--I love this stuff, just love it. Ancient artifacts that suggest a much more advanced civilization than what mainstream scientists will admit to. The funny part is, it really DOES blow a lot of the current accepted beliefs. There's another one you can find with a google, and that's the evidence in india of a long ago past nuclear war.
You know that scene in the indiana jones movie where the ark of the covenant gets wheeleed into a huge gov warehouse to be forgotten about? I believe it! I think they do stuff like that when they can get away with it and when embarassing stuff shows up! Ha!
--Alex Jones is WAY up there in the real independent broadcasting. Beats the pants off most other radio guys, especially the "party" shills who I won't name *shuffle papers shuffle papers* a-hem
Genesis communications is the network he is on, they have a variety of great hosts, I especially like ThePowerHour show in the morning.
They just released a press release that they now have 5 people who have told them they were part of or had knowledge of US forces touching off those kuwaiti oil fires back in desert storm 1 war, so that saddam could be blamed for it and the mil/industrial complex could get more public support. They also have been at the forefront of exposing a lot of other cover-ups, the DOD covering up the gulf war syndrome disease in the vets, etc.
URL to genesis, broadcasting on am/fm, shortwave, satellite and on the net
http://www.gcnlive.com
Has all the hosts and streams and freqs, etc, plus links to their various websites
I'll also plug one of alex's videos "911-Road to Tyranny". You get that video and watch it, then watch it again. Then you do your own research, try to find anything that isn't 100% factual in it. Once you find that out, you just can't look at what's going on in the USA and the world the same way again. It literally causes a political paradigm shift with most people once they see it.
We are definetly in a late 1930's germany type level now in this nation, and given the technology advances, it's *scarier*.
biodiesel is just so derived from vegetable products OR animal fats.
From the very top of link of a google search using searchword biodiesel:
http://www.biodiesel.org/ (catchy url, yes?)
What is biodiesel? Biodiesel is the name of a clean burning alternative fuel, produced from domestic, renewable resources. Biodiesel contains no petroleum, but it can be blended at any level with petroleum diesel to create a biodiesel blend. It can be used in compression-ignition (diesel) engines with little or no modifications. Biodiesel is simple to use, biodegradable, nontoxic, and essentially free of sulfur and aromatics.
How is biodiesel made? Biodiesel is made through a chemical process called transesterification whereby the glycerin is separated from the fat or vegetable oil. The process leaves behind two products -- methyl esters (the chemical name for biodiesel) and glycerin (a valuable byproduct usually sold to be used in soaps and other products).
Is Biodiesel the same thing as raw vegetable oil? No! Fuel-grade biodiesel must be produced to strict industry specifications (ASTM D6751) in order to insure proper performance. Biodiesel is the only alternative fuel to have fully completed the health effects testing requirements of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments. Biodiesel that meets ASTM D6751 and is legally registered with the Environmental Protection Agency is a legal motor fuel for sale and distribution. Raw vegetable oil cannot meet biodiesel fuel specifications, it is not registered with the EPA, and it is not a legal motor fuel.
For entities seeking to adopt a definition of biodiesel for purposes such as federal or state statute, state or national divisions of weights and measures, or for any other purpose, the official definition consistent with other federal and state laws and Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) guidelines is as follows:
OFFICIAL DEFINITION
Biodiesel is defined as mono-alkyl esters of long chain fatty acids derived from vegetable oils or animal fats which conform to ASTM D6751 specifications for use in diesel engines. Biodiesel refers to the pure fuel before blending with diesel fuel. Biodiesel blends are denoted as, "BXX" with "XX" representing the percentage of biodiesel contained in the blend (ie: B20 is 20% biodiesel, 80% petroleum diesel).
and so on, and etc....
I don't know how to code, but alternate energy is a hobby of mine.
--we have solar power here, PV panels. Part of the rig is dual battery banks of deep cell batts and a set of large power inverter/chargers. These can take dc power inputs and ac power inputs, from "the grid" or from a generator or PV or a windcharger. This results in basically a huge UPS system that is quite robust and reliable and significantly cheaper than what I see sold to computer centers as UPS solutions. Granted I haven't looked at all of them but just a few examples I have seen were hugely over priced for what you get compared to what we have, which basically does the same exact thing, just better. primarily the size of the batteries. You use normal deep cycle lead acid batteries. Those batteries are put into a battery bank box which has a sealable lid and is vented to the outside with pvc pipe and a normal small dc fan. The inverters/chargers have an option to be remote controlled with a serial interface (local or off the internet), along with just a normal set of push buttons and a simple menu interface built in to them. I've posted on this before here several times. I think something like this would be a good option for someone wanting a good power supply center/UPS for either home use or commercial. There's no absolute need for outside power inputs beyond the "normal" AC grid supplied power, that alone is sufficient to keep your battery bank charged,and a decent sized battery bank has a lot of "stored" power to carry you through power outtages, and it's quite "clean" power that comes out of it. And having an easy to wire option to add additional ac or dc inputs is a big plus. In other words, easy to configure and customise, easy to use.
Here is url where you can see a small set of pics and a description of the rig we have, scroll to middle of page, look for mountaintop in georgia set. Pay attention to the inverters/chargers/ battery banks set up. That part there is the power center, along with just normal electrical circuit panels and sub panels. This rig doesn't need solar to operate, it is quite functional with only normal ac input either grid or generator. This one has all three installed and operational. We get both 220 and 110 ac out of it. Just one battery bank and one inverter is quite a lot of power on tap. The system here is designed to be redundant, and powers most of the normal operation of a three story large house except for the electric heat pumps.
http://www.four-winds-energy.com/about.html
This is the main page url. There is an email form on the bottom of the page,you can send roy, the owner of the energy company, a description of your requirements and I'm sure he can work up a proposal for you for comparison. He is a personal friend of mine, so I'll add that caveat and disclaimer. He's been in this biz over 20 years and is quite knowledgable on this subject and has installs all over, the ones on his news site are just a small number of them, I know since that page went up he did a lot more projects, mostly commercial installs. Prices are good, and variety is excellent for what he carries, something for any budget.
..I've seen those points, and btw that post you referenced was funny and a good way to illustrate them, but my point can be clarified even further. It will still happen. "Google" as a verb or googled meaning "to look for something hidden but you have a good idea it's there to find-past tense" will continue to happen unless google.inc goes out of business tomorrow and we all get brain wiped. Unless you are physically prepared to literally sue anyone for using your name "wrong", it's futile and silly. Where do "words" come from? I mean really? The english dialect I speak is not the same as what is spoken in other areas of the nation, or back in history, nor is it what will be spoken 20 or 100 years from now. It will still be "english" but it will have changed. Carry this to the very next step. Printing or publishing a copyrighted word, without permission. How can you even discuss the org or corp or person behind that copyright without first contacting them and getting permission? Far fetched? Not if this goes to suit and passes and they get a judgement it's not. Say Bigco just didn't like people dissin them or even talking about them some place "unapproved" by them. (side note-dissin, a relatively new english word). It could be anything they didn't like. So, you as a poster talk about them in a post, merely used "their" word. You didn't get permission. You don't "own" that word. You now owe them whatever a court/jury decides after they sue you, after all that person who "owns" that word has the "right" now.
This isn't the same as another search engine company calling themselves google. That would be a copyright violation, and that makes sense. This is different, and right now it's silly, if it sticks, it's incredibly harmful. If I can say I "googled for the result" out loud, is it legal, or should it be made illegal, especially if at least one other human hears me say it? Now, if that is legal, can I now write that down or post it on the web? May I say that in a phrase over a radio? May I write a novel in which a character uses that phrase? Do I "owe" google money, or can they have my publication stopped and all the copies destroyed? How far is "reasonable"?
This is one of the reasons I fully favor corporate review, and holding them to "of the public benefit" besides them just "making money". I am not saying google would be crossing the line here, but edging pretty close if they persue it. I can think of several large still in business and "profitable" corporations who have so abused their incorporation that they should be dissolved, no matter the "monetary" loss to anyone.
People complain abpout "frivolous" lawsuits, I think there's some merit to it, and also lawyers get away with what in other circumstances I would call a direct threat,an assault, and especially the way our society is set up so that those with the deepest pockets frequently seem to be able to use "the law" to beat up on people. They don't use a club, they just bankrupt you, on purpose. Because it's polite and gen-teel and proper they can get away with it.
I don't know how to say it any better than "it's just wrong"
And I wasn't joking about not electing lawyers to office either, I'm completely serious about it. About the worst and most harmful conflict of interest running. The class or society or organization of people who profit financially in a professional sense from "the law business industry" should not be in charge of writing more complex and invasive and pervasive "laws". It's an absurd and obvious conflict of interest. There is little to no profit involved in writing less laws, simpler laws, more fair laws, and easier to understand laws, if you profit from the opposite. There are maximum profits to be made by requiring the "law" to be so complex that only "your org" can "do it". I am also in favor of "loser pays" with a twist, it's proportional to your gross income. Big corp sues little guy, they lose, then little guys law expenses he incurred as a proportion of his gross income for that year are applied to bigcos, that's what they pay him for "legal expenses". And vice versa of course. Not net, gross. In my view, that would eliminate a huge percentage of what is termed "frivilous" when it comes to lawsuits, without having to legally define frivolous. It depends on everyone's common sense then, and how lucky they feel. It wouldnt stop frivolous suits, but it would both slow them down and still protect all parties concerned, both sides.
And dicussions about the law and lawyering are directly related to this article, it's exactly 50% of it. There would be no article at all if it wasn't for the way the "law" and lawyers work.
--file this customer service ticket with the ID 10 T stamp. I can't believe it. To have your business model be so succesful in a POSITIVE light that it becomes an understood "new word" is GOOD. Suing the people who noticed that this happened-really, all they did was SEE THIS HAPPENED IN SOCIETY- is BAD. This is just elementary free advertising for them in the worst possible case. After that it can only get better.
Here is Mr. google deep in contemplation over this while juggling algorithms in his head and not really paying attention to this word issue --->"Hmm, free advertsing,WHAT?!? Our company so well respected and in such widespread use it's now an offical word in the language, man I am so whizzed off! I wanted to stay obscure, have no one know our name! I must protect my name from being used as a word by...well by anyone, all those TALKERS out there! The nerve! I'm gonna SUE 'EM! That'll teach 'em to say my word!"
Can't they see how dumb that is to feel that way? Guess not, maybe someone will clue them in on it. I will only charge them 100$ for this service, too. It's a deal at that rate.
Once again, you can see where advanced brains that can be successful in a highly specialised field, and are simultaneously completely clueless in other areas. Zee-ro common sense it appears. I've had some bosses like that. Example. "Uhh boss, if I do what you tell me to do this generator will 'splode" No lie, happened to me, had my boss tell me to run the generator in such a way as it would have overheated and had a "catastrophic failure" but he wanted me to "just try it". Well, I didn't obviously, started to walk away, said I would go call 911 and let the fire department get a head start on coming over..
Anyway,and g**gl3 (gotta be careful, don't want to get sued now) HQ masterminds were lame enough to listen to their tame lawyers and persue this. Missing the forest for the trees mistake 2, dealing with lawyers,a necessary e-vile, like you know God got a plan for mosquitoes, but dang if you can see it.
OK-lawyers got to either create laws that society was perfectly able to do without the day before,or write extremely arcane things called "contracts" that are compilations of said laws with people's names now attached to them which apply to the previous laws they created, or argue what they already did between themselves, and get paid both ways and up and down on this deal. That's all they do. This is called "job security" or if you are a low level peon or like still in school "busywork".
Like scorpions stinging and the old fable, it's just their nature,that's it, just got to deal with it, so one needs to pay attention to what they recommend all the time and apply a "common sense" interpreter to it. And it's also why you should NEVER "vote" to "elect" one to governmental "office", OF COURSE they will make your life more expensive and more complicated if they wind up there!
..they are great cases! I think why many geeks don't do that is that the hardware already installed is quite good as well, and is upgradeable, cpu, drives, expansion cards, etc. I guess if you could find a for-real busted one it would make more sense to snag it for the case. The stock config could run 3 or 4 OS's,too, so that would probably be enough for most folks, you could run mac os classic, 10.x whatever, linux, and doze with virtual PC. That covers a lot.
Tell ya what I want to build, a super tough portable for camping and emergency use. I am accumulating pieces for it now. It'll be built into one of two briefcase things I have (haven't decided which one yet though yet) have multiple non stock just generic 12 volt rechargeable batteries and some removable solar panels (I have two lightweight flexible ones now for this project I could use, Unisolars) with long enough wire that the computer can be put in the shade but the panels run out to the sunshine. Used components now are so cheap, I want to try this sometime. Some very low electrical requirements mobo and chip (cruesoe?), lotsa ram, I'll sacrafice cpu speed for that. I want a good large lcd monitor, a normal keyboard and a real mouse as I am fumble fingered and don't like laptop keyboards, and a variety of drives-2 hdd, 1- cd/rw- and a wireless net connection obviously. Plus storage in the case for extra cd disks, etc. I'll probably have a small multiband radio in there as well, and my sony watchman TV, call it my portable communications kit. I know some companies already make this sort of rig (kinda sorta, at least the computer parts), but fresh out of "spare" thousand dollar bills for those industrial models I have seen.
--I would point to this issue as well for a tremendous amount of the "reason" for this war. Not the sole reason, but a major one. I'd say it's well past the "theory" phase, as all the data is right there to look at, absolutely nothing there is hidden or secret.
Any world switch for the generally accepted rserve currency from using the petrodollar to the euro or muslim gold dinar would result in an economic loss to the US that would literally be unrecoverable for at least an entire generation, if not permanently unrecoverable. It would make the bankrupting of the soviet union seem like a lemonade stand stickup in comparison.
It is rather simple, we can (and have been for years and years)print up dollars that through inertia over many decades, especially since the end of WW2, eventually got accepted around the world as a reserve currency. This was due mostly to the fact that we had manufactured goods to export, so that exported dollars that went to oil got reintroduced back into our own economy. that's exactly where the term petrodollar came frombecause it is the most accurate way to describe this representation of wealth that we call money and in specific, "US" money. And oil being of such importance and so universally recognized as "tangible wealth" that the easily to trade representations of such-the since named petrodollar-became just "understood" as how "business" was done around the world, what currency was used extrensively.
This is a GREAT deal for the US. It can't be overestimated really, the figures are huge. It amounted to a massive planetary subsidy for us, and has definetly resulted in a much higher standard of living, along with our productivity, and the use of other nation's and people's productivity. All of the above. to prove this, you can see especially in the past decade of what "labor" is actually worth on a global scale, what most americans think they are "worth" can be shown to be highly inflated, one job at a time as someone else takes it once given the opportunity to do so. As this has now been proven over and over again by literally millions of US jobs that paid x and now pay x-minus a lot, I don't think this can be disputed.
Some extreme political thinkers have labeled this world reliance on pterodollars as "economic imperialism", and although I disagree with some of the tenets proposed in those theories, the basic argument I can find little fault with, and I would be hard pressed to argue against that point.
This is changing, and a lot of outside nations no longer need to purchase US goods, and we are gradually eliminating any goods of note beyond aircraft and war materials TO export. We also are gradually losing agricultural exports as well, for a variety of reasons. Uhh, then you have to ask, what's left to sell? We export "entertainments" and "warstuffs". Virtual intellectual property andsuch "assets" can be reproduced cheaply,both from copying and from direct implementation anywhere locally, so true long term worth of those "products" is not a viable statistical tangible model that can be sustained for more than the short term, and I think we are seeing the beginnings of the time frame involved, it appears to be around 30 years ort so since the great IT boom started, but now those economic realities are shifting. Virtual products are just not all that valuable when they can be easily replicated. Once the tech advanced to that point and the labor potential in those fields reached a universl threshold, the buble has been pricked. It's leaking now and will continue to leak. Just as hardware drops in price and worth (I still have several older computers that would retail for like 10 dollars now that costed thousands when new), so will 'soft' tangibles drop in worth, and my best guess it will accelerate even faster than hardware worth has dropped. I think anyone who reads slashdot for more than two days can see that point clearly.
So that leaves us back on true "tangible" wealth, back to oil, manufactured goods, and grown from the ground goods. That's it, that's where wealth comes from, it's grown or made. If ya ain't got them for sale cheaper than the other guy, you won't last long, and middle-man skimming "trading" only lasts as long as the real buyers and sellers cannot contact each other and do their business without your "assistance", and once they can, well, they won't use you any more, nothing in it for them except lost wealth. And if you are too poor to buy anything, well, you won't get much. the US can NOT sustain itself as a consumer nation when we don't make anything, being the worlds middlemen won't last long. short term, sure, but the above point stands, once you aren't needed for the trade, you get cut out, and tough times make people look harder at where to cut costs, and I'd call the middlemen a good place to look first. And this is happening. A "cheap" dollar allows our exporters to sell goods, but a "strong" dollar allows us to purchase things cheaply, but the point is *moot* if the return will not support your current status quo! It is a NET LOSS in terms of real economy once you switch from a producer to a consumer.. Massive catch 22, it's a no win situation. Who is wealthier, the guy who has the warehouse of goods, or you with your purchase, if the owner of the goods has a choice of customers? That's the exact point we are at now in the US. We are called the consumer of last resort, but we cannot consume for much longer without expanding credit in the terms of printed petrodollars, and other nations know this and are slowly coming to the realization they don't have to subsidise us. Well, the fatcats know this, joe in the street really doesn't yet.
This is why now there's so much interest in maintaining the petrodollar (for those who profit from of it of course), when the actual need for them from other nation's points of view has been "exported" elsewheres. I would call any efforts theorized to maintain the petrodollar even in terms of warfare to have a high credibility factor once you get past the world as being any sort of altrusitic place and realise EVERYTHING on a planetary scale is played hardball, and outright obfuscation and lying are the most minimal of national crimes committed by organizations of human beings going well back into the dawn of time. The least, not the most.
It is QUITE probable that unless the shift to the euro stops, and unless the muslim gold dinar is squashed completely(that one is an example of a choas theory event that has established old world bankers and us bankers wetting their pants) by the US/anglo bankers, that it will have cascading economic and social consequences to the negative for millions of people in the US and the UK and to our immediate trading partner Canada in particular. It would literally topple governments, cause massive shifts in social consequences, and could quite easily lead to civil wars in a few nations, and all sorts of other "not nice things" to happen.
I don't think it would be fair intellectually to negate or to underestimate the importance of this in this "war". Iraq got the ball rolling, first entire nation to completely shift from petrodollar to the euro. What all his reasons were do not matter, that the event happened does matter, and that the other oil producing nations are looking HARD at this now, and that nations like japan that are holding huge quantities of us paper are rethinking this, as their nation is tied even more to imported oil than the US is.
With a world shift in currencies, take that as an academic postulate, we are quite literally talking about an economic decline in the US that would surpass the "great" depression in statistical form, and would greatly surpass it in terms of the social consequences. Greatly.
As to the war itself, and the public reasons, aww shoot, I mean really, of course saddam has WMD, the US and various europaen nations sold or gave them to him, all such transfers being illegal by international so called treaties we all signed in great hypocritical pompous diplomatic ritual, and equally embarrasing to all in their gross violations. Back then we didn't care one how many iraqis and iranians bumped themselves off. This is elementary school level stuff now. And it's as far as you will see in the mass market opinion manipulating "news", they don't use psychologists in the advertising field because those studies are useless, and the "news" and "public politics" is "advertising".
The europaens (current EU members), and some other nations of importance, notably Japan (waffling but close to making the switch) want to expand the use of the euro obviously, it's of too much economic worth to them to do so, plus, and this is a big one to me, they don't want the americans to have the sole restricted and unfettered access to all the hidden records that exist in iraq, because they know that our government employees will hide or destroy any and all evidence of US involvement in WMD transfers that turn up, while "revealing" europaen's involvement, or such records will be kept in reserve until such a time in the future as their revelations prove to be politically expedient and warranted, blackmail in other words, very high stakes blackmail that no single europaen political party or it's particular industrial supporters could avoid. Of course they are against the war. Of course russia is and china. Of course saddam hussein is a tinpot dictator who is a mass murderer and etc, so are dozens of others around the world you never heard of. Saddam is a "threat" to the dominance of the US dollar, to maintaining the status quo of our economy to keep all the voters voting as they should, to keep a variety iof international fatcats in power, and has a tangent into the existence of israel, but that's another side issue for another thread.
Please ecuse remaining typos, I have some chores to do now. Thanks for the opportunity to expound on one of my favorite subjects.
-the us airline industry, (another example would be the past "civilian" nuclear industry), is a 'stealth' way to have larger military funding/budgets without appearing to be so, and to keep aviation designers and technicians employed, just as much as for "moving civilian cargo and passengers".. They will continue to be susbsidised well past any rational civilian economic benefit angle, which is already close to just being break even and not profitable. And I am guessing it's the same with airbus and the EU, who want to become a superpower once they are more fully integrated. And china is just on track for building the worlds largest military, this is SO obvious, their merchant marine and "civilian" aircraft are a 100% part of the PLA aggregate, and any advanced tech they accrue in those fields is perfectly dual use, as are the ships and planes themselves.
I would find it hard to believe that any really large business decision being made around the world now does not have a component of carefully considered military use and planning connected to it, which planning then revolves around this decade's and the next decade's planetary resource wars.
this guys post at http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=54631&cid= 5354453 has the best info, I just read the pdf he links to, gives ya a lot of the info you want. I will also heartily recommend a book by Joel Skousen called "Strategic Relocation", it's a detailed analysis of all of the US covering just a ton of different features.
--I am just wondering,because I don't know and never heard of it, is there a way to easily have a two "layered" hard drive, where on the surface level you can keep the decoy os and data, but you are really using a complete other system that is stored underneath in apparent deleted space? Then it might not matter as much, even with all the latest patches, etc, etc, anyone who owned you might be faked out and not look "deeper".
This would be a security through obscurity variant.
Why not just ask him? Couldn't slashdot officially do one of their interviews? It's not like he's unaware of slashdot. He's got a binary choice, he can accept or decline. The editors and mods pick the questions anyway, might as well try.
mac classic had text to speech like almost forever. I used to use it sometimes when I was like cooking in the kitchen and wanted to "hear" the news or a long forum thread from someplace when I was away from the keyboard.
--I've done at two different times just a cursory level search for spywarez on the computers at my local library. It's just slap full of every commercial spyware you can imagine, so I would bet it's got some real nifty ones buried in it as well. When I pointed it out to the librarian she got real upset, said their administrator would "take care of it". Went back, nope, still there. They have it locked so cookies stay on, scripting, etc, well, sheesh. They got enough gators to start a tourist trap. It's a multi county wan based on nt, for whatever that is worth. I know I wouldn't trust it for anything important, I wouldn't even use web mail from it. I mean, people who use it don't even bother logging out of sessions, you can sit down, back it up or look in history and you are right in someones email, etc. I'd bet a nickle it's got every trojan in the known universe on it.
"The peaceniks aren't saying "America bad, Saddam good". They are protesting against the moral corruption going on here and the wrongdoings of the US _and_ other western countries since way back but alot of people seem to have an inability to grasp this."
Yes, exactly what I am saying. Saddam is a heinous jerk off torturing thieving tyrannical freeking demon. I think he needs to go, ALONG with his past business partners and facilitators, whomever they are, and wherever they are.. it's not like he's ever been a boy scout, and they knew it when they did business with him. In the US, I think way past time that impeachments actually resulted in impeachments and jail time. I'm just tired of these high level US fatcat goons who act, and I mean literally put on their actor's hat, who act all righteous on the tv with their soundbytes, when back at the ranch or office they are just..slimeballs, profits at any costs types of people. Same with some of these international corporate pirates, just petty gangsters on steroids. And I could care less what letter is after their name either, D or R, you are "with" the crooks or not, I choose "not".
You know, should our own goivernment get cleaned up, there's more than enough evidence to show saddam needs to go, but, they won't release this information, because it's sorta hard to justify when you were a major part in creating the problem. Not all of it, but a major part. I think "national security, need to keep it a secret" is used a lot more to cover up high level crimes than it's used to just keep secret normal intelligence.
And one of the reasons I think that is honest people in government who have talked to me off the record, who know that 'weird stuff' goes on all the time, but because of the lofty levels where this stuff happens, little ever comes of it. I'll give just a small example, I know personally some retired cops who have told me how they were tasked or asked to, to infiltrate demonstrations, pose as demonstrators, and start the rock throwing, etc. And to back it up, I actually saw an example of that with my own eyeballs back at a nam demonstration way back when. Saw some goof who just looked "weird" he just didn't fit in with the people around at the demo. So, he's at the front of the line, gets a rock out of his army field jacket, beans a uniformed cop with it, they go nuts, charge the crowd. I was off to the side watching this go down, saw this gomer slip back in the crowd and split. I followed him a few blocks where low and behold I see him go "check in" at a parked unmarked cop car. Call that the very bottom and least level of 'bad stuff' based on lies and obfuscations that goes on in government, and even at that level you can see how it effects public perceptions and what gets passed as law or policy. Now just carry that sort of behavior and mindset right up the food chain into international levels, things get a scosh clearer and easier to understand.
--I am sure there are any number of different formulas and work descriptions that could apply to this discussion. And that makes it hard to really talk about it except in very general terms. In your case I guess you have to look at the old boring way of a cost/benefit analysis, are you getting paid more for this extra work at night and is it acceptable to pay the additional expenses from your pocket? Or were you told upfront this might happen, and now that it did it just sucks and you are stuck with it. If it really doesn't make you any money, where the cost of getting access to work is almost the same as what you get paid to do for those hours, or a significant part of it, then that's a no brainer, you just say no, or ask for more money and show the reasons why. I've been in the position as well of being just about forced to work for free, when the boss starts adding on more and more tasks that don't jibe with the original job description. I've seen it a lot too, the worst I ever get is contracting small building jobs when the homeowner or building owner just every day walks over and asks you to do "just the little one thing more" that takes them one sentence or two to ask in time or effort, but requires you to once again go to the store for more materials, do more work, slows you down on the original project etc, and they expect the contract to not change! Going through it exactly right now in fact. It's a tough call to make, when exactly do you get in an employer's face and tell them to eithercut some more money or STFU and do this new task themselves. I guess that's why we have contracts and lawyers, and it's a shame we have to go that route sometimes. My basic nature is I will give people the benefit of the doubt on being honest and rational until a pattern of irrationality and greed and dishonesty show up, if I know little about them when I first start working for them. If they show themselves to have a bent towards untrustworthiness, I stop working for them as soon as I can find a different job. It's cost me "money" sometimes, sometimes a lot of money, but I detest crooks, petty or otherwise. And some times the petty ones are just so smarmy about it, my favorite trick they do is to have what I call "selective memory", it's almost like you have to follow them around and tape record every conversation you have with them.
--I disagree with you such much that even going beyond your first counterpoint is.. almost pointless. Transfering chemical and biological warfare materials and expertise was and will remain..just wrong. this is a you "get it" or just plain don't get it proposition, and if you can't get beyond that, it makes it difficult to even discuss anything else. The US and some western nations did that, transferred chemical weapons and biological weaponry and expertise, and continue to do so. If you think that is "cool" and is the sort of behavior that should be used later on as justification for yet another round of wars, and that the facilitators and their business partners show great leadership qualities and need and deserve political power rewards and money rewards for this, well, I guess I'll have to let it go then. And my view doesn't take 20/20 hindsight, it's a rational view any non war loving person would take. I am a big proponent of self defense, the second amendment, and soverignty. And I know enough to not help out gangs of criminals and seem to be able to differentiate between "good guys" and "badguys" without a lot of effort. I don't support badguys, any scale. I don't trade or do business with badguys. I wish my nation followed those sorts of principles too. so do millions and millions of people, in our nation, and around the world. To my view, that was our original purpose of having our own nation, at least a big part of it. To get away from artificially created wars, to not be lead around by the nose ring by various tinpot dictators, kings, potentates and "rulers". You can have your imperial blood profits centric politicians and political parties and international corporations, I find them..distasteful.
--so OK, the "peaceniks" are wrong and will "cost lives". That's an opinion, it has to my mind a certain amount of validity, but I'd like to expand on it more. I have an additional opinion, but I'll phrase it in the form of some questions at first.
How many people will die because others refuse to accept the evidence that high level "leaders" in various western nations created, sponsored, armed, equipped and encouraged saddam hussein, al queda, and etc, and are currently conveniently "forgetting" those facts? What are we to do with people who refuse to learn from history, and can't see the hegelian dialectic at work, when crises are manufatured on purpose in order to garrer power and profits for high level "connected ones"? When does it become politically correct to notice exact parallels with events such as the reichstagg fire,where a retarded man was setup to commit a crime of such size as to influence public opinion so that "drastic security measures' were "needed", and 9-11, where obvious brainwashed goat herders were used in a similar fashion, and where the linkages up stream go directly not only to far off afghanistan, but to western intelligence services, large corporations, and various stock brokerages, and this information was "overlooked" or dismissed as "intelligence failures", when it obviously wasn't? Why is it that international financiers who always seem to be quite willing to finance all the sides in various conflicts are given a "get out of jail free pass" on their actions? When will all the connections between "serious bad stuff happening" and extremely rich and powerful western white guys in suits be "fashionably correct" to note?
You see, it works on several levels. I have noticed that for a lot of people, stopping the data input at the 'comfort level' based on a prior "belief" system seems to be the norm. If any data is presented that doesn't fit someone's pre conceived belief of what political reality is, then such data gets rejected out of hand, based not on cold clinical analysis and a sense of honesty and fair play, which should be an intelligent response and is an accepted scientifc model, but rejected and denied based on just a partisan sense of belonging to some group who "can do no wrong, it's those other guys fault, all of it". That is an absurd "belief" system that can be classed as almost cultish, and as such should be avoided, one would think.
Now, to switch to just general commentary on iraq, if it was my call, this is what I would like to see. I would like to see the high level US leaders (other nations in the west need a similar action to take place) who decided to fund and bankroll that goon saddam exposed, and busted. Busted, exposed, prosecuted. I think the United States should FIRST show the world we are willing to clean up our own messes, that we did in fact break international law and common sense by supplying him with poison gasses and active alive biowarfare germs that were produced and stockpiled in direct avoidance of treaties we have signed, that the materials shipped over there were not "samples" but actual production runs of size, and that we as a nation screwed up. I would also contend that this goes across the two major political parties leadership levels, and into various places inside our own military establishment and inside various private corporations, and has been an ongoing criminal enterprise of monumental and sinister proportions. And that we did this partly to counter iran, but that the iraninan problem itself was AGAIN partly our fault as we had our intelligence services help to overthrow the previous elected government of iran, put into power this royal "shah" monster, who went about so abusing his people that radical islamicists were able to easily recruit converts, leading to the mullah khomeni taking over with his gang of despots. You see, there's connections. You can't stop at one point and say "here is where it started and it's all these other guy's fault!" And that all of this was done on purpose for the reasons of power accumulation and "making money" into the obscene levels. ONCE we do that,clean up our own mess, and regain the moral high ground we have lost on the international levels you can plainly see, THEN proceed to deal with creatures of our creation like saddam the dictator, and if we have to, to do it legally according to our constitution which insists on congress and not some tin pot dictator to decide about such a heavy event as 'war'.
There are literally dozens more examples I can cite to reinforce this position, completely outside of just iraq. In other words, our hands are not clean either and it's well past time we as a nation have the courage to admit it and deal with it.
And this is not a "leftist"or "rightist" viewpoint, millions share it, it goes across the political spectrum. I doubt were you to poll any of the protesters across the world from this weekend you would find many "saddam" supporters. What some folks are uncomfortable with is the notion that the protesters were also protesting the "why did this happen" position which points pretty clearly towards "us" as having some serious involvement, and unfortunately, a lot of the high level people involved in creating this saddam problem are now offering their latest "solutions"..
Personally, I think none of these gents we have who are connected to saddam and to bin laden and al queda, etc, should be in ANY position of power, and in fact need to be pulling some hard time at club fed, and that their public personas are a sham,a shame, and a lie, a very, very big lie. It is embarrasing, so a lot of folks go into denial over it.
I can put this even simpler. If I as an individual do business with the crackhouse and gang up the street, if I sell them arms, supply them with support,make sure their car runs, loan them various burglary and mugging tools, etc, then later on they go on a crime rampage around the neighborhood, would I be guilty or innocent of being "wrong"? Would I have any claim to moral superiority, would I have any rational basis to claim I had no hand in the crimes committed? Or would the local prosecutor say I was in fact a part of this gang?
When it's on that level it's easy to see, when a nation and it's so called "elected" leaders and it's "pillars of society" business people do it, then this situation is supposed to change, morally and legally? Uhh, why is this?
A lot of the people around the world don't see much difference, and frankly, I share that view. The scale is different with the examples of the crackhouse gang and it's crimes, but the crimes committed certainly aren't, and ALL the criminals involved need to be dealt with in a legal fashion, no matter their skin tone, what they wear for clothing, what country they currently reside in, or what temporary 'title' they enjoy, or what current economic level they happen to be at..
This picking and choosing just "some" of the gang members to "prosecute", while completely ignoring the other gang members is just intellectually and ethically and morally bankrupt, IMO. And that's what's going on with the current "protest" activity, millions of other people can see that.
--there's a previous model of "cost of working" that is well established. Usually an employee who must physically travel into work pays for this travel out of their own pocket, auto, gas, etc, normal commuter expenses. That is usally more than a broadband connection cost. I would think anyone lucky and skilled enough to work from home would gladly pay a nominal fee such as this for their job access. In sales where travel costs are deductable, it usually doesn't apply until after the first 50 miles daily (IIRC), again, much higher than a monthly broadband account most places. In other words it's such a good deal for the employee compared to the alternative they should just pony it up. If your employer wants to pay it, well, that's cool too but expecting them to pay for your physical or electronic travel just to "get to work" everyday is not usually a normal expense most employers pay.
As to related expenses, not sure in the white collar IT world but in the blue collar world most jobs I have had require that I personally own and pay for "tools" which cost a lot more in aggregate than most laptops. If it was me I would just assume before even applying anywhere that an IT job would require me to have and own a laptop,and I would already own one being an "IT" guy, although if I worked inside a cube exclusively I would expect the employer to have the workstation. This is just normal, when I've had factory jobs I didn't pay for the lathe or bandsaw I was running, but on construction sites 90%+ of the tools I used were my own. I paid for my own specialised work clothing, blue collar, I paid for my own steel toed boots, rugged clothing and hard hat and gloves, white collar sales jobs I have had, I paid for my own suits and shiny shoes, and etc. I never even considered that the employer pay for this clothing.
I would think in today's economy that both employers and employees in IT would just "get real" on pay scales, corporate profits, expectations, and costs of doing business. A little of give and take both ways might result in this IT company actually staying in business and everyone concerned remaining employed. I mean, diidn't we just go through this dotbomb phenomenon? Was there nothing to learn from this?
I am reminded of the lessons of eastern airlines, an old, established, profitable enterprise that tanked swiftly once the 'stupidity and greed' factor became part of the mindset there, and was shared across the board up and down and sideways throught their organization. Where a combination of white collar mismanagement and arrogance and severe over compensation, combined with completely unrealistic blue collar union demands and expectations of compensation, resulted in *no one* at eastern airlines having "a job" after a short time frame of this attitude being adopted.
--left some out. Here's some more from memory, and I know I'll forget some too. Somalia, Sudan, colombia, bolivia, peru, phillipines,el salvador, haiti, dominican republic,costa rica, cuba, guatemala, chile, pakistan, laos, cambodia,thailand, korea, lebanon. All places attacked or fought in and around with US dotmil troops, paramilitary spook troops, or contract mercenaries, since the end of the last lawful declared war. I'm sure there's a lot more places, those are just the larger more public ones I can readily remember to add to the list. And yes I could easily find them on a globe.
We have a rather excellent constitution,a pity it's just a quaint historical record.
..doesn't space still have a lot of random stuff in it, atoms of hydrogen or helium and whatnot? Seems like I was reading that was one theoretical way to make a really fast moving craft, but the catch 22 was you had to build up enough speed so the scoop was scooping in enough atoms to use them for fuel, then the fuel burning increased the speed, more stuff scooped, and etc. I guess with the sail you could store it up, then have a full fuel load when you wanted to brake and manuever. Of course, with the sail out front of you, it would be hard to scoop....oh well...
--thanks. I find the most interesting aspect is that it increased over time, wasn't a constant. To me it now seems like an immune response based on increasing needs, following your explanation, if there were a way to correlate what the cumulative total of damaging factors represented quantitatively. Well, if I'm understanding this adequately.
thanks, interesting article. Thoroughly outside my expertise, so I limited myself to just the press release. I hope some more knowledgable folks chime in here on it with some more user friendly opinions. It's funny, but since I was a kid I had this weird notion that just going on odds, that there had to be a very, very small percentage of the population that lived even longer than what is considered "normal" advanced age, like this reference to centennarians. And that they probably had to dodge the issue-deal with it on a practical basis, security, etc- once it became apparent they were quite "different". I know it's a subject that has been explored in various fictional literature, just wondered "what if"? This research shows there might be something to it, and it really is limited to what could be considered the second tier examples, IF there are the small populations of VERY old people as I always suspected.
... and you need to buy a clue. I posted my opinion on this "tax software" and what people could do about this whole DRM issue. It's crap. It was crap before, now there's another reason to avoid it. don't buy it. Not needed. that's the solution. Wasn't me started the thread, but as like any other slashdot registered user, I have an option to post, and comment on it, and replied, as I do on some posts. My original reply wasn't a flame or troll,and I labeled it as such,I was short and to the point and serious, it's not needed,. in fact I'd go further and say it's a bad idea to get in the habit of using it, so YOU chose to post a smarmy ass juvenile reply, so you got one back, moron. It was you decided to jump the ante. I think you (or anyone else) shouldn't use it. That's the obvious solution that about anyone with common sense could see. this closed software, spyware, DRM, etc business at it's heart is about scamming money out of people, one of the better ways to not become a victim is to not buy or use or promote such "products". Because over and over again you can see what happens, but the main lesson never seems to sink in for some people. But, if you are more content with rube goldberg robot-ish solutions to problems,to use your computer for everything possible, even when it might not be the best tool for the job, then go for it! Hey, add some neon lights to your return as well, case mod it, change it to mp3 format, then to ogg, then to divx, whatever floats your boat.. Who cares? In my opinion it's better to RTFM, tax noob. In this case, actually do some reading research on the tax system and how it works, learn to do your own taxes, not use some one size fits no one adequately "solution" that's also spyware, but hey, free choice! Need a tax GUI set of training wheels to hold your hand? Fine! You want to trust these guys with something as important as this, when right off the bat you can see they are sneaky? Go for it! Use the DRM boot sector writing paid for piece of propietary spyware crap. Next year, buy another one. Year after that, buy another one. Keep on doing that. Write into slashdot crying in your beer about it, lather, rinse, repeat. Do it as long as you want to. I hope you enjoy it, really!
That's it for me on juvenile flame wars, it's been fun, you can have the last word.
--wasn't it originally life, liberty and the pursuit of property? And wasn't it changed later to happiness? And I am asking, I have heard both, with the former obviously being the more popular and published.
Slashdot Mirror
--I love this stuff, just love it. Ancient artifacts that suggest a much more advanced civilization than what mainstream scientists will admit to. The funny part is, it really DOES blow a lot of the current accepted beliefs. There's another one you can find with a google, and that's the evidence in india of a long ago past nuclear war.
You know that scene in the indiana jones movie where the ark of the covenant gets wheeleed into a huge gov warehouse to be forgotten about? I believe it! I think they do stuff like that when they can get away with it and when embarassing stuff shows up! Ha!
--Alex Jones is WAY up there in the real independent broadcasting. Beats the pants off most other radio guys, especially the "party" shills who I won't name *shuffle papers shuffle papers* a-hem
Genesis communications is the network he is on, they have a variety of great hosts, I especially like ThePowerHour show in the morning.
They just released a press release that they now have 5 people who have told them they were part of or had knowledge of US forces touching off those kuwaiti oil fires back in desert storm 1 war, so that saddam could be blamed for it and the mil/industrial complex could get more public support. They also have been at the forefront of exposing a lot of other cover-ups, the DOD covering up the gulf war syndrome disease in the vets, etc.
URL to genesis, broadcasting on am/fm, shortwave, satellite and on the net
http://www.gcnlive.com
Has all the hosts and streams and freqs, etc, plus links to their various websites
I'll also plug one of alex's videos "911-Road to Tyranny". You get that video and watch it, then watch it again. Then you do your own research, try to find anything that isn't 100% factual in it. Once you find that out, you just can't look at what's going on in the USA and the world the same way again. It literally causes a political paradigm shift with most people once they see it.
We are definetly in a late 1930's germany type level now in this nation, and given the technology advances, it's *scarier*.
biodiesel is just so derived from vegetable products OR animal fats.
From the very top of link of a google search using searchword biodiesel:
http://www.biodiesel.org/ (catchy url, yes?)
What is biodiesel?
Biodiesel is the name of a clean burning alternative fuel, produced from domestic, renewable resources. Biodiesel contains no petroleum, but it can be blended at any level with petroleum diesel to create a biodiesel blend. It can be used in compression-ignition (diesel) engines with little or no modifications. Biodiesel is simple to use, biodegradable, nontoxic, and essentially free of sulfur and aromatics.
How is biodiesel made?
Biodiesel is made through a chemical process called transesterification whereby the glycerin is separated from the fat or vegetable oil. The process leaves behind two products -- methyl esters (the chemical name for biodiesel) and glycerin (a valuable byproduct usually sold to be used in soaps and other products).
Is Biodiesel the same thing as raw vegetable oil?
No! Fuel-grade biodiesel must be produced to strict industry specifications (ASTM D6751) in order to insure proper performance. Biodiesel is the only alternative fuel to have fully completed the health effects testing requirements of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments. Biodiesel that meets ASTM D6751 and is legally registered with the Environmental Protection Agency is a legal motor fuel for sale and distribution. Raw vegetable oil cannot meet biodiesel fuel specifications, it is not registered with the EPA, and it is not a legal motor fuel.
For entities seeking to adopt a definition of biodiesel for purposes such as federal or state statute, state or national divisions of weights and measures, or for any other purpose, the official definition consistent with other federal and state laws and Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) guidelines is as follows:
OFFICIAL DEFINITION
Biodiesel is defined as mono-alkyl esters of long chain fatty acids derived from vegetable oils or animal fats which conform to ASTM D6751 specifications for use in diesel engines. Biodiesel refers to the pure fuel before blending with diesel fuel. Biodiesel blends are denoted as, "BXX" with "XX" representing the percentage of biodiesel contained in the blend (ie: B20 is 20% biodiesel, 80% petroleum diesel).
and so on, and etc....
I don't know how to code, but alternate energy is a hobby of mine.
--we have solar power here, PV panels. Part of the rig is dual battery banks of deep cell batts and a set of large power inverter/chargers. These can take dc power inputs and ac power inputs, from "the grid" or from a generator or PV or a windcharger. This results in basically a huge UPS system that is quite robust and reliable and significantly cheaper than what I see sold to computer centers as UPS solutions. Granted I haven't looked at all of them but just a few examples I have seen were hugely over priced for what you get compared to what we have, which basically does the same exact thing, just better. primarily the size of the batteries. You use normal deep cycle lead acid batteries. Those batteries are put into a battery bank box which has a sealable lid and is vented to the outside with pvc pipe and a normal small dc fan. The inverters/chargers have an option to be remote controlled with a serial interface (local or off the internet), along with just a normal set of push buttons and a simple menu interface built in to them. I've posted on this before here several times. I think something like this would be a good option for someone wanting a good power supply center/UPS for either home use or commercial. There's no absolute need for outside power inputs beyond the "normal" AC grid supplied power, that alone is sufficient to keep your battery bank charged,and a decent sized battery bank has a lot of "stored" power to carry you through power outtages, and it's quite "clean" power that comes out of it. And having an easy to wire option to add additional ac or dc inputs is a big plus. In other words, easy to configure and customise, easy to use.
Here is url where you can see a small set of pics and a description of the rig we have, scroll to middle of page, look for mountaintop in georgia set. Pay attention to the inverters/chargers/ battery banks set up. That part there is the power center, along with just normal electrical circuit panels and sub panels. This rig doesn't need solar to operate, it is quite functional with only normal ac input either grid or generator. This one has all three installed and operational. We get both 220 and 110 ac out of it. Just one battery bank and one inverter is quite a lot of power on tap. The system here is designed to be redundant, and powers most of the normal operation of a three story large house except for the electric heat pumps.
http://www.four-winds-energy.com/about.html
This is the main page url. There is an email form on the bottom of the page,you can send roy, the owner of the energy company, a description of your requirements and I'm sure he can work up a proposal for you for comparison. He is a personal friend of mine, so I'll add that caveat and disclaimer. He's been in this biz over 20 years and is quite knowledgable on this subject and has installs all over, the ones on his news site are just a small number of them, I know since that page went up he did a lot more projects, mostly commercial installs. Prices are good, and variety is excellent for what he carries, something for any budget.
http://www.four-winds-energy.com/
..I've seen those points, and btw that post you referenced was funny and a good way to illustrate them, but my point can be clarified even further. It will still happen. "Google" as a verb or googled meaning "to look for something hidden but you have a good idea it's there to find-past tense" will continue to happen unless google.inc goes out of business tomorrow and we all get brain wiped. Unless you are physically prepared to literally sue anyone for using your name "wrong", it's futile and silly. Where do "words" come from? I mean really? The english dialect I speak is not the same as what is spoken in other areas of the nation, or back in history, nor is it what will be spoken 20 or 100 years from now. It will still be "english" but it will have changed. Carry this to the very next step. Printing or publishing a copyrighted word, without permission. How can you even discuss the org or corp or person behind that copyright without first contacting them and getting permission? Far fetched? Not if this goes to suit and passes and they get a judgement it's not. Say Bigco just didn't like people dissin them or even talking about them some place "unapproved" by them. (side note-dissin, a relatively new english word). It could be anything they didn't like. So, you as a poster talk about them in a post, merely used "their" word. You didn't get permission. You don't "own" that word. You now owe them whatever a court/jury decides after they sue you, after all that person who "owns" that word has the "right" now.
This isn't the same as another search engine company calling themselves google. That would be a copyright violation, and that makes sense. This is different, and right now it's silly, if it sticks, it's incredibly harmful. If I can say I "googled for the result" out loud, is it legal, or should it be made illegal, especially if at least one other human hears me say it? Now, if that is legal, can I now write that down or post it on the web? May I say that in a phrase over a radio? May I write a novel in which a character uses that phrase? Do I "owe" google money, or can they have my publication stopped and all the copies destroyed? How far is "reasonable"?
This is one of the reasons I fully favor corporate review, and holding them to "of the public benefit" besides them just "making money". I am not saying google would be crossing the line here, but edging pretty close if they persue it. I can think of several large still in business and "profitable" corporations who have so abused their incorporation that they should be dissolved, no matter the "monetary" loss to anyone.
People complain abpout "frivolous" lawsuits, I think there's some merit to it, and also lawyers get away with what in other circumstances I would call a direct threat,an assault, and especially the way our society is set up so that those with the deepest pockets frequently seem to be able to use "the law" to beat up on people. They don't use a club, they just bankrupt you, on purpose. Because it's polite and gen-teel and proper they can get away with it.
I don't know how to say it any better than "it's just wrong"
And I wasn't joking about not electing lawyers to office either, I'm completely serious about it. About the worst and most harmful conflict of interest running. The class or society or organization of people who profit financially in a professional sense from "the law business industry" should not be in charge of writing more complex and invasive and pervasive "laws". It's an absurd and obvious conflict of interest. There is little to no profit involved in writing less laws, simpler laws, more fair laws, and easier to understand laws, if you profit from the opposite. There are maximum profits to be made by requiring the "law" to be so complex that only "your org" can "do it". I am also in favor of "loser pays" with a twist, it's proportional to your gross income. Big corp sues little guy, they lose, then little guys law expenses he incurred as a proportion of his gross income for that year are applied to bigcos, that's what they pay him for "legal expenses". And vice versa of course. Not net, gross. In my view, that would eliminate a huge percentage of what is termed "frivilous" when it comes to lawsuits, without having to legally define frivolous. It depends on everyone's common sense then, and how lucky they feel. It wouldnt stop frivolous suits, but it would both slow them down and still protect all parties concerned, both sides.
And dicussions about the law and lawyering are directly related to this article, it's exactly 50% of it. There would be no article at all if it wasn't for the way the "law" and lawyers work.
--file this customer service ticket with the ID 10 T stamp. I can't believe it. To have your business model be so succesful in a POSITIVE light that it becomes an understood "new word" is GOOD. Suing the people who noticed that this happened-really, all they did was SEE THIS HAPPENED IN SOCIETY- is BAD. This is just elementary free advertising for them in the worst possible case. After that it can only get better.
Here is Mr. google deep in contemplation over this while juggling algorithms in his head and not really paying attention to this word issue --->"Hmm, free advertsing,WHAT?!? Our company so well respected and in such widespread use it's now an offical word in the language, man I am so whizzed off! I wanted to stay obscure, have no one know our name! I must protect my name from being used as a word by...well by anyone, all those TALKERS out there! The nerve! I'm gonna SUE 'EM! That'll teach 'em to say my word!"
Can't they see how dumb that is to feel that way? Guess not, maybe someone will clue them in on it. I will only charge them 100$ for this service, too. It's a deal at that rate.
Once again, you can see where advanced brains that can be successful in a highly specialised field, and are simultaneously completely clueless in other areas. Zee-ro common sense it appears. I've had some bosses like that. Example. "Uhh boss, if I do what you tell me to do this generator will 'splode" No lie, happened to me, had my boss tell me to run the generator in such a way as it would have overheated and had a "catastrophic failure" but he wanted me to "just try it". Well, I didn't obviously, started to walk away, said I would go call 911 and let the fire department get a head start on coming over..
Anyway,and g**gl3 (gotta be careful, don't want to get sued now) HQ masterminds were lame enough to listen to their tame lawyers and persue this. Missing the forest for the trees mistake 2, dealing with lawyers,a necessary e-vile, like you know God got a plan for mosquitoes, but dang if you can see it.
OK-lawyers got to either create laws that society was perfectly able to do without the day before,or write extremely arcane things called "contracts" that are compilations of said laws with people's names now attached to them which apply to the previous laws they created, or argue what they already did between themselves, and get paid both ways and up and down on this deal. That's all they do. This is called "job security" or if you are a low level peon or like still in school "busywork".
Like scorpions stinging and the old fable, it's just their nature,that's it, just got to deal with it, so one needs to pay attention to what they recommend all the time and apply a "common sense" interpreter to it. And it's also why you should NEVER "vote" to "elect" one to governmental "office", OF COURSE they will make your life more expensive and more complicated if they wind up there!
..they are great cases! I think why many geeks don't do that is that the hardware already installed is quite good as well, and is upgradeable, cpu, drives, expansion cards, etc. I guess if you could find a for-real busted one it would make more sense to snag it for the case. The stock config could run 3 or 4 OS's,too, so that would probably be enough for most folks, you could run mac os classic, 10.x whatever, linux, and doze with virtual PC. That covers a lot.
Tell ya what I want to build, a super tough portable for camping and emergency use. I am accumulating pieces for it now. It'll be built into one of two briefcase things I have (haven't decided which one yet though yet) have multiple non stock just generic 12 volt rechargeable batteries and some removable solar panels (I have two lightweight flexible ones now for this project I could use, Unisolars) with long enough wire that the computer can be put in the shade but the panels run out to the sunshine. Used components now are so cheap, I want to try this sometime. Some very low electrical requirements mobo and chip (cruesoe?), lotsa ram, I'll sacrafice cpu speed for that. I want a good large lcd monitor, a normal keyboard and a real mouse as I am fumble fingered and don't like laptop keyboards, and a variety of drives-2 hdd, 1- cd/rw- and a wireless net connection obviously. Plus storage in the case for extra cd disks, etc. I'll probably have a small multiband radio in there as well, and my sony watchman TV, call it my portable communications kit. I know some companies already make this sort of rig (kinda sorta, at least the computer parts), but fresh out of "spare" thousand dollar bills for those industrial models I have seen.
--I would point to this issue as well for a tremendous amount of the "reason" for this war. Not the sole reason, but a major one. I'd say it's well past the "theory" phase, as all the data is right there to look at, absolutely nothing there is hidden or secret.
Any world switch for the generally accepted rserve currency from using the petrodollar to the euro or muslim gold dinar would result in an economic loss to the US that would literally be unrecoverable for at least an entire generation, if not permanently unrecoverable. It would make the bankrupting of the soviet union seem like a lemonade stand stickup in comparison.
It is rather simple, we can (and have been for years and years)print up dollars that through inertia over many decades, especially since the end of WW2, eventually got accepted around the world as a reserve currency. This was due mostly to the fact that we had manufactured goods to export, so that exported dollars that went to oil got reintroduced back into our own economy. that's exactly where the term petrodollar came frombecause it is the most accurate way to describe this representation of wealth that we call money and in specific, "US" money. And oil being of such importance and so universally recognized as "tangible wealth" that the easily to trade representations of such-the since named petrodollar-became just "understood" as how "business" was done around the world, what currency was used extrensively.
This is a GREAT deal for the US. It can't be overestimated really, the figures are huge. It amounted to a massive planetary subsidy for us, and has definetly resulted in a much higher standard of living, along with our productivity, and the use of other nation's and people's productivity. All of the above. to prove this, you can see especially in the past decade of what "labor" is actually worth on a global scale, what most americans think they are "worth" can be shown to be highly inflated, one job at a time as someone else takes it once given the opportunity to do so. As this has now been proven over and over again by literally millions of US jobs that paid x and now pay x-minus a lot, I don't think this can be disputed.
Some extreme political thinkers have labeled this world reliance on pterodollars as "economic imperialism", and although I disagree with some of the tenets proposed in those theories, the basic argument I can find little fault with, and I would be hard pressed to argue against that point.
This is changing, and a lot of outside nations no longer need to purchase US goods, and we are gradually eliminating any goods of note beyond aircraft and war materials TO export. We also are gradually losing agricultural exports as well, for a variety of reasons. Uhh, then you have to ask, what's left to sell? We export "entertainments" and "warstuffs". Virtual intellectual property andsuch "assets" can be reproduced cheaply,both from copying and from direct implementation anywhere locally, so true long term worth of those "products" is not a viable statistical tangible model that can be sustained for more than the short term, and I think we are seeing the beginnings of the time frame involved, it appears to be around 30 years ort so since the great IT boom started, but now those economic realities are shifting. Virtual products are just not all that valuable when they can be easily replicated. Once the tech advanced to that point and the labor potential in those fields reached a universl threshold, the buble has been pricked. It's leaking now and will continue to leak. Just as hardware drops in price and worth (I still have several older computers that would retail for like 10 dollars now that costed thousands when new), so will 'soft' tangibles drop in worth, and my best guess it will accelerate even faster than hardware worth has dropped. I think anyone who reads slashdot for more than two days can see that point clearly.
So that leaves us back on true "tangible" wealth, back to oil, manufactured goods, and grown from the ground goods. That's it, that's where wealth comes from, it's grown or made. If ya ain't got them for sale cheaper than the other guy, you won't last long, and middle-man skimming "trading" only lasts as long as the real buyers and sellers cannot contact each other and do their business without your "assistance", and once they can, well, they won't use you any more, nothing in it for them except lost wealth. And if you are too poor to buy anything, well, you won't get much. the US can NOT sustain itself as a consumer nation when we don't make anything, being the worlds middlemen won't last long. short term, sure, but the above point stands, once you aren't needed for the trade, you get cut out, and tough times make people look harder at where to cut costs, and I'd call the middlemen a good place to look first. And this is happening. A "cheap" dollar allows our exporters to sell goods, but a "strong" dollar allows us to purchase things cheaply, but the point is *moot* if the return will not support your current status quo! It is a NET LOSS in terms of real economy once you switch from a producer to a consumer.. Massive catch 22, it's a no win situation. Who is wealthier, the guy who has the warehouse of goods, or you with your purchase, if the owner of the goods has a choice of customers? That's the exact point we are at now in the US. We are called the consumer of last resort, but we cannot consume for much longer without expanding credit in the terms of printed petrodollars, and other nations know this and are slowly coming to the realization they don't have to subsidise us. Well, the fatcats know this, joe in the street really doesn't yet.
This is why now there's so much interest in maintaining the petrodollar (for those who profit from of it of course), when the actual need for them from other nation's points of view has been "exported" elsewheres. I would call any efforts theorized to maintain the petrodollar even in terms of warfare to have a high credibility factor once you get past the world as being any sort of altrusitic place and realise EVERYTHING on a planetary scale is played hardball, and outright obfuscation and lying are the most minimal of national crimes committed by organizations of human beings going well back into the dawn of time. The least, not the most.
It is QUITE probable that unless the shift to the euro stops, and unless the muslim gold dinar is squashed completely(that one is an example of a choas theory event that has established old world bankers and us bankers wetting their pants) by the US/anglo bankers, that it will have cascading economic and social consequences to the negative for millions of people in the US and the UK and to our immediate trading partner Canada in particular. It would literally topple governments, cause massive shifts in social consequences, and could quite easily lead to civil wars in a few nations, and all sorts of other "not nice things" to happen.
I don't think it would be fair intellectually to negate or to underestimate the importance of this in this "war". Iraq got the ball rolling, first entire nation to completely shift from petrodollar to the euro. What all his reasons were do not matter, that the event happened does matter, and that the other oil producing nations are looking HARD at this now, and that nations like japan that are holding huge quantities of us paper are rethinking this, as their nation is tied even more to imported oil than the US is.
With a world shift in currencies, take that as an academic postulate, we are quite literally talking about an economic decline in the US that would surpass the "great" depression in statistical form, and would greatly surpass it in terms of the social consequences. Greatly.
As to the war itself, and the public reasons, aww shoot, I mean really, of course saddam has WMD, the US and various europaen nations sold or gave them to him, all such transfers being illegal by international so called treaties we all signed in great hypocritical pompous diplomatic ritual, and equally embarrasing to all in their gross violations. Back then we didn't care one how many iraqis and iranians bumped themselves off. This is elementary school level stuff now. And it's as far as you will see in the mass market opinion manipulating "news", they don't use psychologists in the advertising field because those studies are useless, and the "news" and "public politics" is "advertising".
The europaens (current EU members), and some other nations of importance, notably Japan (waffling but close to making the switch) want to expand the use of the euro obviously, it's of too much economic worth to them to do so, plus, and this is a big one to me, they don't want the americans to have the sole restricted and unfettered access to all the hidden records that exist in iraq, because they know that our government employees will hide or destroy any and all evidence of US involvement in WMD transfers that turn up, while "revealing" europaen's involvement, or such records will be kept in reserve until such a time in the future as their revelations prove to be politically expedient and warranted, blackmail in other words, very high stakes blackmail that no single europaen political party or it's particular industrial supporters could avoid. Of course they are against the war. Of course russia is and china. Of course saddam hussein is a tinpot dictator who is a mass murderer and etc, so are dozens of others around the world you never heard of. Saddam is a "threat" to the dominance of the US dollar, to maintaining the status quo of our economy to keep all the voters voting as they should, to keep a variety iof international fatcats in power, and has a tangent into the existence of israel, but that's another side issue for another thread.
Please ecuse remaining typos, I have some chores to do now. Thanks for the opportunity to expound on one of my favorite subjects.
-the us airline industry, (another example would be the past "civilian" nuclear industry), is a 'stealth' way to have larger military funding/budgets without appearing to be so, and to keep aviation designers and technicians employed, just as much as for "moving civilian cargo and passengers".. They will continue to be susbsidised well past any rational civilian economic benefit angle, which is already close to just being break even and not profitable. And I am guessing it's the same with airbus and the EU, who want to become a superpower once they are more fully integrated. And china is just on track for building the worlds largest military, this is SO obvious, their merchant marine and "civilian" aircraft are a 100% part of the PLA aggregate, and any advanced tech they accrue in those fields is perfectly dual use, as are the ships and planes themselves.
I would find it hard to believe that any really large business decision being made around the world now does not have a component of carefully considered military use and planning connected to it, which planning then revolves around this decade's and the next decade's planetary resource wars.
this guys post at http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=54631&cid= 5354453 has the best info, I just read the pdf he links to, gives ya a lot of the info you want. I will also heartily recommend a book by Joel Skousen called "Strategic Relocation", it's a detailed analysis of all of the US covering just a ton of different features.
--I am just wondering,because I don't know and never heard of it, is there a way to easily have a two "layered" hard drive, where on the surface level you can keep the decoy os and data, but you are really using a complete other system that is stored underneath in apparent deleted space? Then it might not matter as much, even with all the latest patches, etc, etc, anyone who owned you might be faked out and not look "deeper".
This would be a security through obscurity variant.
Why not just ask him? Couldn't slashdot officially do one of their interviews? It's not like he's unaware of slashdot. He's got a binary choice, he can accept or decline. The editors and mods pick the questions anyway, might as well try.
mac classic had text to speech like almost forever. I used to use it sometimes when I was like cooking in the kitchen and wanted to "hear" the news or a long forum thread from someplace when I was away from the keyboard.
--I've done at two different times just a cursory level search for spywarez on the computers at my local library. It's just slap full of every commercial spyware you can imagine, so I would bet it's got some real nifty ones buried in it as well. When I pointed it out to the librarian she got real upset, said their administrator would "take care of it". Went back, nope, still there. They have it locked so cookies stay on, scripting, etc, well, sheesh. They got enough gators to start a tourist trap. It's a multi county wan based on nt, for whatever that is worth. I know I wouldn't trust it for anything important, I wouldn't even use web mail from it. I mean, people who use it don't even bother logging out of sessions, you can sit down, back it up or look in history and you are right in someones email, etc. I'd bet a nickle it's got every trojan in the known universe on it.
"The peaceniks aren't saying "America bad, Saddam good". They are protesting against the moral corruption going on here and the wrongdoings of the US _and_ other western countries since way back but alot of people seem to have an inability to grasp this."
Yes, exactly what I am saying. Saddam is a heinous jerk off torturing thieving tyrannical freeking demon. I think he needs to go, ALONG with his past business partners and facilitators, whomever they are, and wherever they are.. it's not like he's ever been a boy scout, and they knew it when they did business with him. In the US, I think way past time that impeachments actually resulted in impeachments and jail time. I'm just tired of these high level US fatcat goons who act, and I mean literally put on their actor's hat, who act all righteous on the tv with their soundbytes, when back at the ranch or office they are just..slimeballs, profits at any costs types of people. Same with some of these international corporate pirates, just petty gangsters on steroids. And I could care less what letter is after their name either, D or R, you are "with" the crooks or not, I choose "not".
You know, should our own goivernment get cleaned up, there's more than enough evidence to show saddam needs to go, but, they won't release this information, because it's sorta hard to justify when you were a major part in creating the problem. Not all of it, but a major part. I think "national security, need to keep it a secret" is used a lot more to cover up high level crimes than it's used to just keep secret normal intelligence.
And one of the reasons I think that is honest people in government who have talked to me off the record, who know that 'weird stuff' goes on all the time, but because of the lofty levels where this stuff happens, little ever comes of it. I'll give just a small example, I know personally some retired cops who have told me how they were tasked or asked to, to infiltrate demonstrations, pose as demonstrators, and start the rock throwing, etc. And to back it up, I actually saw an example of that with my own eyeballs back at a nam demonstration way back when. Saw some goof who just looked "weird" he just didn't fit in with the people around at the demo. So, he's at the front of the line, gets a rock out of his army field jacket, beans a uniformed cop with it, they go nuts, charge the crowd. I was off to the side watching this go down, saw this gomer slip back in the crowd and split. I followed him a few blocks where low and behold I see him go "check in" at a parked unmarked cop car. Call that the very bottom and least level of 'bad stuff' based on lies and obfuscations that goes on in government, and even at that level you can see how it effects public perceptions and what gets passed as law or policy. Now just carry that sort of behavior and mindset right up the food chain into international levels, things get a scosh clearer and easier to understand.
--I am sure there are any number of different formulas and work descriptions that could apply to this discussion. And that makes it hard to really talk about it except in very general terms. In your case I guess you have to look at the old boring way of a cost/benefit analysis, are you getting paid more for this extra work at night and is it acceptable to pay the additional expenses from your pocket? Or were you told upfront this might happen, and now that it did it just sucks and you are stuck with it. If it really doesn't make you any money, where the cost of getting access to work is almost the same as what you get paid to do for those hours, or a significant part of it, then that's a no brainer, you just say no, or ask for more money and show the reasons why. I've been in the position as well of being just about forced to work for free, when the boss starts adding on more and more tasks that don't jibe with the original job description. I've seen it a lot too, the worst I ever get is contracting small building jobs when the homeowner or building owner just every day walks over and asks you to do "just the little one thing more" that takes them one sentence or two to ask in time or effort, but requires you to once again go to the store for more materials, do more work, slows you down on the original project etc, and they expect the contract to not change! Going through it exactly right now in fact. It's a tough call to make, when exactly do you get in an employer's face and tell them to eithercut some more money or STFU and do this new task themselves. I guess that's why we have contracts and lawyers, and it's a shame we have to go that route sometimes. My basic nature is I will give people the benefit of the doubt on being honest and rational until a pattern of irrationality and greed and dishonesty show up, if I know little about them when I first start working for them. If they show themselves to have a bent towards untrustworthiness, I stop working for them as soon as I can find a different job. It's cost me "money" sometimes, sometimes a lot of money, but I detest crooks, petty or otherwise. And some times the petty ones are just so smarmy about it, my favorite trick they do is to have what I call "selective memory", it's almost like you have to follow them around and tape record every conversation you have with them.
--I disagree with you such much that even going beyond your first counterpoint is.. almost pointless. Transfering chemical and biological warfare materials and expertise was and will remain..just wrong. this is a you "get it" or just plain don't get it proposition, and if you can't get beyond that, it makes it difficult to even discuss anything else. The US and some western nations did that, transferred chemical weapons and biological weaponry and expertise, and continue to do so. If you think that is "cool" and is the sort of behavior that should be used later on as justification for yet another round of wars, and that the facilitators and their business partners show great leadership qualities and need and deserve political power rewards and money rewards for this, well, I guess I'll have to let it go then. And my view doesn't take 20/20 hindsight, it's a rational view any non war loving person would take. I am a big proponent of self defense, the second amendment, and soverignty. And I know enough to not help out gangs of criminals and seem to be able to differentiate between "good guys" and "badguys" without a lot of effort. I don't support badguys, any scale. I don't trade or do business with badguys. I wish my nation followed those sorts of principles too. so do millions and millions of people, in our nation, and around the world. To my view, that was our original purpose of having our own nation, at least a big part of it. To get away from artificially created wars, to not be lead around by the nose ring by various tinpot dictators, kings, potentates and "rulers". You can have your imperial blood profits centric politicians and political parties and international corporations, I find them..distasteful.
--so OK, the "peaceniks" are wrong and will "cost lives". That's an opinion, it has to my mind a certain amount of validity, but I'd like to expand on it more. I have an additional opinion, but I'll phrase it in the form of some questions at first.
How many people will die because others refuse to accept the evidence that high level "leaders" in various western nations created, sponsored, armed, equipped and encouraged saddam hussein, al queda, and etc, and are currently conveniently "forgetting" those facts? What are we to do with people who refuse to learn from history, and can't see the hegelian dialectic at work, when crises are manufatured on purpose in order to garrer power and profits for high level "connected ones"? When does it become politically correct to notice exact parallels with events such as the reichstagg fire,where a retarded man was setup to commit a crime of such size as to influence public opinion so that "drastic security measures' were "needed", and 9-11, where obvious brainwashed goat herders were used in a similar fashion, and where the linkages up stream go directly not only to far off afghanistan, but to western intelligence services, large corporations, and various stock brokerages, and this information was "overlooked" or dismissed as "intelligence failures", when it obviously wasn't? Why is it that international financiers who always seem to be quite willing to finance all the sides in various conflicts are given a "get out of jail free pass" on their actions? When will all the connections between "serious bad stuff happening" and extremely rich and powerful western white guys in suits be "fashionably correct" to note?
You see, it works on several levels. I have noticed that for a lot of people, stopping the data input at the 'comfort level' based on a prior "belief" system seems to be the norm. If any data is presented that doesn't fit someone's pre conceived belief of what political reality is, then such data gets rejected out of hand, based not on cold clinical analysis and a sense of honesty and fair play, which should be an intelligent response and is an accepted scientifc model, but rejected and denied based on just a partisan sense of belonging to some group who "can do no wrong, it's those other guys fault, all of it". That is an absurd "belief" system that can be classed as almost cultish, and as such should be avoided, one would think.
Now, to switch to just general commentary on iraq, if it was my call, this is what I would like to see. I would like to see the high level US leaders (other nations in the west need a similar action to take place) who decided to fund and bankroll that goon saddam exposed, and busted. Busted, exposed, prosecuted. I think the United States should FIRST show the world we are willing to clean up our own messes, that we did in fact break international law and common sense by supplying him with poison gasses and active alive biowarfare germs that were produced and stockpiled in direct avoidance of treaties we have signed, that the materials shipped over there were not "samples" but actual production runs of size, and that we as a nation screwed up. I would also contend that this goes across the two major political parties leadership levels, and into various places inside our own military establishment and inside various private corporations, and has been an ongoing criminal enterprise of monumental and sinister proportions. And that we did this partly to counter iran, but that the iraninan problem itself was AGAIN partly our fault as we had our intelligence services help to overthrow the previous elected government of iran, put into power this royal "shah" monster, who went about so abusing his people that radical islamicists were able to easily recruit converts, leading to the mullah khomeni taking over with his gang of despots. You see, there's connections. You can't stop at one point and say "here is where it started and it's all these other guy's fault!" And that all of this was done on purpose for the reasons of power accumulation and "making money" into the obscene levels. ONCE we do that,clean up our own mess, and regain the moral high ground we have lost on the international levels you can plainly see, THEN proceed to deal with creatures of our creation like saddam the dictator, and if we have to, to do it legally according to our constitution which insists on congress and not some tin pot dictator to decide about such a heavy event as 'war'.
There are literally dozens more examples I can cite to reinforce this position, completely outside of just iraq. In other words, our hands are not clean either and it's well past time we as a nation have the courage to admit it and deal with it.
And this is not a "leftist"or "rightist" viewpoint, millions share it, it goes across the political spectrum. I doubt were you to poll any of the protesters across the world from this weekend you would find many "saddam" supporters. What some folks are uncomfortable with is the notion that the protesters were also protesting the "why did this happen" position which points pretty clearly towards "us" as having some serious involvement, and unfortunately, a lot of the high level people involved in creating this saddam problem are now offering their latest "solutions"..
Personally, I think none of these gents we have who are connected to saddam and to bin laden and al queda, etc, should be in ANY position of power, and in fact need to be pulling some hard time at club fed, and that their public personas are a sham,a shame, and a lie, a very, very big lie. It is embarrasing, so a lot of folks go into denial over it.
I can put this even simpler. If I as an individual do business with the crackhouse and gang up the street, if I sell them arms, supply them with support,make sure their car runs, loan them various burglary and mugging tools, etc, then later on they go on a crime rampage around the neighborhood, would I be guilty or innocent of being "wrong"? Would I have any claim to moral superiority, would I have any rational basis to claim I had no hand in the crimes committed? Or would the local prosecutor say I was in fact a part of this gang?
When it's on that level it's easy to see, when a nation and it's so called "elected" leaders and it's "pillars of society" business people do it, then this situation is supposed to change, morally and legally? Uhh, why is this?
A lot of the people around the world don't see much difference, and frankly, I share that view. The scale is different with the examples of the crackhouse gang and it's crimes, but the crimes committed certainly aren't, and ALL the criminals involved need to be dealt with in a legal fashion, no matter their skin tone, what they wear for clothing, what country they currently reside in, or what temporary 'title' they enjoy, or what current economic level they happen to be at..
This picking and choosing just "some" of the gang members to "prosecute", while completely ignoring the other gang members is just intellectually and ethically and morally bankrupt, IMO. And that's what's going on with the current "protest" activity, millions of other people can see that.
--there's a previous model of "cost of working" that is well established. Usually an employee who must physically travel into work pays for this travel out of their own pocket, auto, gas, etc, normal commuter expenses. That is usally more than a broadband connection cost. I would think anyone lucky and skilled enough to work from home would gladly pay a nominal fee such as this for their job access. In sales where travel costs are deductable, it usually doesn't apply until after the first 50 miles daily (IIRC), again, much higher than a monthly broadband account most places. In other words it's such a good deal for the employee compared to the alternative they should just pony it up. If your employer wants to pay it, well, that's cool too but expecting them to pay for your physical or electronic travel just to "get to work" everyday is not usually a normal expense most employers pay.
As to related expenses, not sure in the white collar IT world but in the blue collar world most jobs I have had require that I personally own and pay for "tools" which cost a lot more in aggregate than most laptops. If it was me I would just assume before even applying anywhere that an IT job would require me to have and own a laptop,and I would already own one being an "IT" guy, although if I worked inside a cube exclusively I would expect the employer to have the workstation. This is just normal, when I've had factory jobs I didn't pay for the lathe or bandsaw I was running, but on construction sites 90%+ of the tools I used were my own. I paid for my own specialised work clothing, blue collar, I paid for my own steel toed boots, rugged clothing and hard hat and gloves, white collar sales jobs I have had, I paid for my own suits and shiny shoes, and etc. I never even considered that the employer pay for this clothing.
I would think in today's economy that both employers and employees in IT would just "get real" on pay scales, corporate profits, expectations, and costs of doing business. A little of give and take both ways might result in this IT company actually staying in business and everyone concerned remaining employed. I mean, diidn't we just go through this dotbomb phenomenon? Was there nothing to learn from this?
I am reminded of the lessons of eastern airlines, an old, established, profitable enterprise that tanked swiftly once the 'stupidity and greed' factor became part of the mindset there, and was shared across the board up and down and sideways throught their organization. Where a combination of white collar mismanagement and arrogance and severe over compensation, combined with completely unrealistic blue collar union demands and expectations of compensation, resulted in *no one* at eastern airlines having "a job" after a short time frame of this attitude being adopted.
--left some out. Here's some more from memory, and I know I'll forget some too. Somalia, Sudan, colombia, bolivia, peru, phillipines,el salvador, haiti, dominican republic,costa rica, cuba, guatemala, chile, pakistan, laos, cambodia,thailand, korea, lebanon. All places attacked or fought in and around with US dotmil troops, paramilitary spook troops, or contract mercenaries, since the end of the last lawful declared war. I'm sure there's a lot more places, those are just the larger more public ones I can readily remember to add to the list. And yes I could easily find them on a globe.
We have a rather excellent constitution,a pity it's just a quaint historical record.
..doesn't space still have a lot of random stuff in it, atoms of hydrogen or helium and whatnot? Seems like I was reading that was one theoretical way to make a really fast moving craft, but the catch 22 was you had to build up enough speed so the scoop was scooping in enough atoms to use them for fuel, then the fuel burning increased the speed, more stuff scooped, and etc. I guess with the sail you could store it up, then have a full fuel load when you wanted to brake and manuever. Of course, with the sail out front of you, it would be hard to scoop. ...oh well...
--thanks. I find the most interesting aspect is that it increased over time, wasn't a constant. To me it now seems like an immune response based on increasing needs, following your explanation, if there were a way to correlate what the cumulative total of damaging factors represented quantitatively. Well, if I'm understanding this adequately.
thanks, interesting article. Thoroughly outside my expertise, so I limited myself to just the press release. I hope some more knowledgable folks chime in here on it with some more user friendly opinions. It's funny, but since I was a kid I had this weird notion that just going on odds, that there had to be a very, very small percentage of the population that lived even longer than what is considered "normal" advanced age, like this reference to centennarians. And that they probably had to dodge the issue-deal with it on a practical basis, security, etc- once it became apparent they were quite "different". I know it's a subject that has been explored in various fictional literature, just wondered "what if"? This research shows there might be something to it, and it really is limited to what could be considered the second tier examples, IF there are the small populations of VERY old people as I always suspected.
... and you need to buy a clue. I posted my opinion on this "tax software" and what people could do about this whole DRM issue. It's crap. It was crap before, now there's another reason to avoid it. don't buy it. Not needed. that's the solution. Wasn't me started the thread, but as like any other slashdot registered user, I have an option to post, and comment on it, and replied, as I do on some posts. My original reply wasn't a flame or troll,and I labeled it as such,I was short and to the point and serious, it's not needed,. in fact I'd go further and say it's a bad idea to get in the habit of using it, so YOU chose to post a smarmy ass juvenile reply, so you got one back, moron. It was you decided to jump the ante. I think you (or anyone else) shouldn't use it. That's the obvious solution that about anyone with common sense could see. this closed software, spyware, DRM, etc business at it's heart is about scamming money out of people, one of the better ways to not become a victim is to not buy or use or promote such "products". Because over and over again you can see what happens, but the main lesson never seems to sink in for some people. But, if you are more content with rube goldberg robot-ish solutions to problems,to use your computer for everything possible, even when it might not be the best tool for the job, then go for it! Hey, add some neon lights to your return as well, case mod it, change it to mp3 format, then to ogg, then to divx, whatever floats your boat.. Who cares? In my opinion it's better to RTFM, tax noob. In this case, actually do some reading research on the tax system and how it works, learn to do your own taxes, not use some one size fits no one adequately "solution" that's also spyware, but hey, free choice! Need a tax GUI set of training wheels to hold your hand? Fine! You want to trust these guys with something as important as this, when right off the bat you can see they are sneaky? Go for it! Use the DRM boot sector writing paid for piece of propietary spyware crap. Next year, buy another one. Year after that, buy another one. Keep on doing that. Write into slashdot crying in your beer about it, lather, rinse, repeat. Do it as long as you want to. I hope you enjoy it, really!
That's it for me on juvenile flame wars, it's been fun, you can have the last word.
--wasn't it originally life, liberty and the pursuit of property? And wasn't it changed later to happiness? And I am asking, I have heard both, with the former obviously being the more popular and published.