of letting people say things you don't like, and respecting their right. Any right you don't let others have is a right you deny yourself.
In any case, the indymedia people were probably viewed in the same light as al-jazeera here. If you go onto suprnova.org and look in the movies, then documentaries section, then look for protesting video's I believe you can find some of their work. When I saw police using pepper spray on people en masse during a protest, unprovoked, and using other tactics to break up protests which were completly legitimate and non-violent (the protesters also placed themselves in good places, and conducted themselves politely, until the cops showed up and began harassing them) I got pretty pissed. Then there's some other stuff on Suprnova.org like alex jones's work, which is a bunch of hyped up stuff as he's trying to run a business off of being a complete nutcase. But he also has video's of people being arrested at road stops after they told them they wouldn't get out of their cars.
So now some very angry people decided to break in and destroy some republican party headquarters and scare the shit out of the people within. The FBI see's that as a loose military command; when your media sways people, you are commanding them, and when that command is bad, you must be eliminated in a non-chalant manner.
In any case, if you put up material that makes people angry, and then give them addresses of senators/representatives, guess what's going to happen? The FBI is going to consider that "inciting violence"; telling people how and where, and giving them a confincing reason to, attack. It's BS IMO, I know the representatives home address in my area, and I'd rather bake him a pizza and give him a few documents/cd's of information politely.
The FBI want us to be calm sheeple and not know the information, but they'll never be able to achieve that. Guess what? You just made their smallish-media outlet get a story on slashdot and on every other nut's webpage. Guess what people are going to do now?
In a nutshell, guerilla warfare with americans who have internet connections is a bitch, ain't it?
Wow, nice debunk; no topics, no use, just pointing out that I don't grammarcheck/spellcheck my posts and have slight dyslexia. A big F: F for FAILURE to get the point, and a FAILURE to add something meaningful to the discussion.
As for being a gaming addict; loud n' proud, but it doesn't take away from me studying or me getting out for walks (which hopefully will turn into running within a few months, heh) every night. Everyone who took salvation in videogames instead of a needle as a teenager has to get out of the videogame reality and into real reality; my solution was computers and nature walks, and learning a fscksum of skills. I still play games to relax and to sulk, and I find it's a good coping mechanism compaired to, say, beer. Even better if some guys are on Ven and we can go fuck shit up on a server. I use slashdot and essaying to give ideas form and think them out, and get people to bitch back.
Mostly, it seems to stem, in most of the addicts I'v talked to, from a combination of state run education and depression. Most techies aren't preppy, and infact most of them have had a lot of bad problems early on in life, especially with social rejection and the realization, subconsciouncly, that things were fucked and had to cope with them.
State run education comes in when it makes learning boring and monotonous compaired to videogames and TV. Really, the kids who play videogames are far better prone to be self-learners than slowed down by everyone else. Lord knows when I switched to learning on my own I started learning 3 or 4 times faster, and that's been steadily increasing over the past 2 years. Kids who watch TV just learn take what they're given and sit there until ordered to do something.
I think, mostly, it's getting them away from the games, advertising, TV and this whole screwey culture for a good 3 or 4 months. You'll notice that the kids who have no TV tend to have fewer social problems and fewer problems in life in general, namely because their identity of reality is based off of something solid. When you spend 6 hours a night watching TV, it becomes part o your reality. When you play games, likewise, it becomes a part of your reality. Gamers tend to become more dependant on their medium, namely becuase it integrates more throughly into their reality. By playing games (not shitty arcade games or football, we're talking the heavy stuff, doom, quake, evercrack, ect, games that require thought to win), you begin to understand intrinsically how a lot of things work and how to think through situations.
The last reason, I believe it happens, is becuase kids get something, psychologically, they don't get from the rest of their reality. If they have no control over their lives, then they may like playing a major RPG game or engauging in something that makes them feel important and in control. Same goes for adults. Some kids get a sense of social acceptance through the internet by playing games with other people. It can also be a heavily spirtual, if even tribal, experience where kids can hit an almost meditative, sublime minerva-type state. I know that, for quite some time, that was why I played games. It's hard to get to that high, but baby when you hit it is it ever so gooooooood (especially when you've got music pumping).
As for that article, it's truely scary. They're equating videogame addiction to crack addiction (which isn't as nearly as bad, imho, the word evercrack is satire afterall), then talking about "guides" to help parents "identify" the problem, from the sound of the article, it's the same thing with school teachers usingdugs to medicate problem kids. Really, it's about learning to like other things. When you're all consuming desire for 13 years is supposed to be slow, boring learning and sleep, games can become the number 1 thing you do. This becomes a problem, because kids just can't develop into real people like that, unless they're in a gaming clan inwhich older people usually talk to em' and help to set em' straight.
There are 3 methods of attacking an opponent with IT devices; one which denies him his communications, the other which changes those communications, and finally those that listen in on those communications. If you know yourself, and you know your enemy, you are garounteed victory. If you know yourself and not your enemy, or you know your enemy but not yourself, you have a 50% chance. Oterwise, you're screwed.
Everyone is paranoid about having their banking records stolen. Nobody is paranoid about NC blackmailing senators.
Mmmmboy, I'd bet you'll be doubly amazed if I pointed out the gigantic ball of plasma in the sky. Actually, it's not the sun, it's the universes largest heat bulb. The liberals had to scrape all of the fillament out of the moon in order to creat it.
However, that unix system was overloaded and wouldn't run on current day software. MS's reps came along, and offered the simple n' easy solution. Sure, a linux or even more recent unix application would be far superior, but far more costly (depending on how you set it up and who you ask); you spend a few grand on linux lisences, or a few grand on a guy to code a custom application for you.
Is an energetic drunk. Usually, drunk people are happy up until the point atwhich they tire out. Now, with this stuff, they can party hard all day, evening, night, morning...for a few days until they either pass out or die...