And let me guess, you are one of those people who thinks there's an actual carved in stone law someplace that you have to use EITHER some sort of alternative energy system OR just grid supplied?
I hear this so much from scoffers, it really is weird too, because it's so completely illogical. It's like saying your personal commuter car can't carry 2 tons of rocks all the time so that means cars are impractical and useless. I also hear it from people who -example only- think nothing of dropping similar sums on things like skiboats they might use half a dozen times a year, or something like that.. Surprise, you can run BOTH, or have a multi-hybrid system like most people have (and what I recommend to people first getting into it, to build up to it), which is usually (depends on your site survey obviously)solar PV, and a wind charger (that deals with the winter/summer split nicely), then grid supplied and some sort of fuel genny. Mix and match and spice to taste. All can feed into the same battery banks with zero effort through the charger/inverters, or most states have a grid buy back program if you want it simpler.
It's schweeet.
If you live someplace that's dead calm all the time,never any wind or vewery little, never gets any useful amount of sun, has no running water in some small creek, well, yep, short of your own home depot baby nuke plant, nope, not a lot you can do about it, sorry. If that's 90% of the planet I guess I never travelled much. I know of some places like that, I guess I just wouldn't live there. Anyplace else besides those dead zones there's something "alternative" that will get you some kind of juice. Heck, I got a buddy of mine sells wood boilers that run a homes heat, hot water and electricity, if all you have is some handy trees or coal on the property. there's usually something that would work for most folks, but yes, there's always some places or situations where i guess you are just stuck. In that case about the only thing alternative you can do that is practical is to make sure your home/building is built or retroifitted to "super insulation" standards, which is an entirely different but related subject. ANYONE can do that, anyplace, any climate or environment it works.
I live in north georgia, it's humid as all get out here, rains a lot, then when it's not raining, yes it's sunny. In the winter it's pretty windy, not so much in the summer. My personal requirements, yes, I don't use much, but I get by. I'm running a desktop now, 17 inch monitor, speakers, got a light on and a window fan. Seems to all be working, and it's all I need right now. My stove and burners and furnace run on propane. My next door neighbor who uses a lot of power on the other hand, lives in a three story mansion,close to a million bucks worth, close to around 6,000 square feet, and is a gadget head. He's doesn't "do without" none whatsoever. He runs everything but his heat pumps and his electric stove on solar and one electric dryer. The refrigerator and chest freezer run on solar. Most of everyhting else he has runs on solar. the deep well is switchable, a lot of the times in the summer if we have to water the gardens I run that 220 VAC well completely off the solar, just because it's possible and in mid day there's a lot of extra juice going begging. We run the washers on solar. And yada yada yada. I think his total cost that included bringing in from out of state a three guy crew for installation was around 25 grand, basically the cost of an extra bathroom in a new better quality home some place. With a 20 year note for some folks, not that bad, and the deal is, it's the same sort of price if you live in a high rent or a low rent place, it hides itself in that big mortgage pretty easy I hear. I think if he had done the labor himself and scrounged a few of the pieces he could have knocked around 5 grand off that price. Just depends on what you want, I read that that charming foyer in most peoples houses with the marvelous bay windows don't put out much electricity at all.
Or you have tried it as a "normal" desktop type OS? Have any thoughts on it if so?
I noticed on the download page for the hobbyist freebie version they recommend a 400 mhz speed cpu minimum and 128 ram. well, I thought the whole idea of it was small, maybe could run adequately on much older chips and much less ram. It's also a big download, at least on dialup modem. I like the idea of small/fast/uber reliable though, and it says it has a full GUI and whatnot with it. Just wondering if it's really worth it to try, I was really looking for something better able to run on the cast off older computers out there (I fix them up and give them away or sell them cheap/whatever). I've been looking for something adequate but bulletproof I can give brand new & inexperienced users for those sorts of older low powered machines.
Here's my attempt
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Settling SCOres
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· Score: 4, Interesting
I just use the old traditional car analogy when I try to explain it to people.
Here 'tis:
I make alternators, you make engines, leroy over there makes wheels, bubba makes frames and bodies and etc. Now we could all sit around and try to sell this stuff to each other with all sorts of schemes and deals and middlemen and whatnot, or we could all just cooperate completely and share a part with each other and all of us wind up with a pretty cool and snazzy complete car at very little cost to anyone. Then we *all* have our own good car to go drive to "real work" in. And whenever I build a newer better alternator I chip it in, and so does the engine guy, and so on. We do this forever, we are always driving a new car for real reasonable and not much hassle. And once in awhile someone totally new joins our car co-op group, like the new guy this week we added has a really nice car sound system we all get to add to our cars. Cool beans. Fat city.
Read the whole thread, no bit torrent link yet from anyone. I thought that was the gnu rools and stuff here with OS ISOs.
With that said,(to anyone) how out of the box secure is this thing? I admit I had never even heard of it before. I am just wondering, I have some old pentiums kicking around to play with.
You might like this. Old cartoon I saw in some scifi mag like analog or someting. Guy on a train, standing up, holding the overhead strap. He looks around 6 feet, 13 and 1/2 inches tall, around 400 lbs, in a suit, and he's holding a briefcase.
caption --> "conan the commuter"
Re:Changing Voltage CHanges nothing
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42-Volt Autos
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· Score: 1
I have something like what you were looking for on my smaller camper van. It uses two batteries, with an over sized alternator, but are connected across what's called an "isolator". All the extra accessories run from the storage battery (called "the house battery" side, and the van itself runs from the normal starter battery side. You could completely exhaust the storage battery side and not effect the normal starting and charging side. You can buy those isolators at most car accessory or Rv or marine shops for maybe around 50~100$, and do a dual battery installation yourself. Whether or not you can fit an over sized alternator is really a function of your individual ride, but it's quite possible you can. It's actually a good idea,not a very hard mod to do, and in the rare cases you need a junmp, you can actually just use the other battery fairly easily.
Now my RV is even more so, it has 3 seperate sets of circuits, it has two non connected 12 volt circuits, and two 110 ac circuits. The second 12 volt dc circuit I ran/added myself, it is solar PV panels charged and feeds 4 -6 volt batteries wired series & then parallel for 12 VDC. Those run quite a bit of my day to day stuff (we live in this thing)the first 12 VDC circuits have two rather large big truck sized starter designed batteries in parallel, plus they run some additional accessory circuits. And you can mount solar panels permanent on most vehicles, it's just not that hard, although down and flat all the time you won't get as much juice as up and aimed correctly when parked. But it's an easy thing to do. Mine are on a homebrew little buggy thing I made so I can move them around and manually aim them better, they are on a longish real heavy guage cable, but they make permanent mounts as well, and you can always cob it, it's just drilling and bolting really.
I don't run out of juice *too very often*. I also have an onboard 2.5 KW gas genny with it's own fuel tank. I guess that's enough electricity.
wirez on the roadz....
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42-Volt Autos
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· Score: 1
Depends on where you get the car and drive it I guess. I'm just relating an anecdotal. My boss just had to buy two new cars, for himself and wifey. Reason? One was bought and used up north in a serious salt the roads in the winter rust belt, the other sat down near their beach condo in florida. I worked on both those POSs until I refused to do it, told them to just go eat it at the dealers.. the electrical systems (and brakes and this and that) were totaled from corrosion, nothing worked on them for very long,computerised crap all over, they would get something fixed, within a month another extremely expensive and mostly stupid doo dad was gone, almost always due to corroded wires, that lead to this thing frying, then down the chain, poof, poof, poof. Neither car was more than a few years old, one was a full size conversion van, the other a pathfinder. Maybe that's not typical, but it's what I saw. I'm spolied I guess, grew up working on rusty salty stuff,..never again!
Contrast my pure steel, no exotic electronics, never even seen salty anything 1975 van, 300+ miles, everything works just swell. No salt, no rust, no corrosion.
I predicteth that the 42 volt cars will suffer similar,or worse, unless they really learn to seal them better. I also think these new batteries won't last as long,(unless they use some sort of sealed exotic materials batteries) because the lead plates inside will have to be smaller, less bulk, less strength, their spongy nature/design will flake off faster with road bumps. That's the reason off roaders go to special batteries, because "normal" car starter batteries break internally so easy because of smaller more delicate plates (one reason anyway, there's several actually)(Hi off roaders, 80 cj7 here)(someone please shoot my carter bbd please).
Besides that, some of the newer tech sounds interesting, but I guess I'll just keep sticking with running much older stuff I can still work on, until they outlaw it or something. Now, I *would* go to a hybrid though,there's an exception, if it was diesel on the fuel burning side. I already need generators, might as well have one that does double duty. But I certainly wouldn't go to a new car just to run 1000 amp boom boxes "more efficiently". In fact, I think those rolling racket rap machines should be codified into law under the "he just needed killin'" statutes we have.
west nile is killing a lot more birds now than anything else, windchargers included, although I'll admit they do clonk into them and get chewed up some. I can see it around here, bird populations in general are dismal the past two years since west nile was detected here. I even was the first person to tell the local vet about it, she had never even heard of it, told her to watch the birds and horses for it, so she went and looked it up on the net, before it was really hitting the TV news.. It used to be pesticides I believe killed most of the raptors, being higher in the food chain they accumulated more toxins, etc.. Also, some environmental "rulings" stuff has a side effect of killing eagles, example, when they shut the klamath farmers water off, it also dried up the remaining marshlands downstream of the irrigation canals,really devasting huge numbers of species,including the largest cocnentration of eagles in the lower 48, to "save" a couple of really not endangered species. It also removed the food that millions of migratory species were depending on in the pacific flyway. whoops. Good intentions (sort of),but unfortunatly really bad ecological results, plus wiped out a lot of humans economically and socially, for no real reason..
I don't think there's any single one silver bullet energy solution, it's natch though we will be building a lot more windmills, because they actually *work* and are pretty cost effective now. I am hoping to find some property local to me that has a small stream, I use solar now but I'm juiced on low head small scale hydro,I am liking that 24 hour a day concept, well, until the government tells me I can't do it. I have a small wind charger but it isn't installed yet, again, waiting to move now, soon sometime.
They already make complete replacement roofing systems that are solar PV. the cost is offset some by not needing a lot of the conventional roofing materials (shingles, etc). there are also now many lenders offering 100% financing when it's tied into the home mortgage, rather a less painful way then full up front cost.
I like them myself, I plan on getting more after we move. Right now I am more cruising on my neighbors solar rigs (I work for them, that's part of my pay), and I'm really impressed with them. Maintenance is minimal, the batteries carry you through the night or across cloudy days, clean power, and etc. Quiet, reliable. I have a few of my own that I use as well, I run all our lights and some of my smaller stuff with them when I need to. I like the idea of paying my electric bill completely off, and get it over with, plus it's a *dandy* whole house (or as many circuits as you wire into them, you can still have grid supplied as well, it doesn't have to be either/or) sized UPS unit.
Re:Be careful of your evidence
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A Mighty Wind
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· Score: 2, Interesting
You have it exactly. I am skeptical of hydrogen at this time except in places like iceland where they did the geothermal to hydrogen because that's all they have to work with, and plenty of it, heat + lotsa water.
Methanol or ethanol have huge advantages most places else as alternative fuels, namely, very little in the way of "switching over" required, it's just liquid fuel, that's it. Same gas stations and the same gas tanks and with a little tuning the same engines in the vehicles, and that's it. No exotic containers, no radically different engines, etc. You lose a bit on miles per tank, gain it back by cleaner running engines that will last a lot longer and much less pollution. Mileage you adjust by weight of vehicle, styling, and use. We HAVE high mileage cars now, they just run on nasty fuel. I used to have a two seater fiat built in 69 that got over 60 mpg, and it would do any legal highway speeds in the US readily. I mean, c'mon, they really do have better engineering now to pick and choose from. Alcohols are fairly efficient fuel,so is gasoline, just that gasoline is pretty nasty after it's burnt. It (ethanol or methanol production)also can be done down to very small scale,with much cheaper and easier to use equipment, whereas cheneys and bushes scheme still requires the same monopoly companies that exist now to build the thousands of baby nuke plants (that's their main scheme now)for the hydrogen production (trillions profit for them) PLUS still use the oil they sell (trillions profit for them). More or less the same guys will be the same billionaires under their "new energy policy". methanol in particular can be made from cellulose, that the planet earth has in abundance and keeps making more of (I call cellulose stored solar), ethanol requires the sugars, not nearly as efficient, rather expensive to make with most techniques on any large scales, not the manufacturing, the just getting your hands on the sugars part. Places like brazil have been able to do it from cheap oil beinhg used to grow cheap sugar cane, same as in the US with cheap oil and natgas being used to grow corn, but most of the time when you look at the figures ethanol is out, just too expensive. methanol, nope, it's doable. Probably cost morre than gasoline now, but eventually that gasoline is not going to be cheap, and it could happen quickly, any random nutjob (in a suit, uniform or robes) setting off one nuke in the middle east will cause those prices to what they call "fluctuate" rather severely, as "investor confidence drops".
What's the matter, got accounting criminality to hide? That's my first impression.
Obviously tax and accounting rules have to change radically for that to be effective. I'll give you that one. They would have to be pretty simple, the bulk of the tax code scrapped, and assets really had to be assets, debits had to be debits, and so on. And yes, I could care less if it puts a huge number of traders and investment "advisors" and media astroturfer shills and brokerages and newsletter writers out of work and makes companies compete on merit of what they do long term, if they really have a business plan they work at or are they paper work shufflers and schemers and scammers.
Any more, take it up with warren buffet, he has similar-not identical-but similar styled views, he's also even rougher on the scammers and government than I am, and I guarantee is richer and more successful than any random poster on slashdot. He buys companies, he doesn't specialise in "waving" voodoo theories of trading stocks. He doesn't always nail it, but has been *rather* successful at it.
And yes, I agree, what I proposed is not even remotely likely to even ever be considered, another one I'll grant you. I just think they are dandy ideas if "the market" was truly interested in reform. there's zero about any reform to benefit them or their skimmed profits, all they ("they" being the so called private market and the so called public government) will do is run the latest version of "See, we're doing something about it, we're cleaning it up and cracking down on abuse! Really and truly this time, we are!" like they've been doing as long as I have been looking at it. I know it's not, and so does everyone else, so the point is moot, I was just daydreaming a little on a couple of "what ifs". I stay out of it,I like to look at it but stay out of it, I only have any truck with tangibles of any sorts.
thanks, I saw the reference further down the thread, just at the time of posting I had one of those brane locks. And that's how I watched it, online. The story about over the ICBM base was very good, IMO.
Not sure about other folks here, but the contacts I have had with some "connected ones" inside uncle sugar paint a completely different story then what is presented in the magazine article. Along with some other issues I have been privy to, is why I am a confirmed default skeptic whenever I hear government spin doctors speaking on most any subject, I always take it in context and with several large handfuls of salt.
You see that "conspiracy theorist" slur works both ways, I tend to dismiss as "conspiracy theorists" anyone who default believes "official" government 100% of the time, or only thinks one of the two major political parties always tells the truth, and the other guys are liars. Those sorts of people I am skeptical of making critical decisions and analysis, because they are always working from flawed data usually, or have entered into a cult like mindset. I think they wear not tin foil hats, but complete opaque blinders and solid rubber ear plugs.
I never owned a foreign made pair of sneaks until I was in my 30's. Nor a car, nor any electrical or mechanical appliance I can think of, or a tool of any sort. We used to do all that stuff,vertically manufactured,and the people who made them could all afford them. Plus a home, plus vacations, plus retirement nest eggs plus could send kids to school and etc, etc. I used to fill my gas tank for 2.50$, and the 50 cents was silver, and the two dollar bills said silver certificate on them, not "federal reserve (debt) note". And everything else cost similar.
What we DIDN'T have was near as many high level multi-multi-multi millionaires and billionaires, or near as many people who existed and "made their living" by skimming other's wealth as opposed to producing their own wealth.
And that's what happened, and those gents control the mass media and politics now, and it's why the middle class is getting hammered and will continue to get hammered. It's much easier for high level thieves to steal when they go by "color of law" and it's not classed as theft and they set the rules and they control the media and public schooling mass conditioning and indoctrinational efforts.
Greed always sells,or promising the impossible, it's the magic beans for the cow scam theory, it's a great advertising tool because it's based on almost universal human nature. You promise enough people the impossible, eventually more and more will believe it.
You've just independently invented what was put into words a few thousand years ago as part of biblical economic and social laws/guidelines, laws which make great sense, whether a believer or not. One of the laws is to have "just weights and measures" for example, and to use real money and to not engage in usury. Another is admonitions to be productive, and because of the nature of the world, that resulted in most people having more than one specific sort of job, to not grossly over specialise to the detriment of your human-ness.
And to be more specific, in your post you have outlined the "tithing" concept, and are hinting around the "jubilee" concept a little as well. Where you missed it was granting too many powers to the "priest" class, in your example substitute government, as in the old days they were the government, and had strict but very limited authority and powers, and really could not lawfully "demand" a tithe except as outlined in some other rules, and if they did they became non-priests quickly.
Human nature really doesn't change all that much, and nor do basic simple realities of work, trade, economy, wealth creation as opposed to wealth re-arrangement, and social interaction.
I can think of one simple change in the trading laws that might actually work to help the real economy and to knock down the skimmers back to levels they should be at, and not prominent either like they are now.
I would put a minimum time limit holding law on stocks, and make it realistic, at least one year and ideally two years. In other words, no pumping and dumping, no short term trades or daily trades, you buy it, you buy it because you believe company x makes good products or services so you sit on the stock. If I had another dictatorial wish to make the market "work" better, stocks would have to pay dividends, at a credible % level based on gross income(that will help set limits on CEO pay, etc), within a few years, say 5 maximum, or the corporation gets dissolved by law, they lose their "of the public benefit" status, their granted charter. The first one though is vital, time limits on exchanges of stock. Right now it has nothing(to be fair just little) to do with what a company does or makes or anything, it's done with "waves" and charts and rumors and shilling and other associated economic astrological-esque voodoo just as much or more as whether or not the company actually does good profitable business and makes and services and markets widgets.
Can you see the reason why your area is still booming? It should be sort of obvious, you are in a completely artificial economic microclimate compared to the rest of the nation, Washington DC exists on coerced tax money basically, it doesn't have to "compete", it's an (generally speaking) complete monopoly run by more or less pointing guns at people heads, pay up, or go to prison. that's where you excessive money is coming from. It's certainly not from being "producers" of wealth.
And oh ya, it's also *the* #1 bulls eye target if some other nations and groups of the wealthy and armed adequately around the planet decide that the US "coalition of advanced and coerced profiteers" has becomed too arrogant and bullying to suit them.
Good luck! Glad it's still a good "economy" for you!
Maybe your hamburger won't be assembled in malaysia, but it sure might be "packaged" in some place like argentina and shipped in. All you might get here is the "presentation" of it. In case (anyone, generally speaking throughout this post)you haven't noticed, agriculture here is collapsing pretty fast now. It's not totally gone,no way, but being based on resource costs being static -fuel, machinery, fertilisers, etc), it's destroyed now,just finishing the shaking-out, no way to sustain it except the very largest international corporate farms, and very small hobby niche farms. And the corporate farms wil be moving to third world nations eventually as well, and probably pretty soon. You can see all the trends, it's going to become very marginalised in the US. It's existing by inertia now more than anything else, farms are being consolidated or abandoned to other purposes, and for most farmers, there is very, very little if any profit any more, and almost all new laws and regulations and taxes are designed to drive them out of existance. Some mid level thinkers spout "subsidies" on the television and elsewheres,but reality is, hardly no real "old fashioned" type farmers receive those,in any true meaningful way that really helps out, they go way way more to corporate CEOS once you follow the buck around to wherever it stops.
All the jobs (and who really owns the valuable tangibles) are rearranging, it's the great leveling combined with the shift to a master/serf planet,based completely on the social goal of the very higher levels of the globalists, which can be termed technofuedalism. Both parts of that descriptive word are important to consider.
Economics are only one factor-techno- they also want power and control beyond which they have now-feudalism. It is very, very important to always remember that, it is NOT only about money, it's also about raw power over other humans. It is 50/50 in that perspective to them.
A rough model to compare is mainland china, which is really their poster boy style of nation, hence all the international very high level globalist interest. An industrious but thorughly controlled and cowed population, 1% master, 99% techno and traditional serf, full tech available to the elite, some bones thrown here and there to those beneath them. Just enough carrots and sticks to keep things running smoothly, in a technofeudal fashion. Now imagine that on a global scale. It's not hard to imagine that either, 1/3th of the planet is like this now already, population-wise.
The only way to level is to run the highs and lows together. That's the easy definitionand what leveling means. Unfortunately, the historical past US vast middle class,both white collar and blue collar, represent a significant chunk of the highs on a planetary scale. There's hardly any way whatsoever they will escape a general over all loss in income and quality of life as determind by economics with globalization and this leveling. Balance of trade proves it, unemployment rates (The real rates of over 10%, not the lied about cooked rates they quote) prove it, interest levels prove it, instances of bankruptcy prove it, debt load proves it, and socially it's past being proven, we are more chaotic and un-social now than at any time previous in our history short of the revolutionary wars 1 and 2.
Globalization will result in turning the planet into one giant "second world" type nation, with all this re arranging and leveling out, first world nations level go down, third world levels go up, that's the over all big picture. That's the leveled middle ground. Once that's achieved, a very slow rise in general up is a possibility and even a probability, EXCEPT if major technological wars break out merely one single order of magnitude larger than what we are seeing today with all the various wars going on. Then, no one knows or can predict, too many wild cards. If no major global devastating wars or plagues,(I sincerely doubt we will avoid them) by around mid century there *might* be a good general ri
They had a press conference at the national press club, I watched it live. They brought out out quite a few government employees, mostly retired military, who told their stories about various events related to this topic, not roswell, just in general. Mainstream press covered it for a few minutes then it poofed basically. Most likely less than 1% of the population is aware it even happened, let alone watched it. It was on cspan. I'd say all but one of the people sounded most credible, one guy seemed addled by old age and perhaps fear and stage fright maybe, the rest though, all sounded normal, just had some pretty interesting anecdotals to relate.
the press is pretty good at hiding events, anyone remember the multiple million gallon coal slurry spill that wiped out a small river in kentucky during the presidential campaign last? It was almost completely surpressed,although it was a pretty serious ecological disaster, the owners had direct ties leading through some companies to one of the candidates, known sometimes as "Mr. Environment". That story was spiked.
False stories get planted, real ones get suppressed or placed on the back pages,there appears to be a lot of collusion that happens in the so called "free press". I've been a news junkie too long to not have seen it over and over again. Just because something doesn't get national coverage doesn't mean it didn't happen, and conversely, just because something makes wide coverage headlines is absolutely no proof whatsoever that it's actually "real". The spirit of Goebbels is alive and well in our mass market news media, print or electronic.
Right in the pop sci article, they give refernces to the "released" documents that show the government did some pretty foul experimentation on humqns, without their knowledge. No one ever got busted for it,or went to jail like they should have, and it made little major mainstream press. Yet, it's a big story. Radiological infections, physical mutilation, electro shock experiments,secret drug exposure, some leading to suicides, etc, etc, etc. And despite some of the victims and insiders leaks, the government denied it for years and years,with the same techniques they always use, they always trot out their tame scientists and PR flaks with uniforms on to astroturf or spread FUD. We've been seeing it lately, the UN WMD "proof" powell was spouting, and the kings several whoppers. Sometimes they get press, sometimes they don't, but the default is, there is no credible accountability for the ones who constantly do it. Really, who's gotten busted for the gulf of tonkin "attack" lie, that lead to a huge over decade long war?
Sometimes they outright lie, sometimes they do lies of omission, but I think most of the time they do the propaganda technique which is the most effective, the blend of some lies and some truth that changes the focus of the political effort and agenda.
The "northwoods documents" (easy to find with a search)are very interesting if (anyone) you have never seen them or heard about them.
--it's just the past few days what with all their other credibility stories, the NYT is being pressured along with the Pulitzer committe to give their prize back that one of their jounalists got. The reason? They kept hid from the west the starvation death of millions of people, on purpose, Stalin's forced Ukrainian famine. Their reporter was there, saw it, instead they published much praise for stalin and the soviet model. Something that big,that huge, that real, kept completely hidden from the rest of the world for years and years.
Another, we just passed the anniversay, the attack by Israel on the USS Liberty, an attack that went on for hours and hours, well beyond positive identification, denied by the governments, both the US and Israel, and they almost got away with blaming it on egypt, but some of the people survived and the ship didn't sink. It took some time for the truth to come out, and still the government denied, even going so far as to physically threated their own military survivors, ordered them to not talk about it. That was a more modern proven historical cover up. Tonkin gulf, another. The "dead babies and incubators" story of gulf war 1, one of the major public perception propaganda initiatives to get the US public behind bush 1 first war against his business partner he wanted to double cross.
There's plenty more.
Government lies like a cheap rug when it suits them. I would *bet* it would be hard to find a civil or military government employee who doesn't know about some lie or another, some small, some large, that government pushes as *true facts*.
Anyone wants to review some pretty credible stuff,at least very interesting, google for the few large mexican city sightings, especially july 11, 1991, and there have been a few since. Hours of video and stills out there, I've seen a lot of it, including around 20 minutes or so shot with 16 mm.. Hard to fake a jet plane chasing a metallic orb, all the time being watched and photoed by tens of thousands of people. Pretty good stuff, can't tell ya what it is, can tell ya what it wasn't, balloons or sea gulls or venus through the clouds etc don't out-maneuver jets last I heard. It was shown near real time on mexico city news TV. You won't see much on US TV with it, but it's played a lot in central and south america and in europe from what I understand. Also look for "the battle of LA", 1942, and the Washington DC sightings of I believe 1952. Un-ignorable.
Something out there, probably a variety of reasons,and I just don't see this entire universe and we would be "it", alone, just ain't happening, IMO.
Anyway, the previous googles are good, and if anyone wants to look at freedom of information act documents, best place on the net is theblackvault.com Not sure of his total count, but well over 12,000 docs, something like that, you can spend a long time there. The government sure does redact out a lot of things for a big nothing it appears.
Re:Sounds Fantastic -- Now Why Not Hemp
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Corn-Based Plastic
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· Score: 1
no, thought I made that clear, I just don't do drugs or alcohol. I wouldn't make them illegal for people either, we have enough real laws to deal with any crime associated with peoples behavior. For any government or society to deny that injesting in some form substances that can alter moods, etc is just silly, every human culture and society has done it. sometimes there's prroblems associated with it, but it's never to the point of being so outrageous that this or that actually needs to be banned, same as say "food" in general or any other human interest or endeavor, it just depends. On the lesser of many evils scale, prohibition styled laws cause more problems than they solve.
As to my writing style, if that is what you are referring to, well, it's how I write, and my spiritual beliefs are mine, personal, once in awhile in public I will make a clarification as to part of my reasoning that leads to an opinion or conclusion. I think we have stewardship over the planet,it is in our care,and all the things therein,and we are free to use but not abuse. Even from a strictly secular viewpoint it still makes sense, IMO.
mandating open software over closed is a financial and logical extension of the notion that government should be more cost effective, accessible to all comers, more equitable and be able to accomplish it's tasks. What this does is to put a huge incentive on other software companies to compete on terms of usability and service, instead of locked in closed formats and inertia, ie, holding them ransom for money every year beyond what is really necessary to spend, which is the model most governments and busineses have been using for a long time, but times change now. Cost is a serious consideration, and open source has enough variety to do the bulk of what needs to be done, and shows every indication of soon doing *all* of it.. If-obvious reference- microsoft wants to still compete, the ball is in their court now, there's several avenues they can persue, either drop prices to a much more realistic level and open up their document formats in particular, or go full bore open source same as linux and bsd vendors,make their profit from service and reliability and security, and also the same thing applies to various specific applications they might require.
The "right tool for the job" is the correct assessment, but you must needs take all the variables into account when considering your selection. Example, I can dig out a small gadren spot to make a new flower bed, I could lease a trackhoe, by golly that thing is very efficient in digging out the bed, and it's sure a tool, but all things considered the better tool would be me, the garden sysadmin and my shovel I own and don't have to rent.
I don't think the brazilians are stupid, they can see the advantages in cost, long term viability, having the freedom to develop custom in house, having the notion that more of their people will have lawful access to the same tools for more universal access, and so on.
Put it another way, it would sure be bogus if to use the highway here I had to only drive a belchfire, and government wouldn't use anything but belchfires, and they were real expensive all the time with expensive parts and expensive maintenance. That's been almost completely "mandated" so far, time to move on to another idea.
About time too, and I'm glad Apple saw it coming. And much as I don't want to see the internet becoming marginalized because microsoft will continue to make things "their way", I don't *fear* two different internets either. Perhaps it's time to reconsider this entire internet thing. I would rather access an internet that didn't run on microsoft anything or didn't require it. I don't want to conduct business with their stuff, have my government run or use their stuff, and quite frankly, would be quite pleased to not have to worry about the net getting borked because of their stuff. hard to describe but they just induce a feeling of "icky" in me, they give me the creeps. I can't describe it better than that, not even addressing any specific part of their tech, just the over all feel, it's just wrong to me somehow. They had their chance,in the beginning made actual contributions to the rise of personal computing and the net, they made huge sums, but it's time to move on now, they became too arrogant and bullyish for any sort of continued support from people, IMO, and their products are reflecting that, their announcements keep reflecting that,and they are actively still seeking total control. They are absolutely no different now, in fact, they have grown even worse. Screw em in other words. If they are so bound and determined to "take over", I say let them,let them take over and destroy what they seek in their blindness, just use social and business aikido and step completely around them, let them fall flat on their face from their own out of control inertia and predatory aggression, develop a more advanced and honest and open and free-ish alternative internet where open source and anything *not* microsoft can go. Nixinet in other words. Browser wars? Minor skirmishes, I say let's get down and dirty, have complete net wars,let them control their version of the net, let it turn into a dung pile of bloat and bugginess and viruses and worms, who cares, I would gladly boycott any site/net/domain that insists on microsoft/IE only, just as now I don't access "aolnet". I don't care if they "dominate", their own bugginess and insecurity and upcoming massive big brotherism schemes will destroy their efforts anyway,so who cares? Let people keep getting burned and stung, eventually they'll see the light. Perhaps this is a good time to move forward, and not fight microsoft, just ignore them and abandon them to yesterdays business model, and yesterdays technology.
This article could relate to the other article on Ipv6 as well, suppose everyone who used a *nix variant of any flavor just went there and did that? Along with fast adoption of advanced wireless, peer to peer, shared hosting a la bit torrent styled efforts, and so on and so forth, similar efforts on rapid new and improved. Create a modern autobahn while microsoft stays stuck on the two muddy ruts gravel road model of computing and the net.
Shunning and avoidance are underrated, it's a very good technique, and usually you are a minority in the initial stages of that effort following all the previous classic examples. It's possible too, look at all the servers for instance that don't use their products. Desktops are one thing, the servers with the content have the ultimate power.
In fact, if you really get down to it,most of all the advanced stuff that makes up "the net" is non microsoft already, it is definetly nixy flavored, so it wouldn't really be that much of a stretch to take it into another gear and put the throttle down, just pull away from them. Linux and the BSDs are doing it, we still have the other unixes, and OSX's uniqueness,there's some really big companies out there that see microsoft as an annoyance, and there's enough people now who would probably like to see the next advanced internet. Seems a natural to me, the leaders lead, the herd will eventually follow or get left behind. There would need a transitional period, where both sorts would interact, but we should get beyond it as rapidly as possible, IMO.
Let them have microsof
Re:Sounds Fantastic -- Now Why Not Hemp
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--I really couldn't completely say with absolute certainty about the ramifications of full legaliztion of everything. I would say that prices would drop to the point that very little violence or crime would be associated with drugs, at least from that financial profit angle. Socially I think you'd see a temporary surge in use of this or that, then it would settle back down to roughly what we already have. The reason I would say that is, well, it gets used now all over despite all their prohibitive laws and the excessive cost of having to deal with a "black market". And from what I have read before, if any of the numbers are accurate, the rate of coke use today per capita is roughly identical to back before it was made illegal.
With that said I'll make a disclaimer, I think of natural plants as useful medicinal herbs, the refined substances as more worthy of an honest and non-corrupt effort by society and government to regulate, that's about where I draw the line, and I think that follows the basic guidelines of the constitution pretty fairly. I don't own or grow or use whatever anything that is currently classed as illegal, I just don't do those sorts of things, and I also don't advocate any sort of massive "recreational" use of any substance, or addiction, I am rather a prude about it I am afraid, have seen too many people I know go over the top with liquid drugs or dry drugs of various kinds, but I wouldn't make it completely unlawful, not when we have the obvious so called "legal" drug market being some sort of legitimate business. It's an obvious fraud,like the saying goes we have a war on "some" drugs. And we went through liquid drug prohibition, that should be a clear enough example I would think.
And industrial hemp, to get back to that exact issue, I honestly can't see how anyone even remotely rational would be against it, and because we have extremely powerful persons and organizations who absolutely maintain it's some sort of heinous threat, I would describe those people and organizations who hold that view as to being so irrational as to be classed as dangerously and criminally insane, especially of they are any sort of official authority figure part of government, and that that sort of mindset probably also influences their views on a variety of subjects of importance, which would compound the irrationality. That's an opinion, and a strong one, but I see no need to disguise it, frankly, I think those anti industrial hemp people are completely *nuts* and have no business in any position of authority,and it's the same view I have of people who are addicts of either legal or illegal substances, I don't think they should be in any position of authority, and I definetly class alcohol right in there with any other highly addictive substance, legal or otherwise, which sorta makes me suspicious of the bulk of high level government because the alcoholism rate is so high in it. I don't trust them to make good decisions in other words.
Yes, I know I am an opinionated extremist, that is my nature and I never hide it or deny it, that would be silly. I tend to be extreme on personal freedoms, honesty, and accountability when discussing business or government or politics.
It also makes the internet and forums a lot more fun.......
Re:Sounds Fantastic -- Now Why Not Hemp
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I'll look for it, thanks. I tend to not buy many new books, but I use the library and buy used. I also need to get down with online books, I admit I've only read two so far, and I know there's thousands, I just find reading stuff longer than feature article length material on a screen to be annoying, still prefer to kick back with a paper based book. Or was this book printed hemp based? That would have been amusing and made a point.
Tell you a funny, when I was a kid they showed us the movie reefer madness in school as a serious deal. I thought it was ludicrously funny. I had never even seen or heard about anyone smoking that stuff, but it was so hokey even a kid could see it.
Slashdot Mirror
And let me guess, you are one of those people who thinks there's an actual carved in stone law someplace that you have to use EITHER some sort of alternative energy system OR just grid supplied?
I hear this so much from scoffers, it really is weird too, because it's so completely illogical. It's like saying your personal commuter car can't carry 2 tons of rocks all the time so that means cars are impractical and useless. I also hear it from people who -example only- think nothing of dropping similar sums on things like skiboats they might use half a dozen times a year, or something like that.. Surprise, you can run BOTH, or have a multi-hybrid system like most people have (and what I recommend to people first getting into it, to build up to it), which is usually (depends on your site survey obviously)solar PV, and a wind charger (that deals with the winter/summer split nicely), then grid supplied and some sort of fuel genny. Mix and match and spice to taste. All can feed into the same battery banks with zero effort through the charger/inverters, or most states have a grid buy back program if you want it simpler.
It's schweeet.
If you live someplace that's dead calm all the time,never any wind or vewery little, never gets any useful amount of sun, has no running water in some small creek, well, yep, short of your own home depot baby nuke plant, nope, not a lot you can do about it, sorry. If that's 90% of the planet I guess I never travelled much. I know of some places like that, I guess I just wouldn't live there. Anyplace else besides those dead zones there's something "alternative" that will get you some kind of juice. Heck, I got a buddy of mine sells wood boilers that run a homes heat, hot water and electricity, if all you have is some handy trees or coal on the property. there's usually something that would work for most folks, but yes, there's always some places or situations where i guess you are just stuck. In that case about the only thing alternative you can do that is practical is to make sure your home/building is built or retroifitted to "super insulation" standards, which is an entirely different but related subject. ANYONE can do that, anyplace, any climate or environment it works.
I live in north georgia, it's humid as all get out here, rains a lot, then when it's not raining, yes it's sunny. In the winter it's pretty windy, not so much in the summer. My personal requirements, yes, I don't use much, but I get by. I'm running a desktop now, 17 inch monitor, speakers, got a light on and a window fan. Seems to all be working, and it's all I need right now. My stove and burners and furnace run on propane. My next door neighbor who uses a lot of power on the other hand, lives in a three story mansion,close to a million bucks worth, close to around 6,000 square feet, and is a gadget head. He's doesn't "do without" none whatsoever. He runs everything but his heat pumps and his electric stove on solar and one electric dryer. The refrigerator and chest freezer run on solar. Most of everyhting else he has runs on solar. the deep well is switchable, a lot of the times in the summer if we have to water the gardens I run that 220 VAC well completely off the solar, just because it's possible and in mid day there's a lot of extra juice going begging. We run the washers on solar. And yada yada yada. I think his total cost that included bringing in from out of state a three guy crew for installation was around 25 grand, basically the cost of an extra bathroom in a new better quality home some place. With a 20 year note for some folks, not that bad, and the deal is, it's the same sort of price if you live in a high rent or a low rent place, it hides itself in that big mortgage pretty easy I hear. I think if he had done the labor himself and scrounged a few of the pieces he could have knocked around 5 grand off that price. Just depends on what you want, I read that that charming foyer in most peoples houses with the marvelous bay windows don't put out much electricity at all.
I know
Or you have tried it as a "normal" desktop type OS? Have any thoughts on it if so?
I noticed on the download page for the hobbyist freebie version they recommend a 400 mhz speed cpu minimum and 128 ram. well, I thought the whole idea of it was small, maybe could run adequately on much older chips and much less ram. It's also a big download, at least on dialup modem. I like the idea of small/fast/uber reliable though, and it says it has a full GUI and whatnot with it. Just wondering if it's really worth it to try, I was really looking for something better able to run on the cast off older computers out there (I fix them up and give them away or sell them cheap/whatever). I've been looking for something adequate but bulletproof I can give brand new & inexperienced users for those sorts of older low powered machines.
I just use the old traditional car analogy when I try to explain it to people.
Here 'tis:
I make alternators, you make engines, leroy over there makes wheels, bubba makes frames and bodies and etc. Now we could all sit around and try to sell this stuff to each other with all sorts of schemes and deals and middlemen and whatnot, or we could all just cooperate completely and share a part with each other and all of us wind up with a pretty cool and snazzy complete car at very little cost to anyone. Then we *all* have our own good car to go drive to "real work" in. And whenever I build a newer better alternator I chip it in, and so does the engine guy, and so on. We do this forever, we are always driving a new car for real reasonable and not much hassle. And once in awhile someone totally new joins our car co-op group, like the new guy this week we added has a really nice car sound system we all get to add to our cars. Cool beans. Fat city.
Read the whole thread, no bit torrent link yet from anyone. I thought that was the gnu rools and stuff here with OS ISOs.
With that said,(to anyone) how out of the box secure is this thing? I admit I had never even heard of it before. I am just wondering, I have some old pentiums kicking around to play with.
You might like this. Old cartoon I saw in some scifi mag like analog or someting. Guy on a train, standing up, holding the overhead strap. He looks around 6 feet, 13 and 1/2 inches tall, around 400 lbs, in a suit, and he's holding a briefcase.
caption --> "conan the commuter"
I have something like what you were looking for on my smaller camper van. It uses two batteries, with an over sized alternator, but are connected across what's called an "isolator". All the extra accessories run from the storage battery (called "the house battery" side, and the van itself runs from the normal starter battery side. You could completely exhaust the storage battery side and not effect the normal starting and charging side. You can buy those isolators at most car accessory or Rv or marine shops for maybe around 50~100$, and do a dual battery installation yourself. Whether or not you can fit an over sized alternator is really a function of your individual ride, but it's quite possible you can. It's actually a good idea,not a very hard mod to do, and in the rare cases you need a junmp, you can actually just use the other battery fairly easily.
Now my RV is even more so, it has 3 seperate sets of circuits, it has two non connected 12 volt circuits, and two 110 ac circuits. The second 12 volt dc circuit I ran/added myself, it is solar PV panels charged and feeds 4 -6 volt batteries wired series & then parallel for 12 VDC. Those run quite a bit of my day to day stuff (we live in this thing)the first 12 VDC circuits have two rather large big truck sized starter designed batteries in parallel, plus they run some additional accessory circuits. And you can mount solar panels permanent on most vehicles, it's just not that hard, although down and flat all the time you won't get as much juice as up and aimed correctly when parked. But it's an easy thing to do. Mine are on a homebrew little buggy thing I made so I can move them around and manually aim them better, they are on a longish real heavy guage cable, but they make permanent mounts as well, and you can always cob it, it's just drilling and bolting really.
I don't run out of juice *too very often*. I also have an onboard 2.5 KW gas genny with it's own fuel tank. I guess that's enough electricity.
Depends on where you get the car and drive it I guess. I'm just relating an anecdotal. My boss just had to buy two new cars, for himself and wifey. Reason? One was bought and used up north in a serious salt the roads in the winter rust belt, the other sat down near their beach condo in florida. I worked on both those POSs until I refused to do it, told them to just go eat it at the dealers.. the electrical systems (and brakes and this and that) were totaled from corrosion, nothing worked on them for very long,computerised crap all over, they would get something fixed, within a month another extremely expensive and mostly stupid doo dad was gone, almost always due to corroded wires, that lead to this thing frying, then down the chain, poof, poof, poof. Neither car was more than a few years old, one was a full size conversion van, the other a pathfinder. Maybe that's not typical, but it's what I saw. I'm spolied I guess, grew up working on rusty salty stuff, ..never again!
Contrast my pure steel, no exotic electronics, never even seen salty anything 1975 van, 300+ miles, everything works just swell. No salt, no rust, no corrosion.
I predicteth that the 42 volt cars will suffer similar,or worse, unless they really learn to seal them better. I also think these new batteries won't last as long,(unless they use some sort of sealed exotic materials batteries) because the lead plates inside will have to be smaller, less bulk, less strength, their spongy nature/design will flake off faster with road bumps. That's the reason off roaders go to special batteries, because "normal" car starter batteries break internally so easy because of smaller more delicate plates (one reason anyway, there's several actually)(Hi off roaders, 80 cj7 here)(someone please shoot my carter bbd please).
Besides that, some of the newer tech sounds interesting, but I guess I'll just keep sticking with running much older stuff I can still work on, until they outlaw it or something. Now, I *would* go to a hybrid though,there's an exception, if it was diesel on the fuel burning side. I already need generators, might as well have one that does double duty. But I certainly wouldn't go to a new car just to run 1000 amp boom boxes "more efficiently". In fact, I think those rolling racket rap machines should be codified into law under the "he just needed killin'" statutes we have.
west nile is killing a lot more birds now than anything else, windchargers included, although I'll admit they do clonk into them and get chewed up some. I can see it around here, bird populations in general are dismal the past two years since west nile was detected here. I even was the first person to tell the local vet about it, she had never even heard of it, told her to watch the birds and horses for it, so she went and looked it up on the net, before it was really hitting the TV news.. It used to be pesticides I believe killed most of the raptors, being higher in the food chain they accumulated more toxins, etc.. Also, some environmental "rulings" stuff has a side effect of killing eagles, example, when they shut the klamath farmers water off, it also dried up the remaining marshlands downstream of the irrigation canals,really devasting huge numbers of species,including the largest cocnentration of eagles in the lower 48, to "save" a couple of really not endangered species. It also removed the food that millions of migratory species were depending on in the pacific flyway. whoops. Good intentions (sort of),but unfortunatly really bad ecological results, plus wiped out a lot of humans economically and socially, for no real reason..
I don't think there's any single one silver bullet energy solution, it's natch though we will be building a lot more windmills, because they actually *work* and are pretty cost effective now. I am hoping to find some property local to me that has a small stream, I use solar now but I'm juiced on low head small scale hydro,I am liking that 24 hour a day concept, well, until the government tells me I can't do it. I have a small wind charger but it isn't installed yet, again, waiting to move now, soon sometime.
They already make complete replacement roofing systems that are solar PV. the cost is offset some by not needing a lot of the conventional roofing materials (shingles, etc). there are also now many lenders offering 100% financing when it's tied into the home mortgage, rather a less painful way then full up front cost.
I like them myself, I plan on getting more after we move. Right now I am more cruising on my neighbors solar rigs (I work for them, that's part of my pay), and I'm really impressed with them. Maintenance is minimal, the batteries carry you through the night or across cloudy days, clean power, and etc. Quiet, reliable. I have a few of my own that I use as well, I run all our lights and some of my smaller stuff with them when I need to. I like the idea of paying my electric bill completely off, and get it over with, plus it's a *dandy* whole house (or as many circuits as you wire into them, you can still have grid supplied as well, it doesn't have to be either/or) sized UPS unit.
You have it exactly. I am skeptical of hydrogen at this time except in places like iceland where they did the geothermal to hydrogen because that's all they have to work with, and plenty of it, heat + lotsa water.
Methanol or ethanol have huge advantages most places else as alternative fuels, namely, very little in the way of "switching over" required, it's just liquid fuel, that's it. Same gas stations and the same gas tanks and with a little tuning the same engines in the vehicles, and that's it. No exotic containers, no radically different engines, etc. You lose a bit on miles per tank, gain it back by cleaner running engines that will last a lot longer and much less pollution. Mileage you adjust by weight of vehicle, styling, and use. We HAVE high mileage cars now, they just run on nasty fuel. I used to have a two seater fiat built in 69 that got over 60 mpg, and it would do any legal highway speeds in the US readily. I mean, c'mon, they really do have better engineering now to pick and choose from. Alcohols are fairly efficient fuel,so is gasoline, just that gasoline is pretty nasty after it's burnt. It (ethanol or methanol production)also can be done down to very small scale,with much cheaper and easier to use equipment, whereas cheneys and bushes scheme still requires the same monopoly companies that exist now to build the thousands of baby nuke plants (that's their main scheme now)for the hydrogen production (trillions profit for them) PLUS still use the oil they sell (trillions profit for them). More or less the same guys will be the same billionaires under their "new energy policy". methanol in particular can be made from cellulose, that the planet earth has in abundance and keeps making more of (I call cellulose stored solar), ethanol requires the sugars, not nearly as efficient, rather expensive to make with most techniques on any large scales, not the manufacturing, the just getting your hands on the sugars part. Places like brazil have been able to do it from cheap oil beinhg used to grow cheap sugar cane, same as in the US with cheap oil and natgas being used to grow corn, but most of the time when you look at the figures ethanol is out, just too expensive. methanol, nope, it's doable. Probably cost morre than gasoline now, but eventually that gasoline is not going to be cheap, and it could happen quickly, any random nutjob (in a suit, uniform or robes) setting off one nuke in the middle east will cause those prices to what they call "fluctuate" rather severely, as "investor confidence drops".
What's the matter, got accounting criminality to hide? That's my first impression.
Obviously tax and accounting rules have to change radically for that to be effective. I'll give you that one. They would have to be pretty simple, the bulk of the tax code scrapped, and assets really had to be assets, debits had to be debits, and so on. And yes, I could care less if it puts a huge number of traders and investment "advisors" and media astroturfer shills and brokerages and newsletter writers out of work and makes companies compete on merit of what they do long term, if they really have a business plan they work at or are they paper work shufflers and schemers and scammers.
Any more, take it up with warren buffet, he has similar-not identical-but similar styled views, he's also even rougher on the scammers and government than I am, and I guarantee is richer and more successful than any random poster on slashdot. He buys companies, he doesn't specialise in "waving" voodoo theories of trading stocks. He doesn't always nail it, but has been *rather* successful at it.
And yes, I agree, what I proposed is not even remotely likely to even ever be considered, another one I'll grant you. I just think they are dandy ideas if "the market" was truly interested in reform. there's zero about any reform to benefit them or their skimmed profits, all they ("they" being the so called private market and the so called public government) will do is run the latest version of "See, we're doing something about it, we're cleaning it up and cracking down on abuse! Really and truly this time, we are!" like they've been doing as long as I have been looking at it. I know it's not, and so does everyone else, so the point is moot, I was just daydreaming a little on a couple of "what ifs".
I stay out of it,I like to look at it but stay out of it, I only have any truck with tangibles of any sorts.
thanks, I saw the reference further down the thread, just at the time of posting I had one of those brane locks. And that's how I watched it, online. The story about over the ICBM base was very good, IMO.
Not sure about other folks here, but the contacts I have had with some "connected ones" inside uncle sugar paint a completely different story then what is presented in the magazine article. Along with some other issues I have been privy to, is why I am a confirmed default skeptic whenever I hear government spin doctors speaking on most any subject, I always take it in context and with several large handfuls of salt.
You see that "conspiracy theorist" slur works both ways, I tend to dismiss as "conspiracy theorists" anyone who default believes "official" government 100% of the time, or only thinks one of the two major political parties always tells the truth, and the other guys are liars. Those sorts of people I am skeptical of making critical decisions and analysis, because they are always working from flawed data usually, or have entered into a cult like mindset. I think they wear not tin foil hats, but complete opaque blinders and solid rubber ear plugs.
I never owned a foreign made pair of sneaks until I was in my 30's. Nor a car, nor any electrical or mechanical appliance I can think of, or a tool of any sort. We used to do all that stuff,vertically manufactured,and the people who made them could all afford them. Plus a home, plus vacations, plus retirement nest eggs plus could send kids to school and etc, etc. I used to fill my gas tank for 2.50$, and the 50 cents was silver, and the two dollar bills said silver certificate on them, not "federal reserve (debt) note". And everything else cost similar.
What we DIDN'T have was near as many high level multi-multi-multi millionaires and billionaires, or near as many people who existed and "made their living" by skimming other's wealth as opposed to producing their own wealth.
And that's what happened, and those gents control the mass media and politics now, and it's why the middle class is getting hammered and will continue to get hammered. It's much easier for high level thieves to steal when they go by "color of law" and it's not classed as theft and they set the rules and they control the media and public schooling mass conditioning and indoctrinational efforts.
Greed always sells,or promising the impossible, it's the magic beans for the cow scam theory, it's a great advertising tool because it's based on almost universal human nature. You promise enough people the impossible, eventually more and more will believe it.
Have doubts?
Ever see spam, wonder why it still exists?
You've just independently invented what was put into words a few thousand years ago as part of biblical economic and social laws/guidelines, laws which make great sense, whether a believer or not. One of the laws is to have "just weights and measures" for example, and to use real money and to not engage in usury. Another is admonitions to be productive, and because of the nature of the world, that resulted in most people having more than one specific sort of job, to not grossly over specialise to the detriment of your human-ness.
And to be more specific, in your post you have outlined the "tithing" concept, and are hinting around the "jubilee" concept a little as well. Where you missed it was granting too many powers to the "priest" class, in your example substitute government, as in the old days they were the government, and had strict but very limited authority and powers, and really could not lawfully "demand" a tithe except as outlined in some other rules, and if they did they became non-priests quickly.
Human nature really doesn't change all that much, and nor do basic simple realities of work, trade, economy, wealth creation as opposed to wealth re-arrangement, and social interaction.
I can think of one simple change in the trading laws that might actually work to help the real economy and to knock down the skimmers back to levels they should be at, and not prominent either like they are now.
I would put a minimum time limit holding law on stocks, and make it realistic, at least one year and ideally two years. In other words, no pumping and dumping, no short term trades or daily trades, you buy it, you buy it because you believe company x makes good products or services so you sit on the stock. If I had another dictatorial wish to make the market "work" better, stocks would have to pay dividends, at a credible % level based on gross income(that will help set limits on CEO pay, etc), within a few years, say 5 maximum, or the corporation gets dissolved by law, they lose their "of the public benefit" status, their granted charter. The first one though is vital, time limits on exchanges of stock. Right now it has nothing(to be fair just little) to do with what a company does or makes or anything, it's done with "waves" and charts and rumors and shilling and other associated economic astrological-esque voodoo just as much or more as whether or not the company actually does good profitable business and makes and services and markets widgets.
Can you see the reason why your area is still booming? It should be sort of obvious, you are in a completely artificial economic microclimate compared to the rest of the nation, Washington DC exists on coerced tax money basically, it doesn't have to "compete", it's an (generally speaking) complete monopoly run by more or less pointing guns at people heads, pay up, or go to prison. that's where you excessive money is coming from. It's certainly not from being "producers" of wealth.
And oh ya, it's also *the* #1 bulls eye target if some other nations and groups of the wealthy and armed adequately around the planet decide that the US "coalition of advanced and coerced profiteers" has becomed too arrogant and bullying to suit them.
Good luck! Glad it's still a good "economy" for you!
Maybe your hamburger won't be assembled in malaysia, but it sure might be "packaged" in some place like argentina and shipped in. All you might get here is the "presentation" of it. In case (anyone, generally speaking throughout this post)you haven't noticed, agriculture here is collapsing pretty fast now. It's not totally gone,no way, but being based on resource costs being static -fuel, machinery, fertilisers, etc), it's destroyed now,just finishing the shaking-out, no way to sustain it except the very largest international corporate farms, and very small hobby niche farms. And the corporate farms wil be moving to third world nations eventually as well, and probably pretty soon. You can see all the trends, it's going to become very marginalised in the US. It's existing by inertia now more than anything else, farms are being consolidated or abandoned to other purposes, and for most farmers, there is very, very little if any profit any more, and almost all new laws and regulations and taxes are designed to drive them out of existance. Some mid level thinkers spout "subsidies" on the television and elsewheres,but reality is, hardly no real "old fashioned" type farmers receive those,in any true meaningful way that really helps out, they go way way more to corporate CEOS once you follow the buck around to wherever it stops.
All the jobs (and who really owns the valuable tangibles) are rearranging, it's the great leveling combined with the shift to a master/serf planet,based completely on the social goal of the very higher levels of the globalists, which can be termed technofuedalism. Both parts of that descriptive word are important to consider.
Economics are only one factor-techno- they also want power and control beyond which they have now-feudalism. It is very, very important to always remember that, it is NOT only about money, it's also about raw power over other humans. It is 50/50 in that perspective to them.
A rough model to compare is mainland china, which is really their poster boy style of nation, hence all the international very high level globalist interest. An industrious but thorughly controlled and cowed population, 1% master, 99% techno and traditional serf, full tech available to the elite, some bones thrown here and there to those beneath them. Just enough carrots and sticks to keep things running smoothly, in a technofeudal fashion. Now imagine that on a global scale. It's not hard to imagine that either, 1/3th of the planet is like this now already, population-wise.
The only way to level is to run the highs and lows together. That's the easy definitionand what leveling means. Unfortunately, the historical past US vast middle class,both white collar and blue collar, represent a significant chunk of the highs on a planetary scale. There's hardly any way whatsoever they will escape a general over all loss in income and quality of life as determind by economics with globalization and this leveling. Balance of trade proves it, unemployment rates (The real rates of over 10%, not the lied about cooked rates they quote) prove it, interest levels prove it, instances of bankruptcy prove it, debt load proves it, and socially it's past being proven, we are more chaotic and un-social now than at any time previous in our history short of the revolutionary wars 1 and 2.
Globalization will result in turning the planet into one giant "second world" type nation, with all this re arranging and leveling out, first world nations level go down, third world levels go up, that's the over all big picture. That's the leveled middle ground. Once that's achieved, a very slow rise in general up is a possibility and even a probability, EXCEPT if major technological wars break out merely one single order of magnitude larger than what we are seeing today with all the various wars going on. Then, no one knows or can predict, too many wild cards. If no major global devastating wars or plagues,(I sincerely doubt we will avoid them) by around mid century there *might* be a good general ri
They had a press conference at the national press club, I watched it live. They brought out out quite a few government employees, mostly retired military, who told their stories about various events related to this topic, not roswell, just in general. Mainstream press covered it for a few minutes then it poofed basically. Most likely less than 1% of the population is aware it even happened, let alone watched it. It was on cspan. I'd say all but one of the people sounded most credible, one guy seemed addled by old age and perhaps fear and stage fright maybe, the rest though, all sounded normal, just had some pretty interesting anecdotals to relate.
the press is pretty good at hiding events, anyone remember the multiple million gallon coal slurry spill that wiped out a small river in kentucky during the presidential campaign last? It was almost completely surpressed,although it was a pretty serious ecological disaster, the owners had direct ties leading through some companies to one of the candidates, known sometimes as "Mr. Environment". That story was spiked.
False stories get planted, real ones get suppressed or placed on the back pages,there appears to be a lot of collusion that happens in the so called "free press". I've been a news junkie too long to not have seen it over and over again. Just because something doesn't get national coverage doesn't mean it didn't happen, and conversely, just because something makes wide coverage headlines is absolutely no proof whatsoever that it's actually "real". The spirit of Goebbels is alive and well in our mass market news media, print or electronic.
Right in the pop sci article, they give refernces to the "released" documents that show the government did some pretty foul experimentation on humqns, without their knowledge. No one ever got busted for it,or went to jail like they should have, and it made little major mainstream press. Yet, it's a big story. Radiological infections, physical mutilation, electro shock experiments,secret drug exposure, some leading to suicides, etc, etc, etc. And despite some of the victims and insiders leaks, the government denied it for years and years,with the same techniques they always use, they always trot out their tame scientists and PR flaks with uniforms on to astroturf or spread FUD. We've been seeing it lately, the UN WMD "proof" powell was spouting, and the kings several whoppers. Sometimes they get press, sometimes they don't, but the default is, there is no credible accountability for the ones who constantly do it. Really, who's gotten busted for the gulf of tonkin "attack" lie, that lead to a huge over decade long war?
Sometimes they outright lie, sometimes they do lies of omission, but I think most of the time they do the propaganda technique which is the most effective, the blend of some lies and some truth that changes the focus of the political effort and agenda.
The "northwoods documents" (easy to find with a search)are very interesting if (anyone) you have never seen them or heard about them.
--it's just the past few days what with all their other credibility stories, the NYT is being pressured along with the Pulitzer committe to give their prize back that one of their jounalists got. The reason? They kept hid from the west the starvation death of millions of people, on purpose, Stalin's forced Ukrainian famine. Their reporter was there, saw it, instead they published much praise for stalin and the soviet model. Something that big,that huge, that real, kept completely hidden from the rest of the world for years and years.
Another, we just passed the anniversay, the attack by Israel on the USS Liberty, an attack that went on for hours and hours, well beyond positive identification, denied by the governments, both the US and Israel, and they almost got away with blaming it on egypt, but some of the people survived and the ship didn't sink. It took some time for the truth to come out, and still the government denied, even going so far as to physically threated their own military survivors, ordered them to not talk about it. That was a more modern proven historical cover up. Tonkin gulf, another. The "dead babies and incubators" story of gulf war 1, one of the major public perception propaganda initiatives to get the US public behind bush 1 first war against his business partner he wanted to double cross.
There's plenty more.
Government lies like a cheap rug when it suits them. I would *bet* it would be hard to find a civil or military government employee who doesn't know about some lie or another, some small, some large, that government pushes as *true facts*.
Anyone wants to review some pretty credible stuff,at least very interesting, google for the few large mexican city sightings, especially july 11, 1991, and there have been a few since. Hours of video and stills out there, I've seen a lot of it, including around 20 minutes or so shot with 16 mm.. Hard to fake a jet plane chasing a metallic orb, all the time being watched and photoed by tens of thousands of people. Pretty good stuff, can't tell ya what it is, can tell ya what it wasn't, balloons or sea gulls or venus through the clouds etc don't out-maneuver jets last I heard. It was shown near real time on mexico city news TV. You won't see much on US TV with it, but it's played a lot in central and south america and in europe from what I understand. Also look for "the battle of LA", 1942, and the Washington DC sightings of I believe 1952. Un-ignorable.
Something out there, probably a variety of reasons,and I just don't see this entire universe and we would be "it", alone, just ain't happening, IMO.
Anyway, the previous googles are good, and if anyone wants to look at freedom of information act documents, best place on the net is theblackvault.com Not sure of his total count, but well over 12,000 docs, something like that, you can spend a long time there. The government sure does redact out a lot of things for a big nothing it appears.
no, thought I made that clear, I just don't do drugs or alcohol. I wouldn't make them illegal for people either, we have enough real laws to deal with any crime associated with peoples behavior. For any government or society to deny that injesting in some form substances that can alter moods, etc is just silly, every human culture and society has done it. sometimes there's prroblems associated with it, but it's never to the point of being so outrageous that this or that actually needs to be banned, same as say "food" in general or any other human interest or endeavor, it just depends. On the lesser of many evils scale, prohibition styled laws cause more problems than they solve.
As to my writing style, if that is what you are referring to, well, it's how I write, and my spiritual beliefs are mine, personal, once in awhile in public I will make a clarification as to part of my reasoning that leads to an opinion or conclusion. I think we have stewardship over the planet,it is in our care,and all the things therein,and we are free to use but not abuse. Even from a strictly secular viewpoint it still makes sense, IMO.
mandating open software over closed is a financial and logical extension of the notion that government should be more cost effective, accessible to all comers, more equitable and be able to accomplish it's tasks. What this does is to put a huge incentive on other software companies to compete on terms of usability and service, instead of locked in closed formats and inertia, ie, holding them ransom for money every year beyond what is really necessary to spend, which is the model most governments and busineses have been using for a long time, but times change now. Cost is a serious consideration, and open source has enough variety to do the bulk of what needs to be done, and shows every indication of soon doing *all* of it.. If-obvious reference- microsoft wants to still compete, the ball is in their court now, there's several avenues they can persue, either drop prices to a much more realistic level and open up their document formats in particular, or go full bore open source same as linux and bsd vendors,make their profit from service and reliability and security, and also the same thing applies to various specific applications they might require.
The "right tool for the job" is the correct assessment, but you must needs take all the variables into account when considering your selection. Example, I can dig out a small gadren spot to make a new flower bed, I could lease a trackhoe, by golly that thing is very efficient in digging out the bed, and it's sure a tool, but all things considered the better tool would be me, the garden sysadmin and my shovel I own and don't have to rent.
I don't think the brazilians are stupid, they can see the advantages in cost, long term viability, having the freedom to develop custom in house, having the notion that more of their people will have lawful access to the same tools for more universal access, and so on.
Put it another way, it would sure be bogus if to use the highway here I had to only drive a belchfire, and government wouldn't use anything but belchfires, and they were real expensive all the time with expensive parts and expensive maintenance. That's been almost completely "mandated" so far, time to move on to another idea.
About time too, and I'm glad Apple saw it coming. And much as I don't want to see the internet becoming marginalized because microsoft will continue to make things "their way", I don't *fear* two different internets either. Perhaps it's time to reconsider this entire internet thing. I would rather access an internet that didn't run on microsoft anything or didn't require it. I don't want to conduct business with their stuff, have my government run or use their stuff, and quite frankly, would be quite pleased to not have to worry about the net getting borked because of their stuff. hard to describe but they just induce a feeling of "icky" in me, they give me the creeps. I can't describe it better than that, not even addressing any specific part of their tech, just the over all feel, it's just wrong to me somehow. They had their chance,in the beginning made actual contributions to the rise of personal computing and the net, they made huge sums, but it's time to move on now, they became too arrogant and bullyish for any sort of continued support from people, IMO, and their products are reflecting that, their announcements keep reflecting that,and they are actively still seeking total control. They are absolutely no different now, in fact, they have grown even worse. Screw em in other words. If they are so bound and determined to "take over", I say let them,let them take over and destroy what they seek in their blindness, just use social and business aikido and step completely around them, let them fall flat on their face from their own out of control inertia and predatory aggression, develop a more advanced and honest and open and free-ish alternative internet where open source and anything *not* microsoft can go. Nixinet in other words. Browser wars? Minor skirmishes, I say let's get down and dirty, have complete net wars,let them control their version of the net, let it turn into a dung pile of bloat and bugginess and viruses and worms, who cares, I would gladly boycott any site/net/domain that insists on microsoft/IE only, just as now I don't access "aolnet". I don't care if they "dominate", their own bugginess and insecurity and upcoming massive big brotherism schemes will destroy their efforts anyway,so who cares? Let people keep getting burned and stung, eventually they'll see the light. Perhaps this is a good time to move forward, and not fight microsoft, just ignore them and abandon them to yesterdays business model, and yesterdays technology.
This article could relate to the other article on Ipv6 as well, suppose everyone who used a *nix variant of any flavor just went there and did that? Along with fast adoption of advanced wireless, peer to peer, shared hosting a la bit torrent styled efforts, and so on and so forth, similar efforts on rapid new and improved. Create a modern autobahn while microsoft stays stuck on the two muddy ruts gravel road model of computing and the net.
Shunning and avoidance are underrated, it's a very good technique, and usually you are a minority in the initial stages of that effort following all the previous classic examples. It's possible too, look at all the servers for instance that don't use their products. Desktops are one thing, the servers with the content have the ultimate power.
In fact, if you really get down to it,most of all the advanced stuff that makes up "the net" is non microsoft already, it is definetly nixy flavored, so it wouldn't really be that much of a stretch to take it into another gear and put the throttle down, just pull away from them. Linux and the BSDs are doing it, we still have the other unixes, and OSX's uniqueness,there's some really big companies out there that see microsoft as an annoyance, and there's enough people now who would probably like to see the next advanced internet. Seems a natural to me, the leaders lead, the herd will eventually follow or get left behind. There would need a transitional period, where both sorts would interact, but we should get beyond it as rapidly as possible, IMO.
Let them have microsof
--I really couldn't completely say with absolute certainty about the ramifications of full legaliztion of everything. I would say that prices would drop to the point that very little violence or crime would be associated with drugs, at least from that financial profit angle. Socially I think you'd see a temporary surge in use of this or that, then it would settle back down to roughly what we already have. The reason I would say that is, well, it gets used now all over despite all their prohibitive laws and the excessive cost of having to deal with a "black market". And from what I have read before, if any of the numbers are accurate, the rate of coke use today per capita is roughly identical to back before it was made illegal.
With that said I'll make a disclaimer, I think of natural plants as useful medicinal herbs, the refined substances as more worthy of an honest and non-corrupt effort by society and government to regulate, that's about where I draw the line, and I think that follows the basic guidelines of the constitution pretty fairly. I don't own or grow or use whatever anything that is currently classed as illegal, I just don't do those sorts of things, and I also don't advocate any sort of massive "recreational" use of any substance, or addiction, I am rather a prude about it I am afraid, have seen too many people I know go over the top with liquid drugs or dry drugs of various kinds, but I wouldn't make it completely unlawful, not when we have the obvious so called "legal" drug market being some sort of legitimate business. It's an obvious fraud,like the saying goes we have a war on "some" drugs. And we went through liquid drug prohibition, that should be a clear enough example I would think.
And industrial hemp, to get back to that exact issue, I honestly can't see how anyone even remotely rational would be against it, and because we have extremely powerful persons and organizations who absolutely maintain it's some sort of heinous threat, I would describe those people and organizations who hold that view as to being so irrational as to be classed as dangerously and criminally insane, especially of they are any sort of official authority figure part of government, and that that sort of mindset probably also influences their views on a variety of subjects of importance, which would compound the irrationality. That's an opinion, and a strong one, but I see no need to disguise it, frankly, I think those anti industrial hemp people are completely *nuts* and have no business in any position of authority,and it's the same view I have of people who are addicts of either legal or illegal substances, I don't think they should be in any position of authority, and I definetly class alcohol right in there with any other highly addictive substance, legal or otherwise, which sorta makes me suspicious of the bulk of high level government because the alcoholism rate is so high in it. I don't trust them to make good decisions in other words.
Yes, I know I am an opinionated extremist, that is my nature and I never hide it or deny it, that would be silly. I tend to be extreme on personal freedoms, honesty, and accountability when discussing business or government or politics.
It also makes the internet and forums a lot more fun.......
I'll look for it, thanks. I tend to not buy many new books, but I use the library and buy used. I also need to get down with online books, I admit I've only read two so far, and I know there's thousands, I just find reading stuff longer than feature article length material on a screen to be annoying, still prefer to kick back with a paper based book. Or was this book printed hemp based? That would have been amusing and made a point.
Tell you a funny, when I was a kid they showed us the movie reefer madness in school as a serious deal. I thought it was ludicrously funny. I had never even seen or heard about anyone smoking that stuff, but it was so hokey even a kid could see it.