--I am an extreme flashlight fiend, I mean I got dozens of them. My LED flashlights are just a sheer joy. The bulbs don't burn out or pop in temp extremes, I got literally years of normal use off a set of batteries. Most of them will run for days if you just turn them on and leave them on, I've tried it. a regular flashlight lasts a couple of hours max usually. I took one of my first ones, a ccrane model, and read several books at night on one set of batts, just to see how they did "real world". Just outstanding.
I switched several years ago from 12 vdc incandescents to fluorescents for my interior lighting in my RV I live in,got a good boost in performance, but as soon as the LEDs get a scosh cheaper in a normal 12 vdc config for area lighting I will switch to them instead.
This rush to a totally surveilled, cashless society, bugged, videoed, tracked, data mined, rush to the new world order big brother stuff is just plain disgusting. I think if we can't stop it now it will make a borg-like society look like a libertarian convention in the woods.
Some technology is good, other technology can be *not so good*. You give big brother unlimited funds, the ability to semi collapse economies so they can get all the techs they need lining up for "work", paying off the research universities, and the judge dredd "I am DE LAWWW!" mindset, that's just asking for it.
And sensor nets?? Nanotech cameras that can be so small you can't hardly find them? Mega terrabyte storage and smart AI? And people want THIS government to have all that stuff??? Microwave beam weapons, sonic nausea generators? Big bro having the ability to enter a few commands and your entire credit, medical, education, police record, whatever "history" can be altered or deleted? Little one meter across hover drones with cameras and weapons mounted in them? DNA databases? Biometric microchips with radios in them? Huh? Huh? Say WHUT? And this is supposed to be COOL?
Nuts. It ain't paranoia when you can read about it and verify it. These are legit concerns that are not being addressed, government is just DOING it and there's no stopping them now, too many will take the blood money it appears. Enough was enough like 10 years ago. I can remember getting razzed seriously then when I told people it weas coming, they said "naww, never happen". Well here it is, in your face, real. Now we got hacked closed source "official voting", so that option has poofed.
how many different channels do you need? FRS (family radio service) walkie talkies are really cheap, very clear, and you can adjust them for a lot of different channels, and have headsets with voice activated microphones. I have several of them, work great over here on the estate where I work, get around a 1/4 mile or so open, not sure inside a building though.
Did I mention cheap? I got two in a blister pack at a thrifstore for 5$ once, some sort of scratch and dent/closeout deal. I imagine if you shop around on the net you can find some deals, like a case of them at a bulk price. You'll go through batteries so invest in some rechargeable nicads of appropriate size (usually AA or AAA) and charging stations though. I even modded one of them into a "base station" by using a ratshack dc to dc power converter (12 to 6vdc) and a little wiring action inside the batt compartment, so I can run it off the 12 volt circuits I have here.
as long as we are on the topic of this OS versus that OS in terms of security, how does old mac classic OS in server mode stack up, strictly from a security angle, not "performance" or whatever, just strictly from a security perspective? Anyone?
-- you're cool word -anosognosia- explains political parties and why fanatical party member A can clearly see the faults in party B, but not in his own party.
Thanks, I always knew they were nuts, just didn't know there was an exact word for it!
hmm, I guess that applies to operating systems and editors, too....
--the one I read was that advanced civilization came about from beer. Guys accidentaly had some wild grain ferment in some gourd, they drink/eat it, get drunk, liked it. Being hunter gatherer's, they stripped the local grain supply, moved on until they found abundance. Then your scenario takes over, controlled agriculture comes about, they settle in one area, villages arise, trade starts, division of labor, etc, etc.
Probably fire and metal working in there, too, someplace, but I think beer and then therefore an abundance of drunk babes did most of it. Occams razor.
--why did they stop counting people who have exhausted benefits then? They used to include those figures in the over-all stats.
I think you have to look at all the various indicators. Look at personal bankruptcy rates. Look at international balance of payments figures. Look at percentage of savings as opposed to credit/debt. Look at big ticket items, like cars for instance, and what's happening with them. Look at over-all combined tax rates as opposed to every decade past, go all the way back to the great depression and the 20's. Look at pension funding, bank derivatives, hedge funds, real estate figures, look at all of it to get a better picture.
Heck, look at this thread and all the other employment threads we have had. We got sold the illusion that destroying vertical manufacturing in this nation would be OK, that the "new economy" based on IT and service jobs would take over. Since then we've gone from the worlds largest creditor nation to the worlds largest debtor nation. It's an exact timeline parallel, and that is really the biggest economic change that has occurred in this time. I will take the time to drop just a few links/urls.
a random example of a government workers pension http://news.statesmanjournal.com/article. cfm?i=602 42
a random example of a fortune 500 pension http://www.thepittsburghchannel.com/team4 /2160267/ detail.html
unemployment stats new "lowball" official figures http://www.fox23news.com/business/story.a spx?conte nt_id=A8D08925-FCE5-47FF-BEF6-72F77C9EAA63
hedge funds and derivatives http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepub lic/business/ articles/0403talton03.html
retail sales and balance of payments http://www.modbee.com/24hour/opinions/st ory/864284 p-6039228c.html
--there's a lot more obviously, and weird events like SARS are an example of a serious wildcard that could cause a lot of changes, and definetly into the not good territory.
I would not say we are "out of the economic woods".
I never predicted a collapse in the 60s, the 70's during the energy crises,or the 80's, but by the 90's, when everyone else was just freaking out over "the new economy" I go "uh oh, serious greed by the people and short sighted and incredibly stupid foreign trade policies gonna bite us hard"- "bottom line" is I saw serious grief coming starting with the stock market, which was totally bonkers and so many people believed it was "real",I had 99 out of 100 people arguing with me over it. Oh well. Lot of those same people are not arguing with me now, that I can tell you. Now I see a more-general collapse as inevitable.
It has a good chance of being worse than the general depression from 28 to 1946-7. I can't really tell you how much worse, depends on wars and WMD, especially nukes and bios.
Do your own research, believe all the rosy pictures they tell you, not my call. I just never take the carnival barkers word for anything. I look a scosh deeper, usually you can see closer to reality then. It's not perfect but it works OK.
--it's bad now and getting worse. The federal government is cooking the reality books on the true figures, I would guess it is probably almost double of what they claim. People who exhaust unemployment get taken off the official figures, as well as people only working a few hours a week in some part timer. In addition, a lot of the private corporate pension funds are in some serious problems, uber serious as in "it just ain't there". Many many millions of people who are close to retirement are going to find out there won't be any money for them. Last year 5 out of 38,000 corporations in the pension insurance deal went bankrupt, and just those 5 were enough to strip the funds from the emergency cash stash they have. Some of the largest corporations out there are *this close* to not being able to pay their retirees. Fortune 500 guys.
My basic recommendations to anyone still working and making money is to make sure you have a small rural country place paid off. Even if it's a ratty trailer, as long as you got a well, a garden and a woodlot you can probably make it through a great depression version 2.0. You don't have to live there right now, but get it paid off, free and clear, then all you have to worry about is scraping up the taxes.
I spent many an hour talking to older relatives about their experiences in the great depression. It got to the point of an actual barter economy for millions, and it happened quickly, and lasted a really long time. Some of the stories I heard were downright scary. The geopolitical and economic reasons aren't near as important as your personal bottom line on survival. You will always NEED a roof over your head and food and water and some sort of cheap "energy" source which is "firewood" in it's simplest forms.
People who are in a position now of being "at work" and well paid should note that there's no full 100% guarantee that things will always be that way. The dotcom boom should be lesson enough for anyone with more than a few neurons clanking around inside the bio hard drive. And those young folks starting out with great hopes, ditto. Take care of those human basics first, then go to the luxuries and more affluent day to day lifestyle if you choose, keep that rural place as a backup if you can't live there full time, and it can also be a nice place for weekenders, etc.
This is a learn from history or repeat it sort of deal. I know some fairly well off people who during the build up last decade, instead of paying something off, just keep using credit to buy more and more property, now they are stuck with trying to dump property just to scrape together enough to pay one of them off, as their businesses are hurting bad. Because they were "wealthy" they didn't bother with necessities, they just ass-umed it would always be there for them, I guess because maybe they though they were "special" or something.
Whern I was a kid, you could walk into the five and dime store-literally stuff in there cost a 5 cents and 10 cents mostly- and one of their things they had in the novelties was packs of "stocks" from the boom years of the roaring 20's then the great depression. You could get a pack of them for a dime, knowing all of them at one time were bought by people with high hopes, using real money they worked hard to get, then it all poofed away on them. They were just turned into pretty pieces of paper then,of no real worth, a kids toy next to the slingshots and packs of trading cards with bubble gum.
They don't even give you the pretty pieces of paper anymore, it's usually just bits on a screen..
If you can't get the job that you want, take the job (and buy that rural place) that you need. Rolling Stones nailed it on that one.
--done this myself on a few occassions. It's learning some normal court room procedure and buzz words that is the most important. Usually the county clerk will help as well, finding the correct forms, etc. You can also research similar cases to see what worked and what didn't. I was actually so well prepared in two cases, cases actually against the government, that they capitulated shy of the actual court. One got to the court house steps before they caved though.
Throwing some cash at a good paralegal in advance helps too, they are usually the ones who prep their lawyers anyway, and are heaps 0 cash cheaper.
Think of court like any other construct. this does this, this does that. This comes first, then that, then that. If you follow their rules, they will let you play. and it really is just a big game, a game combined with some drama.
I haven't done it in a long time though, I imagine it's even easier now with having the internet to help with research.
I am sort of wondering now why there aren't more court cases brought against spammers in the states that have some laws against it. Even if it's hard to collect damages, just getting convictions in anti spammers favor helps establish more precedent.
Another really useful tool is to hold elected and appointed politicians and bureaucrats feet to the fire to uphold the laws via investigating if they're NOT doing their jobs, and are therefore in violations of their respective oaths,job descriptions, etc and see if they have ethics codes violations based along those lines.
..I know you guys think the developer section is secure, just wanted you to know you got at least one non coder lurker. I usually have NO IDEA whatsoever is being talked about, but after around a year now (didn't register for a long time)at least some of the jargon is comprehensible. Not much, but some.
So this is a good idea, huh?
OK, lamer question. If you had never coded anything before, what language would you start with, and why?
--they have a microwave beam weapon that is deployable now. The military and the cops have it, supposedly it is "non" lethal. It only "Heats the skin temporarily to the temperature of a turned on incandescent light bulb".
Uh huh, like they don't got a "well done" setting on them bad boys.
As far as I can figure out,they are for the next series of mass riots in the states. There is also a bit of anecdotal I have seen on the web about a prototype being used in gulf war one, I don't have a link but I've seen the pics of dead guys all burnt up while their clothes remain relatively un scorched.
Here's a really old url from an actual military domain
http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/96 au tumn/stanton.htm
google has a lot more using microwave, nonlethal, riot
--I'm fairly decent on using google now, eliminating keywords, limiting it to domains, using proper keywords, etc, but tell ya WHAT would work better. I'd like the ability to ask a normal question, where every word had meaning, the sentence structure had meaning, all of the above, to the seach criteria. Just like you talk, exactly like that. Including prepositions, that one non available feature makes a difference in searching, if they could be included it would be great. Now sometimes I can get lucky, if I really think hard on my data request, make the sentence simple, and use quotes around the whole thing, sometimes I get a bingo right on the first page, but usually I get bupkis with that. Search engines now, as good as they have gotten, still force you into being psychic a lot of times.
It would also be nice to be able to use wild cards better, almost like how web pages get scripted with the "if this...then that" commands.
Another would be able to sequence your searches, give a series of complex commands, then hit go, so it parses to a gross result based on your priority of the request by what was requested first, then refines down your steps based on the same sort of odds they use now. A variant on this would assemble several pages of hits that taken as a combined total is your entire result. Say you are researching a complex topic, you know that there are several widely divergent things you need, then you have to assemble them in one place to have all the data you need for your query anser. Now you have to do that one step at a time, manually, open another page or tab, re enter a completely different set of criteria, mash search, blah blah, tedious, un manageable a lot of times. Be nicer to have it "right there". And you know, it wouldn't matter if it took some time, actually it would be perfectly OK to have it queued and run through a more intelligent set of algorythms based on how many features and how detailed your search needs to be. It could show up "later" as a retrievable service perhaps. Spend 15 minutes figuring out all the searches you need and entering your complex set of parameters, send it off. An hour later (or whatever it's timed for) it shows up, downloads in the back ground. Something like that. A human can do this now, that's what paid searchibng services do, but it's tedious and long and expensive. I could deal with a few bad hits, it's the huge number of bad hits that are the bear to deal with all the time, usually you have to enter simpler terms to just get started, so you can then re enter an advanced search after you find out what the non essential terms are that show up in the first pages if you haven't gotten extremely lucky.
Next I want a talking computer to do that, and have my venusian slave girl secretary do the asking for me, but I know that will most likely cost *extra* and require at least another stick of ram or two......
..and how would viruses and bacteria effect this new media? Seems like you'd need a clean room to assemble these things at a level 4 facility threshold to keep them prisitine clean. And because drives need to be vented in some small fashion now, seems like it would be almost impossible. I have a hard enough tiome keeping BIG things out of my gear. Yesterday I dug out an old HP printer to see if I could get it to work on an old computer I have for a project to run away from my regular machine. WELL, seems mr mouse decided to move in, there's acorns and bits of fluff and other rodentia sign in there! I pick it up off the junk/backup pile, hear this rattling going on. I go WTF is this? Turn it over, clunk clunk, oak tree potential. Sheesh!
... this would be nice in two applications on the low end. It would be nice to be able to recycle older hardware that has a too-small RAM limit now, perhaps with a pci card gizmo. Or to be able to upgraxde to better quality RAM. It would also be nice in a home or business lan situation where you could have several relatively cheap dumb nodes but a server that has or is capable of using a huge amount of ram and serving that along with various files.
..the notion that vendors would be liable for *bugs they know about* has some merit. Think about it. If the large companies-we'll pick on MS because it's such a good example-were forced to fix bugs in a timely manner, then they would need to accept bug reports. They would also have to release bug reports as soon as they knew about them, ie, they couldn't sit on a critical exploit and let people hang out in the wind for months and months. Once a report was made to them, it would then become an official bug they couldn't ignore. They'd have two choices then, switch to open source to find as many bugs as possible in the shortest time, or keep paying claims forever because they ignored bugs. Either way they would release less of better quality, not really a bad idea. If they wanted to hire professional beta testers, so what? More paid jobs. I don't see that as being all that bad. Nope, I don't.
Open source -FOSS- is in a unique position because it's "free". There can't be any damages if you haven't paid for it, or at least that could be part of "the law" written into it.
Normally I'm against new laws, but instituting some sort of consumer protection should be in order, if these companies want to make serious profits all the time. There are very few examples of consumer products out there that have no liability at all attached to them. With just a short time reflection on it, I can't think of any off hand, just *some* software. Eventually it's going to happen, so better to sort it out now, it really should have been sorted out 30 years ago, IMO. I tell you what will cause it too, if it's not done voluntarily in advance and adhered to, the first uber killer mass virus or trojan that makes code red or slammer look like a case of the sniffles, a net-killer. You'll get ten times worse legislation out of washington if the software community waits until that happens.
I'd say it's bound to happen sometime, too. The article cites 50 some odd billion a year already in losses due to either bad or insecure programs, you have something bad happens that does ten times that in one day or something, you WILL see the mother of all knee-jerk reactions from "the software consumers".
Well, OK, say that "something" is needed - What would be reasonable, but still not stifle development? One would be outright sales of software, not just renting -licensing of software. You buy it, you OWN it. You get it at such and such a date, as of that date it worked as advertised, after that date, well, up to the vendor then, anything "new" that needs to be added is up to them, from free unlimited patches and updates to pay-for individual bugfixes and exploits as you go, forever. Could be a yearly lease thing, whatever. For-profit vendors would get on the ball pretty quickly then if they charged too much or it didn't work all the time. they'd be forced into auditing as the most important part of production. Hmm, is this a bad idea really? The software is sold as "works on this and this, won't work with that and that". Yes, that would make software developers tend to work around just a few pieces of hardware and one or two OSs max no doubt. It would also be very expensive. Very expensive. Maybe people would go to the no liability but free stuff then? And I can see various versions in between those two extremes.
Could there be set limits per incident? Perhaps. Max liability, perhaps.
How about classifications of software?
"Entertainments" might be of lower criticality (so less liable in terms of maximum cash) then say the pacemaker software, or auto-controlling software. "Communications" like browsers and email and chat would be in the middle someplace in those terms of criticality. If your business depends on UPS or FEDEX to ship widgets, and they constantly don't get there or they are smashed, those companies would be sued out of existence. but if your widgets are electronic, well? It's just your tough luck as the consumer then, the software and the infrastructure has let you down, but they all get to say
--sure, I'll heed it. Just real tired of the lame "everyone have a nuke?" argument I see on all these pro and anti gun and self defense discussions. The first few times, swell, now that I've seen it hundreds of times over all the years I've been on the web it's gotten old. I admit to being human and getting overly annoyed, I need to remind myself it's just electrons on a screen all the time.
so, OK, my bad.
Thanks. And if the other guys sees this, my apologies. I thought about it some, and again, I have as much potential to getting angry as the next guy. Self defense and gun ownership rights are critically important to me so I guess that any discussions of them are more prone to be emotional than a discussion over something else. I can say I try to not get nasty, but sometimes it happens, I'm a human, mea culpa. It comes from personal incidents, saved myself from serious harm before, and also know people personally who because they had no means of practical definitive defense, suffered greatly. So I admit when I even see the word "nuke" in a self defense "debate" I go...nulcear!
...I guess sometimes I use too much slang when I write. I'll blame it on a very remote blood relationship with samuel clemens... If I was writing this to present to some committee it would be different, obviously. heh. anyway.....
It's not only IT guys who have a lot to lose, it's the actual companies they work for. And it's not only IT guys and their companies, it's EVERYONE who has a lot to lose with all these new so called "laws" being passed. It's just gross. These laws in particular are re building personal computer ownership and use and the internet in general into nothing more than what one way cable TV is once they really start enforcing it. You'll be able to click on an approved web page and that's about it. Your computer will be government approved designed and in a sealed box, illegal to open up. Honest, the next step then it looks like they will take is requiring "licenses" for this or that. You pro IT guys will be regulated and licensed, you can smell it coming. Sending packet one that is not approved will be a fine or jail time. Looking at whatever, the same, if it isn't the true and approved "way".
The main problem is we have this "legal" setup where we "elect" people who on purpose every year get together and who's sole job is to pass NEW laws with no provisions for removing OLD laws or even just to watch over whatever has already been passed. There doesn't exist enough "supreme" courts to keep up with it, it's beyond nuts. And to "challenge" a law you have to take the chance of actually getting arrested and "breaking" the law. I mean, how stupid is that? Serious social design flaw there. The founders were smart, but missed a few biggees it appears. Now we HAD a great way to deal with lame laws, that was the power of the jury, and I can guarantee you that if you are on a jury and start making noises about jury nullification to your fellow jurors that 'the judge" will lock you up as fast as he hears about it, even though it is lawful for juries to nullify stupid laws, and illegal for a judge to harass the jury or intimidate a juror. The reason why this can happen is that the police forces have been co opted into being hired mercenaries for the power structure. It's nuts, but it's real. We've lost the best possible check and balance to over reaching governmental power we had short of the cartridge box, and that is "we the people" lost control over the jury box. Stupid and non common sense laws used to get ignored and chucked out and "case dismissed", now they just keep getting enforced and new ones written. Corrupt judges are rarely called on their corruptions, it's too hard to do when you are locked up.
I would support a severe reduction in time limits legislatures can be in session,both federal and state, outlaw law "bundling" completely, and forced reviews of all laws past and current, so that unconstitutional laws never get passed in the first place and that old laws get removed as much as possible. Call it an emergency decree of overview or something of that sort. It's just way out of hand now. There is no rational reason that the US people need literally millions of laws, none, zero. The "law industry" is so parsitical, it needs to be slapped down and hard. I mean, I want any legislator anyplace to tell me when/where is the EXACT point we will have "enough" laws and regulations that they are 'content and happy". It's open ended on their side, as long as we keep eating new laws they will keep serving them up. I say we should push back away from the law table and get up and leave that restaurant for awhile and digest what we have already eaten.
To answer your question exactly, how to get joe government to go after the big guys first, I think that is waiting too late, you really can't count on that, these new laws just need to be stopped, and any legislators who insist on voting for them need to not be in office next time around. The only way to do that is hit em where it hurts, campaign contributions, and the suits decide who gets what there. So you IT guys need to go to
"the great cull" is the popular term for what you are suggesting, and YES, I think there exist some high level globalist factions working towards those goals, unfortunately. Stealth slow plagues, more wars, hiding destructive viruses inside of "vaccinations" in third world areas, gaining complete control over global food production with GM modified seeds,etc,etc,etc,etc. I don't LIKE it but I can see enough evidence to make a case that it is being attempted right now.
I think, for an exact example, that is one of the reasons that on the continent of africa you see so little actual international intervention beyond play acting at it, the extreme high level globalists basically want all the folks there to rot, they just want it easier to get in there and use the raw resources and land. Hmm, sort of like what happened in the americas with all them pesky injuns in the way during the europaen expansionist phase into the "new world". Pacify or eliminate, usually both.
I think it's possible to both maintain the worlds populations and also to pollute less and have "energy", but it will require some pretty severe out of the box thinking and doing to accomplish. The same old ways we have now, no, I'd agree, going to be a disaster, within 20 or so years tops. That's the main reason I am a proponent of "alternatives" in various forms, based on massive decentralisation as a start. I can't decentralise everything, so I started with meselfs.
I don't think it will happen though, your other scenario is much more likely over-all, so that's why I switched to a personal plan B some time ago, I live very rural and am getting as independent in all human carbon based life form critical areas as possible, ie, food, water, energy, etc. It's about the best I can come up with right now. Not trusting "them" to have my best interests at heart.
yet again another learned either/or argument. I have never recommended nor advised people to just completely switch over night, once they are fully ac grid connected, with all the normal types of appliances. we need a transition stage obviously in both the maco and the personal micro areas. One does not have to be either grid or non grid or off grid. Surprise, you can have BOTH. You can also very easily have two sets of the exact same type of circuits in your home, it's as easy as installing a sub panel box and dragging some circuits over. Done, no grid "tying" involved, no "phase lock gravitational sine wave stepping transducers" or whatever else big boogey man problem involved then. No "danger". Any competent average electrician can do a sub panel box and a few dedicated household already installed circuits in a couple of hours, tops. It just ain't all that exotic or difficult. Maybe it used to be, not seeing it now though.
"Industries" can adapt, should demand be there. We have a lot of commercial, making money industrial wind generators out there now, and it's a pretty impressive growth industry. Cost is good, it's just now hitting pretty darn close to average costs with conventionals. I am a proponent of increasing this demand, as in the above "if one million more people would get some", an example like that. Increasing the demand will mean increasing interest in practical R&D.
And this "average person", even given the level of tech that is off the shelf retail now, has little new knowledge or "work" that is required to use "alternative energy", it is, well, I'll use my case as an example, mashing a few buttons and once a month topping off some batteries with distilled water. I do a lot more than most people (over 60 total I maintain), but it's really not all that hard to do. It just ain't, and it's no more dangerous than dumping gas in your lawnmower. There's also some good work being done now that would eliminate batteries as a storage medium and use industrial capacitors instead, but I'll admit I haven't noted the advances there in over a year or so now so I don't know the actual levels they are at yet. And if a person wants to use sealed glass mat gel cells, they can, or NiMh or whatever, they just cost more than cheaper lead-acid. There's other storage mediums as well, something as simple as gravity and stored water works, many large hydro power operations do that already in off peak times. Even that household level maintenance operational stuff can be automated further into completely "hands off" for some more cash, you can buy it now. the rig here is even remote controlled over a modem if ya want to. And if it got to a more universal and widespread acceptance level,perhaps a lot of new jobs, perhaps the friendly local once a month guy would come by and for a small fee do that for people uncomfortable with doing it themselves, no different from having your oil changed when you could do it yourself, or getting your lawn mowed when you could do it yourself. Service industries are not that unique of a concept, it's quite a normal business model.
Like I said, you work both ways towards the middle, you strive to eliminate wattage demand, on a national scale down to a personal, via efficiwency and choices, whether personal or industrial, by using more efficient processes and machines. Look at the advances of permanent magnet motors for a good example in your field. Superinsulation in homes and commercial buildings, just adopting some more-sane standards beyond "r-18" there would eliminate the "need" for a huge amount of todays established capacity. What would national demand drop to with say doubling insulation all over, a one time cost? I gots no idea but bet a nickle it would fall into the multi multi megawatt range, or in terms of oil it would be "lakes" of it. Advances in just car engines over the past 30 years has done a tremendous job of saving oil, but it never would have happened unless those morinbund domestic industries hadn't gotten kicked in the nads, twice, once by OPEC and
--the act has a provision to re-classify you as a terrorist (primarily from participation in a protest 'threat, intimidate, coerce',or membership in an organization they deem terroristic, etc, fairly broad, you donated 5 bucks to some group before, they get classified as a terrorist group, whoops, you lose), which means you are no longer a "citizen" with any born with rights. This classification is completely on their say-so, no hearing or anything is required, they (any nameless governmental employee) merely state such and such is true, they win, you lose. You can then be "detained" and held in secret,deported to some other country, prosecuted, and punished up to the death penalty. It's about as extreme of a dictatorial move as you can get. Anyone who is aware of your detention and reclassification into sub human non citizen status is forbidden by law to inform anyone else, violations of which can get you reclassified. See above.
The gestalt is they left it broad enough that they can apply it to virtually anyone if they choose to do so. That is patriot act 1. Patriot act 2,which is even more extreme, after being leaked and denied, has now been chopped up and parts of it inserted into various other bills to disguise it.
What has happened is in essence the entire critical parts of the constitution have been re written, and most born-with rights are now null and void. Originally the constitution was written to detail government restrictions. Even the so called bill of rights was just a further description of the limits of government, as the basic fundamental to the constitution was that individual persons and the states had the most power and soverignty. The constitution doesn't "grant" anyone any "rights". You are born-with ALL rights, then there's a small sections of restrictions delineated in some detail which primarily apply to "government". That is now completely reversed, as full a 180 as is possible.
We are not supposed to have a royal, neo-royal, VIP class of "citizens" who are above the law. This explicitly applies to governmental employees. Explicitly, that was the entire purpose of the original secession from england and royal rule, there was no other reason of note. We got rid of the overlord class. that was the deal. This treatment of governmental employees as VIPs with unlimited powers to just grant themselves more powers, even calling them "laws" is not supposed to occur, nor are they even remotely *allowed* to grant themselves powers that they clearly do not have.
Any governmental employee who engages in unconstitutional actions, whether knowing or unknowing, is doing so under the explicit notice under the constititution that at some point they may be held personally liable for some serious citizen reactions, ie, "you don't want to go there", with "you" being any said employee,either elected, appointed, volunteered, or hired on, any "branch" or "level" or "title", civil, military, or "paramilitary", in any "government" federal, state, county, incorporated township or territory or unincorporated territory.
--the topics being presented all sound well thought out and important. I wish the folks there well, last thing they need is a US styled collapsed bloated patenting scheme.
--the monster island reference always cracked me up and seemed like a good idea. They shoulda stuck with that. Or if they aren't, they need to abandon what "mindshare" that mozilla has now while it still is sorta only known about by geeks, just drop any mozilla references entirely. I mean, when you can't even agree on names, no one is going to take your project seriously in the mainstream. I already have a hard enough time trying to encourage people to try "this new browser, mozilla, try it, you'll like it". Now I got to say "hey, try...whatever, you'll like it!"
Just not as snappy as a "name". It's like the browser formely known as 948575757, no, I mean prince, no it's....
In an even further direction, why not just combine it back into "official" netscape and cut out all the cruft and crap? Netscape is a known quantity, there's little reason (that I can see) to have them separate other than inertia.
--you mean that scientist or engineer working there to pull a samson option directly where he works? ya, I can buy that. He builds a great nuke, then flips the switch, kaboom, the whole plant and everyone connected with it goes buh bye. Bonus point for getting the financiers and local political junta goons at the same time. I'd call that guy a hero.
The concentration camp victims working in the slave factories in ww2 used to do that, a lot of von brauns V2's failed because they were sabotaged.
There's some evidence coming out now, it's still sketchy, but a lot of old ww2 vets are now at the point in their lives and don't care, they are spilling the beans about how the US transferred nuclear weapons tech on the sly to stalin during the war and through the "cold war". In public they "caught" spies like the rosenbergs, on the QT it was a scam. The cold war was worth buhzillions in profits when all is said and done. The military industrial complex is an INTERNATIONAL phenomenon, it has always gone across national boundaries. Wars are started at the top levels of industry and finance, been that way forever. Take nam, it wasn't a buncha blue collar farmers kids and inner city kids in the US and some rice farmers kids over there in nam who just magically decided one day they were "against" each other and needed a "war". But, people all over the planet keep getting faked out and go join up with some political faction, or get coerced into it, because "those guys over there" are "the bad guys".
Nope, around the world, want to see who the bad guys are, all you got to do is follow the war cash cow upstream. Wherever it ends, bingo, you got your true "perps" who cause all this misery. There's currently about 2 to 3 thousand top level planetary financiers and industrialists and politicians and controlled media propagandists who call all the shots. The rest are just order followers, sheep. Get rid of those top few thousand serious bad guys,all at the same time, well, it probably won't completely eliminate wars but makes a lot more sense than what we are doing now.
I'll even go further, and detail one place and group of globalist misery profiteering goons exactly, the so called "bilderburgers". It's a proven fact, the info is now out there in the wild to research, and it's not "tin foil hat" stuff, it's credible and real. There's some more, but as far as I know they are the largest and "gooniest" of the criminal war and political command and control gangs. Google will give ya tons of hits on them.
--why do you "doubt it"? You don't think economies of scale and interest and R&D based on that "works"? Are you still running a 286 then? You want me to trash my solar and send a check for some thousands to some centralised energy monopolist where your monthly bill is never paid off, and it's controlled by corrupt CEOs and accountants and subject to middle man profit skimming and government regulators? All we can do is have more and more and more centralised everything? Has enron and the cal political crisis taught us nothing? Do those wars all the time in the middle east and like in nigeria and now colombia and venezuela teach us nothing?
Tell ya what, when you trade in your advanced PC for a webtv,or better yet go back to a manual typewriter and snail mail, when you get rid of your personal vehicle and only take busses and trains everywhere, then maybe. In the meantime I WANT control over my life. I produce power on site, and I have it when the "grid" goes down around here, which it does every other thunderstorm.
People think nothing of getting a new skiboat, or a 50 inch TV, drops mega thousands, but somehow producing your own power is "controversial" and "will never work". Tell me EXACTLY how much power you as a human produce using the tech you have and own now, as opposed to what you consume? Me, I work both ways,I love having power and fuel and what it adds to my life, SO, I strive to consume less and be more efficient, and add to the power I produce. I run computers, lights, TV's, etc, normal stuff, and I KEEP getting told it doesn't work, it pollutes, and it's inefficient and whatnot. Sorry, it works better than your game machine or any other appliance that just consumes,causes pollution in manufacture,causes pollution when it's thrown away, those sorts of appliances NEVER produce power, they just consume it. I mean, what exactly else should someone do, just be a blind consumer and wait until all this stuff gets "fixed" from some elite money and regulatory monopoly? Wait for this "they" guy we always hear about who will "do it"? Huh?
I'll pass, no thanks. Those are the guys and techniques that lead to the problems, they don't solve much. PV tech has gone from one percent to the best now are cracking 30% efficieny, DESPITE the naysayers who have kept saying "it won't work" over the last few decades. They even have panels now that are clear, and can replace normal window glass. they have roofing systems that are pure panels, they eliminate the need for shingles that have to be replaced. there's tons of new techniques out there that IF they got used more would get BETTER. If we had more interest and R&D that cycle would have been sped up considerably, just like any other technology. Or do you DENY that?
You are part of the problem, or part of the solution. Pick one.
Sorry, I am AGAINST closed source energy monopolists, and just maintaining the status quo. I went better, not just more of the same. I want new industries, new jobs, not just further concentratintg capital and political power in fewer and fewer hands. and energy DEFINETLY means political power, let's just skip this ignoring it in the middle east and thinking that these oil guys are all so altrusitic about it. There's dictators all obver the planet, FUNNY we seem to be so "interested" in dictators sitting on lakes of oil. Congo, over three million people killed in the latest war, but they have little oil, not much press or notice. Another one of those coincidences I am sure...
Once we had the detroit cartel thoroughly scared-surprise! They CAN make 4 cyclinder cars that get better mileage and have more horsepower than their old stock 6 and 8's, and are cleaner. It just took them actually "doing it" in Japan, now all the manufacturers make decent 4 bangers.
Competition, new ways of thinking and doing="good idea".
It's the same with alternate energy, keep dissing it, don't support it, yep, it'll never get any better.
Sorry, I am just sick of the oil and nuke crowd. Th
--I think everyone in the world should be allowed nuclear arms...except you. Just too dumb, sorry man, hate to break it to you. You don't "get it", and never will. Well, you might, probably be too late though.
There, that snotty enough of a reply for you? It's distateful to me to have to deal with such immaturity. I am just too old and experienced in this. Your argument if you want to call it that is beyond boring, it falls into the lame level.
Normally I ignore trolls, but seeing as how you used your real account, there ya go, there's your reply.
As to nukes,if you want a real answer, in general, and bioweapons and chemical weapons, etc. I have written on this before various times here. I support a worldwide boycott by scientists, engineers and techs from getting hired or coerced by any regimes to work on those devices, and I condemn any who are currently doing so. I condemn them. If they are doing it for the check,as mercenaries, they should be ashamed of themselves. If they have been coerced into it, it's their duty as a sane human to use their elite brain skills and escape to someplace else where they can get a better and more useful job. If they are physically locked up and forced to work on those WMD,well, I'm sorry for them,but they really should have "gotten it" sooner on their particular political reality at their locale, and they should have used their AKs or whatever they could get their hands on, on the regime's goons sooner and started popping regime badguys before it got that bad.
Don't expect any more replies from me on this topic. Have a nice day, go troll someone else. I hope you never have to use a weapon in self defense, like I have, and millions and millions of other people. To those folks and myself, it is not "academic debateable theory" nor does your "nuclear" troll have any bearing on the discussion, it is a primitive attempt at a distraction. In short, stupid.
If you can't learn from other people, and RTF historical M, you'll never learn a lot of things. In the 20th century, over 100 million people were murdered by their own governments. Not killed in wars, murdered, by their various regimes. That and normal crime is what self defense is about. You either get it, and think self defense is a normal human right, or you don't get it. Yes, it IS a binary deal.
Slashdot Mirror
--I am an extreme flashlight fiend, I mean I got dozens of them. My LED flashlights are just a sheer joy. The bulbs don't burn out or pop in temp extremes, I got literally years of normal use off a set of batteries. Most of them will run for days if you just turn them on and leave them on, I've tried it. a regular flashlight lasts a couple of hours max usually. I took one of my first ones, a ccrane model, and read several books at night on one set of batts, just to see how they did "real world". Just outstanding.
I switched several years ago from 12 vdc incandescents to fluorescents for my interior lighting in my RV I live in,got a good boost in performance, but as soon as the LEDs get a scosh cheaper in a normal 12 vdc config for area lighting I will switch to them instead.
This rush to a totally surveilled, cashless society, bugged, videoed, tracked, data mined, rush to the new world order big brother stuff is just plain disgusting. I think if we can't stop it now it will make a borg-like society look like a libertarian convention in the woods.
Some technology is good, other technology can be *not so good*. You give big brother unlimited funds, the ability to semi collapse economies so they can get all the techs they need lining up for "work", paying off the research universities, and the judge dredd "I am DE LAWWW!" mindset, that's just asking for it.
And sensor nets?? Nanotech cameras that can be so small you can't hardly find them? Mega terrabyte storage and smart AI? And people want THIS government to have all that stuff??? Microwave beam weapons, sonic nausea generators? Big bro having the ability to enter a few commands and your entire credit, medical, education, police record, whatever "history" can be altered or deleted? Little one meter across hover drones with cameras and weapons mounted in them? DNA databases? Biometric microchips with radios in them? Huh? Huh? Say WHUT? And this is supposed to be COOL?
Nuts. It ain't paranoia when you can read about it and verify it. These are legit concerns that are not being addressed, government is just DOING it and there's no stopping them now, too many will take the blood money it appears. Enough was enough like 10 years ago. I can remember getting razzed seriously then when I told people it weas coming, they said "naww, never happen". Well here it is, in your face, real. Now we got hacked closed source "official voting", so that option has poofed.
Double phooie.
how many different channels do you need? FRS (family radio service) walkie talkies are really cheap, very clear, and you can adjust them for a lot of different channels, and have headsets with voice activated microphones. I have several of them, work great over here on the estate where I work, get around a 1/4 mile or so open, not sure inside a building though.
Did I mention cheap? I got two in a blister pack at a thrifstore for 5$ once, some sort of scratch and dent/closeout deal. I imagine if you shop around on the net you can find some deals, like a case of them at a bulk price. You'll go through batteries so invest in some rechargeable nicads of appropriate size (usually AA or AAA) and charging stations though. I even modded one of them into a "base station" by using a ratshack dc to dc power converter (12 to 6vdc) and a little wiring action inside the batt compartment, so I can run it off the 12 volt circuits I have here.
as long as we are on the topic of this OS versus that OS in terms of security, how does old mac classic OS in server mode stack up, strictly from a security angle, not "performance" or whatever, just strictly from a security perspective? Anyone?
-- you're cool word -anosognosia- explains political parties and why fanatical party member A can clearly see the faults in party B, but not in his own party.
Thanks, I always knew they were nuts, just didn't know there was an exact word for it!
hmm, I guess that applies to operating systems and editors, too....
--the one I read was that advanced civilization came about from beer. Guys accidentaly had some wild grain ferment in some gourd, they drink/eat it, get drunk, liked it. Being hunter gatherer's, they stripped the local grain supply, moved on until they found abundance. Then your scenario takes over, controlled agriculture comes about, they settle in one area, villages arise, trade starts, division of labor, etc, etc.
Probably fire and metal working in there, too, someplace, but I think beer and then therefore an abundance of drunk babes did most of it. Occams razor.
--why did they stop counting people who have exhausted benefits then? They used to include those figures in the over-all stats.
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I think you have to look at all the various indicators. Look at personal bankruptcy rates. Look at international balance of payments figures. Look at percentage of savings as opposed to credit/debt. Look at big ticket items, like cars for instance, and what's happening with them. Look at over-all combined tax rates as opposed to every decade past, go all the way back to the great depression and the 20's. Look at pension funding, bank derivatives, hedge funds, real estate figures, look at all of it to get a better picture.
Heck, look at this thread and all the other employment threads we have had. We got sold the illusion that destroying vertical manufacturing in this nation would be OK, that the "new economy" based on IT and service jobs would take over. Since then we've gone from the worlds largest creditor nation to the worlds largest debtor nation. It's an exact timeline parallel, and that is really the biggest economic change that has occurred in this time. I will take the time to drop just a few links/urls.
a random example of a government workers pension
http://news.statesmanjournal.com/article
a random example of a fortune 500 pension
http://www.thepittsburghchannel.com/team
unemployment stats new "lowball" official figures
http://www.fox23news.com/business/story.
hedge funds and derivatives
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepu
retail sales and balance of payments
http://www.modbee.com/24hour/opinions/s
--there's a lot more obviously, and weird events like SARS are an example of a serious wildcard that could cause a lot of changes, and definetly into the not good territory.
I would not say we are "out of the economic woods".
I never predicted a collapse in the 60s, the 70's during the energy crises,or the 80's, but by the 90's, when everyone else was just freaking out over "the new economy" I go "uh oh, serious greed by the people and short sighted and incredibly stupid foreign trade policies gonna bite us hard"- "bottom line" is I saw serious grief coming starting with the stock market, which was totally bonkers and so many people believed it was "real",I had 99 out of 100 people arguing with me over it. Oh well. Lot of those same people are not arguing with me now, that I can tell you. Now I see a more-general collapse as inevitable.
It has a good chance of being worse than the general depression from 28 to 1946-7. I can't really tell you how much worse, depends on wars and WMD, especially nukes and bios.
Do your own research, believe all the rosy pictures they tell you, not my call. I just never take the carnival barkers word for anything. I look a scosh deeper, usually you can see closer to reality then. It's not perfect but it works OK.
--it's bad now and getting worse. The federal government is cooking the reality books on the true figures, I would guess it is probably almost double of what they claim. People who exhaust unemployment get taken off the official figures, as well as people only working a few hours a week in some part timer. In addition, a lot of the private corporate pension funds are in some serious problems, uber serious as in "it just ain't there". Many many millions of people who are close to retirement are going to find out there won't be any money for them. Last year 5 out of 38,000 corporations in the pension insurance deal went bankrupt, and just those 5 were enough to strip the funds from the emergency cash stash they have. Some of the largest corporations out there are *this close* to not being able to pay their retirees. Fortune 500 guys.
My basic recommendations to anyone still working and making money is to make sure you have a small rural country place paid off. Even if it's a ratty trailer, as long as you got a well, a garden and a woodlot you can probably make it through a great depression version 2.0. You don't have to live there right now, but get it paid off, free and clear, then all you have to worry about is scraping up the taxes.
I spent many an hour talking to older relatives about their experiences in the great depression. It got to the point of an actual barter economy for millions, and it happened quickly, and lasted a really long time. Some of the stories I heard were downright scary. The geopolitical and economic reasons aren't near as important as your personal bottom line on survival. You will always NEED a roof over your head and food and water and some sort of cheap "energy" source which is "firewood" in it's simplest forms.
People who are in a position now of being "at work" and well paid should note that there's no full 100% guarantee that things will always be that way. The dotcom boom should be lesson enough for anyone with more than a few neurons clanking around inside the bio hard drive. And those young folks starting out with great hopes, ditto. Take care of those human basics first, then go to the luxuries and more affluent day to day lifestyle if you choose, keep that rural place as a backup if you can't live there full time, and it can also be a nice place for weekenders, etc.
This is a learn from history or repeat it sort of deal. I know some fairly well off people who during the build up last decade, instead of paying something off, just keep using credit to buy more and more property, now they are stuck with trying to dump property just to scrape together enough to pay one of them off, as their businesses are hurting bad. Because they were "wealthy" they didn't bother with necessities, they just ass-umed it would always be there for them, I guess because maybe they though they were "special" or something.
Whern I was a kid, you could walk into the five and dime store-literally stuff in there cost a 5 cents and 10 cents mostly- and one of their things they had in the novelties was packs of "stocks" from the boom years of the roaring 20's then the great depression. You could get a pack of them for a dime, knowing all of them at one time were bought by people with high hopes, using real money they worked hard to get, then it all poofed away on them. They were just turned into pretty pieces of paper then,of no real worth, a kids toy next to the slingshots and packs of trading cards with bubble gum.
They don't even give you the pretty pieces of paper anymore, it's usually just bits on a screen..
If you can't get the job that you want, take the job (and buy that rural place) that you need. Rolling Stones nailed it on that one.
--done this myself on a few occassions. It's learning some normal court room procedure and buzz words that is the most important. Usually the county clerk will help as well, finding the correct forms, etc. You can also research similar cases to see what worked and what didn't. I was actually so well prepared in two cases, cases actually against the government, that they capitulated shy of the actual court. One got to the court house steps before they caved though.
Throwing some cash at a good paralegal in advance helps too, they are usually the ones who prep their lawyers anyway, and are heaps 0 cash cheaper.
Think of court like any other construct. this does this, this does that. This comes first, then that, then that. If you follow their rules, they will let you play. and it really is just a big game, a game combined with some drama.
I haven't done it in a long time though, I imagine it's even easier now with having the internet to help with research.
I am sort of wondering now why there aren't more court cases brought against spammers in the states that have some laws against it. Even if it's hard to collect damages, just getting convictions in anti spammers favor helps establish more precedent.
Another really useful tool is to hold elected and appointed politicians and bureaucrats feet to the fire to uphold the laws via investigating if they're NOT doing their jobs, and are therefore in violations of their respective oaths,job descriptions, etc and see if they have ethics codes violations based along those lines.
..I know you guys think the developer section is secure, just wanted you to know you got at least one non coder lurker. I usually have NO IDEA whatsoever is being talked about, but after around a year now (didn't register for a long time)at least some of the jargon is comprehensible. Not much, but some.
So this is a good idea, huh?
OK, lamer question. If you had never coded anything before, what language would you start with, and why?
--they have a microwave beam weapon that is deployable now. The military and the cops have it, supposedly it is "non" lethal. It only "Heats the skin temporarily to the temperature of a turned on incandescent light bulb".
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Uh huh, like they don't got a "well done" setting on them bad boys.
As far as I can figure out,they are for the next series of mass riots in the states. There is also a bit of anecdotal I have seen on the web about a prototype being used in gulf war one, I don't have a link but I've seen the pics of dead guys all burnt up while their clothes remain relatively un scorched.
Here's a really old url from an actual military domain
http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/9
google has a lot more using microwave, nonlethal, riot
--I'm fairly decent on using google now, eliminating keywords, limiting it to domains, using proper keywords, etc, but tell ya WHAT would work better. I'd like the ability to ask a normal question, where every word had meaning, the sentence structure had meaning, all of the above, to the seach criteria. Just like you talk, exactly like that. Including prepositions, that one non available feature makes a difference in searching, if they could be included it would be great. Now sometimes I can get lucky, if I really think hard on my data request, make the sentence simple, and use quotes around the whole thing, sometimes I get a bingo right on the first page, but usually I get bupkis with that. Search engines now, as good as they have gotten, still force you into being psychic a lot of times.
It would also be nice to be able to use wild cards better, almost like how web pages get scripted with the "if this...then that" commands.
Another would be able to sequence your searches, give a series of complex commands, then hit go, so it parses to a gross result based on your priority of the request by what was requested first, then refines down your steps based on the same sort of odds they use now. A variant on this would assemble several pages of hits that taken as a combined total is your entire result. Say you are researching a complex topic, you know that there are several widely divergent things you need, then you have to assemble them in one place to have all the data you need for your query anser. Now you have to do that one step at a time, manually, open another page or tab, re enter a completely different set of criteria, mash search, blah blah, tedious, un manageable a lot of times. Be nicer to have it "right there". And you know, it wouldn't matter if it took some time, actually it would be perfectly OK to have it queued and run through a more intelligent set of algorythms based on how many features and how detailed your search needs to be. It could show up "later" as a retrievable service perhaps. Spend 15 minutes figuring out all the searches you need and entering your complex set of parameters, send it off. An hour later (or whatever it's timed for) it shows up, downloads in the back ground. Something like that. A human can do this now, that's what paid searchibng services do, but it's tedious and long and expensive. I could deal with a few bad hits, it's the huge number of bad hits that are the bear to deal with all the time, usually you have to enter simpler terms to just get started, so you can then re enter an advanced search after you find out what the non essential terms are that show up in the first pages if you haven't gotten extremely lucky.
Next I want a talking computer to do that, and have my venusian slave girl secretary do the asking for me, but I know that will most likely cost *extra* and require at least another stick of ram or two......
..and how would viruses and bacteria effect this new media? Seems like you'd need a clean room to assemble these things at a level 4 facility threshold to keep them prisitine clean. And because drives need to be vented in some small fashion now, seems like it would be almost impossible. I have a hard enough tiome keeping BIG things out of my gear. Yesterday I dug out an old HP printer to see if I could get it to work on an old computer I have for a project to run away from my regular machine. WELL, seems mr mouse decided to move in, there's acorns and bits of fluff and other rodentia sign in there! I pick it up off the junk/backup pile, hear this rattling going on. I go WTF is this? Turn it over, clunk clunk, oak tree potential. Sheesh!
... this would be nice in two applications on the low end. It would be nice to be able to recycle older hardware that has a too-small RAM limit now, perhaps with a pci card gizmo. Or to be able to upgraxde to better quality RAM. It would also be nice in a home or business lan situation where you could have several relatively cheap dumb nodes but a server that has or is capable of using a huge amount of ram and serving that along with various files.
..the notion that vendors would be liable for *bugs they know about* has some merit. Think about it. If the large companies-we'll pick on MS because it's such a good example-were forced to fix bugs in a timely manner, then they would need to accept bug reports. They would also have to release bug reports as soon as they knew about them, ie, they couldn't sit on a critical exploit and let people hang out in the wind for months and months. Once a report was made to them, it would then become an official bug they couldn't ignore. They'd have two choices then, switch to open source to find as many bugs as possible in the shortest time, or keep paying claims forever because they ignored bugs. Either way they would release less of better quality, not really a bad idea. If they wanted to hire professional beta testers, so what? More paid jobs. I don't see that as being all that bad. Nope, I don't.
Open source -FOSS- is in a unique position because it's "free". There can't be any damages if you haven't paid for it, or at least that could be part of "the law" written into it.
Normally I'm against new laws, but instituting some sort of consumer protection should be in order, if these companies want to make serious profits all the time. There are very few examples of consumer products out there that have no liability at all attached to them. With just a short time reflection on it, I can't think of any off hand, just *some* software. Eventually it's going to happen, so better to sort it out now, it really should have been sorted out 30 years ago, IMO. I tell you what will cause it too, if it's not done voluntarily in advance and adhered to, the first uber killer mass virus or trojan that makes code red or slammer look like a case of the sniffles, a net-killer. You'll get ten times worse legislation out of washington if the software community waits until that happens.
I'd say it's bound to happen sometime, too. The article cites 50 some odd billion a year already in losses due to either bad or insecure programs, you have something bad happens that does ten times that in one day or something, you WILL see the mother of all knee-jerk reactions from "the software consumers".
Well, OK, say that "something" is needed - What would be reasonable, but still not stifle development? One would be outright sales of software, not just renting -licensing of software. You buy it, you OWN it. You get it at such and such a date, as of that date it worked as advertised, after that date, well, up to the vendor then, anything "new" that needs to be added is up to them, from free unlimited patches and updates to pay-for individual bugfixes and exploits as you go, forever. Could be a yearly lease thing, whatever. For-profit vendors would get on the ball pretty quickly then if they charged too much or it didn't work all the time. they'd be forced into auditing as the most important part of production. Hmm, is this a bad idea really? The software is sold as "works on this and this, won't work with that and that". Yes, that would make software developers tend to work around just a few pieces of hardware and one or two OSs max no doubt. It would also be very expensive. Very expensive. Maybe people would go to the no liability but free stuff then? And I can see various versions in between those two extremes.
Could there be set limits per incident? Perhaps. Max liability, perhaps.
How about classifications of software?
"Entertainments" might be of lower criticality (so less liable in terms of maximum cash) then say the pacemaker software, or auto-controlling software. "Communications" like browsers and email and chat would be in the middle someplace in those terms of criticality. If your business depends on UPS or FEDEX to ship widgets, and they constantly don't get there or they are smashed, those companies would be sued out of existence. but if your widgets are electronic, well? It's just your tough luck as the consumer then, the software and the infrastructure has let you down, but they all get to say
--sure, I'll heed it. Just real tired of the lame "everyone have a nuke?" argument I see on all these pro and anti gun and self defense discussions. The first few times, swell, now that I've seen it hundreds of times over all the years I've been on the web it's gotten old. I admit to being human and getting overly annoyed, I need to remind myself it's just electrons on a screen all the time.
so, OK, my bad.
Thanks. And if the other guys sees this, my apologies. I thought about it some, and again, I have as much potential to getting angry as the next guy. Self defense and gun ownership rights are critically important to me so I guess that any discussions of them are more prone to be emotional than a discussion over something else. I can say I try to not get nasty, but sometimes it happens, I'm a human, mea culpa. It comes from personal incidents, saved myself from serious harm before, and also know people personally who because they had no means of practical definitive defense, suffered greatly. So I admit when I even see the word "nuke" in a self defense "debate" I go...nulcear!
...I guess sometimes I use too much slang when I write. I'll blame it on a very remote blood relationship with samuel clemens... If I was writing this to present to some committee it would be different, obviously. heh. anyway.....
It's not only IT guys who have a lot to lose, it's the actual companies they work for. And it's not only IT guys and their companies, it's EVERYONE who has a lot to lose with all these new so called "laws" being passed. It's just gross. These laws in particular are re building personal computer ownership and use and the internet in general into nothing more than what one way cable TV is once they really start enforcing it. You'll be able to click on an approved web page and that's about it. Your computer will be government approved designed and in a sealed box, illegal to open up. Honest, the next step then it looks like they will take is requiring "licenses" for this or that. You pro IT guys will be regulated and licensed, you can smell it coming. Sending packet one that is not approved will be a fine or jail time. Looking at whatever, the same, if it isn't the true and approved "way".
The main problem is we have this "legal" setup where we "elect" people who on purpose every year get together and who's sole job is to pass NEW laws with no provisions for removing OLD laws or even just to watch over whatever has already been passed. There doesn't exist enough "supreme" courts to keep up with it, it's beyond nuts. And to "challenge" a law you have to take the chance of actually getting arrested and "breaking" the law. I mean, how stupid is that? Serious social design flaw there. The founders were smart, but missed a few biggees it appears. Now we HAD a great way to deal with lame laws, that was the power of the jury, and I can guarantee you that if you are on a jury and start making noises about jury nullification to your fellow jurors that 'the judge" will lock you up as fast as he hears about it, even though it is lawful for juries to nullify stupid laws, and illegal for a judge to harass the jury or intimidate a juror. The reason why this can happen is that the police forces have been co opted into being hired mercenaries for the power structure. It's nuts, but it's real. We've lost the best possible check and balance to over reaching governmental power we had short of the cartridge box, and that is "we the people" lost control over the jury box. Stupid and non common sense laws used to get ignored and chucked out and "case dismissed", now they just keep getting enforced and new ones written. Corrupt judges are rarely called on their corruptions, it's too hard to do when you are locked up.
I would support a severe reduction in time limits legislatures can be in session,both federal and state, outlaw law "bundling" completely, and forced reviews of all laws past and current, so that unconstitutional laws never get passed in the first place and that old laws get removed as much as possible. Call it an emergency decree of overview or something of that sort. It's just way out of hand now. There is no rational reason that the US people need literally millions of laws, none, zero. The "law industry" is so parsitical, it needs to be slapped down and hard. I mean, I want any legislator anyplace to tell me when/where is the EXACT point we will have "enough" laws and regulations that they are 'content and happy". It's open ended on their side, as long as we keep eating new laws they will keep serving them up. I say we should push back away from the law table and get up and leave that restaurant for awhile and digest what we have already eaten.
To answer your question exactly, how to get joe government to go after the big guys first, I think that is waiting too late, you really can't count on that, these new laws just need to be stopped, and any legislators who insist on voting for them need to not be in office next time around. The only way to do that is hit em where it hurts, campaign contributions, and the suits decide who gets what there. So you IT guys need to go to
"the great cull" is the popular term for what you are suggesting, and YES, I think there exist some high level globalist factions working towards those goals, unfortunately. Stealth slow plagues, more wars, hiding destructive viruses inside of "vaccinations" in third world areas, gaining complete control over global food production with GM modified seeds,etc,etc,etc,etc. I don't LIKE it but I can see enough evidence to make a case that it is being attempted right now.
I think, for an exact example, that is one of the reasons that on the continent of africa you see so little actual international intervention beyond play acting at it, the extreme high level globalists basically want all the folks there to rot, they just want it easier to get in there and use the raw resources and land. Hmm, sort of like what happened in the americas with all them pesky injuns in the way during the europaen expansionist phase into the "new world". Pacify or eliminate, usually both.
I think it's possible to both maintain the worlds populations and also to pollute less and have "energy", but it will require some pretty severe out of the box thinking and doing to accomplish. The same old ways we have now, no, I'd agree, going to be a disaster, within 20 or so years tops. That's the main reason I am a proponent of "alternatives" in various forms, based on massive decentralisation as a start. I can't decentralise everything, so I started with meselfs.
I don't think it will happen though, your other scenario is much more likely over-all, so that's why I switched to a personal plan B some time ago, I live very rural and am getting as independent in all human carbon based life form critical areas as possible, ie, food, water, energy, etc. It's about the best I can come up with right now. Not trusting "them" to have my best interests at heart.
yet again another learned either/or argument. I have never recommended nor advised people to just completely switch over night, once they are fully ac grid connected, with all the normal types of appliances. we need a transition stage obviously in both the maco and the personal micro areas. One does not have to be either grid or non grid or off grid. Surprise, you can have BOTH. You can also very easily have two sets of the exact same type of circuits in your home, it's as easy as installing a sub panel box and dragging some circuits over. Done, no grid "tying" involved, no "phase lock gravitational sine wave stepping transducers" or whatever else big boogey man problem involved then. No "danger". Any competent average electrician can do a sub panel box and a few dedicated household already installed circuits in a couple of hours, tops. It just ain't all that exotic or difficult. Maybe it used to be, not seeing it now though.
"Industries" can adapt, should demand be there. We have a lot of commercial, making money industrial wind generators out there now, and it's a pretty impressive growth industry. Cost is good, it's just now hitting pretty darn close to average costs with conventionals. I am a proponent of increasing this demand, as in the above "if one million more people would get some", an example like that. Increasing the demand will mean increasing interest in practical R&D.
And this "average person", even given the level of tech that is off the shelf retail now, has little new knowledge or "work" that is required to use "alternative energy", it is, well, I'll use my case as an example, mashing a few buttons and once a month topping off some batteries with distilled water. I do a lot more than most people (over 60 total I maintain), but it's really not all that hard to do. It just ain't, and it's no more dangerous than dumping gas in your lawnmower. There's also some good work being done now that would eliminate batteries as a storage medium and use industrial capacitors instead, but I'll admit I haven't noted the advances there in over a year or so now so I don't know the actual levels they are at yet. And if a person wants to use sealed glass mat gel cells, they can, or NiMh or whatever, they just cost more than cheaper lead-acid. There's other storage mediums as well, something as simple as gravity and stored water works, many large hydro power operations do that already in off peak times. Even that household level maintenance operational stuff can be automated further into completely "hands off" for some more cash, you can buy it now. the rig here is even remote controlled over a modem if ya want to. And if it got to a more universal and widespread acceptance level,perhaps a lot of new jobs, perhaps the friendly local once a month guy would come by and for a small fee do that for people uncomfortable with doing it themselves, no different from having your oil changed when you could do it yourself, or getting your lawn mowed when you could do it yourself. Service industries are not that unique of a concept, it's quite a normal business model.
Like I said, you work both ways towards the middle, you strive to eliminate wattage demand, on a national scale down to a personal, via efficiwency and choices, whether personal or industrial, by using more efficient processes and machines. Look at the advances of permanent magnet motors for a good example in your field. Superinsulation in homes and commercial buildings, just adopting some more-sane standards beyond "r-18" there would eliminate the "need" for a huge amount of todays established capacity. What would national demand drop to with say doubling insulation all over, a one time cost? I gots no idea but bet a nickle it would fall into the multi multi megawatt range, or in terms of oil it would be "lakes" of it. Advances in just car engines over the past 30 years has done a tremendous job of saving oil, but it never would have happened unless those morinbund domestic industries hadn't gotten kicked in the nads, twice, once by OPEC and
--the act has a provision to re-classify you as a terrorist (primarily from participation in a protest 'threat, intimidate, coerce',or membership in an organization they deem terroristic, etc, fairly broad, you donated 5 bucks to some group before, they get classified as a terrorist group, whoops, you lose), which means you are no longer a "citizen" with any born with rights. This classification is completely on their say-so, no hearing or anything is required, they (any nameless governmental employee) merely state such and such is true, they win, you lose. You can then be "detained" and held in secret,deported to some other country, prosecuted, and punished up to the death penalty. It's about as extreme of a dictatorial move as you can get. Anyone who is aware of your detention and reclassification into sub human non citizen status is forbidden by law to inform anyone else, violations of which can get you reclassified. See above.
The gestalt is they left it broad enough that they can apply it to virtually anyone if they choose to do so. That is patriot act 1. Patriot act 2,which is even more extreme, after being leaked and denied, has now been chopped up and parts of it inserted into various other bills to disguise it.
What has happened is in essence the entire critical parts of the constitution have been re written, and most born-with rights are now null and void. Originally the constitution was written to detail government restrictions. Even the so called bill of rights was just a further description of the limits of government, as the basic fundamental to the constitution was that individual persons and the states had the most power and soverignty. The constitution doesn't "grant" anyone any "rights". You are born-with ALL rights, then there's a small sections of restrictions delineated in some detail which primarily apply to "government". That is now completely reversed, as full a 180 as is possible.
We are not supposed to have a royal, neo-royal, VIP class of "citizens" who are above the law. This explicitly applies to governmental employees. Explicitly, that was the entire purpose of the original secession from england and royal rule, there was no other reason of note. We got rid of the overlord class. that was the deal. This treatment of governmental employees as VIPs with unlimited powers to just grant themselves more powers, even calling them "laws" is not supposed to occur, nor are they even remotely *allowed* to grant themselves powers that they clearly do not have.
Any governmental employee who engages in unconstitutional actions, whether knowing or unknowing, is doing so under the explicit notice under the constititution that at some point they may be held personally liable for some serious citizen reactions, ie, "you don't want to go there", with "you" being any said employee,either elected, appointed, volunteered, or hired on, any "branch" or "level" or "title", civil, military, or "paramilitary", in any "government" federal, state, county, incorporated township or territory or unincorporated territory.
--the topics being presented all sound well thought out and important. I wish the folks there well, last thing they need is a US styled collapsed bloated patenting scheme.
--the monster island reference always cracked me up and seemed like a good idea. They shoulda stuck with that. Or if they aren't, they need to abandon what "mindshare" that mozilla has now while it still is sorta only known about by geeks, just drop any mozilla references entirely. I mean, when you can't even agree on names, no one is going to take your project seriously in the mainstream. I already have a hard enough time trying to encourage people to try "this new browser, mozilla, try it, you'll like it". Now I got to say "hey, try...whatever, you'll like it!"
Just not as snappy as a "name". It's like the browser formely known as 948575757, no, I mean prince, no it's....
In an even further direction, why not just combine it back into "official" netscape and cut out all the cruft and crap? Netscape is a known quantity, there's little reason (that I can see) to have them separate other than inertia.
--you mean that scientist or engineer working there to pull a samson option directly where he works? ya, I can buy that. He builds a great nuke, then flips the switch, kaboom, the whole plant and everyone connected with it goes buh bye. Bonus point for getting the financiers and local political junta goons at the same time. I'd call that guy a hero.
The concentration camp victims working in the slave factories in ww2 used to do that, a lot of von brauns V2's failed because they were sabotaged.
There's some evidence coming out now, it's still sketchy, but a lot of old ww2 vets are now at the point in their lives and don't care, they are spilling the beans about how the US transferred nuclear weapons tech on the sly to stalin during the war and through the "cold war". In public they "caught" spies like the rosenbergs, on the QT it was a scam. The cold war was worth buhzillions in profits when all is said and done. The military industrial complex is an INTERNATIONAL phenomenon, it has always gone across national boundaries. Wars are started at the top levels of industry and finance, been that way forever. Take nam, it wasn't a buncha blue collar farmers kids and inner city kids in the US and some rice farmers kids over there in nam who just magically decided one day they were "against" each other and needed a "war". But, people all over the planet keep getting faked out and go join up with some political faction, or get coerced into it, because "those guys over there" are "the bad guys".
Nope, around the world, want to see who the bad guys are, all you got to do is follow the war cash cow upstream. Wherever it ends, bingo, you got your true "perps" who cause all this misery. There's currently about 2 to 3 thousand top level planetary financiers and industrialists and politicians and controlled media propagandists who call all the shots. The rest are just order followers, sheep. Get rid of those top few thousand serious bad guys,all at the same time, well, it probably won't completely eliminate wars but makes a lot more sense than what we are doing now.
I'll even go further, and detail one place and group of globalist misery profiteering goons exactly, the so called "bilderburgers". It's a proven fact, the info is now out there in the wild to research, and it's not "tin foil hat" stuff, it's credible and real. There's some more, but as far as I know they are the largest and "gooniest" of the criminal war and political command and control gangs. Google will give ya tons of hits on them.
--why do you "doubt it"? You don't think economies of scale and interest and R&D based on that "works"? Are you still running a 286 then? You want me to trash my solar and send a check for some thousands to some centralised energy monopolist where your monthly bill is never paid off, and it's controlled by corrupt CEOs and accountants and subject to middle man profit skimming and government regulators? All we can do is have more and more and more centralised everything? Has enron and the cal political crisis taught us nothing? Do those wars all the time in the middle east and like in nigeria and now colombia and venezuela teach us nothing?
Tell ya what, when you trade in your advanced PC for a webtv,or better yet go back to a manual typewriter and snail mail, when you get rid of your personal vehicle and only take busses and trains everywhere, then maybe. In the meantime I WANT control over my life. I produce power on site, and I have it when the "grid" goes down around here, which it does every other thunderstorm.
People think nothing of getting a new skiboat, or a 50 inch TV, drops mega thousands, but somehow producing your own power is "controversial" and "will never work". Tell me EXACTLY how much power you as a human produce using the tech you have and own now, as opposed to what you consume? Me, I work both ways,I love having power and fuel and what it adds to my life, SO, I strive to consume less and be more efficient, and add to the power I produce. I run computers, lights, TV's, etc, normal stuff, and I KEEP getting told it doesn't work, it pollutes, and it's inefficient and whatnot. Sorry, it works better than your game machine or any other appliance that just consumes,causes pollution in manufacture,causes pollution when it's thrown away, those sorts of appliances NEVER produce power, they just consume it. I mean, what exactly else should someone do, just be a blind consumer and wait until all this stuff gets "fixed" from some elite money and regulatory monopoly? Wait for this "they" guy we always hear about who will "do it"? Huh?
I'll pass, no thanks. Those are the guys and techniques that lead to the problems, they don't solve much. PV tech has gone from one percent to the best now are cracking 30% efficieny, DESPITE the naysayers who have kept saying "it won't work" over the last few decades. They even have panels now that are clear, and can replace normal window glass. they have roofing systems that are pure panels, they eliminate the need for shingles that have to be replaced. there's tons of new techniques out there that IF they got used more would get BETTER. If we had more interest and R&D that cycle would have been sped up considerably, just like any other technology. Or do you DENY that?
You are part of the problem, or part of the solution. Pick one.
Sorry, I am AGAINST closed source energy monopolists, and just maintaining the status quo. I went better, not just more of the same. I want new industries, new jobs, not just further concentratintg capital and political power in fewer and fewer hands. and energy DEFINETLY means political power, let's just skip this ignoring it in the middle east and thinking that these oil guys are all so altrusitic about it. There's dictators all obver the planet, FUNNY we seem to be so "interested" in dictators sitting on lakes of oil. Congo, over three million people killed in the latest war, but they have little oil, not much press or notice. Another one of those coincidences I am sure...
Once we had the detroit cartel thoroughly scared-surprise! They CAN make 4 cyclinder cars that get better mileage and have more horsepower than their old stock 6 and 8's, and are cleaner. It just took them actually "doing it" in Japan, now all the manufacturers make decent 4 bangers.
Competition, new ways of thinking and doing="good idea".
It's the same with alternate energy, keep dissing it, don't support it, yep, it'll never get any better.
Sorry, I am just sick of the oil and nuke crowd. Th
--I think everyone in the world should be allowed nuclear arms...except you. Just too dumb, sorry man, hate to break it to you. You don't "get it", and never will. Well, you might, probably be too late though.
There, that snotty enough of a reply for you? It's distateful to me to have to deal with such immaturity. I am just too old and experienced in this. Your argument if you want to call it that is beyond boring, it falls into the lame level.
Normally I ignore trolls, but seeing as how you used your real account, there ya go, there's your reply.
As to nukes,if you want a real answer, in general, and bioweapons and chemical weapons, etc. I have written on this before various times here. I support a worldwide boycott by scientists, engineers and techs from getting hired or coerced by any regimes to work on those devices, and I condemn any who are currently doing so. I condemn them. If they are doing it for the check,as mercenaries, they should be ashamed of themselves. If they have been coerced into it, it's their duty as a sane human to use their elite brain skills and escape to someplace else where they can get a better and more useful job. If they are physically locked up and forced to work on those WMD,well, I'm sorry for them,but they really should have "gotten it" sooner on their particular political reality at their locale, and they should have used their AKs or whatever they could get their hands on, on the regime's goons sooner and started popping regime badguys before it got that bad.
Don't expect any more replies from me on this topic. Have a nice day, go troll someone else. I hope you never have to use a weapon in self defense, like I have, and millions and millions of other people. To those folks and myself, it is not "academic debateable theory" nor does your "nuclear" troll have any bearing on the discussion, it is a primitive attempt at a distraction. In short, stupid.
If you can't learn from other people, and RTF historical M, you'll never learn a lot of things. In the 20th century, over 100 million people were murdered by their own governments. Not killed in wars, murdered, by their various regimes. That and normal crime is what self defense is about. You either get it, and think self defense is a normal human right, or you don't get it. Yes, it IS a binary deal.