Say what? It's worse now then it was back then, including how many people are outright killed by cops. Magnitudes worse. You have no knock raids now as common, and frequently they just barge in and kill everything moving, sometimes even at the wrong address, and mostly get away with it.. Every police force from podunk on up size has black suited anonymous ski masked ninja killers squads with full military arms. You have cameras going up all over, civilian surveillence cams, you have random freekin checkpoint roadblocks,straight out of a bad grade B war spy movie,and people accept it, something we were taught as kids only bad places like east germany had, massive and pervasive government data mining that is going way beyond just flat files in actual file cabinets, spy satellites, helicopters using penetrating radar running grids over cities mapping everything, mass arrests at demos when there is no violence whatsoever, things called "free speech zones" that are just barbed wire enclosures that they 'allow" any protesters to assemble in, the complete abandonment of Posse Comitatus, government snatches and removals to camps where you can be charged in secret and held indefinetly, they are sticking RFID tracking chips in everything, including humans now, and on and on and on and on. I mean, sheesh, that crap is all real stuff!
I call the whole system much more "abusive" than it used to be and the trends are full bore brave new world styled total fascism, right around the corner.
If you can't see it...well... sorry but it's true. I guess you would have had to watch it, every year another law, another technique, another facet of command and control *over* the civilian population introduced. It's called the "slow boiling frog" technique and it's worked admirably for those people seeking it.
Glad you are so easily amused. A long time ago, in the 60's, I saw half a dozen cops beat a man to death. To *death* as in caved in body, blood everywhere, etc. They were laughing and shrieking obscentities at the crowd and asking who wanted it next, etc. Right up there in the top 10 gross things I have ever seen. Their "brothers" holding shotguns and assault rifles also surrounded the crowd (at a small to medium sized anti war demo) who were watching this, and systemtaically went through and seized any cameras (not many I saw, a few though), and also beat a few more people for sport. The guy they wasted was just someone in the front lines they picked at random, I watched the whole thing go down. And no, he wasn't throwing rocks or anything like that, no one was, at least up front where I was, it was just your typical yelling and slogan chanting action before they decided to have a little police mini riot. They never got charged with a thing as far as I could find out later. I personally took the story as far as I could, with a couple other witnesses, which was to the lieutenant governor at the time. Still no action, and it NEVER even made the news anyplace either. Couldn't find out the kids name even, cops wouldn't say and later denied that anything had happened. I'd classify it as a perfect crime they committed and the blue code of silence was part of it. Dozens of cops watched it, too, yet not a single whistleblower.
So ya, a slashdotter might be concerned over that possiblity. So..have another ghoulish chuckle, it's a freebie.
...is it really a problem that much? Isn't it more likely that people get turned on to Linux by someone handing them some disks or doing an install for them? So their first install sorta gets picked for them. maybe. I *doubt* many folks just arbitrarily one day decide to "do" linux and go over to Distrowatch. I think the various OSes there are more for folks who have already started in Linux and just want to try out various flavors then. Maybe I am wrong though, don't know. I have noticed, though,it's not like you waltz into Office Despot and see 85 whatever dozen different linux OS cds on the shelf. I don't think linux is quite there yet like ice cream flavors for the masses. Just not that common...yet..... and when it is, I doth predicteth it will be _so easy_ to roll your own custom distro to fit exactly what you want your computer to do, that that is what most folks *will* do.
How secure is this? Haven't we seen enough havoc wrought with webpages that just go off and do what they want, instead of the web page viewer human actually selecting something? How many ActiveX and JS type security risks and exploits and "surprises" will it take to sink in? Is this lesson never to be learned, or what?
Ya this sort of dynamic stuff can be used for "good", but it also most likely will be exploited for teh evil, and everyone knows it too, and joe poor web surfer will *not* know if he's hit a good or evil website until AFTER he shows up on the webpage, when it's too late. Get it? A-F-T-E-R. As in "too late", hacked, owned, screwed again.
Just like now with JS and flash and whatnot. It's bogus 'sploit du juor, or screwy looking webpages with "style" sheets that *almost* work,(they can't even get that style sheet crap down so it actually works on most sites that use it) And know they want all sorts of new and shiny programs to be automagically activated when you click over on some site? Huh???
uh huh, I bet this is real secure. And no blackhats will ever abuse it.
You can run nitromethane in your car too,get some darn impressive spiffy street effects out of it, the deal is, do you *want* to all the time, is it really a good idea?
Not trying to rain on anyone's parade, but how about this, just for something to chew on. How about making the web you got to play with NOW secure (and accessible) FIRST before you make it even more possibly IN-secure and IN-accessible unless you have broadband and a multi GHz machine with a gigs of RAM and 16 virus programs and three firewalls and block this and non pop that and..phooie. Just to surf??
It's already annoying enough the amount of web pages you click over to INSIST you have images and JS turned on in order to use or view their site and the pages are obviously meant ONLY for people with wicked almost new fast machines and high speed broadband connections. You can't even get most webmasters to do a simple basic HTML 101 useability tiny pice of code typing which is to put alt text tags on images or image links anymore,it's become a lost art, they *don't freeking care*. It's not like they don't know about it, they absolutely don't care, can't be bothered with it, and I can hear them mumbling "&*&&^^^ them turkeys". Sorry, that's already quite rude enough. Now this stuff, they are gonna run all sorts of applications over the net? Click over and WHAM your machine starts doing whatever the heck some guy you never saw thinks it should be doing?
Say WHUT? Oh boy, I can just see it now....not
Good luckski, I'll be avoiding most of those pages whenever I run across them, just like I avoid JS and flash and cookies and images including web bugs now whenever possible. Man, just turning off JS and you avoid 90% of the bogus crap on the net. I kept wondering, like for the longest time where the hell all these "popups" were everyone was kvetching about, then one day I forgot and left JS on after I absolutely had to use it to get what I wanted at this site. MAN, the web is crawling with JS crap that popups ads and stuff! I didn't even know it! thought I was just lucky or something, turns out I took some security advice to heart and IT WORKED. And to avoid it, all I did was turn it OFF, didn't have to download install a new program or whatever. That should be a clue or two I would think.
I just don't see this "new shiny" automatic web applications to last more than a little while and it will primarily be used by the same slimy guys who write and deploy all the crap viruses, trojans, adware, spyware, keyloggers, blah blah blah out there now. And no, absolutely no, I do NOT trust anyone's "assurances" about how "safe and secure" it is. We see security bugs found every day in stuff written years ago and used by millions and they still keep appearing. I'm fed up with "new shiny" crap on the web. FIX what you have FIRST please before you go off and force more crap on us. I'd be much mo
Answer is, depends on what "you" think should or shouldn't be hidden. And any two "yous" would give a different answer.
Generally speaking, they want to classify more data, and restrict it, it's been in the news a lot off and on.
You are not signed in, so I will only provide one generic example for you, the case of Sibel Edmonds. (scroll down the page or run your own search on that name) So there ya go. In this case the feds want to classify, or to re classify the testimony of one of their own-a serious whistleblower- who gave credible and detailed evidence of (some aspects thereof to be accurate) government prior knowledge to the 9-11 attacks and some other related crimes.
There's more, google, intelligently selected keywords and phrases and paying closer attention than the median-norm to the news on a *daily* basis, beyond the headlines I mean, works quite well for answering US political questions like that.
There is absolutely no need for tin foil hat isms, the US government provides all the bona fide strange conspiracies and crimes that anyone could ever use. All the evidence of "high crimes and misdemeanors" is hiding in plain sight,a huge variety, hence they are desparately trying to get a handle on that evidence, without appearing to do so, and to get it re hidden back buried down deep in the bowels of chronically and criminally corrupt bureaucracy, by more advanced obfuscation, either by outright law,agency dictate, e branch edict,or merely because "they can", and just mumble "national security"..
They got caught with their pants down by the rapid rise of the internet and the way information is able to be found, even by "the common man", so they want to stifle it. It is by the slow boiling frog technique, but the fire is lit, and the frog is sitting there enjoying the hot tub action. It's up to people who have an interest in the rapidly approaching archaic and close-to anachronistic concepts of "freedom" and "honesty" to help wake the durn frog up, and get him to abandon the heated pot of boiling "political awareness" obscurity.
If so, become a shareholder, gives you more opportunities to kvetch about matters at the shareholders meetings. Most stockholders never ever say or do anything about their holdings, and there are opportunities to explore there. You can completely bypass the normal "chain of command" then, because you are part owner.
"Security" should be of prime concern in any company, and if they are using insecure or harder to secure and more expensive software products for their business, or ignoring some obvious ways to improve matters, then that's a verylegit gripe from a shareholders POV, something to hold over the various executives there. Due dilligence and whatnot. Of course you'll need some sort of critical mass awareness with many other shareholders to make it stick, just pointing out another option to use in the workplace.
If it's a government place, good luck, even though you would think it might be better, it appears most government agencies are run by the lowest common denominator intel. I have not much advice along those lines. Private companies though, I think anyone "you" are in a better position to get changes done, as long as there is a real problem that can be pointed to, along with some solutions offered. At least you can get it on the record and other stockholders might take notice.
"Hard to tell especially when they release video of ".....
yes..yes it is, especially when this "they" people are hidden by masks and no way to tell where the surrounding turf is in detail or the actual true situation, you get to see people killed in a room someplace by masked men and that's it It is *no more* than that.. The crimes are real but who are all the perps? Are you sure you know exactly with zero doubtwho they are all the time, what their org is, what their political affiliation is, what nationality they are, what religion, what ethnicity, what country they are from and who their paymasters are? Or are you automatically assuming the press release drivel is 100% authentic? People killed, sure, but who did it and why they did it is still a question, because the real identities are not known, at least publically. We see claims made, but that's just crap without credible verification, and one thing we have learned from this war is that "claims" by this that or the other source can be quite wrong and are frequently quite misleading...yes?
Ever hear of "false flag" recruiting or a "trojan horse" gambit or the hegelian dialectic? Or even just the reality that there are a lot of mercenaries in the world who will do *anything* merely for some cash? And a whole oot of them are finding lucrative employment in Iraq, and a lot of them are coming from countries and backgrounds were "deathsquad" activity went on? And that the "coalition" employs quite a few thousands of these "gents"? Forgotten that?
wheels within wheels friend....take some of this terrorism stuff with several large handfuls of salt and always ask yourself "who profits the most" from a various action. and keep looking upstream, don't stop looking at some arbitrary point someone else insists you stop at. The "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" ruse is still alive and well.
Because IBM is an R&D and service company mostly, or it looks like they are headed that direction eventually. They can make better profit margins by just designing then licensing out the tech. By concentrating on their core missions they can maximise ROI, and leave the headaches and drudge work of mass production and marketing of consumer level stuff to some other company, and still get paid well for it. Granted, you get a higher gross income with being the manufacturer, but you get a better net income by just licensing and developing.
At least it looks that way to me, and it's following their past business model of selling off consumer level production, like they did with hard drive manufacture to Hitachi. Whether that will be a very long term smooth move I have no idea, but in the short term it's actually making them money. Profit margins at low end retail are small, they want no part of that, too clunky for them. Fabbing the chips is a different story, they need to be able to have a place to build what they R & D, so in that sense its logical for them to do that,and get that aspect subsidised by licensing and direct sales (saves them research costs long run) but after that point it's just manufacturing vacuum cleaners or blenders, they don't want to, and that's all PCs are now, just another consumer appliance.
I think for this geek hardware project you should start with some sort of PDA like hardware, or any smaller board, perhaps with an embedded linux chip. You could hit the size form factor then anyway. The other alternatives are all too big and still energy hogs, IMO. If you want small, start with small, don't start with big and try to squish it to fit, just ain't happening easy that way. How about something along the lines of a portable CD player, then have it run a live CD distro? You need a distro with small footprint in size so you can load it into ram and still have room left over, then be able to eject the CD and have the drive be back available again, sorta handy, along with USB ports for keyboard, mouse, atomic disintegrator raygun, etc.. There are several decent enough 50 meg or so size distros out now, take yer pick, or use one of the embeddeds. A lot of them are USB drive as well, so there ya go.
Anyway, just thinking along those lines. Seems like it should be possible, the MacMini is small, but not that small. All sorts of phones and pdas are little computers and are smaller than that right now. You have microdrives to play with, flash memory, etc. You don't really want to just make a glorified tiny laptop that isn't portable, you want a very small but fully functional computer,desktop equiv OR possibly portable as well,at least for some functions, so to get to small all the components have to be the "small" stuff you can buy right now. Just needs to put them together correctly, THEN build a box of designed choice around it to make it sharp looking.
That's why I think the entire "open" movement should start to go into hardware big time. Develop and sell open hardware in competition with the closed source guys. Next big thing maybe, it's a logical extension of FOSS. Yes, much harder, but we've seen some improvements in tech that are making design and manufacture easier in a lot of ways, printable circuits, etc.
Yes, I know chip fab is still very expensive, etc. Baby steps is what I mean right now.
...have anti counterfeiting provisions for paper money now. That's done with the combo of built in features in their firmware, and what's in the bills themselves. So theortically at least this would be possible to extend to other printed material. So who knows, it might come to that, various deadtree copies might have standardized watermarks at some time that flag a copy/can't copy thing in the copiers. If it can be done to "protect IP" my guess is eventually "it" -it being any sort of tech along these lines- will be done and most likely legislated into existence and acceptance, especially inside the US, because increasingly we are becoming mostly a paperwork and electron shuffling economy.
They have gotten much safer with design improvements for accidental discharge over the years. Here's one example, hammer blocks on revolvers. Used to be with revolvers it was possible to accidently drop it, the hammer might get slammed forward and the firing pin hit the primer on the cartridge. Now they have sliding steel bars/ hammer blocks that are placed between the two until such a time as the hammer is actually fully cocked back, something that requires deliberate action on the owners part,either manually in the case of a single action directly to the hammer (ie, a cowboy style revolver) or by a long trigger pull in a double action. This makes an accidental discharge very hard to do. Numerous other examples of improved tech over the years in that direction,such as grip safeties,etc. In fact I'd say just in general terms it is one of "the" safest techs out there now when it comes to the strictly mechanical features department.
Small picky point with the analogy, no biggee though.
About the only way that P2P will get legitimised fairly is if the files themselves have a voluntary and built in and pretty painless and automatic way to detect copyright license to see if it's legit or not for you to download. Some sort of peoples generic DRM that isn't developed by "the industry" but by the P2P coder guys and the swapping community. Maybe a variation on the md5 sums or along those lines.
...beyond what they do now with their corporate search engine, to take advantage of this new fiber they are buying. Perhaps they intend that corps would not only get their search features like now (that they sell), but they could possibly add content management and other features and also do it on this new fiber, a separate (mostly) very high speed network for "special clients". Call it internet 3.
OK, here's my WAG. Google needs to up revenue soon, beyond what they are doing now. They provide a ton of services, quite a few of which are really free, as ads are easily ignored.
*Maybe* they will keep the freebie version of google for the peons, then offer a "corporate enterprise class scalable google data searching and management solution" whatever buzzspeak over this new controlled-by-them backbone setup. Say one of the features might be much better content filtering, spam control, antivirus scanning of webpages offered, whatever. Perhaps different search results, more fine tuning of results, more features, etc. Charge bigbuck$ for it.
--I have some of those "gene bank" type seeds, in a way anyway. Bought several large sealed cans of various open pollinated seeds. I keep those just packed away, and use other open pollinated for my season to season garden crops. some are many years old, lost track of when I started breeding them now.. It's a "just in case" deal, and eventually I hope to be able to build a pretty large tight greenhouse with decent air filtration and airlock styled entrys for it. Just for that purpose. Cross pollination is an extreme threat though,generally speaking, as is cross species contamination (it's happened already) and just wait until they get "terminator" gene modified seeds out on the market. They were going to do it, public outcry got them to back off just a little bit and "just do research" but it's only a matter of time now before they bribe off enough legislators to get it legal to distribute.
I think it's one of the larger threats facing the planet. People think about nukes or terror attacks or whatnot, but I think mucking around with the planets food supply with GM products will eventually result in some rather nasty disasters. I simply *don't* trust those industries spokesmodel scientists to be anywhere nears truthful on the subject. IMO, they are simply too blinded by economic greed to seriously acknowledge the inherent dangers in what they are doing. We've seen the same arrogance and public assurances of "safe" with any number of past "new shiny and improved" products that turned out to be not so swift. Just generally speaking now, could be anything, thinking that just relocating species to brand new areas was a good idea (carp, english sparrows, kudzu, etc). Releasing chemcicals for various purposes, medications that turned out to be more harmful than good or had unintended side effects, etc that were missed in the "scientific testing".
I am sure they are intellectually aware of it,back to these various GM modded plants, but that itch for buckets of scratch is just too strong for them to ignore. I know they are capable of creating most anything now, and I have read some amazing claims on what they can do with them, make new medicines, etc, but still...I just don't know if *they* know way down the road how things will turn out. Here's a good analogy, well, good enough for slashdot purposes. Look at software code, people can look at it and use it for awhile and it seems fine, perfectly ok, then one day someone does something just a tad different and POOF a large vulnerability is exposed. With code (in most cases), it's not that big of a deal, it just gets fixed, but with live growing things? Wind blowing pollen around, trucks hauling stuff hither and yon...it could get messy. Look at down in Louisiana now, the last batch of hurricanes brought up a nasty disease that's spreading all through the soybeans now. Stuff happens, planetary wildcards happen. I think with "food" they should go real s-l-o-w and careful. Wouldn't bother me a bit if they studied their products for decades before even teeny tiny uber controlled trials out in the open.
As to "always be able to purchase non GM.." you should investigate what's going down in a lot of african countries and in india lately on this front. Even in Iraq, we had as thread on Iraq and farmers just a little while ago, like last month. They -monsanto they and others- are actively trying to corner "the market" there with their brands of seeds through the legislative (read:bribes) process. They are as far from playing fair as you can get. They tried to even patent a widely used Indian wheat that's been openly grown and shared around India for thousands of years, and they didn't even invent it! It's a form of wheat that lacks some markers that causes it to be not as "sticky" in baking as regular wheat, it has lower gluten content, that's where Indians get their "flat bread". Monsanto ups and patents it! Just said "ya,we own it, give us a patent" and the freekin patent office rubber stamps it! In india they are fighting it, they had to fight in in england
depending on all the factors, more of the heat is lost to colder "space" in one situation as opposed to another. We get heat from three sources, internally from the planet itself, man made burning and normal large scale surface burning (lightning strikes to forest for example), and solar radiation. The atmosphere acts as an insulating blanket and keeps it more moderate than not, but it's not a *perfect* insulator, and tiny variables cause profound changes. In one situation with the increase in greenhouse gasses-including water vapor-the heat stays trapped longer, resulting in higher over all median temps. In another, because of a higher level of reflective particles in the upper atmosphere, we have less heat gain from solar radiation, but the heat loss is about the same, so it gets colder as a median. The point in the research is that the particulate matter tends to partially cancel the effects of "more" gasses in the atmosphere, suggesting that if we over reduce just one component in the atmosphere while the others are increasing, we could actually make it worse, not better. an interesting concept that is logical though. In this case we are getting more of the gasses and reducing the particulate matter lately due to enacted controls on how we burn things on purpose, so it would tend to then again increase the median surface temp because the envelope would be receiving more heat again.
It's a dang yo yo in other words.
The effects are profound though, about all the scientists agree that even small temp variances taken as an average over some years duration tend to then cause shifts in localised/regional climate some places much colder or drier than normal, others hotter and wetter, sea levels go up and down with how much of the water vapor is trapped as sea ice or glaciers as opposed to free flowing, etc.
We as humans get used to relatively short geological time spans and adjust and adapt our society around our surroundings obviously, so if it changes radically one way or the other it can cause any number of what to us are adverse conditions.
I think the main point is that it doesn't take extreme variables to get profound changes, and that said changes can happen rapidly, more rapidly than they used to think. We are seeing it now, there is absolutely zero doubt the poles are getting warmer and the ice is melting there. And the more that melts, the faster the remaining ice will melt because of the albedo effect. That will continue until such a time as it is "too much" for the planet to absorb in that direction, and it will start to refreeze. Back and forth, been going on for millions of years, just now they think we could be real dang close to a tipping over point in this yo yo travel.
The planet seems to have a remarkable ability to self regulate towards a median, it's the swings back and forth that are the worry and the extrmes in the travels back and forth make it "less inhabitable". We as humans tend to like it better in the middle regions there, that's how we can even handle it and thrive.
We are sort of spoiled now being in the middle of a relatively temperate time as far as the needs of humans are. With the polar caps melting, this will greatly reduce the "averaging" effects and cause some pretty dramatic temp variances in places now that are considered more moderate, and those areas are where the bulk of the humans live.
I think the real main problem that we are having in these sorts of discussions is that there is no single one noun to describe it, and various people tend to pick one or the other and try to make that data fit that noun, and it can't be done.
It is *both* a global cooling and a global warming phenomenon that occurrs,simultaneously, just that the actual perceived results are felt differently depending on where anyone "you" is standing geographically. To arctic and antarctic dwellers, they are experiencing "warming", to others in the more temperate zones, it will be getting colder. And areas that are used to x-am
I remember the sunlight as being brighter decades ago. It was a "whiter" sun, now it has more yellow to it. I thought the same as you, and replied like that when we discussed this at technocrat yesterday.
It's not nuts to think about it, just an observation is all. I had thought it was part age related as well, just normal lessening of eye acuity, but I think the apparent sunlight has gotten noticeable dimmer as well. That would explain the scene/image brightness deal you remember. And the stats are there in the research, sunlight hitting the surface has lessened.
"Slowly return all licensed spectrum to a Chicago Board of Trade-like commodities exchange, trading spectrum on a second-by-second basis to entrepreneurs and businesses alike. For each trade, the government could charge a 1% fee. Let supply match demand and variable cost. "
Besides there being constant scandals and corruption with that particular entity, it makes things more expensive not cheaper.
No thanks. We saw what happens with this in the energy market. Hordes of middlemen who produce not a single erg of any sort of energy drive up the cost of energy, artificially manipulate the market, etc. All that's happened since Enron is they have learned to be slyer about it so it's not as easy to catch them. They also wind up with tons of spare cash that they then use to bribe off legislatures and high level nameless bureaucrats to make it even more profitable for them. Lather rinse repeat.
His point on the internet is valid,(although not entirely, lots of aspects the net is regulated when you look at telcos and hardware, etc) but that's because primarily the cost of entry for both producer and end user is very very low, and the method of it working is again low, entry level speaking. With over the air, the FCC is still being dinks about low power community broadcasting, where there are numerous mostly empty freqs still available. they were going to do it a few years back and WHAM it turns out a lot of interest and the affordable tech was there, so the current broadcasters (jncluding beloved "NPR") lobbied to get the law changed back to 'fatcats only". Bogus. completely bogus. they just got scared their cartel would get usurped. and they are correct, it WOULD HAVE BEEN. people are so hungry for alternatives to the expensive drivel out there they went ahead and started doing it on the net and with blogs and with shoutcast, etc, but we can't "legally" do it over the air. What crap.
So far they are leasing this so called "public" airwave in most of the spectrum to the highest bidders, and those bidders are consolidating and buying each other up, and it will invariably lead to a handful of monopolies, or a cartel "owning" the spectrum. How is joe little guy supposed to "freemarket compete" against that? anser is "they can't, and it's designed that way so tough noogies". So joe little guy would supposedly have to go to a new frequency commodites market and buy airspace THERE? double huh? It would be x-times more expensive from 'speculators" siphonming off cash, that's all, and just another avenue for sleazeballs to rake in the profits without actually doing anything the least bit productive.
The problem is, the FCC refuses to PULL licenses. We've had the same big networks for generations now monopolizing extremely lucrative slices of bandwith. Umm...why? Why should they keep getting it year after year, for what reason? They long ago lost any semblance of being anything but maximum for-profit enterprises,and perpetuate this rich ruling class horsecrap meme on people (there I said it and it's true too), yet the rules were intended way back that they had to ALSO serve a broader community interest. Don't t know about anyone else, but I can't find a major network (I will speak of OTA)-just a current for instance-that DOESN'T parrot pentagon media speak and call prisoners of war kidnap victims politically correct "detainees" or call people fighting on their own home turf against foreign invaders "insurgents". That's not balanced and it doesn't cover a lot of people opinions on this latest non declared war based on mostly lies. Yet, talking head after talking head just get "embedded" and regugitate this brave new world order newspeak with what they are more or less told to say. You can't tell me that this mass brainwashing doesn't serve to further the political aims of just "some" people and "some" corporations at the expense of others. And I can go way back and point out numerous other instances of similar. How about news shows that blatantly push bigp
.. and bug fixes I'd like to see in moz suite, no particular order.
In the Browser, the ability to have images off, and load selected images right in the page, and not have to jump back and forth to a new page with the image, from a right click menu entry. I read hundreds of news pages a day, most of the time I don't need images but I'd like to select a single image and have it load right there real time. Would be *nice*. And make the text only version of the browser in options even more so, leave images on the other server, don't want them to render, nor download if that's what I pick.
Add some freekin space to the scroll bar on the right at the bottom between the down arrow and the padlock. That little buffer is a jokeski. It's just too close together, too easy to accidently activate it when you don't want it. It's picky but that's my largest annoyance with Moz. Accidently hit that thing a lot, it's like one pixel away or something. Really lame design there and no rational reason for it.
Individual fast ways to change the referrer info, in particular I am thinking for "subscription only" news sites having the ability to ID yourself say as googlebot or something that will let you in without pesky nag screens. On a page by page or domain by domain basis, and easy to change. I mean sheesh, one million news sites now have that "you must subscribe to view content" nonsense unless you look like something like a webbot they like (and no, don't like bugmenot ideas, don't want a middleman thing involved at all), just want to stick it to those sites so they eventually give up that "me too registration" deal. 90% of the content that will be there will inevitably be reuters/ap, etc feeds or rewritten feeds anyway, so what's the dang point? I see a link to your news site and depending on the referrer tags etc I get to see it or not? Screw that,screw bad webpage design, screw the sites that think they are so overwhelmingly "special" that you will just salivate over the opportunity to subscribe to just view the content, so let me have faster more fine tuned control in the browser to fix this nuts artificially created problem, perhaps even a "save this exact config for this site" menu option, which would include cookie defaults, images, JS or No JS, page referrer and id string info, etc...
Fix mp3 live streams in the "save as" right click menu option. Been broken for awhile (unless it's fixed lately, I am a version behind to be fair). Fix it I say, fix it.
A stop button that won't hang with flash or other huge page downloads you get when you accidently click on some bogus site that is superlame and you instantly want to change your mind about things, and will really stop it right then and there if you want to. You have no way in heck to tell what's on any dang random page until AFTER you click on the link, so give me a "changed my mind" optiion that works instantly. not only stop but HELLYASTOP RIGHT NOW. A *real* stop button that makes things stop when you want them to stop, not some arbitrary time in the mysterious future. If I can get my mouse cursor over it, I want that button to activate and do what it's told.
Then a way to have a satellite laser system blast the offending bogus webpages corporate HQ with the lame page to smithereens. Uhh, well, ya..
Integrate cd/dvd burning right into the browser. that would be a cool feature methinks
another idea, a "live browser" a la knoppix like experience, where you could have the security of running a live OS from a burnt fixed disk (appended to RAM if you choose to free up the drive) without having to do the entire deal. Just the browser websurfing part. Right now it's one or the other, use a live cd, or not. I want a normal HD install with just the browser live from optical disk or ram and "much more" secure that way.
mozmail--not many probs with it, works well and seems to have enough features for me, although an eXtreme text only option would be nice, one single button to mash that makes your e
on the linked to research note reference,after first identifying one of the infected sites/downloads, he states
"On a fresh test computer, I pressed Yes once to allow the installation. My computer quickly became contaminated with the most spyware programs I have ever received in a single sitting, including at least the following 31 programs: 180solutions, Addictive Technologies, AdMilli, BargainBuddy, begin2search, BookedSpace, BullsEye, CoolWebSearch, DealHelper, DyFuca, EliteBar, Elitum, Ezula, Favoriteman, HotSearchBar, I-Lookup, Instafin, Internet Optimizer, ISTbar, Megasearch, PowerScan, ShopAtHome Select, SearchRelevancy, SideFind, TargetSavers, TrafficHog, TV Media, WebRebates, WindUpdates, Winpup32, and VX2 (DirectRevenue). (Most product names are as detected by Lavasoft Ad-Aware.) All told, the infection added 58 folders, 786 files, and an incredible 11,915 registry entries to my test computer. Not one of these programs had showed me any license agreement, nor had I consented to their installation on my computer."
$^&*((()! Frikking amazing!
man, fatcity for all the whitebox windows repair guys out there. Guaranteed job security! Hey, you California guys! Take advantage of the new antispyware laws that went into effect, a lot of loot there possibly if you follow through with complaints perhaps!
I agree, for the cost of a single military jet fighter, they could have provided thousands of "civil alert" radios and made sure each little coastal village and hamlet all got one. pre tuned to an emergency freq, automatically activated like the weather alert radios are. And it should be a transceiver, as there are now multiple reports of all the animals "sensing" the coming tsunami and heading to high ground, etc. This shouldn't be ignored, as a lot of these poorer people are basically agrarians and have grown up watching animals, are around their animals all the time or are observing the wild animals, and note their behavior. It's another form of little understood but effective "sensing" that could be reported back to a central location to act as backup to electronic sensors.
You have to wonder about nations priorities sometimes.
Here's an aside, speaking of military things. Imagine this huge wall of water coming not as a force of nature but as an actual "invasion". In this case,and in one sense, India got invaded directly across the beach over hundreds (thousands?) of miles of coastline and no one in the devastated areas knew this "invasion" was coming. Sort of makes satellites and supercomputers and so called "intelligence" agencies and whatnot seem pretty stupid when you think about it in those terms, great tech gone to waste, when it really could have been used to actually help alleviate this "invasion". Just like in the US, we allegedly have "homeland security" now-a decent concept actually, but in it's application we still get who knows how many drug smuggling planes crossing over daily, and the millions who cross the border by foot yearly, and none of our "high tech" seems to be able to help with that "security". Makes ya wonder sometimes who's driving the bus and how the heck did he get a license?
into cuba after we put jupiters with nukes into turkey and after the CIA had botched a few assassination attempts against Castro.. Not that that makes castro and russia (sovs whatever) back then nice guys or anything.
History has these picky details sometimes.
As to russia not being belligerent, they have a past history of expansionism, and also external and internal genocide, and several defectors swear that "the collapse of the soviet union" is part of a very long term strategy to lull the west into complacency. I think there's something to that, although not "all" the reasons for it.
Personally, I give it better than even odds that russia and china will launch a fairly massive and coordinated pre emptive attack on the US (and some selected targets in other nations like nuke bases/assets in the UK and France for instance) before any rational and successful anti missile shield gets put into place by the US.
Long involved subject, and eventually I think russia and china will go at each other as well, but I think this century will be the century for wars over planetary resources, because there's only "enough" for x- very small number billions of people, say 2 maybe, not 6-10 billion. Just the data that's available I think shows that to be highly probable.
java script and active x websites force people to surf randomly with that stuff turned on. Why do you want to do that? There's more than enough evidence to show that basically it's a bad idea. Your particular site might be totally innocent, but you have no guarantees about other sites, so you force users to set preferences back and forth constantly. This is the 21st century, people use tabs and multiple pages open, not just one...page....at.....a...time, and jump back and forth. JS and Active X is a *threat* in general if you do that.
I avoid sites that use javascript now, especially because rarely do they provide an alternative way to navigate inside the site, and they usually don't use alt tags on image links either. JS *works* and does all kinds of nifty cool keen stuff, but it's bad for security, you can't make it work to be good for security,so, why do it? Convenience? For whom? The visitors? No it's not it's a threat and useability flaw. And as such my personal opinion is it shouldn't be used for web pages. On your closed intranet, sure, go for it, no probs. I am just not going to keep jumping back and forth in preferences to turn it on and off. To me, telling your webpage visitor that they have to use JS just to see and use your site is absolutely no different from coding it to only "work" under one web browser. It's just too easily abused and it's insulting actually. I haven't kept track but I can asure you there's more than a few web merchants who haven't gotten my cash business because they insist on JS, and I am able to find an alternative that doesn't, so they get my money instead. Just how it goes. And Flash without an option, just click on a link then it's a 50/50 crapshoot if it will lock up your browser or not. Well, to be fair that is only one guys experience, mine.. Again, no thanks. Give me an option to click on the flash, just don't spring it on me on the homepage of some site.
..I JUST bought a DVD for the TV and a cdburner/DVD reader for my computer. Yes I know that has been out for years, I had a VHS player that sufficed and never really needed to burn media to disk, but I want to now use free software, so I got one. If you won't let me watch your paid for media on my hardware, FINE, so be it. I won't. Nor will I buy it.
Dear DVD media hardware people, Hollywood, and "musicians". I have never in my life ONE TIME ever downloaded an "illegal" piece of media or "shared" it. I've never burned a "shareware" software programmer or cheated them out of their asked for money, or even used a "pirated" version of software. I have paid as I have gone along. I have grown up with first 78s then 33's then 45s on vinyl, I purchased them. I went to your "movies" at the theater and to your live concerts. I used reel to reel to backup some of my stuff and make playlists of a sort. Then you came out with 8 track and cassettes, I bought the 8 tracks and cassettes, and VHS tapes as well, but I was able to move my 8 tracks all to cassettes because your "standard" was such a sucky failure. I was able to make an original backup of a VHS tape and play that one and not wearout the master. Then the computer age with floppies and CDs. You know what? It never annoyed me that the stuff got "obsolete" before now, because there was a way to transfer your media and "upgrade" without having to REBUY YOUR SAME SHIT OVER AND OVER AGAIN. I am NOT going to keep doing that. You have already whizzed me off enough to rarely go to the theater or to live concerts, and only occassionally do I buy pre recorded media now, but this is it, that will drop to ZERO. If you really don't want me to listen or watch your stuff or rubn your program without taking out a bank loan, then good luck to you with your new and improved "business" model. I'm only one guy, but no more of my loot to you guys.
Slashdot Mirror
Say what? It's worse now then it was back then, including how many people are outright killed by cops. Magnitudes worse. You have no knock raids now as common, and frequently they just barge in and kill everything moving, sometimes even at the wrong address, and mostly get away with it.. Every police force from podunk on up size has black suited anonymous ski masked ninja killers squads with full military arms. You have cameras going up all over, civilian surveillence cams, you have random freekin checkpoint roadblocks,straight out of a bad grade B war spy movie,and people accept it, something we were taught as kids only bad places like east germany had, massive and pervasive government data mining that is going way beyond just flat files in actual file cabinets, spy satellites, helicopters using penetrating radar running grids over cities mapping everything, mass arrests at demos when there is no violence whatsoever, things called "free speech zones" that are just barbed wire enclosures that they 'allow" any protesters to assemble in, the complete abandonment of Posse Comitatus, government snatches and removals to camps where you can be charged in secret and held indefinetly, they are sticking RFID tracking chips in everything, including humans now, and on and on and on and on. I mean, sheesh, that crap is all real stuff!
I call the whole system much more "abusive" than it used to be and the trends are full bore brave new world styled total fascism, right around the corner.
If you can't see it...well... sorry but it's true. I guess you would have had to watch it, every year another law, another technique, another facet of command and control *over* the civilian population introduced. It's called the "slow boiling frog" technique and it's worked admirably for those people seeking it.
Glad you are so easily amused. A long time ago, in the 60's, I saw half a dozen cops beat a man to death. To *death* as in caved in body, blood everywhere, etc. They were laughing and shrieking obscentities at the crowd and asking who wanted it next, etc. Right up there in the top 10 gross things I have ever seen. Their "brothers" holding shotguns and assault rifles also surrounded the crowd (at a small to medium sized anti war demo) who were watching this, and systemtaically went through and seized any cameras (not many I saw, a few though), and also beat a few more people for sport. The guy they wasted was just someone in the front lines they picked at random, I watched the whole thing go down. And no, he wasn't throwing rocks or anything like that, no one was, at least up front where I was, it was just your typical yelling and slogan chanting action before they decided to have a little police mini riot. They never got charged with a thing as far as I could find out later. I personally took the story as far as I could, with a couple other witnesses, which was to the lieutenant governor at the time. Still no action, and it NEVER even made the news anyplace either. Couldn't find out the kids name even, cops wouldn't say and later denied that anything had happened. I'd classify it as a perfect crime they committed and the blue code of silence was part of it. Dozens of cops watched it, too, yet not a single whistleblower.
So ya, a slashdotter might be concerned over that possiblity. So..have another ghoulish chuckle, it's a freebie.
...is it really a problem that much? Isn't it more likely that people get turned on to Linux by someone handing them some disks or doing an install for them? So their first install sorta gets picked for them. maybe. I *doubt* many folks just arbitrarily one day decide to "do" linux and go over to Distrowatch. I think the various OSes there are more for folks who have already started in Linux and just want to try out various flavors then. Maybe I am wrong though, don't know. I have noticed, though,it's not like you waltz into Office Despot and see 85 whatever dozen different linux OS cds on the shelf. I don't think linux is quite there yet like ice cream flavors for the masses. Just not that common...yet..... and when it is, I doth predicteth it will be _so easy_ to roll your own custom distro to fit exactly what you want your computer to do, that that is what most folks *will* do.
How secure is this? Haven't we seen enough havoc wrought with webpages that just go off and do what they want, instead of the web page viewer human actually selecting something? How many ActiveX and JS type security risks and exploits and "surprises" will it take to sink in? Is this lesson never to be learned, or what?
Ya this sort of dynamic stuff can be used for "good", but it also most likely will be exploited for teh evil, and everyone knows it too, and joe poor web surfer will *not* know if he's hit a good or evil website until AFTER he shows up on the webpage, when it's too late. Get it? A-F-T-E-R. As in "too late", hacked, owned, screwed again.
Just like now with JS and flash and whatnot. It's bogus 'sploit du juor, or screwy looking webpages with "style" sheets that *almost* work,(they can't even get that style sheet crap down so it actually works on most sites that use it) And know they want all sorts of new and shiny programs to be automagically activated when you click over on some site? Huh???
uh huh, I bet this is real secure. And no blackhats will ever abuse it.
You can run nitromethane in your car too,get some darn impressive spiffy street effects out of it, the deal is, do you *want* to all the time, is it really a good idea?
Not trying to rain on anyone's parade, but how about this, just for something to chew on. How about making the web you got to play with NOW secure (and accessible) FIRST before you make it even more possibly IN-secure and IN-accessible unless you have broadband and a multi GHz machine with a gigs of RAM and 16 virus programs and three firewalls and block this and non pop that and..phooie. Just to surf??
It's already annoying enough the amount of web pages you click over to INSIST you have images and JS turned on in order to use or view their site and the pages are obviously meant ONLY for people with wicked almost new fast machines and high speed broadband connections. You can't even get most webmasters to do a simple basic HTML 101 useability tiny pice of code typing which is to put alt text tags on images or image links anymore,it's become a lost art, they *don't freeking care*. It's not like they don't know about it, they absolutely don't care, can't be bothered with it, and I can hear them mumbling "&*&&^^^ them turkeys". Sorry, that's already quite rude enough. Now this stuff, they are gonna run all sorts of applications over the net? Click over and WHAM your machine starts doing whatever the heck some guy you never saw thinks it should be doing?
Say WHUT? Oh boy, I can just see it now....not
Good luckski, I'll be avoiding most of those pages whenever I run across them, just like I avoid JS and flash and cookies and images including web bugs now whenever possible. Man, just turning off JS and you avoid 90% of the bogus crap on the net. I kept wondering, like for the longest time where the hell all these "popups" were everyone was kvetching about, then one day I forgot and left JS on after I absolutely had to use it to get what I wanted at this site. MAN, the web is crawling with JS crap that popups ads and stuff! I didn't even know it! thought I was just lucky or something, turns out I took some security advice to heart and IT WORKED. And to avoid it, all I did was turn it OFF, didn't have to download install a new program or whatever. That should be a clue or two I would think.
I just don't see this "new shiny" automatic web applications to last more than a little while and it will primarily be used by the same slimy guys who write and deploy all the crap viruses, trojans, adware, spyware, keyloggers, blah blah blah out there now. And no, absolutely no, I do NOT trust anyone's "assurances" about how "safe and secure" it is. We see security bugs found every day in stuff written years ago and used by millions and they still keep appearing. I'm fed up with "new shiny" crap on the web. FIX what you have FIRST please before you go off and force more crap on us. I'd be much mo
"classify material that shouldn't have been?"
Answer is, depends on what "you" think should or shouldn't be hidden. And any two "yous" would give a different answer.
Generally speaking, they want to classify more data, and restrict it, it's been in the news a lot off and on.
You are not signed in, so I will only provide one generic example for you, the case of Sibel Edmonds. (scroll down the page or run your own search on that name) So there ya go. In this case the feds want to classify, or to re classify the testimony of one of their own-a serious whistleblower- who gave credible and detailed evidence of (some aspects thereof to be accurate) government prior knowledge to the 9-11 attacks and some other related crimes.
There's more, google, intelligently selected keywords and phrases and paying closer attention than the median-norm to the news on a *daily* basis, beyond the headlines I mean, works quite well for answering US political questions like that.
There is absolutely no need for tin foil hat isms, the US government provides all the bona fide strange conspiracies and crimes that anyone could ever use. All the evidence of "high crimes and misdemeanors" is hiding in plain sight,a huge variety, hence they are desparately trying to get a handle on that evidence, without appearing to do so, and to get it re hidden back buried down deep in the bowels of chronically and criminally corrupt bureaucracy, by more advanced obfuscation, either by outright law,agency dictate, e branch edict,or merely because "they can", and just mumble "national security"..
They got caught with their pants down by the rapid rise of the internet and the way information is able to be found, even by "the common man", so they want to stifle it. It is by the slow boiling frog technique, but the fire is lit, and the frog is sitting there enjoying the hot tub action. It's up to people who have an interest in the rapidly approaching archaic and close-to anachronistic concepts of "freedom" and "honesty" to help wake the durn frog up, and get him to abandon the heated pot of boiling "political awareness" obscurity.
If so, become a shareholder, gives you more opportunities to kvetch about matters at the shareholders meetings. Most stockholders never ever say or do anything about their holdings, and there are opportunities to explore there. You can completely bypass the normal "chain of command" then, because you are part owner.
"Security" should be of prime concern in any company, and if they are using insecure or harder to secure and more expensive software products for their business, or ignoring some obvious ways to improve matters, then that's a verylegit gripe from a shareholders POV, something to hold over the various executives there. Due dilligence and whatnot. Of course you'll need some sort of critical mass awareness with many other shareholders to make it stick, just pointing out another option to use in the workplace.
If it's a government place, good luck, even though you would think it might be better, it appears most government agencies are run by the lowest common denominator intel. I have not much advice along those lines. Private companies though, I think anyone "you" are in a better position to get changes done, as long as there is a real problem that can be pointed to, along with some solutions offered. At least you can get it on the record and other stockholders might take notice.
yes..yes it is, especially when this "they" people are hidden by masks and no way to tell where the surrounding turf is in detail or the actual true situation, you get to see people killed in a room someplace by masked men and that's it It is *no more* than that.. The crimes are real but who are all the perps? Are you sure you know exactly with zero doubtwho they are all the time, what their org is, what their political affiliation is, what nationality they are, what religion, what ethnicity, what country they are from and who their paymasters are? Or are you automatically assuming the press release drivel is 100% authentic? People killed, sure, but who did it and why they did it is still a question, because the real identities are not known, at least publically. We see claims made, but that's just crap without credible verification, and one thing we have learned from this war is that "claims" by this that or the other source can be quite wrong and are frequently quite misleading...yes?
Ever hear of "false flag" recruiting or a "trojan horse" gambit or the hegelian dialectic? Or even just the reality that there are a lot of mercenaries in the world who will do *anything* merely for some cash? And a whole oot of them are finding lucrative employment in Iraq, and a lot of them are coming from countries and backgrounds were "deathsquad" activity went on? And that the "coalition" employs quite a few thousands of these "gents"? Forgotten that?
wheels within wheels friend....take some of this terrorism stuff with several large handfuls of salt and always ask yourself "who profits the most" from a various action. and keep looking upstream, don't stop looking at some arbitrary point someone else insists you stop at. The "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" ruse is still alive and well.
Because IBM is an R&D and service company mostly, or it looks like they are headed that direction eventually. They can make better profit margins by just designing then licensing out the tech. By concentrating on their core missions they can maximise ROI, and leave the headaches and drudge work of mass production and marketing of consumer level stuff to some other company, and still get paid well for it. Granted, you get a higher gross income with being the manufacturer, but you get a better net income by just licensing and developing.
At least it looks that way to me, and it's following their past business model of selling off consumer level production, like they did with hard drive manufacture to Hitachi. Whether that will be a very long term smooth move I have no idea, but in the short term it's actually making them money. Profit margins at low end retail are small, they want no part of that, too clunky for them. Fabbing the chips is a different story, they need to be able to have a place to build what they R & D, so in that sense its logical for them to do that,and get that aspect subsidised by licensing and direct sales (saves them research costs long run) but after that point it's just manufacturing vacuum cleaners or blenders, they don't want to, and that's all PCs are now, just another consumer appliance.
cool, thanks! Good link, I like open tech too.
I think for this geek hardware project you should start with some sort of PDA like hardware, or any smaller board, perhaps with an embedded linux chip. You could hit the size form factor then anyway. The other alternatives are all too big and still energy hogs, IMO. If you want small, start with small, don't start with big and try to squish it to fit, just ain't happening easy that way. How about something along the lines of a portable CD player, then have it run a live CD distro? You need a distro with small footprint in size so you can load it into ram and still have room left over, then be able to eject the CD and have the drive be back available again, sorta handy, along with USB ports for keyboard, mouse, atomic disintegrator raygun, etc.. There are several decent enough 50 meg or so size distros out now, take yer pick, or use one of the embeddeds. A lot of them are USB drive as well, so there ya go.
Anyway, just thinking along those lines. Seems like it should be possible, the MacMini is small, but not that small. All sorts of phones and pdas are little computers and are smaller than that right now. You have microdrives to play with, flash memory, etc. You don't really want to just make a glorified tiny laptop that isn't portable, you want a very small but fully functional computer,desktop equiv OR possibly portable as well,at least for some functions, so to get to small all the components have to be the "small" stuff you can buy right now. Just needs to put them together correctly, THEN build a box of designed choice around it to make it sharp looking.
That's why I think the entire "open" movement should start to go into hardware big time. Develop and sell open hardware in competition with the closed source guys. Next big thing maybe, it's a logical extension of FOSS. Yes, much harder, but we've seen some improvements in tech that are making design and manufacture easier in a lot of ways, printable circuits, etc.
Yes, I know chip fab is still very expensive, etc. Baby steps is what I mean right now.
...have anti counterfeiting provisions for paper money now. That's done with the combo of built in features in their firmware, and what's in the bills themselves. So theortically at least this would be possible to extend to other printed material. So who knows, it might come to that, various deadtree copies might have standardized watermarks at some time that flag a copy/can't copy thing in the copiers. If it can be done to "protect IP" my guess is eventually "it" -it being any sort of tech along these lines- will be done and most likely legislated into existence and acceptance, especially inside the US, because increasingly we are becoming mostly a paperwork and electron shuffling economy.
They have gotten much safer with design improvements for accidental discharge over the years. Here's one example, hammer blocks on revolvers. Used to be with revolvers it was possible to accidently drop it, the hammer might get slammed forward and the firing pin hit the primer on the cartridge. Now they have sliding steel bars/ hammer blocks that are placed between the two until such a time as the hammer is actually fully cocked back, something that requires deliberate action on the owners part,either manually in the case of a single action directly to the hammer (ie, a cowboy style revolver) or by a long trigger pull in a double action. This makes an accidental discharge very hard to do. Numerous other examples of improved tech over the years in that direction,such as grip safeties,etc. In fact I'd say just in general terms it is one of "the" safest techs out there now when it comes to the strictly mechanical features department.
Small picky point with the analogy, no biggee though.
About the only way that P2P will get legitimised fairly is if the files themselves have a voluntary and built in and pretty painless and automatic way to detect copyright license to see if it's legit or not for you to download. Some sort of peoples generic DRM that isn't developed by "the industry" but by the P2P coder guys and the swapping community. Maybe a variation on the md5 sums or along those lines.
...beyond what they do now with their corporate search engine, to take advantage of this new fiber they are buying. Perhaps they intend that corps would not only get their search features like now (that they sell), but they could possibly add content management and other features and also do it on this new fiber, a separate (mostly) very high speed network for "special clients". Call it internet 3.
OK, here's my WAG. Google needs to up revenue soon, beyond what they are doing now. They provide a ton of services, quite a few of which are really free, as ads are easily ignored.
*Maybe* they will keep the freebie version of google for the peons, then offer a "corporate enterprise class scalable google data searching and management solution" whatever buzzspeak over this new controlled-by-them backbone setup. Say one of the features might be much better content filtering, spam control, antivirus scanning of webpages offered, whatever. Perhaps different search results, more fine tuning of results, more features, etc. Charge bigbuck$ for it.
--I have some of those "gene bank" type seeds, in a way anyway. Bought several large sealed cans of various open pollinated seeds. I keep those just packed away, and use other open pollinated for my season to season garden crops. some are many years old, lost track of when I started breeding them now.. It's a "just in case" deal, and eventually I hope to be able to build a pretty large tight greenhouse with decent air filtration and airlock styled entrys for it. Just for that purpose. Cross pollination is an extreme threat though,generally speaking, as is cross species contamination (it's happened already) and just wait until they get "terminator" gene modified seeds out on the market. They were going to do it, public outcry got them to back off just a little bit and "just do research" but it's only a matter of time now before they bribe off enough legislators to get it legal to distribute.
I think it's one of the larger threats facing the planet. People think about nukes or terror attacks or whatnot, but I think mucking around with the planets food supply with GM products will eventually result in some rather nasty disasters. I simply *don't* trust those industries spokesmodel scientists to be anywhere nears truthful on the subject. IMO, they are simply too blinded by economic greed to seriously acknowledge the inherent dangers in what they are doing. We've seen the same arrogance and public assurances of "safe" with any number of past "new shiny and improved" products that turned out to be not so swift. Just generally speaking now, could be anything, thinking that just relocating species to brand new areas was a good idea (carp, english sparrows, kudzu, etc). Releasing chemcicals for various purposes, medications that turned out to be more harmful than good or had unintended side effects, etc that were missed in the "scientific testing".
I am sure they are intellectually aware of it,back to these various GM modded plants, but that itch for buckets of scratch is just too strong for them to ignore. I know they are capable of creating most anything now, and I have read some amazing claims on what they can do with them, make new medicines, etc, but still...I just don't know if *they* know way down the road how things will turn out. Here's a good analogy, well, good enough for slashdot purposes. Look at software code, people can look at it and use it for awhile and it seems fine, perfectly ok, then one day someone does something just a tad different and POOF a large vulnerability is exposed. With code (in most cases), it's not that big of a deal, it just gets fixed, but with live growing things? Wind blowing pollen around, trucks hauling stuff hither and yon...it could get messy. Look at down in Louisiana now, the last batch of hurricanes brought up a nasty disease that's spreading all through the soybeans now. Stuff happens, planetary wildcards happen. I think with "food" they should go real s-l-o-w and careful. Wouldn't bother me a bit if they studied their products for decades before even teeny tiny uber controlled trials out in the open.
As to "always be able to purchase non GM.." you should investigate what's going down in a lot of african countries and in india lately on this front. Even in Iraq, we had as thread on Iraq and farmers just a little while ago, like last month. They -monsanto they and others- are actively trying to corner "the market" there with their brands of seeds through the legislative (read:bribes) process. They are as far from playing fair as you can get. They tried to even patent a widely used Indian wheat that's been openly grown and shared around India for thousands of years, and they didn't even invent it! It's a form of wheat that lacks some markers that causes it to be not as "sticky" in baking as regular wheat, it has lower gluten content, that's where Indians get their "flat bread". Monsanto ups and patents it! Just said "ya,we own it, give us a patent" and the freekin patent office rubber stamps it! In india they are fighting it, they had to fight in in england
depending on all the factors, more of the heat is lost to colder "space" in one situation as opposed to another. We get heat from three sources, internally from the planet itself, man made burning and normal large scale surface burning (lightning strikes to forest for example), and solar radiation. The atmosphere acts as an insulating blanket and keeps it more moderate than not, but it's not a *perfect* insulator, and tiny variables cause profound changes. In one situation with the increase in greenhouse gasses-including water vapor-the heat stays trapped longer, resulting in higher over all median temps. In another, because of a higher level of reflective particles in the upper atmosphere, we have less heat gain from solar radiation, but the heat loss is about the same, so it gets colder as a median. The point in the research is that the particulate matter tends to partially cancel the effects of "more" gasses in the atmosphere, suggesting that if we over reduce just one component in the atmosphere while the others are increasing, we could actually make it worse, not better. an interesting concept that is logical though. In this case we are getting more of the gasses and reducing the particulate matter lately due to enacted controls on how we burn things on purpose, so it would tend to then again increase the median surface temp because the envelope would be receiving more heat again.
It's a dang yo yo in other words.
The effects are profound though, about all the scientists agree that even small temp variances taken as an average over some years duration tend to then cause shifts in localised/regional climate some places much colder or drier than normal, others hotter and wetter, sea levels go up and down with how much of the water vapor is trapped as sea ice or glaciers as opposed to free flowing, etc.
We as humans get used to relatively short geological time spans and adjust and adapt our society around our surroundings obviously, so if it changes radically one way or the other it can cause any number of what to us are adverse conditions.
I think the main point is that it doesn't take extreme variables to get profound changes, and that said changes can happen rapidly, more rapidly than they used to think. We are seeing it now, there is absolutely zero doubt the poles are getting warmer and the ice is melting there. And the more that melts, the faster the remaining ice will melt because of the albedo effect. That will continue until such a time as it is "too much" for the planet to absorb in that direction, and it will start to refreeze. Back and forth, been going on for millions of years, just now they think we could be real dang close to a tipping over point in this yo yo travel.
The planet seems to have a remarkable ability to self regulate towards a median, it's the swings back and forth that are the worry and the extrmes in the travels back and forth make it "less inhabitable". We as humans tend to like it better in the middle regions there, that's how we can even handle it and thrive.
We are sort of spoiled now being in the middle of a relatively temperate time as far as the needs of humans are. With the polar caps melting, this will greatly reduce the "averaging" effects and cause some pretty dramatic temp variances in places now that are considered more moderate, and those areas are where the bulk of the humans live.
I think the real main problem that we are having in these sorts of discussions is that there is no single one noun to describe it, and various people tend to pick one or the other and try to make that data fit that noun, and it can't be done.
It is *both* a global cooling and a global warming phenomenon that occurrs,simultaneously, just that the actual perceived results are felt differently depending on where anyone "you" is standing geographically. To arctic and antarctic dwellers, they are experiencing "warming", to others in the more temperate zones, it will be getting colder. And areas that are used to x-am
I remember the sunlight as being brighter decades ago. It was a "whiter" sun, now it has more yellow to it. I thought the same as you, and replied like that when we discussed this at technocrat yesterday.
It's not nuts to think about it, just an observation is all. I had thought it was part age related as well, just normal lessening of eye acuity, but I think the apparent sunlight has gotten noticeable dimmer as well. That would explain the scene/image brightness deal you remember. And the stats are there in the research, sunlight hitting the surface has lessened.
..but this part sucks:
"Slowly return all licensed spectrum to a Chicago Board of Trade-like commodities exchange, trading spectrum on a second-by-second basis to entrepreneurs and businesses alike. For each trade, the government could charge a 1% fee. Let supply match demand and variable cost. "
Besides there being constant scandals and corruption with that particular entity, it makes things more expensive not cheaper.
No thanks. We saw what happens with this in the energy market. Hordes of middlemen who produce not a single erg of any sort of energy drive up the cost of energy, artificially manipulate the market, etc. All that's happened since Enron is they have learned to be slyer about it so it's not as easy to catch them. They also wind up with tons of spare cash that they then use to bribe off legislatures and high level nameless bureaucrats to make it even more profitable for them. Lather rinse repeat.
His point on the internet is valid,(although not entirely, lots of aspects the net is regulated when you look at telcos and hardware, etc) but that's because primarily the cost of entry for both producer and end user is very very low, and the method of it working is again low, entry level speaking. With over the air, the FCC is still being dinks about low power community broadcasting, where there are numerous mostly empty freqs still available. they were going to do it a few years back and WHAM it turns out a lot of interest and the affordable tech was there, so the current broadcasters (jncluding beloved "NPR") lobbied to get the law changed back to 'fatcats only". Bogus. completely bogus. they just got scared their cartel would get usurped. and they are correct, it WOULD HAVE BEEN. people are so hungry for alternatives to the expensive drivel out there they went ahead and started doing it on the net and with blogs and with shoutcast, etc, but we can't "legally" do it over the air. What crap.
So far they are leasing this so called "public" airwave in most of the spectrum to the highest bidders, and those bidders are consolidating and buying each other up, and it will invariably lead to a handful of monopolies, or a cartel "owning" the spectrum. How is joe little guy supposed to "freemarket compete" against that? anser is "they can't, and it's designed that way so tough noogies". So joe little guy would supposedly have to go to a new frequency commodites market and buy airspace THERE? double huh? It would be x-times more expensive from 'speculators" siphonming off cash, that's all, and just another avenue for sleazeballs to rake in the profits without actually doing anything the least bit productive.
The problem is, the FCC refuses to PULL licenses. We've had the same big networks for generations now monopolizing extremely lucrative slices of bandwith. Umm...why? Why should they keep getting it year after year, for what reason? They long ago lost any semblance of being anything but maximum for-profit enterprises,and perpetuate this rich ruling class horsecrap meme on people (there I said it and it's true too), yet the rules were intended way back that they had to ALSO serve a broader community interest. Don't
t know about anyone else, but I can't find a major network (I will speak of OTA)-just a current for instance-that DOESN'T parrot pentagon media speak and call prisoners of war kidnap victims politically correct "detainees" or call people fighting on their own home turf against foreign invaders "insurgents". That's not balanced and it doesn't cover a lot of people opinions on this latest non declared war based on mostly lies. Yet, talking head after talking head just get "embedded" and regugitate this brave new world order newspeak with what they are more or less told to say. You can't tell me that this mass brainwashing doesn't serve to further the political aims of just "some" people and "some" corporations at the expense of others. And I can go way back and point out numerous other instances of similar. How about news shows that blatantly push bigp
.. and bug fixes I'd like to see in moz suite, no particular order.
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In the Browser, the ability to have images off, and load selected images right in the page, and not have to jump back and forth to a new page with the image, from a right click menu entry. I read hundreds of news pages a day, most of the time I don't need images but I'd like to select a single image and have it load right there real time. Would be *nice*. And make the text only version of the browser in options even more so, leave images on the other server, don't want them to render, nor download if that's what I pick.
Add some freekin space to the scroll bar on the right at the bottom between the down arrow and the padlock. That little buffer is a jokeski. It's just too close together, too easy to accidently activate it when you don't want it. It's picky but that's my largest annoyance with Moz. Accidently hit that thing a lot, it's like one pixel away or something. Really lame design there and no rational reason for it.
Individual fast ways to change the referrer info, in particular I am thinking for "subscription only" news sites having the ability to ID yourself say as googlebot or something that will let you in without pesky nag screens. On a page by page or domain by domain basis, and easy to change. I mean sheesh, one million news sites now have that "you must subscribe to view content" nonsense unless you look like something like a webbot they like (and no, don't like bugmenot ideas, don't want a middleman thing involved at all), just want to stick it to those sites so they eventually give up that "me too registration" deal. 90% of the content that will be there will inevitably be reuters/ap, etc feeds or rewritten feeds anyway, so what's the dang point? I see a link to your news site and depending on the referrer tags etc I get to see it or not? Screw that,screw bad webpage design, screw the sites that think they are so overwhelmingly "special" that you will just salivate over the opportunity to subscribe to just view the content, so let me have faster more fine tuned control in the browser to fix this nuts artificially created problem, perhaps even a "save this exact config for this site" menu option, which would include cookie defaults, images, JS or No JS, page referrer and id string info, etc..
Fix mp3 live streams in the "save as" right click menu option. Been broken for awhile (unless it's fixed lately, I am a version behind to be fair). Fix it I say, fix it.
A stop button that won't hang with flash or other huge page downloads you get when you accidently click on some bogus site that is superlame and you instantly want to change your mind about things, and will really stop it right then and there if you want to. You have no way in heck to tell what's on any dang random page until AFTER you click on the link, so give me a "changed my mind" optiion that works instantly. not only stop but HELLYASTOP RIGHT NOW. A *real* stop button that makes things stop when you want them to stop, not some arbitrary time in the mysterious future. If I can get my mouse cursor over it, I want that button to activate and do what it's told.
Then a way to have a satellite laser system blast the offending bogus webpages corporate HQ with the lame page to smithereens. Uhh, well, ya..
Integrate cd/dvd burning right into the browser. that would be a cool feature methinks
another idea, a "live browser" a la knoppix like experience, where you could have the security of running a live OS from a burnt fixed disk (appended to RAM if you choose to free up the drive) without having to do the entire deal. Just the browser websurfing part. Right now it's one or the other, use a live cd, or not. I want a normal HD install with just the browser live from optical disk or ram and "much more" secure that way.
mozmail--not many probs with it, works well and seems to have enough features for me, although an eXtreme text only option would be nice, one single button to mash that makes your e
on the linked to research note reference,after first identifying one of the infected sites/downloads, he states
"On a fresh test computer, I pressed Yes once to allow the installation. My computer quickly became contaminated with the most spyware programs I have ever received in a single sitting, including at least the following 31 programs: 180solutions, Addictive Technologies, AdMilli, BargainBuddy, begin2search, BookedSpace, BullsEye, CoolWebSearch, DealHelper, DyFuca, EliteBar, Elitum, Ezula, Favoriteman, HotSearchBar, I-Lookup, Instafin, Internet Optimizer, ISTbar, Megasearch, PowerScan, ShopAtHome Select, SearchRelevancy, SideFind, TargetSavers, TrafficHog, TV Media, WebRebates, WindUpdates, Winpup32, and VX2 (DirectRevenue). (Most product names are as detected by Lavasoft Ad-Aware.) All told, the infection added 58 folders, 786 files, and an incredible 11,915 registry entries to my test computer. Not one of these programs had showed me any license agreement, nor had I consented to their installation on my computer."
$^&*((()! Frikking amazing!
man, fatcity for all the whitebox windows repair guys out there. Guaranteed job security! Hey, you California guys! Take advantage of the new antispyware laws that went into effect, a lot of loot there possibly if you follow through with complaints perhaps!
I agree, for the cost of a single military jet fighter, they could have provided thousands of "civil alert" radios and made sure each little coastal village and hamlet all got one. pre tuned to an emergency freq, automatically activated like the weather alert radios are. And it should be a transceiver, as there are now multiple reports of all the animals "sensing" the coming tsunami and heading to high ground, etc. This shouldn't be ignored, as a lot of these poorer people are basically agrarians and have grown up watching animals, are around their animals all the time or are observing the wild animals, and note their behavior. It's another form of little understood but effective "sensing" that could be reported back to a central location to act as backup to electronic sensors.
You have to wonder about nations priorities sometimes.
Here's an aside, speaking of military things. Imagine this huge wall of water coming not as a force of nature but as an actual "invasion". In this case,and in one sense, India got invaded directly across the beach over hundreds (thousands?) of miles of coastline and no one in the devastated areas knew this "invasion" was coming. Sort of makes satellites and supercomputers and so called "intelligence" agencies and whatnot seem pretty stupid when you think about it in those terms, great tech gone to waste, when it really could have been used to actually help alleviate this "invasion". Just like in the US, we allegedly have "homeland security" now-a decent concept actually, but in it's application we still get who knows how many drug smuggling planes crossing over daily, and the millions who cross the border by foot yearly, and none of our "high tech" seems to be able to help with that "security". Makes ya wonder sometimes who's driving the bus and how the heck did he get a license?
into cuba after we put jupiters with nukes into turkey and after the CIA had botched a few assassination attempts against Castro.. Not that that makes castro and russia (sovs whatever) back then nice guys or anything.
History has these picky details sometimes.
As to russia not being belligerent, they have a past history of expansionism, and also external and internal genocide, and several defectors swear that "the collapse of the soviet union" is part of a very long term strategy to lull the west into complacency. I think there's something to that, although not "all" the reasons for it.
Personally, I give it better than even odds that russia and china will launch a fairly massive and coordinated pre emptive attack on the US (and some selected targets in other nations like nuke bases/assets in the UK and France for instance) before any rational and successful anti missile shield gets put into place by the US.
Long involved subject, and eventually I think russia and china will go at each other as well, but I think this century will be the century for wars over planetary resources, because there's only "enough" for x- very small number billions of people, say 2 maybe, not 6-10 billion. Just the data that's available I think shows that to be highly probable.
java script and active x websites force people to surf randomly with that stuff turned on. Why do you want to do that? There's more than enough evidence to show that basically it's a bad idea. Your particular site might be totally innocent, but you have no guarantees about other sites, so you force users to set preferences back and forth constantly. This is the 21st century, people use tabs and multiple pages open, not just one...page....at .....a ...time, and jump back and forth. JS and Active X is a *threat* in general if you do that.
I avoid sites that use javascript now, especially because rarely do they provide an alternative way to navigate inside the site, and they usually don't use alt tags on image links either. JS *works* and does all kinds of nifty cool keen stuff, but it's bad for security, you can't make it work to be good for security,so, why do it? Convenience? For whom? The visitors? No it's not it's a threat and useability flaw. And as such my personal opinion is it shouldn't be used for web pages. On your closed intranet, sure, go for it, no probs. I am just not going to keep jumping back and forth in preferences to turn it on and off. To me, telling your webpage visitor that they have to use JS just to see and use your site is absolutely no different from coding it to only "work" under one web browser. It's just too easily abused and it's insulting actually. I haven't kept track but I can asure you there's more than a few web merchants who haven't gotten my cash business because they insist on JS, and I am able to find an alternative that doesn't, so they get my money instead. Just how it goes. And Flash without an option, just click on a link then it's a 50/50 crapshoot if it will lock up your browser or not. Well, to be fair that is only one guys experience, mine.. Again, no thanks. Give me an option to click on the flash, just don't spring it on me on the homepage of some site.
..I JUST bought a DVD for the TV and a cdburner/DVD reader for my computer. Yes I know that has been out for years, I had a VHS player that sufficed and never really needed to burn media to disk, but I want to now use free software, so I got one. If you won't let me watch your paid for media on my hardware, FINE, so be it. I won't. Nor will I buy it.
Dear DVD media hardware people, Hollywood, and "musicians". I have never in my life ONE TIME ever downloaded an "illegal" piece of media or "shared" it. I've never burned a "shareware" software programmer or cheated them out of their asked for money, or even used a "pirated" version of software. I have paid as I have gone along. I have grown up with first 78s then 33's then 45s on vinyl, I purchased them. I went to your "movies" at the theater and to your live concerts. I used reel to reel to backup some of my stuff and make playlists of a sort. Then you came out with 8 track and cassettes, I bought the 8 tracks and cassettes, and VHS tapes as well, but I was able to move my 8 tracks all to cassettes because your "standard" was such a sucky failure. I was able to make an original backup of a VHS tape and play that one and not wearout the master. Then the computer age with floppies and CDs. You know what? It never annoyed me that the stuff got "obsolete" before now, because there was a way to transfer your media and "upgrade" without having to REBUY YOUR SAME SHIT OVER AND OVER AGAIN. I am NOT going to keep doing that. You have already whizzed me off enough to rarely go to the theater or to live concerts, and only occassionally do I buy pre recorded media now, but this is it, that will drop to ZERO. If you really don't want me to listen or watch your stuff or rubn your program without taking out a bank loan, then good luck to you with your new and improved "business" model. I'm only one guy, but no more of my loot to you guys.