...to my satisfaction anyway. And thanks for the kind words. I now get paid to live in a house, I don't pay to live in a house. Of course, I don't own it,and what pay I get in actual check form is pretty small, but... but I know that the house itself it is paid off by the owner,taxes are pretty low on it because it'sold and raggedy, and no matter what he will need a worker like me here to do what I do. I'm a neogeezer, he's a full fledged geezer. I have stored food and gear, keep my camper always working just in case, like you are in a way. Manged to sock away just a smidgen of some various metals for a rainy day in the future, when I think the real estate bubble will collapse and those with *real* money will be able to maybe get something. You look at interest rates now, even with the marginal increase, and that isn't indicative of a good economy, it's the opposite. We also are working a garden three times bigger than last year, already getting a good part of our chow out of it and it's still just spring.
Basically, the only thing I own can be carried, nothing is tied down either, and it's all practical (mostly) very little frivolous stuff. got tools of all sorts, gardening, mechanic, carpentry, electrical, etc, and a lot of small engine devices to keep working with. Got enough clothes to last years and years. Got more than enough stored food to carry gfriend and I at least a year, most likely longer, even if we had nothing else. Have a whopper library accumulated, stored knowledge. I'm a year ahead on my firewood now. Got some solar now so we'll always have at least a minimal but practical amount of electric. Bought some extra fuel back when it was cheaper and got that stored and am rotating it now, taking some, adding some fresh back, etc. About all you can do. I simply HAD to have the internet though, I held out since last year and finally last month (well, two months now) got back online, expensive to me, a big hit from my pay, but it's my only real luxury, and it's almost a necessity because to me, information is a vital human necessity. I talk to people around here at roughly the same income level but not on the net, they do NOT have any idea what's going on in the world, nada. If all you get is TV news you are woefully uninformed it appears.
Anyway, check out and look around for a caretaking position that includes housing you can do part time,while keeping your other job, save the rent money you would normally spend in silver coins or something, best advice I got to anyone now in a similar position. For a young person or a couple it's a dandy way to live cheaper and accumulate some good life karma brownie points helping out older folks, who really appreciate it. The population is aging, so there's gonna be more of these types of jobs opening up, and those people don't want to lose their homes either, but might be in a better position to hang on to them then someone with a huge mortgage still outstanding.
just can't be, sorry. Several internet experts with made up names have stated over and over again, over the years on every forum that discussed it, that it isn't possible,that it is pushed by flat earther crackpots, it's perpetual motion,or "overunity bunkum", it "defies the *laws* of physics and the supreme court and their professor and mommies say so, so there" and other such pronouncements of authority, so that's just that, it's settled.
... I said smug is because I got the impression from your post thathomeless people were all losers, were just lazy panhandlers, would have no reason for a resume, etc.
Myself, I always lived modestly too, the home I was trying to pay off was extremely cheap,entry level price, even then I was working two blue collar jobs to help pay it off. I still have one of my vehicle, it's a 75 van, super high mileage I mangeto keep on the road, the other I gave away to someone who would finish restoring it, it ran, but needed work, I was saving it for a backup in case my van developed a major problem.
It can happen to people, illness, lost jobs, etc, and it doesn't matter a whole lot what economic level you are at if all of a sudden you have zero income. That's the real main point, our society, anyone middle class or lower is just not that far away from being homeless, white collar or blue collar. It can go from just a few weeks reserves to maybe a year at best with no income for most people I have met. I'd say the median is around a half a dozen checks lost away from homeless for most people. That really is just a wild ass guess though to be fair. And the main reason is we don't luive in extended family units any more, there is little in the way of the traditional, been paid off forever family homestead which was always a refuge in the past, now hardly anyone lives anyplace that they truly own outright. And even then there's property taxes and utilities to deal with, MANY people lost their homes and became homeless in the first great depression from just taxes, and the government did not care a bit about that, just let it happen. They loved it, let the banksters and wall street conmen make everyone go broke, stole their wealth then,which was the plan all along, then brainwashed an entire generation into accepting the nanny state, with government as the nanny. Disgusting, and you can smell it coming again. If you talk to *real* old people, they'll tell you it's like it was before the big crash.
just looked at their THIS AIN'T SPYWARE, RILLY! page. Well, what else is it but that? Of course it is, just for their claim to be a benevolent purpose, it's "whitehat" spying to be totally fair about it. But, we don't know if any "blackhats" will get the information over to the university, or--well, if any foreign states might have an interest in it and some of the juicer info gets transferred to some other places that might have a different idea on what to do with the information. Could be, anyone who's seen the demographics at most unis would have to agree, and tech has a lot of students that might have loyalties other than what is publically presented here. Just a note, but it's valid.
The high security setting is the one I predicteth gets used the most by people who run it, for obvious reasons.
hmm, probable bottlenecks. Whenever the latest mega worm hits you'll see which routers choke easiest. Massive constant traffic from owned and zombiefied end users home machines, that should be fairly random and even. Pockets/areas where file sharing is still big. And places with a derth of fat pipes obviously.
Interesting project, but I will have to think on it some if I want to run it. Also, maybe I am not seeing it, but it doesn't seem to have any info on how much of your machine it uses, I see the operating system requirements,installation, etc, but not the resources required. Anyone see that? My apologies if I missed it.
happened to me in 99. In 98 I was working two jobs, payong off a house, had two vehicles, bank accounts, great credit, etc, then my arm got paralysed somehow, it just stopped working. By spring of 99 I finally had gone through my savings, borked my credit, got too far behind in my house note, had to give it up. Sold off and gave away most of my stuff, put the rest in a cheap storage unit, moved out into my small camper van. When you are driving away from your home and security with no exact destination, no money coming in..man, it gets scary and lonely REAL dang quick, tell ya what. Took me a long time to get back to working part time, what I still do because it's all I CAN do. Arm got back well enough to do what I can, but that's it. Fricking hard to move stuff with ONE arm, tell ya what. Even harder to work, when you do blue collar stuff.
Don't be so smug in other words, because it can happen to you, too. It's happening all over the US to varying degrees, I mean, WHAT do you do when you lose your job, righteously looking for more work but it is not happening fast enough, lose your home, etc? Bankruptcies now in the US are at complete record highs, home foreclosures record highs,unemployment is very high and they had to adjust how they count it to keep it publically inside single digit level when it's really in double digits now, wages are dropping when you adjust it to cost of living, etc. We discuss it here all the time, and it remains theoretical until it happens to YOU, then you "get it",you'll understand it then, that what the talking heads say on TV is feel-good drivel. A JOBLESS RECOVERY??? What mastermind thunked that one up anyway? There's a *reason* to be concerned, and there'shardly a middle class job out there that is secure now. I know a LOT of people who's income has dropped to absurdly low levels and are forced ever downwards between the twin nasty whammies of jobs offshoring and the millions of illegals inshoring. And it's not getting better, either, despite the rosy economy drivel they spew on the TV.
And the next bubbles to burst will be bonds and real estate. And anyone who hasn't bingoed to the problems with so called private and government pensions is simply not paying attention to reality, they are BORKED now severely.
We are going to have a LOT of homeless people within 5 years, then it will get BAD as in social unrest bad. This economy is being propped up by toothpicks and soap bubbles.
here in georgia. Only one required a picture ID to login. All of them had sign in sheets, but you could put any name you chose I guess (except the pic ID one of course). The machines have definetly been the donated microsoft gates foundation machines. I have asked at two libraries if they would take donated computers that I would provide running linux, they said NO very emphatically, they run a windows network remote administered. The machines themselves are usually chock full of spyware/adware as near as I can see. I have not seen any of the librarians to be very computer competent besides logging and booting the machines up, all the work is done remotely by who knows who. One library I was in had installed cameras facing the screens. The most common uses I see glancing around is people use email and chatrooms. Next is research for papers or for people (stuck) inside the legal system doing research, then genealogical research.
The demographic split in the article is VERY accurate from what I have seen: teenagers, the over 50's (like me) and "recent arrivals to these shores".
One thing I have seen is their censorware is highly subjective and inaccurate, and frequently blocks sites that are in no way pornographic,etc, but are political, I have seen some sites come up as blocked because they are called "hate speech" sites when they are not, but they are on the blocked list anyway.
...perhaps a big risk from other quarters with deep pockets who might think it cute to do so, and might do it through a daisy chian of proxies first to obfuscate who's behind it. Perhaps, pure speculation of course. I can think of a few places to whom 500 clams doesn't even qualify as pocket lint,but the idea of monkey wrenching in advance any ever potential future competitor might seem like making "good business sense", so maybe NetBSD being proactive before the fact of needing a trademark is a good thing and good idea.
...with the design and implementation of email as it stands now, SO, to me anyway, the only logical conclusion is to institute a brand new email systyem that is treated as serious as my example, the telephony system. Create it on top of the old email system, make people opt in with their cash to get in, then they can have at least a functional email. Millions would buy into that idea. You have to buy an email address, just like a domain and static IP assignement, just like your phone number, just like your street address for snail mail, it has "meaning" because it costs to do that, and that meaning translates to a better design. It's regulated, no spam is allowed, no transmission of viruses, etc..
No idea who could pull that off, it would take a google sized private concern, or an extension of internet addressing as it is now. The mail techs would have to devise a transfer protocol that couldn't be spoofed easily. The critical part is to eliminate the ease of creating millions of new email addys. If EACH address was assigned, registered, paid for, etc,it would sure slow down the mess, and people would take it serious. If every single email addy cost something like ten dollars, that wouldn't hurt people who needed a functional email address, but spammers would have to cough up millions of dollars to send email then. Seems simple enough to me to at least think about it. Right now, a cheap domain lets you create virtually all the email addys you want to, and there's how spammers do it, along with being able to forge where they originate from and hijack some poor guysbox and use that. It's nuts.
The problem with the boxes and OS and email clients, etc is because there is NO LIABILITY WITH SOFTWARE. None, zero. Free skate in the courts and with the laws. They want full complete IP and "service" protection for profits, but want NO, and do not have, any actionable liability. Sweet deal for them, no other multi guhzillion dollar business has that get out of jail free card, does it?
I can see where way back in the day it was necessary to get the whole computer to the masses and the interest of businesss going, but not now, it's a mature industry making billions, time to treat it the same as other industries. You make them liable for selling crap to people, make them liable to pay for stuff getting borked. And email and web connections are borked now, and it's getting worse, not better, the only true functional changes is how many blinkenlights they add to the borked-ness. Mostly anyway.
...mozilla wants to collaborate closer with GNOME and that they asked for it first, according to the release of the minutes of the meeting. Cool Beans. Something that I like, more focused direction on unification for a polished product. *Choice* is good,but it's subjective without some sort of rational goal, choice by itself is mostly used as a buzzword, there must be a *goal* in making the choice and having multiple choices, not just that there *are* multiple choices extant.
And my choice and I bet millions of others would be a "linux thing" that worked cohesively together, and that just won't happen very quickly with thousands of directions taken, many of them just parallel trails with each other.
I most certainly would *chose* an operating system/distribution that worked all well together. A choice of a chaotic mish mash of thousands of incompatable apps and a so-so functionality is not much of a choice if you want quality over quantity.
...failure to even think that because it was new and cool and worked after a fashion, but NOT to take into consideration that all human beings would use it, and that the class "human beings" has always contained major crooks, liars and thieves, is an example of a SERIOUS flaw in the critical thinking department. In short, some sort of naieve thinking that this "internet and email thingee" was going to remain this theoretical "pure" and that not ever would any "bad people" use it was just plain dumb ass wishful thinking, and had back then no basis in any sort of logic or observational input into any other human collaborative efforts, at least not to anyone who knows more than a few dozen people in their lives and actually looks around to see what happens in society and "real life" in general. In particlar I am still appaled that the original designers who were working hand in glove with the highest level of national security and business intelligence could have overlooked this fact, because of all people, they were the ones aware of possible security isues, yet they were ignored for the most part. They stopped short in other words, developed the protocols to facilitate the MACHINE transfer of messages, but almost completely failed to address the very probable HUMAN interaction with said machines.
That's the original flaw, it most assuredly was stupid, the easy way out was taken and put into practice as a world wide "standard", at least to my way of thinking. "Computing" is the combined effort of humans and machines, it is not one or the other. Combined. But, the web and email was and is still mostly treated as merely a combination of hardware and software, it still leaves out the "humanness" that includes all the types of humans that society produces.
No one sells homes without front doors with locks on them, yet that is how-to this day-computers are sold, and it is how email is "sold". All the anti spam efforts are attempts to somehow fix the problem of no front door and no lock by wearing a raincoat inside your living room and wishing that badguys don't come in and rob you, in other words, it won't ever work, and it's just plain lame. The basic design is just borked,it needs to start from scratch and be reimplemented from day one, starting with the idea FIRST that we need doors and locks, and get people used to the idea that doors and locks are a good idea in their cyber "home" as well as their physical home.
--we claimed to be against the wahabists in afghanistan (the taliban), yet one of our larger trading partners is saudi arabia, with almost identical laws and practices as the taliban had in afghanistan. We were against saddams persecution of the kurds, but turn a blind eye towards turkeys similar actions against them, because "they are a NATO ally". We "fight against al queda", yet we embraced and supported the Albanian expansionists the KLA, and the Bosnian islamic militarists, who are and were basically the same guys. We claim to "stop genocide and ethnic cleansing", yet have promoted it ourselves throughout central and south america for generations, and still turn a blind eye to most occurrences in africa, where the really large genocides keep occurring.
In short, claiming the moral high ground becomes irrelelvant when you can plainly see unless it's tied to an important profitable product like oil, we don't bother with it. And this whole "stopping arms, WMDs" etc is hugely hypocritical, the US is the worlds largest arms producer and exporter,it is our largest export industry, and there is ample evidence to show that arms of all possible descriptions and levels of lethality get transferred to despotic regimes all over the planet, along with our military and alphabe letters agenceinces training and supporting so not-very-nice people who go back and continue abuses against their own populations..
We insist on nations adhering to the nuclear non proliferation efforts, yet have a wink wink nod nod blind eye towards *some places* that have nuclear arms, and we helped them get those weapons.
The obvious hypocrisy is overhwleming, it simply cannot be dismissed, because it IS real. IF we had a historical verifiable track record of always adhering to a moral high ground, I could support and feel proud of the nations foreign policy. We don't, it's not even debateable in the face of completely verifiable data, so.. it becomes the honest thing to do to NOT support those policies or engage in convulted explanations that are clearly excuses.
To me, and this is just my opinion of course, a true patriot is one who can see where perhaps his own nation is at fault, and not be afraid to admit it, change directions and move on. And we should be consisitent if we seek to promote some sort of global moral high ground, and we most certainly are NOT consistent there, especially if it concerns mega profits someplace.
... in the case of single large ISP's, when they get blakholed,like in these national monopoly ISPs, it BECOMES enough of an issue that remedial actions are taken. The difference is inside the US there are many many thousands of ISPs. We don't have a single national ISP. We have bunches of them. They (at random when it becomes necessary)get blocked too, just unless it is a very large one you won't hear of it. It is not some sort of racial or ethnic or cultural jingoism or xenophobia, it's just the difference in how the internet is run in various places.
... they were clued in better how to organize their machine so as to not get hacked into being a relay. It's a multipronged problem so it needs a multi pronged approach to attempt to resove it. You can read it here all the time, the nrighborhood or familyu geek or local computer technician spends a lot of their time merely cleaning up personal machines that are full of spyware, etc and are configured incorrectly, ie (or IE) open to becoming zombie spammers, and the people who own them truly do not appreciate that because it just wasn't their fault actually. The machines get bought and shipped to people with inadequate configurations and bad security holes as a default install. There is little to no training" involved with aquiring a computer and getting on the internet. There is no official "fixer" assigned to them, their ISPs just get them online, then it's chaos. They are hacked within short order. They don't know any better. And there's no incentive for them to change, no follow through for them until their machines b3come so unresponsive they take them in saying they are "broken" or they call the family nerd to "look" at it. Sometimes that is a fairly astute person, but more often than not it's merely anephew or whatever who can run the most modern video games as the height of their skills, so he's the expert. And that's if that even happens.
Email is a wide open system, it was designed to facilitate transfer of messages, not to be an all purpose firewall and singl computer security auditing tool. It's silly to think that it is, but that's how it's treated, and why emailis so borked now. It's a basic fundamental flaw, it's akin to closing the barn door after the horse gets out, it will never be effective. It is HUGELY the fault of the OS vendors(extremely piss poor out of the box install defaults), the computer retailers (they keep the level of expertise to use requirements at the lowest level to increase sales, and there are no adequate alternative OS and app choices shipped with most machines) and the ISP service sellers(their default is that they assume one operating system with insecure basic applications, anf have a dismal track record on monitoring their own outbound traffic, to be part of closing off and reapiring zombied machines) in the first place.
There's no easy fix as long as email clients are turned on by default in casual users machines, or even installed for that matter. If people had to make a conscious decision to go get and install and run an email program, they MIGHT just get a chance to make a better choice. I think that it would be a lot better if for the majority of home users that web based only email is the default configuration, where it can be kept "cleaner" by professional email administrators, which needs to be most likely their ISP people.
And there should be carrots and sticks here. A basic email design system could be implemented where you had to at least purchase a single email address for some serious folding money like you purchase a domain name and get a static IP. It shouldn't be automatic and easy to create just an unlimited number of email addresses. Each one should be valuable, unique. You are told up front it's not to be used for spam, nor allowed to become compromised so as to act as a relay. You purchase the email addy, treat it as importantly as you do your own personal phone number. You screw up at your end, it costs you and you get disconnected.
the way it is now, even with spam filtering, will NEVER address the root cause of why it is so hard to stop unless similar type measures are taken. Email is WAY too easy to get, way too easy to get a million addys, costs almost nothing, and peoples home machines are not secured by any law or practice for most practical purposes. Everyone from the user to the developers of the OS's and the middlemen who providfe the hard ware and service is at fualt, and everyone insisits it's all the other guys fault, but not their's. Nuts, it IS everyone's fault, their part in it, but there's NO LIABILITY FOR ANYO
Check the fifth amendment. Government has to prove you are guilty of a crime, 100% on their own. You do not have to testify for them, or say anything. They can and will physically seize your stuff,look for the key someplace, but you don't have to cooperate with them *technically* according to the fifth. And without looking I can guarantee almost that someplace is a ruling saying I am wrong, but not according to the original wording and intent.
The constitution now is mostly ignored by the government, they like to say that word out loud, and that's about it. They like to "swear an oath" to it, said oath lasting a few seconds or minutes when they go back to work. They frequently violate the true law and charge you with this or that,this is true, But the original intent is there, and all the delineated born-with rights were written in english, the words defined in websters first dictionary, so the meaning wouldn't be lost and so that you didn't have to be a lawyer to understand them. Man, that's LONG gone. Laws written by mostly professional lawyers,obvious conflict of interest tolerated blindly, hardly ever rescinded, already at the 15 million on the books level and climbing daily. It won't ever end until it collapses, it's too far gone now, IMO.
But there ya go for a glaring example. Want another biggee? Supposedly government cannot seize your property "for the common good" without fair and just compensation, this is supposedly an inviolate right, but under the endangered species act, they have done this to a huge degree, seizing billions in property with no reimbursement to the private owners.
someone needs to explain that because I sure can't, but it's "legal" by their definition..some normal passed legislation can "trump" (to use their weasel words) the constitution.
Mainly, I guess, because they got the guns and the goons who will follow any orders given to them. More or less how governments act once they are on the decline throughout history. Right before they collapse they burn supernova with despotism and restrictions. All of a sudden they get frantic with external and internal "threats" that have to be dealt with. their economies usually get so bad they have to expand outwward into large scale looting. That's a good sign they show when they are about to implode.
sound familiar?
Same old tune, new band all the time, same old tired tune gets played.
... has a lock on stupidity. Check out the anti vitamin pill and nutrional supplements initiative FSD, the EU Food Supplements Directive, by the EU for an example of that.
...has a pretty good idea where all the major nodes are, and the trunks, etc.
With that said, I think it would be quite fair to assume that they have contingency plans that immediately before, or concurrent with a major "crack down" into fuller despotism (a real or staged-real terrorist incident, for instance), they will have enough willing "order followers" to assume physical control of those facilities. All of them. Count on it.
And for those that say they couldn't run them even if they did, think again. They already have on the books laws that they can use to "draft" you on the spot,for specific work related duties, plus for the assumption of "ownership" of just about anything you can name, and refusing or trying to refuse becomes an automatic serious felony, and the penalities can be whatever the emergency military governor deems them to be. They can be quite severe, BTW. In such a situation it wouldn't requite too many examples to get folks back to the consoles working, and sabotage would be eventually found, leading to some more "examples", and etc.
This government has never been shy of "collateral damage", and this government, either directly or via contracted or coerced proxies, kills people daily and has done so as far back as I can remember.
People really need to read the homeland security act, patriot acts, and the model states health emergency act(there's more, those are crucial to grok though), the latter actually being much worse civil liberties-wise than the previous two, but much less known about or talked about.
As a side issue, as far as I am aware of now, all commercial radio and television stations have government "take over" boxes in them, that the government can activate automatically and remotely and completely control what information is being broadcast. In short, they have the clear potential to have an almost total lock on the dissemination of information on their whim and schedule. Not 100% complete, but so close as to make the exceptions be statistically insignificant. It doesn't take much to see the abuse potential here, of course, It's sold as a public service and they "promise" to be nice guys all the time and not lie or be less than honest, etc. Really. They promise.
uh huh
The above article is a further refutation to those who always spout "eww, that's tin foil hat". The one step at a time, slow boiling frog approach is the technique they use for..well, coming total enslavement to be frank about it, a master/serf technofuedalistic styled society of complete surveillance and control (and exploitation) of your lives. the ancient fiuedalistic system, just with advanced technology. Quite possible, many references showing that's what they desitre broadly speaking, and the evidence shows that is the direction they are headed, ie, history is repeating itself, ni\othing new there, because humans tend to not want to learn from history, it's.... too hard, interferes with day to day life and entertainments and ordinary hassles. So, it gets ignored.
That's their goal, and so far every step of the way that HAS been implemented has also been WARNED ABOUT in advance by people who were told they were wrong, when in fact, they have been consistently correct in this extrpolative position and series of observations and analysis."They" want a form of world government with total control over the population of the planet, and nothing less than that. It's still a ways off,not too far but a ways, but looking back 20 years and seeing how things have changed, anyone may look forward, contemplate it in the fact of a variant of "moores law" being applied to all aspects of technology and governments insatiable use of same, and see what is happening now and their bent, to make a fair assessment of what is coming.
Failure to do so is ill advised, failure to *do something about it while you still can* is suicidal.
On this propoganda piece, get them to send you the stuff, then turn it around on them, show how they were trying to use and abuse the kids (examples such as mnemonics used as a conditioning agent, using imagery to invoke an emotional reaction not in line with reality,use of word "piracy", leaving out the fact they have been busted and convicted many times for payola bribery, collusion industry wide to fix prices at obscene profit levels, abuse of the artists with loan programs based on unreasonable expectations and skewed projections, etc) in the program. Take that phrase "if you haven't paid you've stolen it". Bring up the example of the library, where copyrighted material is freely shared to as many who want to share in it, yet the book was paid for only once, etc.
Bring up how the movie and recorded audio industry have no qualms over using the very latest technology to make their copies of copies cheaper to them, while they can still sell them at the older prices that reflected higher production costs, but now they want to have a monopoly on technology, how they don't want YOU as the end user consumer to be able to make use of modern technology.
And stuff like that there, give em a dose of healthy skepticism towards the self serving interests of pure profits above all else crowd and why the predatory model of business should be avoided.
See, to me anyway, there's 3 business modalities, there isn't just one "business". The list: "Business-neutral" (more or less the norm how most businesses work in, neither highly predatory nor entirely honest or fair at all times),
"Business-predatory" ethically challeneged, morally abysmal, "anything goes",the only thing that matters is profits, no matter what actions are taken, as long as you can get away with it, "greed is good" philosophy, etc
Then there's "Business-'class act'"-non gouging, honest, real fair prices that follow advances in productivity,no scandals, always above board and ethical, etc.
should be some *interesting* discussions along those lines if specific businesses and corporations, etc are topics
--thanks for your hands on advice. I am still contemplating this. I just got a bug about JS, I USED to like it and did the normal cruise for nice scripts and copy paste stuff to web pages, but now I just find it too bothersome because it's abused so much around the web.
...with java scripting turned off? Besides eyecandy whatevers, is it still useable without it? I ask because that is my default browsing mode. Using tabs, say I wanted to add the google mail page to my home set. If I need javascript, I think it has to be turned on for all the pages at once then, as it will be for any new tabs for new links. I find I can cut out the bulk of the crap on the net by keeping that turned off, and if some site insists on it, oh well, big ole web out there, I just refuse to use their site. Same with sites that use all image links with NO alt text tags, DANG that is annoying,open a page and the whole dang thing is blank boxes, sucks bigtime, lazy webmasters for the most part, because keeping images turned on slows me down (and I know I ain't alone in surfing with images off from sheer necessity) surfing like 3 times slower or something, and it's already slow to begin with..
If so,if you are required to use scripting (I can deal with a login ID cookie) too bad, I won't use gmail then, main reason I don't use any of the other web based email things. I've had a few, but after awhile the having to use scripting was driving me buggy (short drive, heh), so I quit using them. for me, a good email will give me all my mail with no flash, scripting, images, etc required. Just the text please, and let me navigate the site with just plain text, too.
And hey, if by ANY chance any moz developers are reading this, how about an image option so you can load any image without having to reload the page and load all the images, or click over and do a stand alone tab like it is now? Look at how iCab does it. Superior design there. *Handy as all get out*. You click on the one image you need on a page, it gives you a menu option "load this image", the page STAYS PUT and that image just loads by itself automagically, leaving everything else alone. El grande slickerness there. Don't know if any other browsers do that, been a knucklescrapper, icab or moz guy like forever.
google is going to make it yet another expansion of the active X crap that is the main reason there's so much worm and virus activity? Man, I hope that's not the case, that's all we need, googles mega monster servers being activeXly used to make that stuff worse on the net. and I sure ain't faking my browser to indicate it's something else just to use a website. and spam filters? Better idea, no commercial email. I'd like a big global email service that just disallows commercails entirely, I'df pay cash to be in on that. It would still leave the regular email to deal with people who want/need advertsing via email. the way to deal with spam is not to try and filter it, just relaise it's a subset of commercial email, filter ALL of it, inside a service that would get used by enough people to make it practical. and google has the mindshare to do that. I know they want to use their ads to pay it, but I'd rather have the option of just paying cash yearly for a decent email addy, and inside a service that disallowed commercials. I hope someone offers that sometime, too.
I'll have to look at this again, now I am thinking heck with the gmail idea. I hope this isn't true facts here that google would do this. I'll read more on it obviously, but if it's explorer and active x (any scripting like that, I'll include java script for instance) centric, I want no part of it.
...of useage rates. Too many people would complain (righteously) that like the road fuel tax,or your electric bill, or water bill, etc, it should be pay as you use it, which means transfer rate metering of some sort, not a flat rate. I know besides thinking the whole idea is dumb,and I don't want to see it,that IF it was implemented and that if I got charged on my 28.8 connection the same as someone with a cable connection or T-1, etc, that it wouldn't be even remotely fair. IF they want a flat rate,and run the net as some sort of taxed public utility, then bring me decent broadband at the same prices that are charged in areas with several kinds and competition, then it would make more sense and be folloiwng the model we have established for utility service in general already in other areas..
Slashdot Mirror
...to my satisfaction anyway. And thanks for the kind words. I now get paid to live in a house, I don't pay to live in a house. Of course, I don't own it,and what pay I get in actual check form is pretty small, but... but I know that the house itself it is paid off by the owner,taxes are pretty low on it because it'sold and raggedy, and no matter what he will need a worker like me here to do what I do. I'm a neogeezer, he's a full fledged geezer. I have stored food and gear, keep my camper always working just in case, like you are in a way. Manged to sock away just a smidgen of some various metals for a rainy day in the future, when I think the real estate bubble will collapse and those with *real* money will be able to maybe get something. You look at interest rates now, even with the marginal increase, and that isn't indicative of a good economy, it's the opposite. We also are working a garden three times bigger than last year, already getting a good part of our chow out of it and it's still just spring.
Basically, the only thing I own can be carried, nothing is tied down either, and it's all practical (mostly) very little frivolous stuff. got tools of all sorts, gardening, mechanic, carpentry, electrical, etc, and a lot of small engine devices to keep working with. Got enough clothes to last years and years. Got more than enough stored food to carry gfriend and I at least a year, most likely longer, even if we had nothing else. Have a whopper library accumulated, stored knowledge. I'm a year ahead on my firewood now. Got some solar now so we'll always have at least a minimal but practical amount of electric. Bought some extra fuel back when it was cheaper and got that stored and am rotating it now, taking some, adding some fresh back, etc. About all you can do. I simply HAD to have the internet though, I held out since last year and finally last month (well, two months now) got back online, expensive to me, a big hit from my pay, but it's my only real luxury, and it's almost a necessity because to me, information is a vital human necessity. I talk to people around here at roughly the same income level but not on the net, they do NOT have any idea what's going on in the world, nada. If all you get is TV news you are woefully uninformed it appears.
Anyway, check out and look around for a caretaking position that includes housing you can do part time,while keeping your other job, save the rent money you would normally spend in silver coins or something, best advice I got to anyone now in a similar position. For a young person or a couple it's a dandy way to live cheaper and accumulate some good life karma brownie points helping out older folks, who really appreciate it. The population is aging, so there's gonna be more of these types of jobs opening up, and those people don't want to lose their homes either, but might be in a better position to hang on to them then someone with a huge mortgage still outstanding.
just can't be, sorry. Several internet experts with made up names have stated over and over again, over the years on every forum that discussed it, that it isn't possible,that it is pushed by flat earther crackpots, it's perpetual motion,or "overunity bunkum", it "defies the *laws* of physics and the supreme court and their professor and mommies say so, so there" and other such pronouncements of authority, so that's just that, it's settled.
... I said smug is because I got the impression from your post thathomeless people were all losers, were just lazy panhandlers, would have no reason for a resume, etc.
Myself, I always lived modestly too, the home I was trying to pay off was extremely cheap,entry level price, even then I was working two blue collar jobs to help pay it off. I still have one of my vehicle, it's a 75 van, super high mileage I mangeto keep on the road, the other I gave away to someone who would finish restoring it, it ran, but needed work, I was saving it for a backup in case my van developed a major problem.
It can happen to people, illness, lost jobs, etc, and it doesn't matter a whole lot what economic level you are at if all of a sudden you have zero income. That's the real main point, our society, anyone middle class or lower is just not that far away from being homeless, white collar or blue collar. It can go from just a few weeks reserves to maybe a year at best with no income for most people I have met. I'd say the median is around a half a dozen checks lost away from homeless for most people. That really is just a wild ass guess though to be fair. And the main reason is we don't luive in extended family units any more, there is little in the way of the traditional, been paid off forever family homestead which was always a refuge in the past, now hardly anyone lives anyplace that they truly own outright. And even then there's property taxes and utilities to deal with, MANY people lost their homes and became homeless in the first great depression from just taxes, and the government did not care a bit about that, just let it happen. They loved it, let the banksters and wall street conmen make everyone go broke, stole their wealth then,which was the plan all along, then brainwashed an entire generation into accepting the nanny state, with government as the nanny. Disgusting, and you can smell it coming again. If you talk to *real* old people, they'll tell you it's like it was before the big crash.
just looked at their THIS AIN'T SPYWARE, RILLY! page. Well, what else is it but that? Of course it is, just for their claim to be a benevolent purpose, it's "whitehat" spying to be totally fair about it. But, we don't know if any "blackhats" will get the information over to the university, or--well, if any foreign states might have an interest in it and some of the juicer info gets transferred to some other places that might have a different idea on what to do with the information. Could be, anyone who's seen the demographics at most unis would have to agree, and tech has a lot of students that might have loyalties other than what is publically presented here. Just a note, but it's valid.
The high security setting is the one I predicteth gets used the most by people who run it, for obvious reasons.
hmm, probable bottlenecks. Whenever the latest mega worm hits you'll see which routers choke easiest. Massive constant traffic from owned and zombiefied end users home machines, that should be fairly random and even. Pockets/areas where file sharing is still big. And places with a derth of fat pipes obviously.
Interesting project, but I will have to think on it some if I want to run it. Also, maybe I am not seeing it, but it doesn't seem to have any info on how much of your machine it uses, I see the operating system requirements,installation, etc, but not the resources required. Anyone see that? My apologies if I missed it.
happened to me in 99. In 98 I was working two jobs, payong off a house, had two vehicles, bank accounts, great credit, etc, then my arm got paralysed somehow, it just stopped working. By spring of 99 I finally had gone through my savings, borked my credit, got too far behind in my house note, had to give it up. Sold off and gave away most of my stuff, put the rest in a cheap storage unit, moved out into my small camper van. When you are driving away from your home and security with no exact destination, no money coming in..man, it gets scary and lonely REAL dang quick, tell ya what. Took me a long time to get back to working part time, what I still do because it's all I CAN do. Arm got back well enough to do what I can, but that's it. Fricking hard to move stuff with ONE arm, tell ya what. Even harder to work, when you do blue collar stuff.
Don't be so smug in other words, because it can happen to you, too. It's happening all over the US to varying degrees, I mean, WHAT do you do when you lose your job, righteously looking for more work but it is not happening fast enough, lose your home, etc? Bankruptcies now in the US are at complete record highs, home foreclosures record highs,unemployment is very high and they had to adjust how they count it to keep it publically inside single digit level when it's really in double digits now, wages are dropping when you adjust it to cost of living, etc. We discuss it here all the time, and it remains theoretical until it happens to YOU, then you "get it",you'll understand it then, that what the talking heads say on TV is feel-good drivel. A JOBLESS RECOVERY??? What mastermind thunked that one up anyway? There's a *reason* to be concerned, and there'shardly a middle class job out there that is secure now. I know a LOT of people who's income has dropped to absurdly low levels and are forced ever downwards between the twin nasty whammies of jobs offshoring and the millions of illegals inshoring. And it's not getting better, either, despite the rosy economy drivel they spew on the TV.
And the next bubbles to burst will be bonds and real estate. And anyone who hasn't bingoed to the problems with so called private and government pensions is simply not paying attention to reality, they are BORKED now severely.
We are going to have a LOT of homeless people within 5 years, then it will get BAD as in social unrest bad. This economy is being propped up by toothpicks and soap bubbles.
here in georgia. Only one required a picture ID to login. All of them had sign in sheets, but you could put any name you chose I guess (except the pic ID one of course). The machines have definetly been the donated microsoft gates foundation machines. I have asked at two libraries if they would take donated computers that I would provide running linux, they said NO very emphatically, they run a windows network remote administered. The machines themselves are usually chock full of spyware/adware as near as I can see. I have not seen any of the librarians to be very computer competent besides logging and booting the machines up, all the work is done remotely by who knows who. One library I was in had installed cameras facing the screens. The most common uses I see glancing around is people use email and chatrooms. Next is research for papers or for people (stuck) inside the legal system doing research, then genealogical research.
The demographic split in the article is VERY accurate from what I have seen: teenagers, the over 50's (like me) and "recent arrivals to these shores".
One thing I have seen is their censorware is highly subjective and inaccurate, and frequently blocks sites that are in no way pornographic,etc, but are political, I have seen some sites come up as blocked because they are called "hate speech" sites when they are not, but they are on the blocked list anyway.
well, seems like you have gotten what you want. Good luck to you and enjoy it.
...perhaps a big risk from other quarters with deep pockets who might think it cute to do so, and might do it through a daisy chian of proxies first to obfuscate who's behind it. Perhaps, pure speculation of course. I can think of a few places to whom 500 clams doesn't even qualify as pocket lint,but the idea of monkey wrenching in advance any ever potential future competitor might seem like making "good business sense", so maybe NetBSD being proactive before the fact of needing a trademark is a good thing and good idea.
...with the design and implementation of email as it stands now, SO, to me anyway, the only logical conclusion is to institute a brand new email systyem that is treated as serious as my example, the telephony system. Create it on top of the old email system, make people opt in with their cash to get in, then they can have at least a functional email. Millions would buy into that idea. You have to buy an email address, just like a domain and static IP assignement, just like your phone number, just like your street address for snail mail, it has "meaning" because it costs to do that, and that meaning translates to a better design. It's regulated, no spam is allowed, no transmission of viruses, etc..
No idea who could pull that off, it would take a google sized private concern, or an extension of internet addressing as it is now. The mail techs would have to devise a transfer protocol that couldn't be spoofed easily. The critical part is to eliminate the ease of creating millions of new email addys. If EACH address was assigned, registered, paid for, etc,it would sure slow down the mess, and people would take it serious. If every single email addy cost something like ten dollars, that wouldn't hurt people who needed a functional email address, but spammers would have to cough up millions of dollars to send email then. Seems simple enough to me to at least think about it. Right now, a cheap domain lets you create virtually all the email addys you want to, and there's how spammers do it, along with being able to forge where they originate from and hijack some poor guysbox and use that. It's nuts.
The problem with the boxes and OS and email clients, etc is because there is NO LIABILITY WITH SOFTWARE. None, zero. Free skate in the courts and with the laws. They want full complete IP and "service" protection for profits, but want NO, and do not have, any actionable liability. Sweet deal for them, no other multi guhzillion dollar business has that get out of jail free card, does it?
I can see where way back in the day it was necessary to get the whole computer to the masses and the interest of businesss going, but not now, it's a mature industry making billions, time to treat it the same as other industries. You make them liable for selling crap to people, make them liable to pay for stuff getting borked. And email and web connections are borked now, and it's getting worse, not better, the only true functional changes is how many blinkenlights they add to the borked-ness. Mostly anyway.
...mozilla wants to collaborate closer with GNOME and that they asked for it first, according to the release of the minutes of the meeting. Cool Beans. Something that I like, more focused direction on unification for a polished product. *Choice* is good,but it's subjective without some sort of rational goal, choice by itself is mostly used as a buzzword, there must be a *goal* in making the choice and having multiple choices, not just that there *are* multiple choices extant.
And my choice and I bet millions of others would be a "linux thing" that worked cohesively together, and that just won't happen very quickly with thousands of directions taken, many of them just parallel trails with each other.
I most certainly would *chose* an operating system/distribution that worked all well together. A choice of a chaotic mish mash of thousands of incompatable apps and a so-so functionality is not much of a choice if you want quality over quantity.
...failure to even think that because it was new and cool and worked after a fashion, but NOT to take into consideration that all human beings would use it, and that the class "human beings" has always contained major crooks, liars and thieves, is an example of a SERIOUS flaw in the critical thinking department. In short, some sort of naieve thinking that this "internet and email thingee" was going to remain this theoretical "pure" and that not ever would any "bad people" use it was just plain dumb ass wishful thinking, and had back then no basis in any sort of logic or observational input into any other human collaborative efforts, at least not to anyone who knows more than a few dozen people in their lives and actually looks around to see what happens in society and "real life" in general. In particlar I am still appaled that the original designers who were working hand in glove with the highest level of national security and business intelligence could have overlooked this fact, because of all people, they were the ones aware of possible security isues, yet they were ignored for the most part. They stopped short in other words, developed the protocols to facilitate the MACHINE transfer of messages, but almost completely failed to address the very probable HUMAN interaction with said machines.
That's the original flaw, it most assuredly was stupid, the easy way out was taken and put into practice as a world wide "standard", at least to my way of thinking. "Computing" is the combined effort of humans and machines, it is not one or the other. Combined. But, the web and email was and is still mostly treated as merely a combination of hardware and software, it still leaves out the "humanness" that includes all the types of humans that society produces.
No one sells homes without front doors with locks on them, yet that is how-to this day-computers are sold, and it is how email is "sold". All the anti spam efforts are attempts to somehow fix the problem of no front door and no lock by wearing a raincoat inside your living room and wishing that badguys don't come in and rob you, in other words, it won't ever work, and it's just plain lame. The basic design is just borked,it needs to start from scratch and be reimplemented from day one, starting with the idea FIRST that we need doors and locks, and get people used to the idea that doors and locks are a good idea in their cyber "home" as well as their physical home.
--we claimed to be against the wahabists in afghanistan (the taliban), yet one of our larger trading partners is saudi arabia, with almost identical laws and practices as the taliban had in afghanistan. We were against saddams persecution of the kurds, but turn a blind eye towards turkeys similar actions against them, because "they are a NATO ally". We "fight against al queda", yet we embraced and supported the Albanian expansionists the KLA, and the Bosnian islamic militarists, who are and were basically the same guys. We claim to "stop genocide and ethnic cleansing", yet have promoted it ourselves throughout central and south america for generations, and still turn a blind eye to most occurrences in africa, where the really large genocides keep occurring.
In short, claiming the moral high ground becomes irrelelvant when you can plainly see unless it's tied to an important profitable product like oil, we don't bother with it. And this whole "stopping arms, WMDs" etc is hugely hypocritical, the US is the worlds largest arms producer and exporter,it is our largest export industry, and there is ample evidence to show that arms of all possible descriptions and levels of lethality get transferred to despotic regimes all over the planet, along with our military and alphabe letters agenceinces training and supporting so not-very-nice people who go back and continue abuses against their own populations..
We insist on nations adhering to the nuclear non proliferation efforts, yet have a wink wink nod nod blind eye towards *some places* that have nuclear arms, and we helped them get those weapons.
The obvious hypocrisy is overhwleming, it simply cannot be dismissed, because it IS real. IF we had a historical verifiable track record of always adhering to a moral high ground, I could support and feel proud of the nations foreign policy. We don't, it's not even debateable in the face of completely verifiable data, so.. it becomes the honest thing to do to NOT support those policies or engage in convulted explanations that are clearly excuses.
To me, and this is just my opinion of course, a true patriot is one who can see where perhaps his own nation is at fault, and not be afraid to admit it, change directions and move on. And we should be consisitent if we seek to promote some sort of global moral high ground, and we most certainly are NOT consistent there, especially if it concerns mega profits someplace.
... in the case of single large ISP's, when they get blakholed,like in these national monopoly ISPs, it BECOMES enough of an issue that remedial actions are taken. The difference is inside the US there are many many thousands of ISPs. We don't have a single national ISP. We have bunches of them. They (at random when it becomes necessary)get blocked too, just unless it is a very large one you won't hear of it. It is not some sort of racial or ethnic or cultural jingoism or xenophobia, it's just the difference in how the internet is run in various places.
... they were clued in better how to organize their machine so as to not get hacked into being a relay. It's a multipronged problem so it needs a multi pronged approach to attempt to resove it. You can read it here all the time, the nrighborhood or familyu geek or local computer technician spends a lot of their time merely cleaning up personal machines that are full of spyware, etc and are configured incorrectly, ie (or IE) open to becoming zombie spammers, and the people who own them truly do not appreciate that because it just wasn't their fault actually. The machines get bought and shipped to people with inadequate configurations and bad security holes as a default install. There is little to no training" involved with aquiring a computer and getting on the internet. There is no official "fixer" assigned to them, their ISPs just get them online, then it's chaos. They are hacked within short order. They don't know any better. And there's no incentive for them to change, no follow through for them until their machines b3come so unresponsive they take them in saying they are "broken" or they call the family nerd to "look" at it. Sometimes that is a fairly astute person, but more often than not it's merely anephew or whatever who can run the most modern video games as the height of their skills, so he's the expert. And that's if that even happens.
Email is a wide open system, it was designed to facilitate transfer of messages, not to be an all purpose firewall and singl computer security auditing tool. It's silly to think that it is, but that's how it's treated, and why emailis so borked now. It's a basic fundamental flaw, it's akin to closing the barn door after the horse gets out, it will never be effective. It is HUGELY the fault of the OS vendors(extremely piss poor out of the box install defaults), the computer retailers (they keep the level of expertise to use requirements at the lowest level to increase sales, and there are no adequate alternative OS and app choices shipped with most machines) and the ISP service sellers(their default is that they assume one operating system with insecure basic applications, anf have a dismal track record on monitoring their own outbound traffic, to be part of closing off and reapiring zombied machines) in the first place.
There's no easy fix as long as email clients are turned on by default in casual users machines, or even installed for that matter. If people had to make a conscious decision to go get and install and run an email program, they MIGHT just get a chance to make a better choice. I think that it would be a lot better if for the majority of home users that web based only email is the default configuration, where it can be kept "cleaner" by professional email administrators, which needs to be most likely their ISP people.
And there should be carrots and sticks here. A basic email design system could be implemented where you had to at least purchase a single email address for some serious folding money like you purchase a domain name and get a static IP. It shouldn't be automatic and easy to create just an unlimited number of email addresses. Each one should be valuable, unique. You are told up front it's not to be used for spam, nor allowed to become compromised so as to act as a relay. You purchase the email addy, treat it as importantly as you do your own personal phone number. You screw up at your end, it costs you and you get disconnected.
the way it is now, even with spam filtering, will NEVER address the root cause of why it is so hard to stop unless similar type measures are taken. Email is WAY too easy to get, way too easy to get a million addys, costs almost nothing, and peoples home machines are not secured by any law or practice for most practical purposes. Everyone from the user to the developers of the OS's and the middlemen who providfe the hard ware and service is at fualt, and everyone insisits it's all the other guys fault, but not their's. Nuts, it IS everyone's fault, their part in it, but there's NO LIABILITY FOR ANYO
bunch of them
Check the fifth amendment. Government has to prove you are guilty of a crime, 100% on their own. You do not have to testify for them, or say anything. They can and will physically seize your stuff,look for the key someplace, but you don't have to cooperate with them *technically* according to the fifth. And without looking I can guarantee almost that someplace is a ruling saying I am wrong, but not according to the original wording and intent.
The constitution now is mostly ignored by the government, they like to say that word out loud, and that's about it. They like to "swear an oath" to it, said oath lasting a few seconds or minutes when they go back to work. They frequently violate the true law and charge you with this or that,this is true, But the original intent is there, and all the delineated born-with rights were written in english, the words defined in websters first dictionary, so the meaning wouldn't be lost and so that you didn't have to be a lawyer to understand them.
Man, that's LONG gone. Laws written by mostly professional lawyers,obvious conflict of interest tolerated blindly, hardly ever rescinded, already at the 15 million on the books level and climbing daily. It won't ever end until it collapses, it's too far gone now, IMO.
But there ya go for a glaring example. Want another biggee? Supposedly government cannot seize your property "for the common good" without fair and just compensation, this is supposedly an inviolate right, but under the endangered species act, they have done this to a huge degree, seizing billions in property with no reimbursement to the private owners.
someone needs to explain that because I sure can't, but it's "legal" by their definition..some normal passed legislation can "trump" (to use their weasel words) the constitution.
Mainly, I guess, because they got the guns and the goons who will follow any orders given to them. More or less how governments act once they are on the decline throughout history. Right before they collapse they burn supernova with despotism and restrictions. All of a sudden they get frantic with external and internal "threats" that have to be dealt with. their economies usually get so bad they have to expand outwward into large scale looting. That's a good sign they show when they are about to implode.
sound familiar?
Same old tune, new band all the time, same old tired tune gets played.
We got bozos, they got bozos, bozos for all!
...has a pretty good idea where all the major nodes are, and the trunks, etc.
With that said, I think it would be quite fair to assume that they have contingency plans that immediately before, or concurrent with a major "crack down" into fuller despotism (a real or staged-real terrorist incident, for instance), they will have enough willing "order followers" to assume physical control of those facilities. All of them. Count on it.
And for those that say they couldn't run them even if they did, think again. They already have on the books laws that they can use to "draft" you on the spot,for specific work related duties, plus for the assumption of "ownership" of just about anything you can name, and refusing or trying to refuse becomes an automatic serious felony, and the penalities can be whatever the emergency military governor deems them to be. They can be quite severe, BTW. In such a situation it wouldn't requite too many examples to get folks back to the consoles working, and sabotage would be eventually found, leading to some more "examples", and etc.
This government has never been shy of "collateral damage", and this government, either directly or via contracted or coerced proxies, kills people daily and has done so as far back as I can remember.
People really need to read the homeland security act, patriot acts, and the model states health emergency act(there's more, those are crucial to grok though), the latter actually being much worse civil liberties-wise than the previous two, but much less known about or talked about.
As a side issue, as far as I am aware of now, all commercial radio and television stations have government "take over" boxes in them, that the government can activate automatically and remotely and completely control what information is being broadcast. In short, they have the clear potential to have an almost total lock on the dissemination of information on their whim and schedule. Not 100% complete, but so close as to make the exceptions be statistically insignificant. It doesn't take much to see the abuse potential here, of course, It's sold as a public service and they "promise" to be nice guys all the time and not lie or be less than honest, etc. Really. They promise.
uh huh
The above article is a further refutation to those who always spout "eww, that's tin foil hat". The one step at a time, slow boiling frog approach is the technique they use for..well, coming total enslavement to be frank about it, a master/serf technofuedalistic styled society of complete surveillance and control (and exploitation) of your lives. the ancient fiuedalistic system, just with advanced technology. Quite possible, many references showing that's what they desitre broadly speaking, and the evidence shows that is the direction they are headed, ie, history is repeating itself, ni\othing new there, because humans tend to not want to learn from history, it's.... too hard, interferes with day to day life and entertainments and ordinary hassles. So, it gets ignored.
That's their goal, and so far every step of the way that HAS been implemented has also been WARNED ABOUT in advance by people who were told they were wrong, when in fact, they have been consistently correct in this extrpolative position and series of observations and analysis."They" want a form of world government with total control over the population of the planet, and nothing less than that. It's still a ways off,not too far but a ways, but looking back 20 years and seeing how things have changed, anyone may look forward, contemplate it in the fact of a variant of "moores law" being applied to all aspects of technology and governments insatiable use of same, and see what is happening now and their bent, to make a fair assessment of what is coming.
Failure to do so is ill advised, failure to *do something about it while you still can* is suicidal.
On this propoganda piece, get them to send you the stuff, then turn it around on them, show how they were trying to use and abuse the kids (examples such as mnemonics used as a conditioning agent, using imagery to invoke an emotional reaction not in line with reality,use of word "piracy", leaving out the fact they have been busted and convicted many times for payola bribery, collusion industry wide to fix prices at obscene profit levels, abuse of the artists with loan programs based on unreasonable expectations and skewed projections, etc) in the program. Take that phrase "if you haven't paid you've stolen it". Bring up the example of the library, where copyrighted material is freely shared to as many who want to share in it, yet the book was paid for only once, etc.
Bring up how the movie and recorded audio industry have no qualms over using the very latest technology to make their copies of copies cheaper to them, while they can still sell them at the older prices that reflected higher production costs, but now they want to have a monopoly on technology, how they don't want YOU as the end user consumer to be able to make use of modern technology.
And stuff like that there, give em a dose of healthy skepticism towards the self serving interests of pure profits above all else crowd and why the predatory model of business should be avoided.
See, to me anyway, there's 3 business modalities, there isn't just one "business". The list: "Business-neutral" (more or less the norm how most businesses work in, neither highly predatory nor entirely honest or fair at all times),
"Business-predatory" ethically challeneged, morally abysmal, "anything goes",the only thing that matters is profits, no matter what actions are taken, as long as you can get away with it, "greed is good" philosophy, etc
Then there's "Business-'class act'"-non gouging, honest, real fair prices that follow advances in productivity,no scandals, always above board and ethical, etc.
should be some *interesting* discussions along those lines if specific businesses and corporations, etc are topics
I didn't know this existed, that certainly helps a lot towards making moz more functional for me, I'll check it out!
--thanks for your hands on advice. I am still contemplating this. I just got a bug about JS, I USED to like it and did the normal cruise for nice scripts and copy paste stuff to web pages, but now I just find it too bothersome because it's abused so much around the web.
...with java scripting turned off? Besides eyecandy whatevers, is it still useable without it? I ask because that is my default browsing mode. Using tabs, say I wanted to add the google mail page to my home set. If I need javascript, I think it has to be turned on for all the pages at once then, as it will be for any new tabs for new links. I find I can cut out the bulk of the crap on the net by keeping that turned off, and if some site insists on it, oh well, big ole web out there, I just refuse to use their site. Same with sites that use all image links with NO alt text tags, DANG that is annoying,open a page and the whole dang thing is blank boxes, sucks bigtime, lazy webmasters for the most part, because keeping images turned on slows me down (and I know I ain't alone in surfing with images off from sheer necessity) surfing like 3 times slower or something, and it's already slow to begin with..
If so,if you are required to use scripting (I can deal with a login ID cookie) too bad, I won't use gmail then, main reason I don't use any of the other web based email things. I've had a few, but after awhile the having to use scripting was driving me buggy (short drive, heh), so I quit using them. for me, a good email will give me all my mail with no flash, scripting, images, etc required. Just the text please, and let me navigate the site with just plain text, too.
And hey, if by ANY chance any moz developers are reading this, how about an image option so you can load any image without having to reload the page and load all the images, or click over and do a stand alone tab like it is now? Look at how iCab does it. Superior design there. *Handy as all get out*. You click on the one image you need on a page, it gives you a menu option "load this image", the page STAYS PUT and that image just loads by itself automagically, leaving everything else alone. El grande slickerness there. Don't know if any other browsers do that, been a knucklescrapper, icab or moz guy like forever.
Best laff all month! It's like DUH, D'YA THINK?
google is going to make it yet another expansion of the active X crap that is the main reason there's so much worm and virus activity? Man, I hope that's not the case, that's all we need, googles mega monster servers being activeXly used to make that stuff worse on the net. and I sure ain't faking my browser to indicate it's something else just to use a website. and spam filters? Better idea, no commercial email. I'd like a big global email service that just disallows commercails entirely, I'df pay cash to be in on that. It would still leave the regular email to deal with people who want/need advertsing via email. the way to deal with spam is not to try and filter it, just relaise it's a subset of commercial email, filter ALL of it, inside a service that would get used by enough people to make it practical. and google has the mindshare to do that. I know they want to use their ads to pay it, but I'd rather have the option of just paying cash yearly for a decent email addy, and inside a service that disallowed commercials. I hope someone offers that sometime, too.
I'll have to look at this again, now I am thinking heck with the gmail idea. I hope this isn't true facts here that google would do this. I'll read more on it obviously, but if it's explorer and active x (any scripting like that, I'll include java script for instance) centric, I want no part of it.
...of useage rates. Too many people would complain (righteously) that like the road fuel tax,or your electric bill, or water bill, etc, it should be pay as you use it, which means transfer rate metering of some sort, not a flat rate. I know besides thinking the whole idea is dumb,and I don't want to see it,that IF it was implemented and that if I got charged on my 28.8 connection the same as someone with a cable connection or T-1, etc, that it wouldn't be even remotely fair. IF they want a flat rate,and run the net as some sort of taxed public utility, then bring me decent broadband at the same prices that are charged in areas with several kinds and competition, then it would make more sense and be folloiwng the model we have established for utility service in general already in other areas..