For one thing - a Saturn V replica isn't really feasible to use for much more than placing things in orbit. The amount of resources needed to create and launch the vehicle is so large that noone can fail to notice that it's going to happen. So any conspiracy theorists thinking that Al-Quaeda is going to use a Saturn V replica for terrorist actions is way out in the deep end.
Slice it the other way - the Saturn V is a historical monument, and the knowledge and materials available today will allow anybody that wants to build a competing vehicle the ability to build a rocket that is much more efficient.
So the end result here is that somebody probably lost their mind and had to motivate that they actually were doing something to protect the security. There are other issues that are much more pressing than shredding Saturn V documents to improve security.
I can state a lot of interesting alternatives, I refrain from it just to avoid giving anybody with terrorist ideas a hint.
why I have set up my email to run SMTPS and IMAPS. This will work until someone figures out how to inspect encrypted traffic.
And if nothing else it's possible to tunnel a lot of information through SSH and other techniques.
OK, one day the encryption may be broken, or that some ISP thinks that all SSH must go through a gateway first... In that case the net will really start to die...
is what comes to mind. Of course - children has to be protected, but not by filtering but by education. Tell them what's out there and how to protect yourself.
Don't give away too much information about yourself.
Don't be specific about your age when chatting.
Avoid pictures of yourself, use a picture of your pet or something instead.
If you still use a picture of yourself - use one that's neutral or formal.
Only tell your closest friends where you are going and where you live.
Detailed descriptions of hobbies, sports, opinions etc are OK, that's nothing unusual about that - unless you have a really weird hobby. (Taxidermist is OK, Necrophilism isn't)
Be aware that there are sites out there that only want to use you or your computer. "Britney Spears Nude" is very likely a hoax and a trojan.
Not everybody out there are what they claim to be.
If you give away your email address - use a disposable email address that you can close when you get too much junk mail.
If you are to meet a chat friend live - bring a few friends to the first meeting and meet at a neutral public place.
Stay protected all the time when surfing - use up to date anti-virus, but not even they are up to the latest threats so be careful.
Don't install any browser plugins that aren't from a well-known source.
Web filter programs are not really good, they can't catch everything - and they only filters out known bad sites - which means that they can't really find the really bad sites. Unless you run a whitelist where you only allow disney and a few other "good" sites, which will throw away the usefulness of the web too.
if users are locked into the services of their ISP then the usage and usefulness of the internet will be out the drain. Of course those who use it will bet better bandwidth, but for the other people that want cheap reliable long-distance communication they will lose.
This doesn't mean that ISP:s can't install caching servers for the most commonly used services to ease of some of the bandwidth.
depends on several factors. Linux has an advantage in that it comes in a lot of distributions. The disadvantage is that some have better quality than others.
There is also a lack of consistency when it comes to packaging. There are RPM and Debian packages as the two "big" ones. A unification of packages would help the software developers.
And the hen and egg situation is also present. Linux versions of the more commonly used tools/utilities like Adobe reader, Flash, Skype etc. all lags behind the Windows versions. (there may be exceptions). One exception is Java, which is released for Linux almost at the same time as the Windows version.
Something that Windows still is better at is the configuration tools for the OS. You are of course still able to hand-hack the config files under Linux but not all users are able to do that. The ability to easily configure triple-head displays are actually better under Windows than under Linux. But you will be able to do it under Linux too if you hand-hack xorg.conf.
On the other hand Linux is really great when you want to do really complex disk configurations. You have full control over the partitioning and not as in Windows that you are forced into an extended partition over which you have no control if you create a second partition. There is no consideration at all in Windows that it maybe is going to co-exist with another OS.
Another drawback with Linux is that it seems to me that the fonts available are often fuzzy or aren't relaxing to view. Here Windows has the upper hand, but I have figured out that the "Cleartype" feature of windows doesn't help a bit, it only adds more fuzziness to the fonts.
When it comes to stability there is no clear advantage for any camp, both have it's share of small problems, but the constant need for reboots are a big Windows problem.
When it comes to software support availability there is no advantage for either camp. Linux support is depending on which distribution you use while Windows support is either expensive or you will get the infamous "have you tried to reinstall" reply.
A problem that also exists are all the web sites that runs pages specific for Internet Explorer. This is a problem that causes users to think that Linux is bad just because Firefox or whatever browser used won't display the page correctly. Microsoft! - Take the Acid2 test and be W3C conformant and come back! And drop the use/support of vbscript as soon as you can!
In the end it does however come down to what you really are going to do with your desktop. Are you just browsing the internet you will probably don't notice much difference, but you will be safer for now if you run Linux. Mostly because the malicious web pages are written for Windows. If you are doing office work you may depend on the availability of business software for your computer. Not only the Word/Calc-features but also accounting, invoicing etc.
I'm moving to a new ISP since my current one has started blocking port 25 in and out. I run my own mail server, so I appreciate that Uniserve's TOS explicitly allow servers (clause #19). However, they also explicitly say that they insert ads:
My ISP is at least only blocking outgoing port 25, which means that I'm still able to run my own mail server, but outgoing mails has to be routed through their server. That's a minor problem.
To be able to run my own mails through the mailserver whenever I'm offsite is no big problem since I have set up the mailserver to run SMTPS and only accept mails from authenticated sessions there.
Well... If you want to keep safe you will probably need more than thin sheets of lead, you will probably need rather thick lead walls as well as being submerged in a deep lake or in the ocean. And don't forget to stack up with food for at least a year together with seeds to plant.
You will also need radiation detectors to make sure it's safe to come out.
A supernova is different from a nuke in the way that a nuke provides a short flash of radiation while a supernova's radiation is hard and stretches over days. This means that if we get a direct hit by the radiation from a supernova the current earth will end as we know it. It may be as bad as the end of the dinosaurs. Greenhouse Warming is nothing compared to this.
And anyway it's not even sure that a shelter will protect you against the radiation. It may only prolong the inevitable.
However - there is no need to panic - it doesn't help. Just realize that the world we live on is fragile and that we can't expect to have a resolution ready for everything. But this doesn't exclude the fact that we still should be trying to protect us. All those petty indifferences about religion are insignificant on the cosmic scale.
First it's terrorists, then it's foreigners, then it's known criminals, then it's suspected criminals, then it's the general average Joe, and then it's everyone. Starts to look like stepping stones to the Soviet state... Control over all humans, what they think and how they should vote. Upcoming steps will be an amendment that drops the freedom of speech and removal of some amendments like the fifth amendment (which seems to be invalid at Guantanamo Bay anyway).
There is a difference between watching and being intrusive. A lot of people in business that actually make their travel decision on a very short notice. Too few have been reading the dark future books or been watching the dark future films. It seems to be a really dark future around the corner, and maybe it's time to get a hideout ready somewhere. It's too late to get an alternate identity so you will have to keep a low profile with the one you have.
And in the end there will be only one party - and you must vote for it. Only government approved clothes, TV shows and commercials are allowed. Travel is restricted to government approved vehicles on protected routes. Damn any kid that visits a friend unless a travel plan has been filed. Marriages are going to be arranged by the government by genetic profile. Unemployed are sent out to do all dirty work, and prisoners has to do all the worst dirty work. Death penalty will be applied for any crime that is deemed to be "against the state" - which would be most crimes.
...the bacteria culture you have on your keyboard - are they really dangerous?
The majority of all bacteria around are harmless to humans unless you have an immune defense problem. And those on a keyboard aren't that bad otherwise we would have seen a massive health problem.
OK, when you see the dirt on the keyboard it's time to clean it...
As it seems to me, all those patent suits and bad patents in the US is actually resulting in the fact that development of new technology slows down in the US. Once the US was the breeding ground for high-tech and fast development, but now it seems to me that that lawsuits, and dangerous politicians controlled by right-wing churches are the only contribution left.
Flamebait mode off:
Patents may have their place, but the problem is that they are monopolistic. And too many patents are granted even though they are obvious. Initiate a rule that requires the patent office to be liable to cover for all costs if a patent is declared invalid in court. This will clearly make the patent office more careful. In my opinion - it's better to invent than to run around filing lawsuits all across. You may lose some advantage on some features, but you will keep the steam up and run ahead of the competition on others by pure momentum.
Today's hotbed for productivity is East Asia. Even though they are copying everything from watches to 200 ton gearboxes there are also other areas where they are well ahead. Just pull up your head from your own sandbox at home and take a look. The funny thing is not that they make copies of expensive watches, the funny thing is that they don't try to make their own brands of their production instead.
it was interesting to read. Anyway - when I connected it looked like the ad servers were/.:ed... And by the way - clicking on the ads will cost the advertiser money. Just figure out a way to create an application that auto-clicks all ads and redirect them to/dev/null or something.
OK, back to topic: From what I have seen, Linux is now at par with Windows when it comes to usablity, and it's better than Windows when it comes to drivers (with the exception of advanced graphics drivers and support for USB-connected WLAN devices.)
behind SELinux is good, and it seems to do the job when correctly configured.
The big problem here is that SELinux is overly cryptic to configure and that the logging regarding access failures are extremely cryptic. This results in a situation where SELinux is often considered more of a problem than an enhancement. The designers of SELinux seems to have forgotten that the log files often are read by humans and that humans act upon the data from the log files and responses from commands issued.
One such example is the log event below. It obviously tells me that there was an access denied to an object, but it is still rather tricky to figure out which context that I have to adjust (or if I even CAN adjust anything).
Jun 3 13:50:12 spix kernel: audit(1180871412.944:291): avc: denied { search } for pid=19556 comm="smbd" name="home" dev=hda3 ino=1822465 scontext=system_u:system_r:smbd_t:s0 tcontext=system_u:object_r:home_root_t:s0 tclass=dir
And anyway, the information about SELinux that you can get hold of still has some rather deep cracks that seems to originate from the fact that the person writing the documentation thinks it's obvious.
Another problem is that SELinux is riddled with a lot of new terms and it takes time to inhale them, or as you say 'grok' them and their use. To make matters worse you can also look into the sub-realm of SELinux called MLS.
And still - SELinux is still only good for addressing issues of security between different applications. Internal application security is still not addressed. Often this isn't a big issue, but when it comes to complex software as web browsers and their plugins it's really an issue. A web browser of today is practically a virtual machine that executes HTML and other code and allows for remote installations.
This results in problems where malicious people can install their features in this environment to get hold of personal information that the user enters when accessing for example bank services online. This is of course not limited to web browsers but also to other intelligent applications like email applications, word processors etc.
It's not unlikely that a virus like 'Melissa' will appear again, next time utilizing a new hole. Not all viruses are of malicious intent either.
the fact that the "nv" driver is buggy there is a lot of room left to improve on here.
I experienced a problem with the "nv" driver on my computer with dual 7600GS cards and three displays. It wasn't possible to run all three displays at all with the "nv" driver, but the binary driver from nvidia works. The part that I'm not satisfied with is the need for an alternate driver.
I haven't tried the Nouveau driver, but somebody else may. As I see it, Nvidia should release all information needed to allow others to write suitable drivers. (should apply to all HW manufacturers).
It seems like this is going to get really ugly really fast...
And all this for a very trivial problem.
Interesting fact is that the water in the toilet bowl often is very low on bacteria just because it is exchanged rather often so if your pet tries to drink that water it's not that much of a problem.
One other thing to consider is that in some parts of the world you are running the risk of being invaded by unwanted pets through the toilet, so you better should have the lid down and kept in place by something heavy there... Sometimes it may be a good idea to flush before and after...
"You just made a call to CIA/NCIS/FBI/NSA/KGB/Area 51/Special Unit 2/Stargate Command and your call is currently tracked down and monitored for further actions."
Tell them to wait, and play up some sounds as if in the bathroom. Flushing toilet, barfing etc...
Same as previous but to some service providing the current time, today's bible word etc.
Tell them to call back on a different number later, same services as before.
Connect a modem/fax to your phone line for a while.
Give them answers with a grave accent that appears to be undefined.
Ask them for their email address and publish it.
Same thing for a fax number.
Start all calls to the department with: "This call will cost $9.95 unless the correct code is entered."
Forward all calls that lacks caller-ID to an answering machine or answering service. Best is an answering service that can select by discretion if the call shall be forwarded or not.
Same as before, but forwarded to a fax...
"Oh what a sexy voice you have, I think I will...". Best said slowly.
Forward the calls to a randomly selected public payphone. Too bad you can't listen to the conversation when someone answers...
According to paragraph; (insert a random or favourite number here) of the law of (insert state/country here) your call is in violation of the beforementioned paragraph.
Hire someone on skid row to go to the interview for you. May cost you a bottle or two...
Hire someone from Hells Angels to go to the interview. May be more expensive, but also more fun.
Look up the phone number to an unpopular politician and tell them to call that number instead.
Give them the number to your manager.
Figure out who's hiring them and then challenge for a paintball war.
Figure out who's hiring them and ask the fire department to do a fire drill there.
Figure out who's hiring them and order a delivery of fresh manure for their lawn. (assuming they have a lawn.)
Figure out who's hiring them and see to that there has to be an asbestos inspection or other popular inspection done.
Figure out who's hiring them and ask the IRS to do a thorough review.
While you are at it, ask the IRS to review the headhunting company.
I haven't sen the show, but this was a good laugh... What arw you going to do with all those peanuts? Throw a humungous party? Just get a Beer sponsor and throw a party!
On the other hand - one series that I'm missing is Max Headroom, it's dark, it's about a near future and it's all about money, media companies, viewer figures and shady affairs. (Sounds familiar?)
It may be time to pick up the show again - the old episodes are a little outdated; no internet, no flat-screen TV:s etc.
But on the other hand RIAA and MPAA may not want to see this...
Seems to be exaggerating things a little. The Bush administration is probably one of the worst ever, but don't forget the anti-communist era with McCarthy. The foreign politics of the current administration isn't doing things any good, and there haven't been any visible efforts to have any smoothness at all in the foreign policy lately. Since Colin Powell stepped down I haven't seen any real attempts to be smooth in foreign policy from the US.
Many tends to say that Carter wasn't a good president and that "his non-presidency is worse than his presidency" (From FOX channel), but they did get it wrong. He actually tried very hard to find diplomatic solutions to the foreign relations and at least didn't make things worse. He tried to resolve the situation between Israelis and Palestinians. A failure was the US Embassy in Iran, but the real failure there was the attempt to use a minimal force to free the hostages, but compared to the Iraq situation that was a bleak failure and also understandable that a minimal force was used in a volatile region. The freeing of the hostages was ultimately through diplomatic channels and even though they were freed after he left office the result has to be credited to him and his administration.
Giuliani may not be the best alternative, and may or may not do a good job. There is a difference between being a mayor and a president, but it's not that different. The question is more if he can stand up to the demands of the position. There are alternative candidates that may or may not be good to be president, the problem is that most politicians are there for the money and the power and not for serving the citizens.
Personally I find Barak Obama interesting, and he may be the fresh approach needed to clean the house after Bush. On the other hand, the cleaning may be a task that can be a real problem and maybe a republican president should be the cleaner. In that case I'm more thinking of somebody like "Terminator" (Hmmm... Demolition Man flashback...) that's carismatic and gets things done (maybe not all things right, but something happens).
One must also consider that the economic situation today is that the US is having economic problems and we do have good times now, so what will the bad times be in a few years? Consider that when selecting the upcoming president, "do I trust this man/woman through BAD times?"
but the spammers keep up their attempt to kill email in it's current form.
This doesn't mean that the basic idea behind email is dead, but you must also think twice about how you use email.
Banish the use of "Reply All", it will just clog other user's mailboxes.
Keep your messages short, if you can't say what you need in 5 to 10 lines - forget it. Especially important for internal company information. Only a few people reads the 200 line memos sent! The rest are too busy with their everyday work.
Never expect an answer the same day. If it's time-critical you should use the phone.
Joke emails may be argued to decrease productivity, and in excess they will. A few now and then may on the other hand take the brain on a short vacation and let it come back with fresh powers.
Auto-sort your messages into different folders depending on sender and/or topic. Current tools are next to worthless when it comes to these functions, especially Outlook, which is hard to understand and configure right even for seasoned programmers.
Spam messages aren't normally signed, so if you run a signed email policy you will be able to drop spam messages.
Missing feature in most email programs are a 'best before' that the sender can apply or the recipient can apply when reading the message.
Use the priority function in your email, but use it sensible. Abusing the high-priority option will cause it to lose it's meaning and get all high-priority flagged emails considered as extreme junk.
Slashdot Mirror
like the 3-dimensional navigator SpaceNavigator.
Slice it the other way - the Saturn V is a historical monument, and the knowledge and materials available today will allow anybody that wants to build a competing vehicle the ability to build a rocket that is much more efficient.
So the end result here is that somebody probably lost their mind and had to motivate that they actually were doing something to protect the security. There are other issues that are much more pressing than shredding Saturn V documents to improve security.
I can state a lot of interesting alternatives, I refrain from it just to avoid giving anybody with terrorist ideas a hint.
And if nothing else it's possible to tunnel a lot of information through SSH and other techniques.
OK, one day the encryption may be broken, or that some ISP thinks that all SSH must go through a gateway first... In that case the net will really start to die...
Don't give away too much information about yourself.
just set up an email account and publish the email address, pick all incoming spam and you get enough...
This doesn't mean that ISP:s can't install caching servers for the most commonly used services to ease of some of the bandwidth.
There is also a lack of consistency when it comes to packaging. There are RPM and Debian packages as the two "big" ones. A unification of packages would help the software developers.
And the hen and egg situation is also present. Linux versions of the more commonly used tools/utilities like Adobe reader, Flash, Skype etc. all lags behind the Windows versions. (there may be exceptions). One exception is Java, which is released for Linux almost at the same time as the Windows version.
Something that Windows still is better at is the configuration tools for the OS. You are of course still able to hand-hack the config files under Linux but not all users are able to do that. The ability to easily configure triple-head displays are actually better under Windows than under Linux. But you will be able to do it under Linux too if you hand-hack xorg.conf.
On the other hand Linux is really great when you want to do really complex disk configurations. You have full control over the partitioning and not as in Windows that you are forced into an extended partition over which you have no control if you create a second partition. There is no consideration at all in Windows that it maybe is going to co-exist with another OS.
Another drawback with Linux is that it seems to me that the fonts available are often fuzzy or aren't relaxing to view. Here Windows has the upper hand, but I have figured out that the "Cleartype" feature of windows doesn't help a bit, it only adds more fuzziness to the fonts.
When it comes to stability there is no clear advantage for any camp, both have it's share of small problems, but the constant need for reboots are a big Windows problem.
When it comes to software support availability there is no advantage for either camp. Linux support is depending on which distribution you use while Windows support is either expensive or you will get the infamous "have you tried to reinstall" reply.
A problem that also exists are all the web sites that runs pages specific for Internet Explorer. This is a problem that causes users to think that Linux is bad just because Firefox or whatever browser used won't display the page correctly. Microsoft! - Take the Acid2 test and be W3C conformant and come back! And drop the use/support of vbscript as soon as you can!
In the end it does however come down to what you really are going to do with your desktop. Are you just browsing the internet you will probably don't notice much difference, but you will be safer for now if you run Linux. Mostly because the malicious web pages are written for Windows. If you are doing office work you may depend on the availability of business software for your computer. Not only the Word/Calc-features but also accounting, invoicing etc.
It seems to me that this is completely forgotten by the Bush government.
To be able to run my own mails through the mailserver whenever I'm offsite is no big problem since I have set up the mailserver to run SMTPS and only accept mails from authenticated sessions there.
You will also need radiation detectors to make sure it's safe to come out.
A supernova is different from a nuke in the way that a nuke provides a short flash of radiation while a supernova's radiation is hard and stretches over days. This means that if we get a direct hit by the radiation from a supernova the current earth will end as we know it. It may be as bad as the end of the dinosaurs. Greenhouse Warming is nothing compared to this.
And anyway it's not even sure that a shelter will protect you against the radiation. It may only prolong the inevitable.
However - there is no need to panic - it doesn't help. Just realize that the world we live on is fragile and that we can't expect to have a resolution ready for everything. But this doesn't exclude the fact that we still should be trying to protect us. All those petty indifferences about religion are insignificant on the cosmic scale.
No need to do a panic-buy of Vista.
It's likely that even SP2 for Vista will be out and around by then.
And when the time comes to do an upgrade it's probably time to look what else is on the market...
There is a difference between watching and being intrusive. A lot of people in business that actually make their travel decision on a very short notice. Too few have been reading the dark future books or been watching the dark future films. It seems to be a really dark future around the corner, and maybe it's time to get a hideout ready somewhere. It's too late to get an alternate identity so you will have to keep a low profile with the one you have.
And in the end there will be only one party - and you must vote for it. Only government approved clothes, TV shows and commercials are allowed. Travel is restricted to government approved vehicles on protected routes. Damn any kid that visits a friend unless a travel plan has been filed. Marriages are going to be arranged by the government by genetic profile. Unemployed are sent out to do all dirty work, and prisoners has to do all the worst dirty work. Death penalty will be applied for any crime that is deemed to be "against the state" - which would be most crimes.
The majority of all bacteria around are harmless to humans unless you have an immune defense problem. And those on a keyboard aren't that bad otherwise we would have seen a massive health problem.
OK, when you see the dirt on the keyboard it's time to clean it...
Interesting to read about events from a bygone era.
As it seems to me, all those patent suits and bad patents in the US is actually resulting in the fact that development of new technology slows down in the US. Once the US was the breeding ground for high-tech and fast development, but now it seems to me that that lawsuits, and dangerous politicians controlled by right-wing churches are the only contribution left.
Patents may have their place, but the problem is that they are monopolistic. And too many patents are granted even though they are obvious. Initiate a rule that requires the patent office to be liable to cover for all costs if a patent is declared invalid in court. This will clearly make the patent office more careful. In my opinion - it's better to invent than to run around filing lawsuits all across. You may lose some advantage on some features, but you will keep the steam up and run ahead of the competition on others by pure momentum.
Today's hotbed for productivity is East Asia. Even though they are copying everything from watches to 200 ton gearboxes there are also other areas where they are well ahead. Just pull up your head from your own sandbox at home and take a look. The funny thing is not that they make copies of expensive watches, the funny thing is that they don't try to make their own brands of their production instead.
it was interesting to read. Anyway - when I connected it looked like the ad servers were /.:ed... And by the way - clicking on the ads will cost the advertiser money. Just figure out a way to create an application that auto-clicks all ads and redirect them to /dev/null or something.
OK, back to topic: From what I have seen, Linux is now at par with Windows when it comes to usablity, and it's better than Windows when it comes to drivers (with the exception of advanced graphics drivers and support for USB-connected WLAN devices.)
Maybe they have registered under the software clausule?
The big problem here is that SELinux is overly cryptic to configure and that the logging regarding access failures are extremely cryptic. This results in a situation where SELinux is often considered more of a problem than an enhancement. The designers of SELinux seems to have forgotten that the log files often are read by humans and that humans act upon the data from the log files and responses from commands issued.
One such example is the log event below. It obviously tells me that there was an access denied to an object, but it is still rather tricky to figure out which context that I have to adjust (or if I even CAN adjust anything).
And anyway, the information about SELinux that you can get hold of still has some rather deep cracks that seems to originate from the fact that the person writing the documentation thinks it's obvious.
Another problem is that SELinux is riddled with a lot of new terms and it takes time to inhale them, or as you say 'grok' them and their use. To make matters worse you can also look into the sub-realm of SELinux called MLS.
And still - SELinux is still only good for addressing issues of security between different applications. Internal application security is still not addressed. Often this isn't a big issue, but when it comes to complex software as web browsers and their plugins it's really an issue. A web browser of today is practically a virtual machine that executes HTML and other code and allows for remote installations.
This results in problems where malicious people can install their features in this environment to get hold of personal information that the user enters when accessing for example bank services online. This is of course not limited to web browsers but also to other intelligent applications like email applications, word processors etc.
It's not unlikely that a virus like 'Melissa' will appear again, next time utilizing a new hole. Not all viruses are of malicious intent either.
I experienced a problem with the "nv" driver on my computer with dual 7600GS cards and three displays. It wasn't possible to run all three displays at all with the "nv" driver, but the binary driver from nvidia works. The part that I'm not satisfied with is the need for an alternate driver.
I haven't tried the Nouveau driver, but somebody else may. As I see it, Nvidia should release all information needed to allow others to write suitable drivers. (should apply to all HW manufacturers).
This could allow for a better search result when using for example "APPLE NEAR MACINTOSH" or "APPLE NEAR BEATLES"
Ho hum... Times changes and not always for the better...
And all this for a very trivial problem.
Interesting fact is that the water in the toilet bowl often is very low on bacteria just because it is exchanged rather often so if your pet tries to drink that water it's not that much of a problem.
One other thing to consider is that in some parts of the world you are running the risk of being invaded by unwanted pets through the toilet, so you better should have the lid down and kept in place by something heavy there... Sometimes it may be a good idea to flush before and after...
On the other hand - one series that I'm missing is Max Headroom, it's dark, it's about a near future and it's all about money, media companies, viewer figures and shady affairs. (Sounds familiar?)
It may be time to pick up the show again - the old episodes are a little outdated; no internet, no flat-screen TV:s etc.
But on the other hand RIAA and MPAA may not want to see this...
Many tends to say that Carter wasn't a good president and that "his non-presidency is worse than his presidency" (From FOX channel), but they did get it wrong. He actually tried very hard to find diplomatic solutions to the foreign relations and at least didn't make things worse. He tried to resolve the situation between Israelis and Palestinians. A failure was the US Embassy in Iran, but the real failure there was the attempt to use a minimal force to free the hostages, but compared to the Iraq situation that was a bleak failure and also understandable that a minimal force was used in a volatile region. The freeing of the hostages was ultimately through diplomatic channels and even though they were freed after he left office the result has to be credited to him and his administration.
Giuliani may not be the best alternative, and may or may not do a good job. There is a difference between being a mayor and a president, but it's not that different. The question is more if he can stand up to the demands of the position. There are alternative candidates that may or may not be good to be president, the problem is that most politicians are there for the money and the power and not for serving the citizens.
Personally I find Barak Obama interesting, and he may be the fresh approach needed to clean the house after Bush. On the other hand, the cleaning may be a task that can be a real problem and maybe a republican president should be the cleaner. In that case I'm more thinking of somebody like "Terminator" (Hmmm... Demolition Man flashback...) that's carismatic and gets things done (maybe not all things right, but something happens).
One must also consider that the economic situation today is that the US is having economic problems and we do have good times now, so what will the bad times be in a few years? Consider that when selecting the upcoming president, "do I trust this man/woman through BAD times?"
This doesn't mean that the basic idea behind email is dead, but you must also think twice about how you use email.