"From my perspective, if a corporation deliberately stores my personal information using a server OS that is known to have more security holes than the Moon has craters, when that info is stolen the people that made that decision should be up on charges of negligence or worse"
If it is a company you do business with, send them a letter-snail mail, registered, notarized whatever, in advance to that effect. Not a threat, just a reminder that they have alternatives, and it's in their best interest business-wise and liability-wise to look at ALL the options. then they can't claim down the road that they "didn't know". Send an identical copy to their CEO, CFO and CIO/CTO. It's a +1 bonus if you can have several people on your side with simjilar viewpoints sign it as well, all customers of theirs.
Another thing you can do is to buy stock in the company, that gives you an additional legal edge should something "go wrong", and also let's you offer suggestions and/or complain at shareholders meetings, or give you another avenue for a potential lawsuit.
that's what it will take, as in NOT fixing peoples computers for free, or just not fixing them at all and let them take them to the store and get them fixed there. If someone won't take your advice, and insists on constantly borking their box, the best thing you can do for them is to use tough love and stop being an "enabler". I'd say one time only, then if they won't learn, ta heck with them, let them figure out that maybe THEY are the problem and it's not the computers fault.
So, did your friend decide to switch, or did he just suck you for the free work then go back to his old computing habits?
In a way it is, but only tangentially, not directly. You see both methods of monetarizing and creating portable wealth have advantages and disadvantages, my way only takes mostly the advantages from both, and tends to eliminate the disadavantages. We don't have a big vault someplace stacked with gold only as the indicator of wealth, although gold would be in the mix to determine the number of dollars created, and I would like to keep the production of eagles going, just because it's constitutional(also good for balance of trade international payments), but we would still create paper dollars just like now, for normal business on top of that, same as we do now, just with a much more transparently honest and determinable amount.
What I propose is to base the supply numbers of dollars in circulation on the top 100 traded commodities in the previous year. These represent actual produced wealth the nation has accomplished. I picked 100 because it's the figure our dollar is based on, 100 penny/money units, and it's familiar. The top 100 gives us enough variety to have a good representation of what the nations business is. And I pick the "top" because that way it's evolutionary, as industries become less important -the classic buggywhips-they would fall off the list to be replaced with something else new or in growing importance which has crept up the list. I think precious metals and ordinary metals and manufactured goods and agricultural goods, etc, all have a place on the list right now. We use commodities because they are tangibles and easily quantifiable, we already have all the stats we need to determine the amount of new cash to infuse in every fiscal year (or quarter, that is an either/or deal that isn't that important).
In order to arrive at the numerical amount needed to "create new dollars", we'd have to correlate at some point,when we switched over, how many dollars are in existence at that precise time and do a proportion with that first tally of the top one hundred commodities, that gives us a baseline to start with for the ratio, and we can then freeze unregulated over-inflation at that point safely. I would think also at that time we should do a one time payout on accumulated indebtedness, just get it over with and start fresh. The new dollars from that point onward then are what are used to fund government and get the new dollars out into the wild into circulation, following federal government expenditures as they are now or as we have to address them as we go to a "pay as you go" governmental funding system, which is critical to make this work. Any surplus new created dollars can be used for governmental low interest loans,say student or first time home ownership-whatever- or for additional infrastructure requirements on top of any normal maintenance. We should also insure that adeqaute working capital is used to fund pensions, social security, etc, all the debt we have accumulated, but start to work towards not having a necessity for going into debt in the first place. some of government can also be funded with precise excise taxes which are lawful, and at that border, with a "quid pro quo" tariff structure which we set up so that the OTHER trading nation sets the rates, we match them exactly, so it is in their best interest to keep them sane and affordable. We no longer have to "fight" over tariffs, because it's all based on the other guys numbers they want to set. They want 30% on our goods, swell, we do 30% on theirs. They want 0%, swell, we do 0. And balance of trade payments with other nations have to be made in tradeable commodites, to be determoned by current market fair value, based on our dollar that quarter. That will help insure that people are not overly exploited in other nations or bvy transnationals, because as much as they seek to exploit to unfair advantage, they would probably have to make up for "in kind" anyway, so it would be in their best interest to be more fair and honest about things and work smarter, not harder or by using exploitative techniques.
Yes, I know Feather is a live Cd, it's hard drive installable though, and only 64 megs total size default. It runs well on my older machines, but I want something even better, something that will run with some sort of GUI with as little as 16 megs RAM, which some of my older pentium 1's have. I have found with various experimentation that total RAM is way more important than processor speed. I run a 200PP as my main machine, because it has the most RAM of my boxes, and it is running full bloaterized FedoraC2 just fine. When I was first using it with factory supplied dismal level RAM at 32 megs it just plain wouldn't run GUI linux very well, but after I added an additional two sticks one of 64 and one of 128 megs, THEN it worked well.
but...still interested in finding something really decent to make these old machines functional, so I can give them away without sticking 95 or 98 on them.
It is bad because it will cause temp extremes, we will lose the moderating effect that the frozen poles and ocean currents cause. You see, as the poles melt off their ice, they dump huge quantities of ice cold fresh water into the salty seas. These hit ocean currents like the gulf stream and japanese current, which bring heat to the northern latitudes, moderating the cold. When this new and huge qwuantity of ice cold fresh water hit the currents, they slow them down, and depending on how much ice melts, they could almost stop. What happens then is the lower atlantic and gulf regions get really hot and stay hot,which means there's a lot more hurricanes and probably way too much rain in the south east,along with more tornadoes, and the northern regions of North America on the east coast and northern europe will get REALLY cold and stay cold longer in the season.
There's other stuff that will happen, the ocean currents keep things stirred up and are an important part of ocean animals life cycles, so it will mess with the food supply there as well as on land.
Just think, to make it easier, where humans mostly live now, in what we call the temperate zones, the normally warmer areas now will get much hotter, and the cooler areas will get much colder, as in ice age style action.
No, we don't know the time limits on this happening, and we don't know exactly when and where a tipping over point might be, but it's happened in the past over and over again.
So it IS cyclical, but some scientists think that it can also be partially induced by human activity with burning fuels. ( I don't see how it couldn't really) So, I tend to agree it is from *both methods*, not one or the other. We are also at a solar activity maximum point which is thousands of years cyclical, so we have that as well to contend with.
Could get real interesting quickly, might take a hundred years or something, so ya gotta ask yourself..feeling lucky?
--the problem is, we have a situation where about a half a dozen or so transnational corporations owz0rz "the big media" in the US. They let it be known right on down their news food chain what is appropriate and what isn't to cover, and how to do it. They have already been flooded with emails and snail mails and faxes and phone calls on any number of issues, and this goes way way back.
You have to look at those lofty economic levels for any change, because so far, they seem to dig what is going on. Perhaps they profit from it as well?
And people like to dfismiss it, but I'll throw it out anyway because it IS relevant,. You have to look at large semi secret megapower "groups" for what global policy will be, because they call the shots WAY more than national elections do, in the US, and in a lot of other nations as well. Groups like the Bilderbergers for instance.
I find it *amusing* that something like any random WTO meeting can have a ton of demonstrations around it, and a lot of international press coverage, yet something even more important like a global power elite bilderberger meeting is almost unnoticed, either by mainstream press and even in the alternative press and protest "community". It is very telling to me.
I think it can be displayed so even the pointest headed boss can understand it.
Stop thinking for a moment it's software, and imagine it's a product for sale, just like anything else.
Here's an example
Amalgamated Bicycles -- 100$, comes with flats fixed and chain oiled
Acme Bicycles -- 0$ and do your own maintenance or flats fixed and chain oiled -- 10$
What is going to win the bicycle market in the long run, given that both are bicycles of at least rough equal "value" to the pedaling consumer, they both work, go from point A to B? What would the "market" pundits say if it was another product with similar criteria?
funny coincidence with your sig and this article and thread. An episode of "the Prisoner" was the first "video" I ever saw being copied for sharing/timeshifting/what have you. Way before home VCRs of course. Guy I know had a super 8 cam and a tripod. A few of us locals were all sci fi nerds and would meet at each others homes for discussions, etc,we called them "cons" but really just like a dozen folks or something like that, anyway usually we would time them so that we could all enjoy something off the TV. He setup his cam and framed the toob and made a copy, don't recall how many reels of film it took, but he got the whole show, and after it was developed we watched it again. It was at best passable, by todays standards dismal, but all of us went WAY COOL!
and I'll repeat it. Back when we mostly manufactured all of our own consumer products, we had a better economy by all benchmarks. I don't know what fantasy site you are getting your figures from, but we are running massive deficits. If your way worked, we would be rolling in the dough, we would have surplusses spilling out of bags all over, and I sure don't see them, WHERE are they? Got a link? Get it yet? If it "worked" we would be running near equal, but it hasn't worked as advertised, it was a scam, all we have done is switched to a credit economy, and eventually the credit runs out and we are darn close now. We not only had a better economy, WE werein a position to be the global leader in issuing credit to others, now it's reversed, we are in DEBT to others to the tune of trillions of dollars. It's more than a billion dollars a day in credit we have to beg for realistically, and promise our childrens and grandchildrens future labor on it as the collateral, and that's only possible if they have jobs, and good jobs that actually pay more than what is required for normal existence. That's nuts! It's obscene! there's your great results of the great experiment! Black and white figures, go look at them! It has exactly paralleled the explosion in imports and then outsourcing jobs throughout the economy. Less families have full benefits now, not more. If you can prove otherwise, let's see it. Average personal debt is higher, along with our national debt. If you can prove otherwise, let's see it. Average personal savings are lower, much lower. If you can prove otherwise, let's see it. Bankruptcies are at a 30 year high, along with foreclosures. People now are taking out second mortgages just to pay the bills. I mean, I just got a "second line of credit, home equity" offer from my bank today for a quartermillion. How the heck is someone supposed to pay off their first mortgage and bills if they take out a second one for another 1/4 million and then pay interest on top of that, why would they need to? Magic fairy dust money? With what job guarantee, what income guaranty? And people are TAKING those kinds of offers because they are in quiet panic mode now, because they no longer can afford much UNLESS it's with credit. People are getting smacked uplong side the head with bill paying reality now, so what do they do? go into denial and take out whopper second mortgages. that's cuckoo! Mortgages themselves have ballooned, like I said, it used to be ten years was common, because it was quite doable to pay them off in that time frame, now 30 years are the most common AFAIK, and they have now started issuing 40 year mortgages. 40 years! Un precedented! Nothing ever like it! Car notes WERE 12 months or 18 months, not 60 or 72 months, and that's because it was easy to pay it off in that time frame with a joe average middle class blue collar job. One of those incomes was more than adequate to pay the bills,support a full family more than adequately, now most households have to have two incomes to barely stay above water. This is just economic reality history. Yes, that is what it was like back when we exported stuff because we made stuff. And way back then, we didn't buy foreign made cars as much, and the parts that went into the cars were all made here, in US machine shops. Tvs, radios, you name it, all made here, and all still affordable, AND the workers got paid reasonably well. And we all "afforded" what was for sale in the stores for smaller items.
Sorry, try as you might, you cannot make me dis remember how it used to be. And many economists, the contrarians, warned back then that switching to a service economy and outsourcing was a short sighted idea, precisely because you can't outsource normal cost of living at the same time, some things are fixed in what they cost a lot more than others, and those are the important things, "the bills". A US worker cannot compete very well when his rival has only 1/10th the living costs, I don't care how well they automate it,
"I get an absolute kick out of you RAH RAH RAH buy USA people. because you do not do what you preach, you would have to be a billionare to do so."
Yes, NOW, if you re read it I said it used to be that you didn't. And prices dropped on new things once the manufacturing got ramped up to a sufficient level, exactly like it is now, just we did it with most things when we wanted them. Admit it, you personally have no frame of reference to remember when it was possible to buy almost all american made with just a modest income level, do you? To you it's just quaint theory, you don't even think it's possible because you've never seen it working. Am I right, you've only grown up since the economy changed drastically?
Home mortgages were ten years max and a car loan was 12 or 18 months. And other prices were along those lines for domestically made manufactured goods, and it's because we did, in fact, make the stuff here and pay the middle class to do it adequately, and because the dollar shifted around from neighbor to neighbor inside the nation a lot more instead of immediately getting shipped out of the country. It improved the economy more efficiently. It worked, that's just raw past historical data, it is not merely opinion, it's the facts. Go back and look, 25 years ago or so and before the US was the worlds largest creditor nation, now we are the worlds largest debtor nation. This is the same exact time frame where we stopped making things. This is NOT a coincidence, it's the cause and effect in action. We had a higher savings rate, prices were still affordable on your normal consumer items, but they decided to change that,the millionaires decided they needed to be billionaires, so they got up this scheme to offer cheaper trinkets, knowing that it would eventually bork, but they would be set for life then, and it worked, for them. We are right now starting to see the delayed effects of those economic decisions. We have less people with full employment, less families with full benefits packages, much higher rates of indebtedness, etc. And a lot of people tried to stop it to little avail, that I will admit.
Nothing against "trade", people just wanted fair trade and to not dramatically change what we had that was successfully working. We threw the baby out with the bathwater is the old expression.
Them chickens with the way they have borked the economy ARE going to eventually come home and roost sometime. Get thee to the economy pages and start reading about the reality of what is happening right now as opposed to the globalist shills spinoganda. You simply cannot borrow forever and expect it to keep working. And you also can't keep piling up the police state apparatus, until eventually you have to admit that yes, in fact, you've created a police state.
And to get to the REAL issue of the article, the toy has the word CUBE in it. BIG DEAL, I thought that part was obvious, I guess it wasn't so I'l line it out here with a clear example. Go to the grocery store, look at the soda section, quite a few cans with the word "cola" stamped on them,yes? But as long as they don't say "coca" in front of it it's LEGAL. LEGAL, GET IT? Saying "magic CUBE" is not a trademark infringement either then. That woman got scared, frightened, terrorised into removing the product, because the cops of whatever federal agency you want to call them now are MORONS and cheap hired gun muscle boy bullys. All they do is sieg heil and follow orders, can't think for themselves even to this basic level. They used police state scare tactics because they can and it's encouraged now.
once in a while I think about it, but nope, couldn't afford it at this time. As to just buying one, I got so many computers now getting yet again another one is not on the top of the must have pile right now.
I know you are razzing me but thought I'd answer truthfully.
...tha's just wrong. Completely absolutely wrong. I distinctly remember when we had a great, viable economy, a GOOD one, BEFORE almost everything was imported. BEFORE. When any random Joe Normal blue collar job was enough for a house and a car and a flock of kids and benefits and vacations and savings. Not even a high paid white collar, just a normal middle of the road blue collar, and yes, it might even have been making inexpensive toys. Just because you don't remember it doesn't mean it didn't exist. They not only could inspect the containers, they could change the laws back to where the bulk of the containers were going OUT like they used to be when we had a REAL economy that wasn't skewed towards the globalist elite millionaire crowd and calling massive debt, deficits and credit a "strong economy".
That "not be able to inspect" the containers jazz is a load, OF COURSE they could if they wanted to, they don't want to. They manage to "inspect" 80 year old ladies and crippled vets in wheelchairs at the airport. They manage to "inspect" a heap of countries over yonder, to the tune of billions of dollars a WEEK using hundreds of thousands of dudes, some of them making in excess of 600$ a day to just tote a rifle. The "war on terrorism" is a complete fraud. It's war to terrorise americans,oh, that's true, that's really true, but it's being waged by the government, and this article proved it in yet again another small way.
You had to watch it grow ever since the 60s to see it,but it's been creeping incrementalism, and a lot of folks have been warning about it for years. The past few years they have hit the nitrous button, that's the only difference. And they show no sign of relenting, or rolling anything back for that matter, just ever onward. And people have been eating it and sucking it up every step of the way. Can't look at a news site anymore without seeing more and more evidence of it. A FAN at a baseball game shot and killed by getting hit in ther eye with a riot paintball pellet? Huh? Random "courtesy" checkpoints? Huh? Cameras all over staring at you? Huh? Even that name "Homeland Security" WHAT WW2 B war movie did they drag that from? What is all this crap BUT big brotherism and state terrorism?
The goons have proven it, the slow boiling frog, most people will just slurp it down, excuse it, make believe they aren't seeing or hearing what they are seeing or hearing, every step of the way.
this stuff exists in every field, not just white collar office work
this is me, 30 years ago, talking to my boss, farmer smith (no lie, his name really is smith)
"yo, check this stuff out! alternate energy, cool stuff! You get free electricity, you get more from your crops, keep your cash, don't ship it to bigagco! Composting! Methane digesters! solar PV panels!," and etc etc
PHB farmer smith to me -> "dumbass hippie, if that stuff was so good, why aren't THEY doing it, huh? Huh? huh? Now get back to work...."
Flash fast forward to NOW, back working on BIGFARM, INC
This farm I'm on has three WHOPPER HUMONGOUS composting barns, designed for commercial scale composting of chicken litter. Not only is it better for the fields, but now with a big hammermill and some slick packaging, he can sell this stuff for a nice premium to upscale landscapers, and etc. Then, just last night joe farmer boss here gives me his used industry magazines, so I am checking them out in the executive library, cruise to the classifieds, always a interesting place to look... what do I see? BUY THESE SOLAR PANELS, RUN YOUR FARM ON THEM, PUMP WATER, RUN THE LIGHTS, RUN THE FANS! and etc. Next page ACME GIANT WINDMILL GENERATORS 4 SALE! TASTES GREAT, LESS FILLING! FREE ELECTROJUICE! and etc....Next page GROW ALTERNATIVE CROPS IN THESE SOLAR GREENHOUSES, EXPAND YOUR MARKET..."
on and on, amazing. The stuff I was pushing so long ago has hit mainstream with the dudes who resisted it the most, who made a career out of complaining and working hard instead of smart, because "they weren't doing it".
Ever like to just SLAP this "they" guy??
PHB don't believe it until their peers are doing it. Whether it's a white collar CEO at the golf course bragging on his new technology he just got, or a stained-collar "boss of the fields", or any place in between,it's a catch 22, usually it takes one oddball "boss" action dood with serious cred in their field to break the ice, THEN it might happen. The problem is to find the oddball willing to pony up the chutzpah and the cash to make the plunge. Sometimes it takes a LONG time though...
but ya, names.....best advice is cool it on the weird names, PHBs don't get weird names unless THEY think of them.
That's three tractor trailer loads, tops, two if they really loaded it up. Not really a problem or a huge convoy needed. Coupla forklifts, an hour, loaded, vamoose. It's not like they would have needed this huge number of trucks or that it would have been anything of note from sat pics. If they did use smaller trucks, it was for a larger reason, best guess is overland travel off the roads, and also a more widely dispersed cache, ie, different destinations. Plus, it would have been safer.
With that said, I think saddam would have been nuts to not hedge his bets and move some stuff out way before the war, and syria would have been his safest bet. He had plenty of notice. Every other nation of note does it, store war materiel outside their borders, it's called pre positioned supplies, it's quite common really. The US has done it almost forever, and we still do.
And with THAT said I still don't see him as being a threat to the US before the invasion. A threat to Israel, yes, to the US, no. And I don't think he was a good guy, but I can think of several regimes more deserving of change than his was.
I think war should be last resort, then if decided upon, actually declared and fought to win. What we have now is just organized mass looting, caged inside of a lot of jingoistic rhetoric and half-truths. It was planned in advance, the PNAC docs show this. 9-11 was the excuse they needed, the "pearl harbor like event" they planned to use for an invasion into the middle east.
..for one upgrade (or change to keep it neutral) going from all MS to all Linux is probably pretty spendy. After that though,when you will want to continue upgrading, I would imagine it drops in price significantly, then stays cheaper forever. See, Balmer wants to keep business locked into that short sightedness, because at least he understands long term view, but he doesn't want other companies to honestly think that way, when it comes to what he has to sell. It is in his best intertest to be disingenuous on the topic. As in, do what I say, not what I do.
American business (I am generalizing now of course, but I think it is more accurate than not) seems to take short historical future progression extrapolations, this is called the "this quarter mentality". I think it would be more prudent to look at ten, twenty years or more in the future as well as just next year or next quarter.
CEOs that are only in it for a few years and want to cash out with as much as possible (seems like most of them doesn't it?) do more harm than good to corporations, and we can see that happening in the news all the time. And in order to get there, they do things that look fantastically good for the shareholders in the short term, so they get a free ride on their decisions, then when a WHOOPS happens, a lot of monday morning quarterbacking and lawsuits happen, and Joe CEO is long gone to Aruba with his golden parachute bundle..
And the weird thing is, you can see it happen over and over again, yet it continues, it's like the shareholding public refuses to learn any constructive lessons from the past.
see also: shafting your potential customer base by overly outsourcing still useful jobs, then wondering why your sales keep falling. One company doing that, eh, the domestic economy can handle it, almost all of them doing it, well, check out the business news lately to see what happens. Now creating additional jobs overseas is not harmful, but shifting the same job is if you want to maintain your domestic level of employment and the cash that is in the middle class pool, which by far is the most important one in most economies.
--your money is already inflationary bent, as it is created artificially. The poroblem with paying government workers, then takin some of it back should be obvious, just pay them directly. Where else do you think the money originally came from? You control inflation like I outlined, we already accumulate and collect all the business and productivity stats necessary. We create money based on produced wealth, but no more. We can only spend what we actually have, we can't produce more than what we can pay. the way it's done now is HUGELY inflationary, so I can't see where anyone would say my method is somehow worse.
My idea takes all this into consideration, it just ends the loansharking and middleman skimming and onerous laws aspects of it into consideration. And it also introduces a way to actually quantifiably issue the correct amount of money, that is neither inflationary nor deflationary, because it's based on produced wealth, something that can be accurately measured. How they do it now is to try and guess or manipulate what they think might happen. This is a square peg in a round hole, and why you see the Fed always fiddling with the prime. Under my system, it wouldn't be necessary, or even warranted, because the amount to be increased into circulation would in fact be based on what actually *exists* and was produced.
And if we run out of all stuff, your raw resources,so that no tangible business can be conducted..well.. the last thing you'll have to worry about is the form of "money" in your wallet or what taxes you might owe or how the government is run. No business at all, no natural resources at all = end of planet earth.
Really, the only way to really understand this is to "get it" that the money is completely artificial already, it IS that way already, what I propose is not new, just a different way of doing the same thing, introducing a lot more fairness and honesty and efficiency and responsible frugality. In fact, the way they do it now is just official counterfeit. It literally is printed up directly (or data entries) or is filtered through a one two or three step process with governmental paper products (bonds, treasuries, etc) which are future promises to work and actually produce something so that can result in payment. My idea makes the money worth something because it represents previously produced wealth from the last fiscal reporting period, a year or a quarter, that really doesn't matter, taken as an addition to all that has been produced before, but no more than that. The money we use today is based on future promises, they are IOUs with an incredibly enlarging "doubt" attached to them. And there is no rational "need" for it.
There was a need way way back when all money was hard metals backed, congress is authorised to "borrow" money, they had to pass a completely different law - the Federal Reserve Act- in order to let some private corporation create money that was backed by nothing more than new private bookeeping entries internal to their corporation, and then "borrow" that from them. Just make believe the dang name is changed, think it was called general motors money. Would it be weird to let general motors manufacture the money and profit from it? It's the same dang thing, the federal reserve is just a corporate name they concocted to sound official. It is not federal, and there is no reserve. Federal express, are they the offical transportation agency? Nope, just got federal in their name. They had to literally sneak pass that thing late at night with only a few reps and senators present, it is an interesting story, google for the creation of the Federal Reserve. Get the real background to it. It's fascinating to see how a few wealthy people were able to literally steal a nations monetary system and profit immensely from it to this day. Quite fascinating if you like crime dramas. These are bona fide named humans who's progeny to this day continually profit from it, they make bill gates look like
--there is an easy way. Treat emails just like telephone numbers or street addresses. Don't recognize any emails that aren't connected to a verifiable human being. have them be registered exactly like domains, pay 10 or 20$ per email addy.
It's that, or put up with various schemes so that anyone can create as many email addys as they want to, which is what we have now. This is fish or cut bait time, we either like having access to unlimited email with as many names as we choose, or we do not. What we have now is cart before the horse action, though, and I'm not sure how many people want to give up anonymity and their ability to create as many email addys as they want to effortlessly on the net just to have verified email addresses.
I've read the various rube goldberg authentication schemes, none of them address the problem of tying a verifiable individual named human being to an individual email address in total. At best they would "verify" a still easy to be anonymous and thereby a gooberhead if you want to be "person" on the net. Even with domain registration the way it is now badguys can get them and still do bogus stuff and hide their identity. So even if all email addys were registered we would STILL have badguys getting them. Maybe not as many, but it would still be possible.
Now if there is some magical protocol that would allow you to be both anonymous but still identified, I'd like to see it, because you could write it up in physics journals, because in the past it was one or the other. If you mean some "authority" could identify you, then you have to deal with official corruption, which exists in every nation on the planet. Badguys would just buy off the appropriate person to do e-vile,to get into or around or through the new and improved "system", same as they do now with smuggling across borders for instance.
So, I don't see an easy answer to this, other than to just deal with things of this nature immediately and rationally, not make a huge deal out of it, if you get threatened with an extortion attempt, immediately make it as public as possible and turn the threat emails over to the authorities. Post the threats on your website so that any user could see that you are innocent, let them decide if a legit business would send them child porn or other malwares of any nature on purpose. If you hide the threat, then the badguy follows through, then you not only have to admit it happened, but play catch up and have a doubly hard time convincing your clientele that you are innocent.
Best bet to dry up slime is to expose it to sunlight.
Hmm, geography as a dumb american, I'll give it a stab as I R 1.
Chuck Taylor = Liberia, an artificially created nation in Africa that served as a repository for returned slaves from america. Plenty of civil war action there, natch. It is always more productive to kill people and break things than it is to work. See also, tribalism, greed, ignorance
Zimbabwe, formely Rhodesia, currently under one man one party and only one vote that counts, heh, headed up by Robert Mugabwe, who had his "veterans", many of whom weren't even born during their civil war, wipe out the opposition political parties and folks of any color, and most of the farmers, killing many of them. Most of the still alive and reasonably clueful farmers noticed this and despite it being an economic loss for them, decided to cut tothe chase and relocate,to mozambique (which is welcoming them because they still understand "food = good idea", or south africa or the US or australia, the ones left are an endangered species. Mugabe is embarrassing even to other despots. See also kim ill dung
South Africa, currently doing the same thing to it's farmers, but not getting much international press because it is even more embarrassing since the ANC takeover has given the multiculturists little to brag on since it's obviously the same old stealth genocide they've always had there is now up and running. See also manipulated media
USA, strange grouping of allegedly 50 soverign nations that are supposed to be a cooperative "union" -hence "united" in the name, for extremely limited and equistely detailed economic and self defense purposes on paper, but in reality is run as a serious top down police state, headquartered in a completely artificially maintained "district" where about every penny starts out as stolen, then it goers down hill from there. Currently run by a cartel of two cooperating political gangs who maintain an illusion of "diversness and choice", but in fact are a junta and seized power and use that power to keep themselves rolling in the pork. They are currently running a candidate for president who apparently has two different faces and two different names,a very good media photoshop effort, but who is in reality a single spoiled never had to work a day in his life Yale upper crust skull and bones frat boy, who every other statement in the press tries to convince the public that he's just a good ole boy, just like them, and really knows what's best, so please pick him to make all the decisions. He even rolls up his shirt sleeves once in awhile for photo ops, proving without a doubt that he is just a good ole boy.
How did I do?
Besides my spelun and grammer, which I know can sucketh bad at times. I think I got the geography quiz fairly close.
...in who owns the worlds fastest. I would bet this is the worlds fastest *publically admitted-to* supercomputer. Now, let's remove one A and contemplate what NSA instead of NASA has running someplace...
--if he left the keys in it, it's a distinct possibility, depending on some other circumstances. If the car thief had to jimmy the lock or hotwire it, no. The owner made a reasonable effort, leaving the keys in is not a reasonable effort. And speaking as an ex insurance agent (long time ago but I was for about a year and change), I will assure you that leaving the keys in the car gets looked at pretty closely should you be forced to make a claim. The keys and locks exist for a reason, they assume you are a responsible adult, they expect you to act like one when you presented yourself to them for coverage. If the cops would make that charge I don't know, they certainly would rag on the owner though for being a lamer at a minimum. They *would* probably look at them as being an accessory, because the story would sound fishy to them. Anyway, that's not a good example of what I am talking about, a good example is like having a porch with a busted railing, you can see it's busted, and you know people come over, eventually someone falls off. You can't claim stoopid then. Backyard deep swimming pool with no decent fence, some little kid falls in. Sorry, you needed a fence. You run a business like a motel and you know you got scurvy people in and out of the rooms all the time, eventually the cops will shut you down and charge YOU for that. Lotsa precedent out there on an attractive nuisance.
If you think an attractive nuisance is vapor ware, just google for it, it's a REAL thing that people get charged with and LOSE on in court. It's the ultimate anti lamer law. It's based on "you really should have known better", and when it comes to the net, in this day and age, anyone should know better, yes, even your aunt tillie. If she really is incapable of using the net wisely, they make web tvs that will allow pretty safe and functional surfing, get aunt tillie off a full featured PC then.
It's one avenue I haven't seen used in the fight against internet craphack spam and virus and trojan pollution,and crime, and I think it should be looked at, precisely *because* we have a legal precedent for it in meatspace, and it goes way way back..
Sorry, this is 2004, not naieve innocent semi friendly 1994, adults should be aware by now that being on the internet involves some responsible actions being taken by them personally. That excuse "they didn't know" was OK for a few years, but now it's a coverup for "I really can't be bothered". Yes, I DO think they are at least partially responsible for getting owned now, and then their box gets used in actual crimes. And yes, if it was me, then tough noogies for me, too. I make a serious effort to be responsible for my net connection, I don't take things for granted. I've met too many people who honestly are aware, but they will NOT make an effort to do anything but the minimum, which is use a default install of borgware and then become part of the problem within a few minutes. I know it, you know it, everyone knows it, so lets don't dance around it, lets just admit that it exists, k? It's more important for them to forward spyware laden jokes than to run minimum security upgrades. It's more important for them to spend hours on IM, and less than 5 seconds on making intelligent choices in their software and how it's configured, or to add some after market third party apps that actually make their OS functionally secure to some sort of minimum standard beyond "zero". Sorry, no more sympathy from me. I USED to be sympathetic, but not anymore, not when security and the internet is a regular staple even on the bland plain vanilla nightly news.
...let me know when you are offering it in north_cow_flop georgia where I live. I do know that hecksouth has fiber to the nearest box, which is 2.75 miles from my abode....and they have NO plans evah to bring it any place else down these parts, from what I was told when I asked them. 40$/month you would have my business, cash in advance. Let me see, that should only take you around two decades for a ROI probably...../me admits to capitalist reality..
..that hasn't been used yet against zombies. In meatspace it's called "maintaining an attractive nuisance". You don't get a get out of it with a free pass card by claiming stupid or "you didn't know", it's just tough charlie for you.. Lots of precedent out there.
I think if a major site/corporation just said ENOUGH OF THIS and did in fact go and file suit against the people behind all the IPs that attack them in a DDoS attack, just MAYBE it might wake up a few clueless users to maintain their machines better, and then MAYBE the lawsuit pain would spread upstream to the vendor (yes, them guys) where it belongs and MAYBE it might make the news so that even more people take a more serious and proactive stance with their boxes and security.
I see no reason to keep allowing billionaires to get richer over extremely easy to compromise no warranty "products" they lease out to use. And I also see no reason not to require adults to maintain their machines or their minors machines in proper working order on the net. It's this "well it isn't my fault" idea that has spread, none of this is ever anyones fault, it's just this vague "hackers" fault, where said hackers couldn't do near as much without the millions of "attractive nuisances" out there that are easy pickings.
It's hard isn't it? Product branding and naming is a pretty specialised field, sounds easy to contemplate, then it gets pretty hard when you have to put your serious folding money on it and go forward. I'll try one of each...
search engine = bloodhound (relentless, tracks down things no matter how well hidden or how far away, etc)
browser = Eagle (soars above the terrain almost effortlessly, sees everything quickly at a glance, swoops down to it's target without fail)
Slashdot Mirror
"From my perspective, if a corporation deliberately stores my personal information using a server OS that is known to have more security holes than the Moon has craters, when that info is stolen the people that made that decision should be up on charges of negligence or worse"
If it is a company you do business with, send them a letter-snail mail, registered, notarized whatever, in advance to that effect. Not a threat, just a reminder that they have alternatives, and it's in their best interest business-wise and liability-wise to look at ALL the options. then they can't claim down the road that they "didn't know". Send an identical copy to their CEO, CFO and CIO/CTO. It's a +1 bonus if you can have several people on your side with simjilar viewpoints sign it as well, all customers of theirs.
Another thing you can do is to buy stock in the company, that gives you an additional legal edge should something "go wrong", and also let's you offer suggestions and/or complain at shareholders meetings, or give you another avenue for a potential lawsuit.
that's what it will take, as in NOT fixing peoples computers for free, or just not fixing them at all and let them take them to the store and get them fixed there. If someone won't take your advice, and insists on constantly borking their box, the best thing you can do for them is to use tough love and stop being an "enabler". I'd say one time only, then if they won't learn, ta heck with them, let them figure out that maybe THEY are the problem and it's not the computers fault.
So, did your friend decide to switch, or did he just suck you for the free work then go back to his old computing habits?
In a way it is, but only tangentially, not directly. You see both methods of monetarizing and creating portable wealth have advantages and disadvantages, my way only takes mostly the advantages from both, and tends to eliminate the disadavantages. We don't have a big vault someplace stacked with gold only as the indicator of wealth, although gold would be in the mix to determine the number of dollars created, and I would like to keep the production of eagles going, just because it's constitutional(also good for balance of trade international payments), but we would still create paper dollars just like now, for normal business on top of that, same as we do now, just with a much more transparently honest and determinable amount.
What I propose is to base the supply numbers of dollars in circulation on the top 100 traded commodities in the previous year. These represent actual produced wealth the nation has accomplished. I picked 100 because it's the figure our dollar is based on, 100 penny/money units, and it's familiar. The top 100 gives us enough variety to have a good representation of what the nations business is. And I pick the "top" because that way it's evolutionary, as industries become less important -the classic buggywhips-they would fall off the list to be replaced with something else new or in growing importance which has crept up the list. I think precious metals and ordinary metals and manufactured goods and agricultural goods, etc, all have a place on the list right now. We use commodities because they are tangibles and easily quantifiable, we already have all the stats we need to determine the amount of new cash to infuse in every fiscal year (or quarter, that is an either/or deal that isn't that important).
In order to arrive at the numerical amount needed to "create new dollars", we'd have to correlate at some point,when we switched over, how many dollars are in existence at that precise time and do a proportion with that first tally of the top one hundred commodities, that gives us a baseline to start with for the ratio, and we can then freeze unregulated over-inflation at that point safely. I would think also at that time we should do a one time payout on accumulated indebtedness, just get it over with and start fresh. The new dollars from that point onward then are what are used to fund government and get the new dollars out into the wild into circulation, following federal government expenditures as they are now or as we have to address them as we go to a "pay as you go" governmental funding system, which is critical to make this work. Any surplus new created dollars can be used for governmental low interest loans,say student or first time home ownership-whatever- or for additional infrastructure requirements on top of any normal maintenance. We should also insure that adeqaute working capital is used to fund pensions, social security, etc, all the debt we have accumulated, but start to work towards not having a necessity for going into debt in the first place. some of government can also be funded with precise excise taxes which are lawful, and at that border, with a "quid pro quo" tariff structure which we set up so that the OTHER trading nation sets the rates, we match them exactly, so it is in their best interest to keep them sane and affordable. We no longer have to "fight" over tariffs, because it's all based on the other guys numbers they want to set. They want 30% on our goods, swell, we do 30% on theirs. They want 0%, swell, we do 0. And balance of trade payments with other nations have to be made in tradeable commodites, to be determoned by current market fair value, based on our dollar that quarter. That will help insure that people are not overly exploited in other nations or bvy transnationals, because as much as they seek to exploit to unfair advantage, they would probably have to make up for "in kind" anyway, so it would be in their best interest to be more fair and honest about things and work smarter, not harder or by using exploitative techniques.
Take
..how does Vector compare to Feather Linux?
Yes, I know Feather is a live Cd, it's hard drive installable though, and only 64 megs total size default. It runs well on my older machines, but I want something even better, something that will run with some sort of GUI with as little as 16 megs RAM, which some of my older pentium 1's have. I have found with various experimentation that total RAM is way more important than processor speed. I run a 200PP as my main machine, because it has the most RAM of my boxes, and it is running full bloaterized FedoraC2 just fine. When I was first using it with factory supplied dismal level RAM at 32 megs it just plain wouldn't run GUI linux very well, but after I added an additional two sticks one of 64 and one of 128 megs, THEN it worked well.
but...still interested in finding something really decent to make these old machines functional, so I can give them away without sticking 95 or 98 on them.
It is bad because it will cause temp extremes, we will lose the moderating effect that the frozen poles and ocean currents cause. You see, as the poles melt off their ice, they dump huge quantities of ice cold fresh water into the salty seas. These hit ocean currents like the gulf stream and japanese current, which bring heat to the northern latitudes, moderating the cold. When this new and huge qwuantity of ice cold fresh water hit the currents, they slow them down, and depending on how much ice melts, they could almost stop. What happens then is the lower atlantic and gulf regions get really hot and stay hot,which means there's a lot more hurricanes and probably way too much rain in the south east,along with more tornadoes, and the northern regions of North America on the east coast and northern europe will get REALLY cold and stay cold longer in the season.
There's other stuff that will happen, the ocean currents keep things stirred up and are an important part of ocean animals life cycles, so it will mess with the food supply there as well as on land.
Just think, to make it easier, where humans mostly live now, in what we call the temperate zones, the normally warmer areas now will get much hotter, and the cooler areas will get much colder, as in ice age style action.
No, we don't know the time limits on this happening, and we don't know exactly when and where a tipping over point might be, but it's happened in the past over and over again.
So it IS cyclical, but some scientists think that it can also be partially induced by human activity with burning fuels. ( I don't see how it couldn't really) So, I tend to agree it is from *both methods*, not one or the other. We are also at a solar activity maximum point which is thousands of years cyclical, so we have that as well to contend with.
Could get real interesting quickly, might take a hundred years or something, so ya gotta ask yourself..feeling lucky?
--the problem is, we have a situation where about a half a dozen or so transnational corporations owz0rz "the big media" in the US. They let it be known right on down their news food chain what is appropriate and what isn't to cover, and how to do it. They have already been flooded with emails and snail mails and faxes and phone calls on any number of issues, and this goes way way back.
You have to look at those lofty economic levels for any change, because so far, they seem to dig what is going on. Perhaps they profit from it as well?
And people like to dfismiss it, but I'll throw it out anyway because it IS relevant,. You have to look at large semi secret megapower "groups" for what global policy will be, because they call the shots WAY more than national elections do, in the US, and in a lot of other nations as well. Groups like the Bilderbergers for instance.
I find it *amusing* that something like any random WTO meeting can have a ton of demonstrations around it, and a lot of international press coverage, yet something even more important like a global power elite bilderberger meeting is almost unnoticed, either by mainstream press and even in the alternative press and protest "community". It is very telling to me.
I think it can be displayed so even the pointest headed boss can understand it.
Stop thinking for a moment it's software, and imagine it's a product for sale, just like anything else.
Here's an example
Amalgamated Bicycles -- 100$, comes with flats fixed and chain oiled
Acme Bicycles -- 0$ and do your own maintenance or flats fixed and chain oiled -- 10$
What is going to win the bicycle market in the long run, given that both are bicycles of at least rough equal "value" to the pedaling consumer, they both work, go from point A to B? What would the "market" pundits say if it was another product with similar criteria?
funny coincidence with your sig and this article and thread. An episode of "the Prisoner" was the first "video" I ever saw being copied for sharing/timeshifting/what have you. Way before home VCRs of course. Guy I know had a super 8 cam and a tripod. A few of us locals were all sci fi nerds and would meet at each others homes for discussions, etc,we called them "cons" but really just like a dozen folks or something like that, anyway usually we would time them so that we could all enjoy something off the TV. He setup his cam and framed the toob and made a copy, don't recall how many reels of film it took, but he got the whole show, and after it was developed we watched it again. It was at best passable, by todays standards dismal, but all of us went WAY COOL!
and I'll repeat it. Back when we mostly manufactured all of our own consumer products, we had a better economy by all benchmarks. I don't know what fantasy site you are getting your figures from, but we are running massive deficits. If your way worked, we would be rolling in the dough, we would have surplusses spilling out of bags all over, and I sure don't see them, WHERE are they? Got a link? Get it yet? If it "worked" we would be running near equal, but it hasn't worked as advertised, it was a scam, all we have done is switched to a credit economy, and eventually the credit runs out and we are darn close now. We not only had a better economy, WE werein a position to be the global leader in issuing credit to others, now it's reversed, we are in DEBT to others to the tune of trillions of dollars. It's more than a billion dollars a day in credit we have to beg for realistically, and promise our childrens and grandchildrens future labor on it as the collateral, and that's only possible if they have jobs, and good jobs that actually pay more than what is required for normal existence. That's nuts! It's obscene! there's your great results of the great experiment! Black and white figures, go look at them! It has exactly paralleled the explosion in imports and then outsourcing jobs throughout the economy.
Less families have full benefits now, not more. If you can prove otherwise, let's see it. Average personal debt is higher, along with our national debt. If you can prove otherwise, let's see it. Average personal savings are lower, much lower. If you can prove otherwise, let's see it. Bankruptcies are at a 30 year high, along with foreclosures. People now are taking out second mortgages just to pay the bills. I mean, I just got a "second line of credit, home equity" offer from my bank today for a quartermillion. How the heck is someone supposed to pay off their first mortgage and bills if they take out a second one for another 1/4 million and then pay interest on top of that, why would they need to? Magic fairy dust money? With what job guarantee, what income guaranty? And people are TAKING those kinds of offers because they are in quiet panic mode now, because they no longer can afford much UNLESS it's with credit. People are getting smacked uplong side the head with bill paying reality now, so what do they do? go into denial and take out whopper second mortgages. that's cuckoo! Mortgages themselves have ballooned, like I said, it used to be ten years was common, because it was quite doable to pay them off in that time frame, now 30 years are the most common AFAIK, and they have now started issuing 40 year mortgages. 40 years! Un precedented! Nothing ever like it! Car notes WERE 12 months or 18 months, not 60 or 72 months, and that's because it was easy to pay it off in that time frame with a joe average middle class blue collar job. One of those incomes was more than adequate to pay the bills,support a full family more than adequately, now most households have to have two incomes to barely stay above water. This is just economic reality history. Yes, that is what it was like back when we exported stuff because we made stuff. And way back then, we didn't buy foreign made cars as much, and the parts that went into the cars were all made here, in US machine shops. Tvs, radios, you name it, all made here, and all still affordable, AND the workers got paid reasonably well. And we all "afforded" what was for sale in the stores for smaller items.
Sorry, try as you might, you cannot make me dis remember how it used to be. And many economists, the contrarians, warned back then that switching to a service economy and outsourcing was a short sighted idea, precisely because you can't outsource normal cost of living at the same time, some things are fixed in what they cost a lot more than others, and those are the important things, "the bills". A US worker cannot compete very well when his rival has only 1/10th the living costs, I don't care how well they automate it,
"I get an absolute kick out of you RAH RAH RAH buy USA people. because you do not do what you preach, you would have to be a billionare to do so."
Yes, NOW, if you re read it I said it used to be that you didn't. And prices dropped on new things once the manufacturing got ramped up to a sufficient level, exactly like it is now, just we did it with most things when we wanted them. Admit it, you personally have no frame of reference to remember when it was possible to buy almost all american made with just a modest income level, do you? To you it's just quaint theory, you don't even think it's possible because you've never seen it working. Am I right, you've only grown up since the economy changed drastically?
Home mortgages were ten years max and a car loan was 12 or 18 months. And other prices were along those lines for domestically made manufactured goods, and it's because we did, in fact, make the stuff here and pay the middle class to do it adequately, and because the dollar shifted around from neighbor to neighbor inside the nation a lot more instead of immediately getting shipped out of the country. It improved the economy more efficiently. It worked, that's just raw past historical data, it is not merely opinion, it's the facts. Go back and look, 25 years ago or so and before the US was the worlds largest creditor nation, now we are the worlds largest debtor nation. This is the same exact time frame where we stopped making things. This is NOT a coincidence, it's the cause and effect in action. We had a higher savings rate, prices were still affordable on your normal consumer items, but they decided to change that,the millionaires decided they needed to be billionaires, so they got up this scheme to offer cheaper trinkets, knowing that it would eventually bork, but they would be set for life then, and it worked, for them.
We are right now starting to see the delayed effects of those economic decisions. We have less people with full employment, less families with full benefits packages, much higher rates of indebtedness, etc. And a lot of people tried to stop it to little avail, that I will admit.
Nothing against "trade", people just wanted fair trade and to not dramatically change what we had that was successfully working. We threw the baby out with the bathwater is the old expression.
Them chickens with the way they have borked the economy ARE going to eventually come home and roost sometime. Get thee to the economy pages and start reading about the reality of what is happening right now as opposed to the globalist shills spinoganda. You simply cannot borrow forever and expect it to keep working. And you also can't keep piling up the police state apparatus, until eventually you have to admit that yes, in fact, you've created a police state.
And to get to the REAL issue of the article, the toy has the word CUBE in it. BIG DEAL, I thought that part was obvious, I guess it wasn't so I'l line it out here with a clear example. Go to the grocery store, look at the soda section, quite a few cans with the word "cola" stamped on them,yes? But as long as they don't say "coca" in front of it it's LEGAL. LEGAL, GET IT? Saying "magic CUBE" is not a trademark infringement either then. That woman got scared, frightened, terrorised into removing the product, because the cops of whatever federal agency you want to call them now are MORONS and cheap hired gun muscle boy bullys. All they do is sieg heil and follow orders, can't think for themselves even to this basic level. They used police state scare tactics because they can and it's encouraged now.
once in a while I think about it, but nope, couldn't afford it at this time. As to just buying one, I got so many computers now getting yet again another one is not on the top of the must have pile right now.
I know you are razzing me but thought I'd answer truthfully.
...tha's just wrong. Completely absolutely wrong. I distinctly remember when we had a great, viable economy, a GOOD one, BEFORE almost everything was imported. BEFORE. When any random Joe Normal blue collar job was enough for a house and a car and a flock of kids and benefits and vacations and savings. Not even a high paid white collar, just a normal middle of the road blue collar, and yes, it might even have been making inexpensive toys. Just because you don't remember it doesn't mean it didn't exist. They not only could inspect the containers, they could change the laws back to where the bulk of the containers were going OUT like they used to be when we had a REAL economy that wasn't skewed towards the globalist elite millionaire crowd and calling massive debt, deficits and credit a "strong economy".
That "not be able to inspect" the containers jazz is a load, OF COURSE they could if they wanted to, they don't want to. They manage to "inspect" 80 year old ladies and crippled vets in wheelchairs at the airport. They manage to "inspect" a heap of countries over yonder, to the tune of billions of dollars a WEEK using hundreds of thousands of dudes, some of them making in excess of 600$ a day to just tote a rifle. The "war on terrorism" is a complete fraud. It's war to terrorise americans,oh, that's true, that's really true, but it's being waged by the government, and this article proved it in yet again another small way.
You had to watch it grow ever since the 60s to see it,but it's been creeping incrementalism, and a lot of folks have been warning about it for years. The past few years they have hit the nitrous button, that's the only difference. And they show no sign of relenting, or rolling anything back for that matter, just ever onward. And people have been eating it and sucking it up every step of the way. Can't look at a news site anymore without seeing more and more evidence of it. A FAN at a baseball game shot and killed by getting hit in ther eye with a riot paintball pellet? Huh? Random "courtesy" checkpoints? Huh? Cameras all over staring at you? Huh? Even that name "Homeland Security" WHAT WW2 B war movie did they drag that from? What is all this crap BUT big brotherism and state terrorism?
The goons have proven it, the slow boiling frog, most people will just slurp it down, excuse it, make believe they aren't seeing or hearing what they are seeing or hearing, every step of the way.
this stuff exists in every field, not just white collar office work
this is me, 30 years ago, talking to my boss, farmer smith (no lie, his name really is smith)
"yo, check this stuff out! alternate energy, cool stuff! You get free electricity, you get more from your crops, keep your cash, don't ship it to bigagco! Composting! Methane digesters! solar PV panels!," and etc etc
PHB farmer smith to me -> "dumbass hippie, if that stuff was so good, why aren't THEY doing it, huh? Huh? huh? Now get back to work...."
Flash fast forward to NOW, back working on BIGFARM, INC
This farm I'm on has three WHOPPER HUMONGOUS composting barns, designed for commercial scale composting of chicken litter. Not only is it better for the fields, but now with a big hammermill and some slick packaging, he can sell this stuff for a nice premium to upscale landscapers, and etc. Then, just last night joe farmer boss here gives me his used industry magazines, so I am checking them out in the executive library, cruise to the classifieds, always a interesting place to look... what do I see? BUY THESE SOLAR PANELS, RUN YOUR FARM ON THEM, PUMP WATER, RUN THE LIGHTS, RUN THE FANS! and etc. Next page ACME GIANT WINDMILL GENERATORS 4 SALE! TASTES GREAT, LESS FILLING! FREE ELECTROJUICE! and etc....Next page GROW ALTERNATIVE CROPS IN THESE SOLAR GREENHOUSES, EXPAND YOUR MARKET..."
on and on, amazing. The stuff I was pushing so long ago has hit mainstream with the dudes who resisted it the most, who made a career out of complaining and working hard instead of smart, because "they weren't doing it".
Ever like to just SLAP this "they" guy??
PHB don't believe it until their peers are doing it. Whether it's a white collar CEO at the golf course bragging on his new technology he just got, or a stained-collar "boss of the fields", or any place in between,it's a catch 22, usually it takes one oddball "boss" action dood with serious cred in their field to break the ice, THEN it might happen. The problem is to find the oddball willing to pony up the chutzpah and the cash to make the plunge. Sometimes it takes a LONG time though...
but ya, names.....best advice is cool it on the weird names, PHBs don't get weird names unless THEY think of them.
That's three tractor trailer loads, tops, two if they really loaded it up. Not really a problem or a huge convoy needed. Coupla forklifts, an hour, loaded, vamoose. It's not like they would have needed this huge number of trucks or that it would have been anything of note from sat pics. If they did use smaller trucks, it was for a larger reason, best guess is overland travel off the roads, and also a more widely dispersed cache, ie, different destinations. Plus, it would have been safer.
With that said, I think saddam would have been nuts to not hedge his bets and move some stuff out way before the war, and syria would have been his safest bet. He had plenty of notice. Every other nation of note does it, store war materiel outside their borders, it's called pre positioned supplies, it's quite common really. The US has done it almost forever, and we still do.
And with THAT said I still don't see him as being a threat to the US before the invasion. A threat to Israel, yes, to the US, no. And I don't think he was a good guy, but I can think of several regimes more deserving of change than his was.
I think war should be last resort, then if decided upon, actually declared and fought to win. What we have now is just organized mass looting, caged inside of a lot of jingoistic rhetoric and half-truths. It was planned in advance, the PNAC docs show this. 9-11 was the excuse they needed, the "pearl harbor like event" they planned to use for an invasion into the middle east.
..for one upgrade (or change to keep it neutral) going from all MS to all Linux is probably pretty spendy. After that though,when you will want to continue upgrading, I would imagine it drops in price significantly, then stays cheaper forever. See, Balmer wants to keep business locked into that short sightedness, because at least he understands long term view, but he doesn't want other companies to honestly think that way, when it comes to what he has to sell. It is in his best intertest to be disingenuous on the topic. As in, do what I say, not what I do.
American business (I am generalizing now of course, but I think it is more accurate than not) seems to take short historical future progression extrapolations, this is called the "this quarter mentality". I think it would be more prudent to look at ten, twenty years or more in the future as well as just next year or next quarter.
CEOs that are only in it for a few years and want to cash out with as much as possible (seems like most of them doesn't it?) do more harm than good to corporations, and we can see that happening in the news all the time. And in order to get there, they do things that look fantastically good for the shareholders in the short term, so they get a free ride on their decisions, then when a WHOOPS happens, a lot of monday morning quarterbacking and lawsuits happen, and Joe CEO is long gone to Aruba with his golden parachute bundle..
And the weird thing is, you can see it happen over and over again, yet it continues, it's like the shareholding public refuses to learn any constructive lessons from the past.
see also: shafting your potential customer base by overly outsourcing still useful jobs, then wondering why your sales keep falling. One company doing that, eh, the domestic economy can handle it, almost all of them doing it, well, check out the business news lately to see what happens. Now creating additional jobs overseas is not harmful, but shifting the same job is if you want to maintain your domestic level of employment and the cash that is in the middle class pool, which by far is the most important one in most economies.
--your money is already inflationary bent, as it is created artificially. The poroblem with paying government workers, then takin some of it back should be obvious, just pay them directly. Where else do you think the money originally came from? You control inflation like I outlined, we already accumulate and collect all the business and productivity stats necessary. We create money based on produced wealth, but no more. We can only spend what we actually have, we can't produce more than what we can pay. the way it's done now is HUGELY inflationary, so I can't see where anyone would say my method is somehow worse.
My idea takes all this into consideration, it just ends the loansharking and middleman skimming and onerous laws aspects of it into consideration. And it also introduces a way to actually quantifiably issue the correct amount of money, that is neither inflationary nor deflationary, because it's based on produced wealth, something that can be accurately measured. How they do it now is to try and guess or manipulate what they think might happen. This is a square peg in a round hole, and why you see the Fed always fiddling with the prime. Under my system, it wouldn't be necessary, or even warranted, because the amount to be increased into circulation would in fact be based on what actually *exists* and was produced.
And if we run out of all stuff, your raw resources,so that no tangible business can be conducted..well.. the last thing you'll have to worry about is the form of "money" in your wallet or what taxes you might owe or how the government is run. No business at all, no natural resources at all = end of planet earth.
Really, the only way to really understand this is to "get it" that the money is completely artificial already, it IS that way already, what I propose is not new, just a different way of doing the same thing, introducing a lot more fairness and honesty and efficiency and responsible frugality. In fact, the way they do it now is just official counterfeit. It literally is printed up directly (or data entries) or is filtered through a one two or three step process with governmental paper products (bonds, treasuries, etc) which are future promises to work and actually produce something so that can result in payment. My idea makes the money worth something because it represents previously produced wealth from the last fiscal reporting period, a year or a quarter, that really doesn't matter, taken as an addition to all that has been produced before, but no more than that. The money we use today is based on future promises, they are IOUs with an incredibly enlarging "doubt" attached to them. And there is no rational "need" for it.
There was a need way way back when all money was hard metals backed, congress is authorised to "borrow" money, they had to pass a completely different law - the Federal Reserve Act- in order to let some private corporation create money that was backed by nothing more than new private bookeeping entries internal to their corporation, and then "borrow" that from them. Just make believe the dang name is changed, think it was called general motors money. Would it be weird to let general motors manufacture the money and profit from it? It's the same dang thing, the federal reserve is just a corporate name they concocted to sound official. It is not federal, and there is no reserve. Federal express, are they the offical transportation agency? Nope, just got federal in their name. They had to literally sneak pass that thing late at night with only a few reps and senators present, it is an interesting story, google for the creation of the Federal Reserve. Get the real background to it. It's fascinating to see how a few wealthy people were able to literally steal a nations monetary system and profit immensely from it to this day. Quite fascinating if you like crime dramas. These are bona fide named humans who's progeny to this day continually profit from it, they make bill gates look like
--there is an easy way. Treat emails just like telephone numbers or street addresses. Don't recognize any emails that aren't connected to a verifiable human being. have them be registered exactly like domains, pay 10 or 20$ per email addy.
It's that, or put up with various schemes so that anyone can create as many email addys as they want to, which is what we have now. This is fish or cut bait time, we either like having access to unlimited email with as many names as we choose, or we do not. What we have now is cart before the horse action, though, and I'm not sure how many people want to give up anonymity and their ability to create as many email addys as they want to effortlessly on the net just to have verified email addresses.
I've read the various rube goldberg authentication schemes, none of them address the problem of tying a verifiable individual named human being to an individual email address in total. At best they would "verify" a still easy to be anonymous and thereby a gooberhead if you want to be "person" on the net. Even with domain registration the way it is now badguys can get them and still do bogus stuff and hide their identity. So even if all email addys were registered we would STILL have badguys getting them. Maybe not as many, but it would still be possible.
Now if there is some magical protocol that would allow you to be both anonymous but still identified, I'd like to see it, because you could write it up in physics journals, because in the past it was one or the other. If you mean some "authority" could identify you, then you have to deal with official corruption, which exists in every nation on the planet. Badguys would just buy off the appropriate person to do e-vile,to get into or around or through the new and improved "system", same as they do now with smuggling across borders for instance.
So, I don't see an easy answer to this, other than to just deal with things of this nature immediately and rationally, not make a huge deal out of it, if you get threatened with an extortion attempt, immediately make it as public as possible and turn the threat emails over to the authorities. Post the threats on your website so that any user could see that you are innocent, let them decide if a legit business would send them child porn or other malwares of any nature on purpose. If you hide the threat, then the badguy follows through, then you not only have to admit it happened, but play catch up and have a doubly hard time convincing your clientele that you are innocent.
Best bet to dry up slime is to expose it to sunlight.
Hmm, geography as a dumb american, I'll give it a stab as I R 1.
Chuck Taylor = Liberia, an artificially created nation in Africa that served as a repository for returned slaves from america. Plenty of civil war action there, natch. It is always more productive to kill people and break things than it is to work. See also, tribalism, greed, ignorance
Zimbabwe, formely Rhodesia, currently under one man one party and only one vote that counts, heh, headed up by Robert Mugabwe, who had his "veterans", many of whom weren't even born during their civil war, wipe out the opposition political parties and folks of any color, and most of the farmers, killing many of them. Most of the still alive and reasonably clueful farmers noticed this and despite it being an economic loss for them, decided to cut tothe chase and relocate,to mozambique (which is welcoming them because they still understand "food = good idea", or south africa or the US or australia, the ones left are an endangered species. Mugabe is embarrassing even to other despots. See also kim ill dung
South Africa, currently doing the same thing to it's farmers, but not getting much international press because it is even more embarrassing since the ANC takeover has given the multiculturists little to brag on since it's obviously the same old stealth genocide they've always had there is now up and running. See also manipulated media
USA, strange grouping of allegedly 50 soverign nations that are supposed to be a cooperative "union" -hence "united" in the name, for extremely limited and equistely detailed economic and self defense purposes on paper, but in reality is run as a serious top down police state, headquartered in a completely artificially maintained "district" where about every penny starts out as stolen, then it goers down hill from there. Currently run by a cartel of two cooperating political gangs who maintain an illusion of "diversness and choice", but in fact are a junta and seized power and use that power to keep themselves rolling in the pork. They are currently running a candidate for president who apparently has two different faces and two different names,a very good media photoshop effort, but who is in reality a single spoiled never had to work a day in his life Yale upper crust skull and bones frat boy, who every other statement in the press tries to convince the public that he's just a good ole boy, just like them, and really knows what's best, so please pick him to make all the decisions. He even rolls up his shirt sleeves once in awhile for photo ops, proving without a doubt that he is just a good ole boy.
How did I do?
Besides my spelun and grammer, which I know can sucketh bad at times. I think I got the geography quiz fairly close.
...in who owns the worlds fastest. I would bet this is the worlds fastest *publically admitted-to* supercomputer. Now, let's remove one A and contemplate what NSA instead of NASA has running someplace...
--if he left the keys in it, it's a distinct possibility, depending on some other circumstances. If the car thief had to jimmy the lock or hotwire it, no. The owner made a reasonable effort, leaving the keys in is not a reasonable effort. And speaking as an ex insurance agent (long time ago but I was for about a year and change), I will assure you that leaving the keys in the car gets looked at pretty closely should you be forced to make a claim. The keys and locks exist for a reason, they assume you are a responsible adult, they expect you to act like one when you presented yourself to them for coverage. If the cops would make that charge I don't know, they certainly would rag on the owner though for being a lamer at a minimum. They *would* probably look at them as being an accessory, because the story would sound fishy to them. Anyway, that's not a good example of what I am talking about, a good example is like having a porch with a busted railing, you can see it's busted, and you know people come over, eventually someone falls off. You can't claim stoopid then. Backyard deep swimming pool with no decent fence, some little kid falls in. Sorry, you needed a fence. You run a business like a motel and you know you got scurvy people in and out of the rooms all the time, eventually the cops will shut you down and charge YOU for that. Lotsa precedent out there on an attractive nuisance.
If you think an attractive nuisance is vapor ware, just google for it, it's a REAL thing that people get charged with and LOSE on in court. It's the ultimate anti lamer law. It's based on "you really should have known better", and when it comes to the net, in this day and age, anyone should know better, yes, even your aunt tillie. If she really is incapable of using the net wisely, they make web tvs that will allow pretty safe and functional surfing, get aunt tillie off a full featured PC then.
It's one avenue I haven't seen used in the fight against internet craphack spam and virus and trojan pollution,and crime, and I think it should be looked at, precisely *because* we have a legal precedent for it in meatspace, and it goes way way back..
Sorry, this is 2004, not naieve innocent semi friendly 1994, adults should be aware by now that being on the internet involves some responsible actions being taken by them personally. That excuse "they didn't know" was OK for a few years, but now it's a coverup for "I really can't be bothered". Yes, I DO think they are at least partially responsible for getting owned now, and then their box gets used in actual crimes. And yes, if it was me, then tough noogies for me, too. I make a serious effort to be responsible for my net connection, I don't take things for granted. I've met too many people who honestly are aware, but they will NOT make an effort to do anything but the minimum, which is use a default install of borgware and then become part of the problem within a few minutes. I know it, you know it, everyone knows it, so lets don't dance around it, lets just admit that it exists, k? It's more important for them to forward spyware laden jokes than to run minimum security upgrades. It's more important for them to spend hours on IM, and less than 5 seconds on making intelligent choices in their software and how it's configured, or to add some after market third party apps that actually make their OS functionally secure to some sort of minimum standard beyond "zero". Sorry, no more sympathy from me. I USED to be sympathetic, but not anymore, not when security and the internet is a regular staple even on the bland plain vanilla nightly news.
...let me know when you are offering it in north_cow_flop georgia where I live. I do know that hecksouth has fiber to the nearest box, which is 2.75 miles from my abode....and they have NO plans evah to bring it any place else down these parts, from what I was told when I asked them. 40$/month you would have my business, cash in advance. Let me see, that should only take you around two decades for a ROI probably..... /me admits to capitalist reality..
GO WIMAX!!111!!1
umm... ferraris and Cicciolina....
in ye olden daze, hmm, aqueducts, the short sword, combat engineering and the vomitorium.
ya, not a real good list in ye olden daze compared to now
..that hasn't been used yet against zombies. In meatspace it's called "maintaining an attractive nuisance". You don't get a get out of it with a free pass card by claiming stupid or "you didn't know", it's just tough charlie for you.. Lots of precedent out there.
I think if a major site/corporation just said ENOUGH OF THIS and did in fact go and file suit against the people behind all the IPs that attack them in a DDoS attack, just MAYBE it might wake up a few clueless users to maintain their machines better, and then MAYBE the lawsuit pain would spread upstream to the vendor (yes, them guys) where it belongs and MAYBE it might make the news so that even more people take a more serious and proactive stance with their boxes and security.
I see no reason to keep allowing billionaires to get richer over extremely easy to compromise no warranty "products" they lease out to use. And I also see no reason not to require adults to maintain their machines or their minors machines in proper working order on the net. It's this "well it isn't my fault" idea that has spread, none of this is ever anyones fault, it's just this vague "hackers" fault, where said hackers couldn't do near as much without the millions of "attractive nuisances" out there that are easy pickings.
Dangerous Dianic d00dz
Degenerate Druidic Desperadoes
Angry Asinine Animists
Oily Ogling Odinists
there ya go, let no man feel left behind!
It's hard isn't it? Product branding and naming is a pretty specialised field, sounds easy to contemplate, then it gets pretty hard when you have to put your serious folding money on it and go forward. I'll try one of each...
search engine = bloodhound (relentless, tracks down things no matter how well hidden or how far away, etc)
browser = Eagle (soars above the terrain almost effortlessly, sees everything quickly at a glance, swoops down to it's target without fail)