I actually have flash disabled in all my browsers, mostly because I can only use a fraction of my pipe for surfing.
All the sites I patronize have, thus far, operated perfectly fine without flash. Once they begin to demand flash or other such crap, I'll find alternatives or do without. Flash has FAR too much risk of being abused (and has been) in the past. Same with javascript and especially Java. I surf for information, not flashy buttons and popups.
Speaking of funny, I checked out "classmates.com" recently, and I must say DEAR GOD... (my personal profile is full of bullshit per my specification) ye gods those people have put up everything but their online banking password on those entries. But that isn't the worst part. The worst part is loading that website, and receiving twenty different batches of advertising tracking cookies, three batches of tracking cookies from the site, and watching it load and move around slower than mollases.
Is that truly necessary? Hell, they charge these people for memberships. I actually test drove a membership some years back just to see, and even then, even for "paying members" they still didn't remove the adverts and other sluggish bloat on their site.
I restate my question. Is that kind of bloat TRULY necessary?
Setup a Knoppix or other (Ubuntu?) livecd using the available tools. Don't worry about anything except setting up an IPSEC tunnel, with preset keys to a machine at home. Presumably this machine should be pulling down your email and other data that you need to access. Since the boot is fresh from a trusted CD it defeats software keyloggers, and using the secure keys also sets it up so you don't have to worry about hardware keyloggers getting your passwords.
Frankly, you ARE better off with some form of wireless PDA or PDA Phone... but if you want to be cheap, it will still cost you time.
Yep, glad you were there to tell me. Please show me when the military has declined to spend billions of other people's money. I would love to see that.
Its not hate. He's one of my better friends in this world. We go shooting at the range regularly.
He's suffering, and while I feel for his pain, I find it hard to identify with him, since both, he, and I, are in agreement that he followed orders without thinking. He was a willing tool, and he agrees that he's paying the price for his ignorance.
Lets put it like this. If he didn't need his disability veterans benefits (he's among the few who actually GOT it in full) he would be speaking out. However, others of his buddies have spoken out and had their services cut back. He's not willing to take that hit with his issues.
Thus again. I don't hate the man. I don't pity him either. He contracted with the government and is now receiving the end results. Sad but true, it seems.
Something they failed to mention is that the endpoint of uranium decay seems to be lead, at least as far as I've researched. Still, I can't feel sorry for anyone that uses this shit and comes back sick. Regardless for their excuses. No different than the assholes who passed diseased blankets to the natives and caught a touch of small pox themselves. That does not excuse the natives for being stupid, silly and gullible fools, so all in all just deserts all around the table, it would seem. Hell, I've friends who served in vietnam, and I don't really feel any bad for them for their encounter with Agent Orange. They chose to show up for the draft, and chose to abide by what they, to this day admit were orders that amounted to nothing more than doing some politician's dirty laundry. Others feel that they served to 'fight communism' which I find humorous since today, Vietnam is STILL communist AND a big exporter of trade goods to the USA, that's right, those EVIL commies are now our trading partners. In fact, they make Jeans, Shirts, Socks... etc. Seen a couple of pretty decent jackets made in Vietnam lately too.
If someone fails to see the irony of all this, then I have little left to say:)
This seems to work on the SAME exact principle as the Depleted Uranium Penetrator. Regular missile with a core of DU, when it strikes, the regular projectile cannot penetrate, but the friction that is created as the DU core moves forward through weapon metal as well as armor metal, heats it up to the point where it doesn't just punch through armor, but ignites and melts its way through. Generally it is presumed that the poor bastards inside the tank or armored emplacement are usually quite unhappy with the results (for about half a second it takes for them to be converted into meat and blood vapors.)
Therefore, it seems DARPA in usual fashion is looking at the best way to help keep raising the national debt level. If anything, the military industrial complex has been the bankers best friend, it has managed to keep spending at insane levels, without really producing any new ways of killing people... not even those who are defenseless and easy to kill in the many innovative ways militaries and governments have devised for the last few centuries.
I mean hell, the missile, bullet, DU Penetrator, APFSDF rounds, all of it, its still the same principle of a hurled projectile, spear, sling stone or arrow. New methods of slinging shit, but still the same old idea. Pretty sad if you think of it. They keep reinventing the wheel, but the wars aren't even fought for land or gold anymore, they're fought so the idiot masses can feel good about themselves. That, there is the worst part of it, as far as I am concerned. Its one thing to fight evil bastards who want to take what is yours, whether it be, life liberty or property, but most of the wars today are fought merely to keep the cattle spending their hard earned income without asking questions. What is not as much sad as it is remarkable is the bovine imbecility present in the vast masses of humanity. THAT amazes me.
My mum said my daughters snarly face looks like my younger brother when he was her age, so she got out the slide, scanned it in and emailed it to me. That's because the slide has survived for 25 years in relatively good condition.
Ironic, eh? Your mum remembers that stuff using her head drive. You need a hard drive.
I didn't say I don't keep pics and movies of people I like or care about. I just am not worried about preserving them for 1000 years. If I am, I will do what my great grand parents did before communism. Make a photo album. Keep it in a safe place. I still got pictures from back then, Europe got bombed to a shell, yet that album survived, amusing, no? I can only hope modern Kodak paper is halfway as durable as old pre nazi and pre/during commie paper was. That being said... if I were to lose all my data again, it wouldn't be the first time. I've learned to adapt. I've made good backups, but good memory is beneficial. Train it. Trust it.
Enjoy the tools of modern society, but don't get uptight if shit falls apart. Most of this shit is designed to fall apart. I remember the hug I got from my mom at my last birthday party. I can recall that feeling directly. I remember the time I've spent with each of my girlfriends, yet I have no videos available to show me those times. Yet I have no pictures of it to remind me what it looked like. Hell, I can clearly remember my first day in kindergarten.
I don't need a prop for my memory. All toys external to my mind are just that. Toys. Enjoyable toys, to be sure... but I'm more concerned about ME lasting 1000 years rather than worrying if my backups will. If I'm alive and well, I will find a way for my backups to endure. If I'm dead, I'm pretty much done worrying:) can't get much use out of those backups, either.
A, my original quote comes FROM TFA (no problem, you're still young, you'll learn to recognize stuff like that eventually.)
I still have an old 386 and Pentium 200 rig. Even got a cyrix lying around somewhere in the basement. Most of that stuff is preserved (I keep a nice low moisture / low statis environment.) As a result, I must say that I'm not all that worried about not being able to read more modern floppies (5.25, 3.5, LS120, ZIP, etc).
CDRW's are pretty common. My backups MIGRATE with me and the hardware I use. If I change hardware, you can guarantee I'll move to a newer backup medium. Wow, what do you know, I did that with all those 12 dollar zip disks that I have sitting in a box somwhere, most still contain various forms of Linux from as far back as my high school days, from 1.0 to a very specific config of Redhat 5.2 I can still recall today. Are they useful to me, not really. But I did spend 12 bucks a pop on the disks, back when 12 bucks was worth 30 today. Just for inflation value, I like to keep 'em and say "look, the sheeple will say these disks have *appreciated* in value."
CD-ROM may be the best, together with paper printouts as a last resort, but that's not going to last 1000 years unless you were to use controlled environments.
Well, the upside to that remark is simple. "Neither will you.":)
That little issue aside, I'm fairly sure that I've yet to have a USB key die on me. But then again, I am fortunate I don't use Vista Ready Drive. I've hard of people killing their keys in 3 months of heavy gaming action. I call that OUCH. Its almost as expensive as me blowing 200 rounds of.45 at the range now and again.
Speaking of storage. I still have a server with a multi drive RAID, and several storage bays. Built it by hand, tinkered the case, etc. Cooling system moves as much air as the wall mounted AC that cools the computer room.
I had to download the entire Debian and Gentoo archive JUST so I could use some of the space and feel like I hadn't just wasted all that space. Gonna pull the Red Hat RPM ftp directory as soon as I decide to actually RUN fedora on something.
Maybe I should run some Web 2.0 app. I could always use the extra spam. After all, I'm a growing boy.;-)
Wait.. did you say USENET? I haven't been on there since college. Its still around and active? No, I'm serious, it is??
I did. Hence why I will not put my brain inside a Tachihoma tank:)
That being said, i'm also not a fan of jacking myself up on drugs so I can "hack" wandering vehicles. I'm thinking any weapon I may wield in such a world would have to be capable of A, using some sort of warp singularity to disrupt all technological defenses of the target, and B, use that same singularity to power down the defender.
Why killem when you can simply turn them off? If that hot animated chick can kill people by fucking with their computerized brains, I can also generate singularity charges with my ham radio set and obliterate enemy cyborgs:)
Dear God, I really am overdoing the sarcasm lately, aren't I?
Santa Cruz (CA) - Have you ever thought how vulnerable your data may be through the simple fact that you may be storing your entire digital life on a single hard drive? On single drive can hold tens of thousands of pictures, thousands of music files, videos, letters and countless other documents. One malfunctioning drive can wipe out your virtual life in a blink of an eye. A scary thought. On a greater scale, at least portions of the digital information describing our generation may be put at risk by current storage technologies. There are only a few decades of life in tape and disk storage these days, but a team of researchers claims to have come up with a power-efficient, scalable way to reliably store data with regular hard drives for an estimated (theoretical) 1400 years.
My "digital life"? Scary to lose it? Man.. these people never heard of backups, or having a real life, eh? Jeez, I can store my whole "digital life" on a 1 gig USB key, with room to spare.
I've lost my backups more times than I can count, my computers are toys, mostly for communication and play. Amazing how many people put their whole LIVES on a hard disk. Remarkable actually. What would I lose? About a dozen passwords and I'd need to reinstall and re-customize my system... OH WAIT... I backed up the important scripts and source code to a DVD.. TWO in fact. Bummer, guess I don't have to cry endless tears over the loss of my "digital life".
They're a wee bit sluggish in 32 bit (running on a 4 ghz rig, dual cpu), as far as I can tell. They're downright choppy in 64 bit (dual core amd in this case 2 ghz).
I'm not much of a fan since regular Mpegs and Oggs and.VOB play FAR better with no lag even on my old (often mothballed) 400 mhz celeron jukebox.
Even Matroska.mkv files play perfectly. Standard microsoft AVI's and WMV's are shit, though. And I'd rather donate 500 bucks to the Gentoo foundation rather than pay Microsoft for their sub par offering, just to get their videos working well.
But as I said, it's a temporary thing, a net drain on the resources of those who participate. It's a party. But it's also a good real world example to look at if you are interested in a non hierarchal society. Not that any society will be free from hierarchy, or should be. Just that it should be the natural hierarchy of freely given respect, not an artificial hierarchy maintained through coercion.
You and I are in agreement here. On all points. A party is a damn fine thing to have, and have as often as possible. Working long hours is overrated. Usually by people with nothing better to do, or who love paying taxes and feeding bureaucracies with lots of revenue.
Certainly it isn't armed revolution against the state, it's more like flipping them the bird. But armed revolution is no answer either, as the most brutal and ruthless almost always rise to the top and take control of those.
You should know I don't advocate such. In an armed insurrection, all sides lose. The only time such a response is fairly acceptable in terms of "gain versus loss" for those rebelling is when the oppressed have nothing left to lose, or have gotten tired of their English Lords imposing Prima Nocta (yeah I'd take quite a bit of offense to it also, even if my Lady would surrender to it to keep the peace.)
Your cynicism is not your most endearing quality. And that's really the best I've got, right there, damn it.
Damn, not you too! Until now only my mom told me I was mean and harsh.
You do realize that Microsoft might actually be trying to demonstrate that DRM is indeed a tool of evil.
And not just any kind of evil... but EEEEEVVEEEEELLL.. kind of evil.
Well, all I can say is simple. Expect that sooner or later, people are going to get a MAJOR shaft in the arse for locking themselves into servitude to any particular big shop. It is to be expected.
I agree with you. I actually will not take anything NOT in Mpeg or Ogg format. Preferably Ogg, but either format will suffice. No, I don't like WMV, WMA, or any of the other big formats (even though.mov is fairly nice) mostly because I have to consistently run someone's proprietary player. Not that I have a problem with that. But if I can't install it with.configure && make install... I don't do it.
Hell, been a BSD user for years, and a Linux user for almost as long. Been a windows user for a little longer than I've been a Linux user, and i must say... of all three drugs, Windows left me pretty deflated... until I learned that I could work on and get Quake II, III and IV running in Linux, side by side with Doom 3:)
I'm still jumpy in dark rooms ever since then. I never understood why they had all the other guns in Doom3, shotgun was enough for all but the last few battles in Hell, and the ammo, even in nightmare mode was guaranteed to rarely run out if you could actually HIT what you aimed at.
What I can't figure out is WHY they don't have some NICE 30 caliber rifles in those games. Always fancy super fast needle guns, AHEM, "assault rifles" but never anything with good penetration and punch. Halflife2... 3mm SMG?? No wonder nobody dies from being shot with those pea shooters in that game.
Vista is like a gun. It burns ammo and requires a decent resupply stock.
The ammo in question is USB sticks. USB 2.0 preferred. I believe the technology is called Vista Ready Drive or Vista Ready Speed. I find it amusing since Microsoft spokesmen are rumored to have said those sticks were supposed to last TEN YEARS!!! Get this... frequently written to, USB sticks, also allowed to stay plugged in and get warm do NOT last 2 years, nevermind 10! I've burned out a couple here and there writing to them non stop and leaving them plugged in. Learned the hard way that you don't leave them to get hot and keep writing to them over and over. They also have a lifespan, and regardless the quality of the memory stick, it will die sooner or later. Using them as secondary RAM sticks is clever of Microsoft, finding a wonderful way to offset their bulky OS by putting the expense on the customer, once more. (If you laugh when I say I saw it coming, I will have to ask: "What, you mean you didn't?")
If you aren't willing to burn through a stick or ten, expect vista to remain relatively slow, at least until DDR4 or DDR5:)
I'm curious, if "food is free", who is paying for it, or growing it? 30000 people tend to eat a lot, even if its just a bowl of rice per day and a glass of water. They also shit alot, which would make for a fairly infectious environment.
I'm curious, how will 30000 peace loving, unarmed, untrained, unskilled hippies fight against a batallion of any nation's marines, backed up with artillery and air support? Wow, all of a sudden you're even worse off than the individualists.
Snickers bars as mediums of exchange.
So instead of enjoying debt based money, you guys skipped over limited resources like silver and gold and went to OTHER limited resources like snickers bars.
Amusing is it not? Commodities are still the best money, even for anti money communities like the one you just mentioned.
I find a lot of your practices (including what has been marketed as homeopathic or natural medicine) which you guys call Living Medicine to be amazingly along the same lines.
You guys are pissed, but don't seem to be noticing that you're still playing the same game. (Who makes snickers? At least you can still dig up your own ore, rocks, jade or other material for exchange, which, as it was once used in very effective tools/weapons is quite valuable as money:)
I find it amazing as a counterculture, but it is still nothing more than counterculture being channeled into acceptable and easily sidelined projects.
As for Mondragon... the only reason they're still around is because they serve some big players purposes and aren't threatening the status quo. I highly doubt they have the clout and pull to stop chinese goods or outsourced contractors from being used to replace their work. It seems, by the wiki page that the only reason they are being helped by their government is because they serve as a good way to keep people at the yoke.
Good attempts, for sure. But as always... every attempt is within the parameters of the paradigm. Nothing world changing... nothing individually changing. Good ideas, but still only serving to maintain the status quo.
Some revolutionaries you guys are. Oops. Sorry, did I just dick back? Sorry:)
Incorrect. Effects others means something you weren't intending, judging by context. Perhaps you meant "affects" others.
If you spent time studying groups and packs, you'll notice there is a REASON the special forces work in small groups, never bigger than 12 (a teams) or 11 (b teams)... why is that I wonder? Huge societies are bullshit. They are simply a way of turning the stronger and fierce packs into livestock for a privileged few to milk. Frankly, judging by the eagerness of the majority to be milked, so long as others get slaughtered first, I am starting to see the wisdom of being among the ruling elite. Perhaps I've been cutting a potential branch from under my own potential "feet".
Show me how many raped in "societies" were protected from being raped by the very people they trusted to "save them".
I'm not worried bud. We're all damaged goods. We begin being damaged the moment we're raised by either schools, or families that were taught to obliterate any sense of freedom from the individual. I merely mentioned a friend who almost got raped, and was saved by someone who happened to be willing to pack a weapon and know how to use it. I merely mentioned being failed by the system that has taken a LOT of my money to pay for your benefits, and I damn well am pissed about it.
I'm not and never got my money's worth. That's not good business, its not fairness and it isn't "protection". If you grow ten watermelons and someone decides that you should only eat one that season, and takes 9, but only takes 3 from someone else, don't you feel fucked over that you went through all that effort to grow the other 9? Bingo. Why should the more productive get fucked so the less productive eat off their backs. If they don't want to donate, they should not be coerced to.
I've been wondering how many truly talented and wonderful people have been forced to remain worthless and unfulfilled because their ideas had to compete with "free stuff" ?
How do you make a living as a farmer in Africa, even in a country that might rebound, if you have to compete with "free grain" from the UN or the USA? You can't. You can't even afford to pay your taxes. Which aren't "your fair share" they are merely what some parasites decided to milk from you to maintain themselves for free. No biggie. Everyone gets what they deserve. There was a really NICE line in that book all the christians hold to be more than parables... in Samuel, I believe, where the hebrews ask for a king, to rule them so they can be "like other nations".
The answer goes something like this. "And the Lord sayeth unto him. Tell them that I shall give unto them a king, like all other nations, and he shall take one tenth of the fruits of their labours, and the fairest of their daughters to serve him, and the finest of their sons to fight his wars, and he shall demand one tenth of their properties and then they shall be slaves."
While most of the Bible is fairly statist in the later chapters, it is interesting that this particular statement gets overlooked. I forget the exact verse lines, but I found it quite enlightening.
We gave them public right of way, fat infusions of public cash, and monopoly powers, but hey, that doesn't mean shit, right, because private entities should always be free to break contracts with the evil public sector.
No, YOU did... I didn't... what is this "we" you keep talking about. You are you, and I am me. There is no WE in this endeavor. I do not consent to be part of your posse.
contracts
Silly boy, only men and women, flesh and blood, can contract. Paper tigers cannot. Be they public or private. That is why the owner of a corporation or its employees can fuck you over and walk away and make a new corporation. You thought you had a contract with a piece of paper, instead of using that little known law to your advantage. You tried to fight them, instead of using their own tools for your benefit.
You call ME a sick fuck? Every woman in my family can draw and drop a man at 15 yards. The ones that live in shitty little socialist shitholes (they married stupid men) have learned some form of combatives. They won't be getting raped. Ever. Killed maybe, but never raped. Then again, I've almost gotten killed driving and observing ALL laws applicable. Laws didn't save me. My own awareness and training saved me. The same holds for all this other shit. I have relatives overseas who think it is "wrong" to defend themselves. I love them... but I feel that they have contracted themselves as victims. Willing victims. Their fate is their own. If I'm not around to try to protect them, should something happen to them. I will still love them. But I will not feel bad one bit. You sleep in the bed you make, they sleep in the one they made, and I will sleep in my spartan bed that I've prepared for quite sometime now.
People who refuse to step outside the mental cattle pen, are NOT my problem. Their fate is their own. I've shouted in the wilderness long enough. I've proposed ideas.. I've even worked on a few. I have no regrets watching the cattle get on the line to their beloved slaughter houses. I just chose not to be one of them. That's about it folks. As an old friend of mine said after a particularly awakening conversation. "Your blood is off my hands." I didn't really understand him back then. I was young, gullible and still thinking that governmental decrees, courts and dogmas would "save us" from evil.
I didn't see what a mistake that was until I needed government's help to reclaim property stolen by big corporations. All my work to that date was seeped in ignorance. I'm tired of shouting in the wilderness. Good luck to you. Thy loving shepherd awaits his ration of lamb this fine day. Don't keep him waiting.
Actually I think its just like with the airlines. Most people are cattle, deserving of what they get. They will continue to submit. Me... the next time I get treated like shit after handing out 1000 bucks or more for a flight, I will mail out my already typed out letter to newspapers, websites, blogs and the airline in question. And then I will refuse to ever patronize their services.
There are other ways, they're more expensive, but they're worth it. All free market ideas too. Most people are willing to sell their kids into slavery if it saves them 50 cents on a bottle of soda pop.
Surprised? Ask yourself how often you've given up info to your local grocery store about how much of what you buy. Think nobody is watching? Perhaps you should pay attention to things that have been discouraged socially (like stocking up on things, or having a stocked fridge or pantry, at the least... and now they've declared "hoarding" to be illegal). I hope you didn't buy 6 bags of flour. I read a recent article (this week) where they listed the west coast of the USA and the Northeastern states have all implemented rationing of flour, rice, cooking oil, etc at their big box marts and pallet sellers (sams club, costco, warlmart, etc). Interesting that this comes exactly at a time when the government is running the inflation numbers to high heaven, and starting all sorts of surveillance and confiscation laws. Amazed yet? Don't be, I saw this crap when I was a child, but at least the commies were smart enough to know they risked an outright revolution if they forbade "hoarding". Yet here, you use your savings card and run the risk of being accused of the "evils of hoarding" if you buy too much flour. Nevermind that greek, latin, hispanic, slavic or other such families consume LOTS of flour over the period of a month.
And yet they haven't removed the "granary" from the list of things we study in history class, despite it being an instrument of hoarding, which is obviously so evil the federal government declared it such. (So did the UN, but we all know how humanitarian THEY are.)
Lets get real... social discouragement of such things that are essential to human life and to the thriving life, not just mere survival, have all been slowly made into "evil" things through the brainwashing media. Thus I believe that lots of people will not wake up even if they are hammered over their heads by the truth.
As Winston Churchill once said, "during the course of his life, man will trip over the truth. sadly, he will often pick himself up, dust himself off, and continue on his way."
The only other solution would be for people to start something a little more rhizomatic in organizational structure, but with higher connectivity than a BBS. I wonder how well background grids are working nowadays. Everyone seems to be awaiting someone to deliver them... We already have the tools, we're not using them yet. Everyone keeps telling me what cannot be done. Goddamit people, I can paint the room walls in this here house with all of your "I can't do this, waaaaah!" crap, but I can't even fill a page with proposed solutions. Proposed solutions. Nevermind actually workable ones. Remember, you have to propose 10 or more solutions before you get to a workable one.
I mean wow... despair city, the sky is falling, the storm trooper's are coming, ye gods someone put a blanket on Jabba's Hutt...
All bitching and no ideas. Pitiful. I thought slashdot was supposed to be a "geek" forum. Seems more like a flamefest as of late.
Well then, since you've told me what you CAN'T do, might as well give up and go live in a cave. No, you can't have mine. My lease doesn't end until 5 years from now:)
Slashdot Mirror
I actually have flash disabled in all my browsers, mostly because I can only use a fraction of my pipe for surfing.
All the sites I patronize have, thus far, operated perfectly fine without flash. Once they begin to demand flash or other such crap, I'll find alternatives or do without. Flash has FAR too much risk of being abused (and has been) in the past. Same with javascript and especially Java. I surf for information, not flashy buttons and popups.
Speaking of funny, I checked out "classmates.com" recently, and I must say DEAR GOD... (my personal profile is full of bullshit per my specification) ye gods those people have put up everything but their online banking password on those entries. But that isn't the worst part. The worst part is loading that website, and receiving twenty different batches of advertising tracking cookies, three batches of tracking cookies from the site, and watching it load and move around slower than mollases.
Is that truly necessary? Hell, they charge these people for memberships. I actually test drove a membership some years back just to see, and even then, even for "paying members" they still didn't remove the adverts and other sluggish bloat on their site.
I restate my question. Is that kind of bloat TRULY necessary?
Setup a Knoppix or other (Ubuntu?) livecd using the available tools. Don't worry about anything except setting up an IPSEC tunnel, with preset keys to a machine at home. Presumably this machine should be pulling down your email and other data that you need to access. Since the boot is fresh from a trusted CD it defeats software keyloggers, and using the secure keys also sets it up so you don't have to worry about hardware keyloggers getting your passwords.
Frankly, you ARE better off with some form of wireless PDA or PDA Phone... but if you want to be cheap, it will still cost you time.
Yep, glad you were there to tell me. Please show me when the military has declined to spend billions of other people's money. I would love to see that.
Wow. well said. Damn well said. You oughta sell posters with that. Mind if I do? :)
Its not hate. He's one of my better friends in this world. We go shooting at the range regularly.
He's suffering, and while I feel for his pain, I find it hard to identify with him, since both, he, and I, are in agreement that he followed orders without thinking. He was a willing tool, and he agrees that he's paying the price for his ignorance.
Lets put it like this. If he didn't need his disability veterans benefits (he's among the few who actually GOT it in full) he would be speaking out. However, others of his buddies have spoken out and had their services cut back. He's not willing to take that hit with his issues.
Thus again. I don't hate the man. I don't pity him either. He contracted with the government and is now receiving the end results. Sad but true, it seems.
Something they failed to mention is that the endpoint of uranium decay seems to be lead, at least as far as I've researched. Still, I can't feel sorry for anyone that uses this shit and comes back sick. Regardless for their excuses. No different than the assholes who passed diseased blankets to the natives and caught a touch of small pox themselves. That does not excuse the natives for being stupid, silly and gullible fools, so all in all just deserts all around the table, it would seem. Hell, I've friends who served in vietnam, and I don't really feel any bad for them for their encounter with Agent Orange. They chose to show up for the draft, and chose to abide by what they, to this day admit were orders that amounted to nothing more than doing some politician's dirty laundry. Others feel that they served to 'fight communism' which I find humorous since today, Vietnam is STILL communist AND a big exporter of trade goods to the USA, that's right, those EVIL commies are now our trading partners. In fact, they make Jeans, Shirts, Socks... etc. Seen a couple of pretty decent jackets made in Vietnam lately too.
:)
If someone fails to see the irony of all this, then I have little left to say
This seems to work on the SAME exact principle as the Depleted Uranium Penetrator. Regular missile with a core of DU, when it strikes, the regular projectile cannot penetrate, but the friction that is created as the DU core moves forward through weapon metal as well as armor metal, heats it up to the point where it doesn't just punch through armor, but ignites and melts its way through. Generally it is presumed that the poor bastards inside the tank or armored emplacement are usually quite unhappy with the results (for about half a second it takes for them to be converted into meat and blood vapors.)
Therefore, it seems DARPA in usual fashion is looking at the best way to help keep raising the national debt level. If anything, the military industrial complex has been the bankers best friend, it has managed to keep spending at insane levels, without really producing any new ways of killing people... not even those who are defenseless and easy to kill in the many innovative ways militaries and governments have devised for the last few centuries.
I mean hell, the missile, bullet, DU Penetrator, APFSDF rounds, all of it, its still the same principle of a hurled projectile, spear, sling stone or arrow. New methods of slinging shit, but still the same old idea. Pretty sad if you think of it. They keep reinventing the wheel, but the wars aren't even fought for land or gold anymore, they're fought so the idiot masses can feel good about themselves. That, there is the worst part of it, as far as I am concerned. Its one thing to fight evil bastards who want to take what is yours, whether it be, life liberty or property, but most of the wars today are fought merely to keep the cattle spending their hard earned income without asking questions. What is not as much sad as it is remarkable is the bovine imbecility present in the vast masses of humanity. THAT amazes me.
My mum said my daughters snarly face looks like my younger brother when he was her age, so she got out the slide, scanned it in and emailed it to me. That's because the slide has survived for 25 years in relatively good condition.
:) can't get much use out of those backups, either.
Ironic, eh? Your mum remembers that stuff using her head drive. You need a hard drive.
I didn't say I don't keep pics and movies of people I like or care about. I just am not worried about preserving them for 1000 years. If I am, I will do what my great grand parents did before communism. Make a photo album. Keep it in a safe place. I still got pictures from back then, Europe got bombed to a shell, yet that album survived, amusing, no? I can only hope modern Kodak paper is halfway as durable as old pre nazi and pre/during commie paper was. That being said... if I were to lose all my data again, it wouldn't be the first time. I've learned to adapt. I've made good backups, but good memory is beneficial. Train it. Trust it.
Enjoy the tools of modern society, but don't get uptight if shit falls apart. Most of this shit is designed to fall apart. I remember the hug I got from my mom at my last birthday party. I can recall that feeling directly. I remember the time I've spent with each of my girlfriends, yet I have no videos available to show me those times. Yet I have no pictures of it to remind me what it looked like. Hell, I can clearly remember my first day in kindergarten.
I don't need a prop for my memory. All toys external to my mind are just that. Toys. Enjoyable toys, to be sure... but I'm more concerned about ME lasting 1000 years rather than worrying if my backups will. If I'm alive and well, I will find a way for my backups to endure. If I'm dead, I'm pretty much done worrying
A, my original quote comes FROM TFA (no problem, you're still young, you'll learn to recognize stuff like that eventually.)
I still have an old 386 and Pentium 200 rig. Even got a cyrix lying around somewhere in the basement. Most of that stuff is preserved (I keep a nice low moisture / low statis environment.) As a result, I must say that I'm not all that worried about not being able to read more modern floppies (5.25, 3.5, LS120, ZIP, etc).
CDRW's are pretty common. My backups MIGRATE with me and the hardware I use. If I change hardware, you can guarantee I'll move to a newer backup medium. Wow, what do you know, I did that with all those 12 dollar zip disks that I have sitting in a box somwhere, most still contain various forms of Linux from as far back as my high school days, from 1.0 to a very specific config of Redhat 5.2 I can still recall today. Are they useful to me, not really. But I did spend 12 bucks a pop on the disks, back when 12 bucks was worth 30 today. Just for inflation value, I like to keep 'em and say "look, the sheeple will say these disks have *appreciated* in value."
CD-ROM may be the best, together with paper printouts as a last resort, but that's not going to last 1000 years unless you were to use controlled environments.
:)
.45 at the range now and again.
Well, the upside to that remark is simple. "Neither will you."
That little issue aside, I'm fairly sure that I've yet to have a USB key die on me. But then again, I am fortunate I don't use Vista Ready Drive. I've hard of people killing their keys in 3 months of heavy gaming action. I call that OUCH. Its almost as expensive as me blowing 200 rounds of
Speaking of storage. I still have a server with a multi drive RAID, and several storage bays. Built it by hand, tinkered the case, etc. Cooling system moves as much air as the wall mounted AC that cools the computer room.
;-)
I had to download the entire Debian and Gentoo archive JUST so I could use some of the space and feel like I hadn't just wasted all that space. Gonna pull the Red Hat RPM ftp directory as soon as I decide to actually RUN fedora on something.
Maybe I should run some Web 2.0 app. I could always use the extra spam. After all, I'm a growing boy.
Wait.. did you say USENET? I haven't been on there since college. Its still around and active? No, I'm serious, it is??
I did. Hence why I will not put my brain inside a Tachihoma tank :)
:)
That being said, i'm also not a fan of jacking myself up on drugs so I can "hack" wandering vehicles. I'm thinking any weapon I may wield in such a world would have to be capable of A, using some sort of warp singularity to disrupt all technological defenses of the target, and B, use that same singularity to power down the defender.
Why killem when you can simply turn them off? If that hot animated chick can kill people by fucking with their computerized brains, I can also generate singularity charges with my ham radio set and obliterate enemy cyborgs
Dear God, I really am overdoing the sarcasm lately, aren't I?
From TFA:
Santa Cruz (CA) - Have you ever thought how vulnerable your data may be through the simple fact that you may be storing your entire digital life on a single hard drive? On single drive can hold tens of thousands of pictures, thousands of music files, videos, letters and countless other documents. One malfunctioning drive can wipe out your virtual life in a blink of an eye. A scary thought. On a greater scale, at least portions of the digital information describing our generation may be put at risk by current storage technologies. There are only a few decades of life in tape and disk storage these days, but a team of researchers claims to have come up with a power-efficient, scalable way to reliably store data with regular hard drives for an estimated (theoretical) 1400 years.
My "digital life"? Scary to lose it? Man.. these people never heard of backups, or having a real life, eh? Jeez, I can store my whole "digital life" on a 1 gig USB key, with room to spare.
I've lost my backups more times than I can count, my computers are toys, mostly for communication and play. Amazing how many people put their whole LIVES on a hard disk. Remarkable actually. What would I lose? About a dozen passwords and I'd need to reinstall and re-customize my system... OH WAIT... I backed up the important scripts and source code to a DVD.. TWO in fact. Bummer, guess I don't have to cry endless tears over the loss of my "digital life".
They're a wee bit sluggish in 32 bit (running on a 4 ghz rig, dual cpu), as far as I can tell. They're downright choppy in 64 bit (dual core amd in this case 2 ghz).
.VOB play FAR better with no lag even on my old (often mothballed) 400 mhz celeron jukebox.
.mkv files play perfectly. Standard microsoft AVI's and WMV's are shit, though. And I'd rather donate 500 bucks to the Gentoo foundation rather than pay Microsoft for their sub par offering, just to get their videos working well.
I'm not much of a fan since regular Mpegs and Oggs and
Even Matroska
Damn I was gonna mention those twin paragons of virtue the RIAA and MPAA, but hell, you get the cake bringing up Apple's saintly record :)
But as I said, it's a temporary thing, a net drain on the resources of those who participate. It's a party. But it's also a good real world example to look at if you are interested in a non hierarchal society. Not that any society will be free from hierarchy, or should be. Just that it should be the natural hierarchy of freely given respect, not an artificial hierarchy maintained through coercion.
You and I are in agreement here. On all points. A party is a damn fine thing to have, and have as often as possible. Working long hours is overrated. Usually by people with nothing better to do, or who love paying taxes and feeding bureaucracies with lots of revenue.
Certainly it isn't armed revolution against the state, it's more like flipping them the bird. But armed revolution is no answer either, as the most brutal and ruthless almost always rise to the top and take control of those.
You should know I don't advocate such. In an armed insurrection, all sides lose. The only time such a response is fairly acceptable in terms of "gain versus loss" for those rebelling is when the oppressed have nothing left to lose, or have gotten tired of their English Lords imposing Prima Nocta (yeah I'd take quite a bit of offense to it also, even if my Lady would surrender to it to keep the peace.)
Your cynicism is not your most endearing quality. And that's really the best I've got, right there, damn it.
Damn, not you too! Until now only my mom told me I was mean and harsh.
You do realize that Microsoft might actually be trying to demonstrate that DRM is indeed a tool of evil.
And not just any kind of evil... but EEEEEVVEEEEELLL.. kind of evil.
Well, all I can say is simple. Expect that sooner or later, people are going to get a MAJOR shaft in the arse for locking themselves into servitude to any particular big shop. It is to be expected.
I agree with you. I actually will not take anything NOT in Mpeg or Ogg format. Preferably Ogg, but either format will suffice. No, I don't like WMV, WMA, or any of the other big formats (even though .mov is fairly nice) mostly because I have to consistently run someone's proprietary player. Not that I have a problem with that. But if I can't install it with .configure && make install... I don't do it.
:)
Hell, been a BSD user for years, and a Linux user for almost as long. Been a windows user for a little longer than I've been a Linux user, and i must say... of all three drugs, Windows left me pretty deflated... until I learned that I could work on and get Quake II, III and IV running in Linux, side by side with Doom 3
I'm still jumpy in dark rooms ever since then. I never understood why they had all the other guns in Doom3, shotgun was enough for all but the last few battles in Hell, and the ammo, even in nightmare mode was guaranteed to rarely run out if you could actually HIT what you aimed at.
What I can't figure out is WHY they don't have some NICE 30 caliber rifles in those games. Always fancy super fast needle guns, AHEM, "assault rifles" but never anything with good penetration and punch. Halflife2... 3mm SMG?? No wonder nobody dies from being shot with those pea shooters in that game.
Oops, got off track. EOF.
Vista is like a gun. It burns ammo and requires a decent resupply stock.
:)
The ammo in question is USB sticks. USB 2.0 preferred. I believe the technology is called Vista Ready Drive or Vista Ready Speed. I find it amusing since Microsoft spokesmen are rumored to have said those sticks were supposed to last TEN YEARS!!! Get this... frequently written to, USB sticks, also allowed to stay plugged in and get warm do NOT last 2 years, nevermind 10! I've burned out a couple here and there writing to them non stop and leaving them plugged in. Learned the hard way that you don't leave them to get hot and keep writing to them over and over. They also have a lifespan, and regardless the quality of the memory stick, it will die sooner or later. Using them as secondary RAM sticks is clever of Microsoft, finding a wonderful way to offset their bulky OS by putting the expense on the customer, once more. (If you laugh when I say I saw it coming, I will have to ask: "What, you mean you didn't?")
If you aren't willing to burn through a stick or ten, expect vista to remain relatively slow, at least until DDR4 or DDR5
I'm curious, if "food is free", who is paying for it, or growing it? 30000 people tend to eat a lot, even if its just a bowl of rice per day and a glass of water. They also shit alot, which would make for a fairly infectious environment.
:)
:)
I'm curious, how will 30000 peace loving, unarmed, untrained, unskilled hippies fight against a batallion of any nation's marines, backed up with artillery and air support? Wow, all of a sudden you're even worse off than the individualists.
Snickers bars as mediums of exchange.
So instead of enjoying debt based money, you guys skipped over limited resources like silver and gold and went to OTHER limited resources like snickers bars.
Amusing is it not? Commodities are still the best money, even for anti money communities like the one you just mentioned.
I find a lot of your practices (including what has been marketed as homeopathic or natural medicine) which you guys call Living Medicine to be amazingly along the same lines.
You guys are pissed, but don't seem to be noticing that you're still playing the same game. (Who makes snickers? At least you can still dig up your own ore, rocks, jade or other material for exchange, which, as it was once used in very effective tools/weapons is quite valuable as money
I find it amazing as a counterculture, but it is still nothing more than counterculture being channeled into acceptable and easily sidelined projects.
As for Mondragon... the only reason they're still around is because they serve some big players purposes and aren't threatening the status quo. I highly doubt they have the clout and pull to stop chinese goods or outsourced contractors from being used to replace their work. It seems, by the wiki page that the only reason they are being helped by their government is because they serve as a good way to keep people at the yoke.
Good attempts, for sure. But as always... every attempt is within the parameters of the paradigm. Nothing world changing... nothing individually changing. Good ideas, but still only serving to maintain the status quo.
Some revolutionaries you guys are. Oops. Sorry, did I just dick back? Sorry
Incorrect. Effects others means something you weren't intending, judging by context. Perhaps you meant "affects" others.
If you spent time studying groups and packs, you'll notice there is a REASON the special forces work in small groups, never bigger than 12 (a teams) or 11 (b teams)... why is that I wonder? Huge societies are bullshit. They are simply a way of turning the stronger and fierce packs into livestock for a privileged few to milk. Frankly, judging by the eagerness of the majority to be milked, so long as others get slaughtered first, I am starting to see the wisdom of being among the ruling elite. Perhaps I've been cutting a potential branch from under my own potential "feet".
Show me how many raped in "societies" were protected from being raped by the very people they trusted to "save them".
I'm not worried bud. We're all damaged goods. We begin being damaged the moment we're raised by either schools, or families that were taught to obliterate any sense of freedom from the individual. I merely mentioned a friend who almost got raped, and was saved by someone who happened to be willing to pack a weapon and know how to use it. I merely mentioned being failed by the system that has taken a LOT of my money to pay for your benefits, and I damn well am pissed about it.
I'm not and never got my money's worth. That's not good business, its not fairness and it isn't "protection". If you grow ten watermelons and someone decides that you should only eat one that season, and takes 9, but only takes 3 from someone else, don't you feel fucked over that you went through all that effort to grow the other 9? Bingo. Why should the more productive get fucked so the less productive eat off their backs. If they don't want to donate, they should not be coerced to.
I've been wondering how many truly talented and wonderful people have been forced to remain worthless and unfulfilled because their ideas had to compete with "free stuff" ?
How do you make a living as a farmer in Africa, even in a country that might rebound, if you have to compete with "free grain" from the UN or the USA? You can't. You can't even afford to pay your taxes. Which aren't "your fair share" they are merely what some parasites decided to milk from you to maintain themselves for free. No biggie. Everyone gets what they deserve. There was a really NICE line in that book all the christians hold to be more than parables... in Samuel, I believe, where the hebrews ask for a king, to rule them so they can be "like other nations".
The answer goes something like this. "And the Lord sayeth unto him. Tell them that I shall give unto them a king, like all other nations, and he shall take one tenth of the fruits of their labours, and the fairest of their daughters to serve him, and the finest of their sons to fight his wars, and he shall demand one tenth of their properties and then they shall be slaves."
While most of the Bible is fairly statist in the later chapters, it is interesting that this particular statement gets overlooked. I forget the exact verse lines, but I found it quite enlightening.
We gave them public right of way, fat infusions of public cash, and monopoly powers, but hey, that doesn't mean shit, right, because private entities should always be free to break contracts with the evil public sector.
No, YOU did... I didn't... what is this "we" you keep talking about. You are you, and I am me. There is no WE in this endeavor. I do not consent to be part of your posse.
contracts
Silly boy, only men and women, flesh and blood, can contract. Paper tigers cannot. Be they public or private. That is why the owner of a corporation or its employees can fuck you over and walk away and make a new corporation. You thought you had a contract with a piece of paper, instead of using that little known law to your advantage. You tried to fight them, instead of using their own tools for your benefit.
You call ME a sick fuck? Every woman in my family can draw and drop a man at 15 yards. The ones that live in shitty little socialist shitholes (they married stupid men) have learned some form of combatives. They won't be getting raped. Ever. Killed maybe, but never raped. Then again, I've almost gotten killed driving and observing ALL laws applicable. Laws didn't save me. My own awareness and training saved me. The same holds for all this other shit. I have relatives overseas who think it is "wrong" to defend themselves. I love them... but I feel that they have contracted themselves as victims. Willing victims. Their fate is their own. If I'm not around to try to protect them, should something happen to them. I will still love them. But I will not feel bad one bit. You sleep in the bed you make, they sleep in the one they made, and I will sleep in my spartan bed that I've prepared for quite sometime now.
People who refuse to step outside the mental cattle pen, are NOT my problem. Their fate is their own. I've shouted in the wilderness long enough. I've proposed ideas.. I've even worked on a few. I have no regrets watching the cattle get on the line to their beloved slaughter houses. I just chose not to be one of them. That's about it folks. As an old friend of mine said after a particularly awakening conversation. "Your blood is off my hands." I didn't really understand him back then. I was young, gullible and still thinking that governmental decrees, courts and dogmas would "save us" from evil.
I didn't see what a mistake that was until I needed government's help to reclaim property stolen by big corporations. All my work to that date was seeped in ignorance. I'm tired of shouting in the wilderness. Good luck to you. Thy loving shepherd awaits his ration of lamb this fine day. Don't keep him waiting.
Actually I think its just like with the airlines. Most people are cattle, deserving of what they get. They will continue to submit. Me... the next time I get treated like shit after handing out 1000 bucks or more for a flight, I will mail out my already typed out letter to newspapers, websites, blogs and the airline in question. And then I will refuse to ever patronize their services.
... social discouragement of such things that are essential to human life and to the thriving life, not just mere survival, have all been slowly made into "evil" things through the brainwashing media. Thus I believe that lots of people will not wake up even if they are hammered over their heads by the truth.
There are other ways, they're more expensive, but they're worth it. All free market ideas too. Most people are willing to sell their kids into slavery if it saves them 50 cents on a bottle of soda pop.
Surprised? Ask yourself how often you've given up info to your local grocery store about how much of what you buy. Think nobody is watching? Perhaps you should pay attention to things that have been discouraged socially (like stocking up on things, or having a stocked fridge or pantry, at the least... and now they've declared "hoarding" to be illegal). I hope you didn't buy 6 bags of flour. I read a recent article (this week) where they listed the west coast of the USA and the Northeastern states have all implemented rationing of flour, rice, cooking oil, etc at their big box marts and pallet sellers (sams club, costco, warlmart, etc). Interesting that this comes exactly at a time when the government is running the inflation numbers to high heaven, and starting all sorts of surveillance and confiscation laws. Amazed yet? Don't be, I saw this crap when I was a child, but at least the commies were smart enough to know they risked an outright revolution if they forbade "hoarding". Yet here, you use your savings card and run the risk of being accused of the "evils of hoarding" if you buy too much flour. Nevermind that greek, latin, hispanic, slavic or other such families consume LOTS of flour over the period of a month.
And yet they haven't removed the "granary" from the list of things we study in history class, despite it being an instrument of hoarding, which is obviously so evil the federal government declared it such. (So did the UN, but we all know how humanitarian THEY are.)
Lets get real
As Winston Churchill once said, "during the course of his life, man will trip over the truth. sadly, he will often pick himself up, dust himself off, and continue on his way."
I couldn't have said it better myself.
The only other solution would be for people to start something a little more rhizomatic in organizational structure, but with higher connectivity than a BBS. I wonder how well background grids are working nowadays. Everyone seems to be awaiting someone to deliver them... We already have the tools, we're not using them yet. Everyone keeps telling me what cannot be done. Goddamit people, I can paint the room walls in this here house with all of your "I can't do this, waaaaah!" crap, but I can't even fill a page with proposed solutions. Proposed solutions. Nevermind actually workable ones. Remember, you have to propose 10 or more solutions before you get to a workable one.
I mean wow... despair city, the sky is falling, the storm trooper's are coming, ye gods someone put a blanket on Jabba's Hutt...
All bitching and no ideas. Pitiful. I thought slashdot was supposed to be a "geek" forum. Seems more like a flamefest as of late.
Well then, since you've told me what you CAN'T do, might as well give up and go live in a cave. No, you can't have mine. My lease doesn't end until 5 years from now :)