Its not banks, per se; its the massive investment banks, who justify their existance in their ability to help multi-nationals raise billions for M-n-A. Like moving an auto-plant from MI to CH One only need look at the 80's to see where that kind of leverage got us. (now its 6T covering 36T of debt)
Right, except for the legislatures they corrupt. Try telling the poor schmuck whose water bill tripled after Bechtel got privatization rights; or the rancher facing a lawsuit by eminent domain in Montana. The examples are endless and if you don't think corps control you are blind or sleeping.
"Should the full facts be known casual observers might come to an entirely different conclusion."
A Neurotypically correct statement, but falling short in many ways. I fully get how pursuit and physical contact affects reactions; of police or anyone. But the violence of the offender should not be used to justify a violent reaction on the part of authority; specially when they out-number in strength or weapons. It's supposedly why they're called 'professionals'.
What you see in a clip is what you get. It speaks for itself. Anyone can generally tell if its over the top, excessive, fundamentally sick. (what usually happens after the clip is far worse)
Whether its taking down a 'perp', pepper-spraying someone while your partner holds open their eyes, or calmly wasting a crowd of people who pose no immediate threat.... it's offensive and flat out wrong. The people who assume they're entitled to do so need to be reminded that they are not.
I've worked on Adult in-patient units; i know what crazy can do and what restraint means. It does not mean being vindictive or brutally cruel.
Regardless of spin or what's left out, some things are over the top, beyond reasonable, flatoutwrong. You are arguing, fundamentally, for the right of police identity to be kept 'secret'. Despite the fact that its nearly impossible for anyone else to do; so as to widen the info (and accountability) gap.
A ruling by a judge, the influence of LEA's, should have been easily anticipated and circumvention plans in order. IP's, domains, websites, should be fundamentally disposable alphachars. Members, subscribers....route around the law like packets on the net. So another site should be hard for ISPs to continually detect.
CopWatch in the USA has been around at least 10 years. I found them researching the web to beat a speeding ticket. They are a solid organization,.fr is prob equiv i suspect. I can't believe they are not more known about, but for all the cameras out there.... I cant believe this thread hasn't mentioned the USA groups who will do the same as the french ones.
i suppose 'outrageous' has to be in the eye of the beholder. Not having checked out the referenced sites 1stHand, i wouldnt know.
I can say this regardless: A video should speak for itself! Some things no amount of spin can justify; they are just plain wrong. Self-supervision is a recipe for failure.
I wish the PD == FD. Stay in the D until summoned and be sincerely appreciated for putting out the fire, stopping something in progress.
Stop patrolling like an occupier more than an occupant. Instead, we get plate-reading camera-mounted 'smart' squad cars to capture every cars' plate it sees. Always looking for suspects; comming soon to some depressed town in a constitution-free zone. Thanks probably to a nearby fusion center.
Having right to photograph authority, the police, means nothing if you don't exercise it. Outcomes may be a mixed bag; sometime appros sometimes less than so. It is better than the status quo.
And if a cop wants to have a facebook, do the 'socialnet', then they accept what all the rest of us do; public exposure, come what may.
They are public servants, not overlording, corruptable, unaccountable, self-appointed guardians of "PublicSafety".
I've grown weary of this adversarial relationship between the plea-bargianed JusticeSystem and (naively) the people they are supposed to protect.
It starts on the road and in the street, where the blue-coats (and agents) patrol. People who i would sincerely like to call in an emergency were it not for their us-vs-them mentality. Not unlike living near 5 prisons in NorthCountry; where 'officers' forget to go off the clock. Power breeds contempt; condones too much to preserve a myth.
CopWatch is about keeping authority 'civil' wherever possible whenever possible. US copwatch forums are replete with stories of strangers witnessing (taping) cop-stops (being detained). There's bound to be mistakes; but the good done outweighs the bad.
In the words of another/.'s postings:
Don't use your own ignorance as an excuse to belittle the actions of those who have decided to stand up and say (do) something.
"is another Kent State, and you will never see a protest again." I attended Kent, was there in May1970. I was there in May1971 also. It's worth noting that the D.C. march that year was postponed by about 2 weeks to allow for the 4May1971 rememberance in Kent. I was part of the "Kent Krazy" (so named by pundits) contingent who went to D.C. that year. Just so you know, more than 5000 ppl were arrested; "after" the KSU massacre a year before.
Janet Napolitano was interviewed by Charlie Rose a couple of weeks ago and I was floored when she started talking about how DHS was going after domestic 'persons of interest' (the illegal enemy combatant ) who lurk withing our borders with their "IED's" Considering that a cherry bomb or M80 could be an IED, or just about anything really, it spooked me that her fervor seemed to be focused on citizens. Adding the sprinkles of tech, 50 or more 'fusion centers' and laws like this turd make me suspect that the U.S. is soon going the China route of totalitarianism; and sooner than later.
I was under the impression that having no single leader (or even the need for 'leaders') was the purpose of both (conservative) anarchy and (liberal) communism extremes. A right to exist and a right to share the wealth.
Belief in the need for leadership only draws the wrong crowd. I hope this is just a 'dry-run' for things to come. What is happening in the streets cannot be expressed by any proxy for the collective group. We're ALL pissed off. You know our demands. Stop the Lies, give back the loot you've ripped off and maybe avoid jailtime. Give us truth and maybe will give back reconciliation.
anybody compelled enough to be drawn into this should be OK with it too. You're correct, it's hardly Chicago'68 (or more recent elsewhere). The whole purpose of protesting is to get knocked around and arrested in the second place; first being to stop traffic. Property destruction, while sometimes inevitable, sometimes warranted is usually only a last-ditch resort out of desperation. Regardless, i'm starting to believe that if the mission is gridlock at a cost of bruises and bail money and trips to the courthouse; then why not just have flashmobs of people who rented a car, drove into town, park in the streets and walk away. Call in and report the car missing even. Save everyone the hassle of confrontation and there aren't enough tows in the city to keep it from being an all-day affair. Then have a 2nd wave do it the next day, and the next after that. Bet towing a car, finding lot space, etc... is more difficult than busting a person and processing them in court!
"and heard and saw either Ron Paul libertarians new agee types"... If by new agee you mean a modern equivalent to SNCC, SDS, NLF, e.g. today's lefty terrorists:) sharing the same space with goldman anarchists and goldwater libertarians then maybe they'll be a bridge to the new front on the people's war on "crony capitalism"
Like me to reply to an AC, but you've got it wrong. Not smarter at all; or, by your NT definition of smart, outright retarded (lets say contrarian). Its just recognizing different patterns, different ways of connecting dots. Not better just different.
Stupid and Smart co-exist quite nicely in my multi-tasking asymetric reality. For me at least, fitting in, 'asimilating', means 'bark less, wag more' and mindfull of the post-it note stuck to my frontal lobe. Remembering to remember.... Being present, intentional, conscious.
Controlling my penchant for total honesty, curbing my desire for clarity, and caring less about the need for understanding and being understood; e.g. trusting the process more. Otherwise, I get in trouble; just a matter of time. The charm wears off and and I turn into an 'effing stupid aspie'
Recent insight: My resume used to say 'good problem solver' until i realized that more than 1/2 my problems were of my own making
"Now a days a president has only one, solid good chance to have a [memorable] legacy" It hasn't been raised on/. so i'll add my.02
Vietnam
No president since, incl BOB, has been free of its shadow. Barack goes to bed at night refraining "i'm not going to be remembered as the guy who lost another war". In fact, quaint and old as it is, I'd say that the bulk of USA's ills are comming from the blowback of the 60's. From 3 assinations to gov dope dealing to agent-orange. Those memories may not be in most people's headspace, but you can bet it looms large from highest command to the homeless and incarcerated.
Obama needs the military for his legacy more than he needs the people who elected him. "His war" is what drives him at the end of the day.
No public option, no closing gitmo, renditions, domestic surveilance, sucking bankster ass...
With a big sigh of relief GWB wispered in BOB's ear: "at least i managed not to lose a war, that's all yours now"; and now the full magnitude of body bags and returning vets with missing bits (to say nothing of the costs of what we owe them) being 'his legacy' intrudes upon his sweeter dreams of being the great mediator.
Banish the warmongers and everyone will have better health care.
Considering that the evolution of conglomeration has many corps larger/richer than most countries, their kingdoms are no less contested territory. Then, take the Carlyle Group; small and very powerful. They, like their ilk, squeeze, pressure, co-opt and trade corps like pawns in a park-bench/avenue chess game. It must be so, otherwise so many people would not be 'failing up'. Immediate employees are no less disposable than the floor worker, boards are adversaries to be mastered. Our zions of industry are a clique unto themselves, for themselves exclusively. The oilygarchs are big game hunters, corporations are their prey, their trophies. We, in their minds, are inconsquential, predictible, controllable and disposable liabilities. Their job is to devalue the work we do. Our 'Managers' are not standing up for us, but taking whatever gravy they can before it all falls apart in a complex heap.
Who has power will become an interesting question Corporations, like their shell counterparts, have no meaning whatever. They are a body of faith in the system. What's now possibly an offshore Postal Box might have left a big, empty, toxified wasteland in their wake as they disolved, went bankrupt (by design), and morphed into some global hydra-headed consumption machine looking for investors. I've heard that of the Fortune 1000, of those HQ'd in the US, around half have some foreign investment. Of that 1/2, half again are (+-5) 50% foreign owned. Our government have sold us as a bill of goods for foreign sovereign debt. Follow that money, the x-fer of public wealth. The privatized consumption machine that made 6% look pitiful in all aspects. While GM (triad?) was shrinking itself into GMAC in MI, it's Chinese head exec was on camera talking up stunning growth and profits. Corps are streamlining themselves into paper holding companies because they know only the bankers, the institutional investors, have the power. Corps gone mobile. Elites gone virtual. Us, left to clean up a mess after realizing there is no spoon. Sorry, needed to vent; found myself here. You have the power, use it where you can.
Only people have power; corps were 1st given that status only bec it was too easy for the 'owners' to slip away and not be held personally accountable. These days that is impossible. The executives, their boards, institutional investors, their hedge-fund cronies in Greenwich, they dont care how their investment is spent, only in the promised returns, too smart or too connected or too big to fail, numb to the sorrows that come from its yields and dividends. How much power does it take to wield disaster capitalism from rice paddy to waterfront city. To economically impose debts upon a corrupted country only to come back as vulture funds to bleed em dry a 2nd time. How much power does it take to orchestrate a massive bailout, get free, 0% money to sit on and leverage, and not only survive a bad economy - but be better off for it.
I'd like to think that sharing data is neutral, the human condition. It's just asking to be shared if it has any value. Unfortunately i suspect we have lost (if ever had) all self-restraint when it comes to more and more of it. Gleaning info like bit-coin mining, a great obsession that seldom leads to making things better, even with more informed choices. We all seem to listen to what we want (are programmed to hear). Our loss of privacy is just a by-product of that addictive need. Growing State and Corporate Intelligence espionage (for lack of beter word), the data is just another commodity. For little peeps like me, it means that, despite signing onto the NCL, i get calls from "david" (maybe jitender?) in "TN" (maybe mumbai?) informing me that i 'requested online information about diabetes' and wanted a contribution for research and do i have diabetes? or someone i know, or.... oh such a sad empty pitch in broken english.
Well spoke. But the binary is that either (both those conditions are met) or not; marked now in inverse proportion; true being a 'less good' and 'more bad' place. I conclude its more about having the ability to control what i (a citizen) want divulged and that in accepting public office one sacrifices any claims to privacy by default. Considering the levels of hypocracy comming from the entrenchments; the entire point of politics seems to be bargaining with skeletons in closets.
Otherwise, our Supreme Court today would be held in Contempt of Country; most of Congress would be ridden shamed out of D.C
Diebold's are voting machines where you choose from a list. My machine is more like an ATM, which could be open-sourced and provide a reciept. Hell, a State could even provide a website that lists the "Yea" voters that you could double-check on.
Your idea about juries is a good one, I like mine because it includes everyone in the process.
I second getting rid of federal elections too! It harks back to a time when D.C. was a far-off place,reached by horseback and many days ride from one's home district. Then, it made sense. Today it makes no sense at all.
I say we replace our congresscritters with a big LCD screen in their chair in the House. That screen represents the peoples' voice back home. And, back home, instead of a congresscritters' office, we could have a bi-partisan committee that serves to inform the public of current legislation and play an active role in shaping it according to the voice of its citizens.
Voting on laws is done via ATM-like machines distributed around the State at convenience stores (or state-liquor outlets). Swiping your license is a "Yes" vote, not voting is a "No" vote. This implies that a citizen must go out of their way to vote FOR a thing they happen to want.
The votes get counted and weighted againt the voter registration list. A majority vote == Yea and the next day (voting day in D.C) the LCD shows a big green thumbs up:)
The idea of congress was a necessary evil when it was first created and for which we no longer have a need. Our borked system can only be repaired with direct democracy. This would be a step in the right direction.
I used to be a big supporter of Patrick. He was the one person I thought I could trust to stand up for the little guy. Now, after 8yrs of BushCo and 4+ of hardcore neo-con politics, I suspect he's just working on his exit strategy. Not unlike CDodd. I doubt he'll be running for re-election next term. I just wish he made a better choice in this regard because he's going to be on the wrong side of history. Sad for someone, who as elder statesman, could have left a better legacy.
Great Comment! Easy points to deliver, hard to argue (IMO). Maybe the upside of this will be the driver for more opensourse iron-n-wire, boards and components. Support for Buglabs and kindred ilk.
The whole point is to make them (like MSM) irrelevant. And, I suspect GP means internal/private/home domains AOT actual subdomains (which could be virtual hosts called anything)
I'm posting to anon believing it goes to dev/null and will provide me the means to reference my opinon/thought on something few if none will read.
Regardless, removing the need for having to maintain an identity in triplicate as a penalty of domainnames is reason enough to find a better way. Having no real control, let alone real ownership, of this wordcombo-cum-extension leaves your image/brand/identity (goodwill) leakey and unreliable.
I envision the adoption of IPv6 as central to the fix. Next would be wide-spread adoption of GPG keys and supporting public keyservers which could be used to auth IPv6 DNS records. The authenticity and confidence of the (signed) keys, combined with TLS/SSL serverhost keygs, would replace the need for IPv4 DNS (maybe?) Heck, gpg info could even be embedded into html docs, rss feeds and the like. Messages to different levels of keyholders(?).
GPG signatures and keys; associated to the v6 addr of the serverhost and even (perhaps) the server. xould shift domain names (wordcombos) to a different paradigm. The DN would become a Name field of a key on a keyring. The URI would be contained in a key field and translate into a URL. Extensions ending in tld names would rollback to IPv4 translation. IPv6 DNS servers could be supported via private usenet server, or gopher, or fidonet.
They could also be adopted by major supporters of decentralization, greater choice, more transparency and lower costs.
I agree that a catalyst is necessary to make this happen and I know what that series of events entails. But thats another subject.
But your note regarding the living room seems to me to be a pureplay to keep games alive. M$ interests, reflected in Nokia/WinMo/GPS/Skype all points to their continuing push to entrench themselves in the automotive market my.002
After 2 decades of lurking the net, leaving breadcrumbs in forums, irc, nntp, and blogs; I have come to conclude, with others, that the meat of any story lies in the commentary more than the story itself. More important, the best parts of the commentary may have no bearing on the subject/topic of the story but are often tangential. This is mostly news stories AOT how2's and responses as answers (like wrongdiagnosis.com or earthclinic.com)
So, sticking to 'news' stories, a story, any comment - my take is that they, if not all writing, are just 'wordballs'; balls of words. In and of themself, meaningless; the o/p of someone's mind; like trees falling in a forest. They only generates value respective to some 'being there', the 'conversations' they inspire.
But the interesting things is that these stories often start conversations unrelated to the subject; but far more interesting.
The daily headlines really do not show where the best conversations are. And I don't have all day to spend on/. poring over all news du jour (I've easily spent a couple hours just on 1 story).
what's interesting is that there is no accounting for 'taste'. Nobody knows what someone is interested in. And, what is interesting may lie deeper in a thread than is apparent. (After all, filtering by interest/informed/ (tag) is not always really accurate but only recourse to wading thru perhaps 100's of posts, dozens of pages. Just to find some juicy points; or for me, more links that I would not have thought to find on my own, but at the cost of sending me into another spidey-hole.
So, I've found a way for the wordballs generated by a story to be measured independent of internal workings; the 'rapport' of a conversation, using moderation points, tagging, link refs, etc as sparklines to help the viewer (me) decide where the more interesting conversations are.
This 'meta-system' would present me with a visual graphic of the days stories measured by the scope and quality of the responses, regardless of actual content.
Ive fleshed out the details of this system and it feels like a fun project. A meta-site (SlashMash) that graphically overlays a visual map of each headline's activity. In deference to those who extoll usenet, this proj could even run a Dnews site that lets users meta-moderate this abstraction (based on the wordball URL) which w/could facilitate fact-checking or another part of the system that provides better credentialism; meaning that it knows who is authoritative.
To go further into the deep, combine/. with a slew of other websites, find ways to connect them, and then go hog wild. Or reference wordballs to archived history and, or go 6 degrees from Kevin Bacon. Lots of possibilitites, very entertaining in and of itself as well as a vehicle to finding the gems of the net.
judging from the extreme way CR/IP is devolving, I'd say is just as much about the ability for a musician to create work w/out getting sued for 12 bars that sound 'similar' to some 12 others in some 40 year old song owned, not by the original author, but by some record label, who with their army of lawyers, see a new revenue stream w/in their grasp.
Thanks for that. Life gets interesting once you realize that everything you thought you knew was basically WRONG. That accuracy is fungible and subject to change. Its a reality made painfully obvious thru Internetworking and people, i've come to believe, just don't want to think too much anymore. Hard enough just to get them to really listen. Causes me to wonder if the net promotes irrational behavior more than mitigates it.
Slashdot Mirror
Its not banks, per se; its the massive investment banks, who justify their existance in their ability to help multi-nationals raise billions for M-n-A. Like moving an auto-plant from MI to CH
One only need look at the 80's to see where that kind of leverage got us.
(now its 6T covering 36T of debt)
"Corporations don't control anything,...."
Right, except for the legislatures they corrupt. Try telling the poor schmuck whose water bill tripled after Bechtel got privatization rights; or the rancher facing a lawsuit by eminent domain in Montana. The examples are endless and if you don't think corps control you are blind or sleeping.
"Should the full facts be known casual observers might come to an entirely different conclusion."
A Neurotypically correct statement, but falling short in many ways.
I fully get how pursuit and physical contact affects reactions; of police or anyone.
But the violence of the offender should not be used to justify a violent reaction on the part of authority; specially when they out-number in strength or weapons.
It's supposedly why they're called 'professionals'.
What you see in a clip is what you get. It speaks for itself. Anyone can generally tell if its over the top, excessive, fundamentally sick.
(what usually happens after the clip is far worse)
Whether its taking down a 'perp', pepper-spraying someone while your partner holds open their eyes, or calmly wasting a crowd of people who pose no immediate threat.... it's offensive and flat out wrong.
The people who assume they're entitled to do so need to be reminded that they are not.
I've worked on Adult in-patient units; i know what crazy can do and what restraint means. It does not mean being vindictive or brutally cruel.
Regardless of spin or what's left out, some things are over the top, beyond reasonable, flatoutwrong.
You are arguing, fundamentally, for the right of police identity to be kept 'secret'.
Despite the fact that its nearly impossible for anyone else to do; so as to widen the info (and accountability) gap.
A ruling by a judge, the influence of LEA's, should have been easily anticipated and circumvention plans in order. IP's, domains, websites, should be fundamentally disposable
alphachars. Members, subscribers....route around the law like packets on the net.
So another site should be hard for ISPs to continually detect.
CopWatch in the USA has been around at least 10 years. I found them researching the web to beat a speeding ticket. They are a solid organization, .fr is prob equiv i suspect. I can't believe they are not more known about, but for all the cameras
out there.... I cant believe this thread hasn't mentioned the USA groups who will do the same as the french ones.
i suppose 'outrageous' has to be in the eye of the beholder. Not having checked out the referenced sites 1stHand, i wouldnt know.
I can say this regardless: A video should speak for itself! Some things no amount of spin can justify; they are just plain wrong. Self-supervision is a recipe for failure.
I wish the PD == FD. Stay in the D until summoned and be sincerely appreciated for putting out the fire, stopping something in progress.
Stop patrolling like an occupier more than an occupant. Instead, we get plate-reading camera-mounted 'smart' squad cars to capture every cars' plate it sees. Always looking for suspects; comming soon to some depressed town in a constitution-free zone. Thanks probably to a nearby fusion center.
Having right to photograph authority, the police, means nothing if you don't exercise it.
Outcomes may be a mixed bag; sometime appros sometimes less than so. It is better than the status quo.
And if a cop wants to have a facebook, do the 'socialnet', then they accept what all the rest of us do; public exposure, come what may.
They are public servants, not overlording, corruptable, unaccountable, self-appointed guardians of "PublicSafety".
I've grown weary of this adversarial
relationship between the plea-bargianed JusticeSystem and (naively) the people they are supposed to protect.
It starts on the road and in the street, where the blue-coats (and agents) patrol. People who i would sincerely like to call in an emergency were it not for their us-vs-them mentality. Not unlike living near 5 prisons in NorthCountry; where 'officers' forget to go off the clock. Power breeds contempt;
condones too much to preserve a myth.
CopWatch is about keeping authority 'civil' wherever possible whenever possible. US copwatch forums are replete with stories of strangers witnessing (taping) cop-stops (being detained).
There's bound to be mistakes; but the good done outweighs the bad.
In the words of another /.'s postings:
Don't use your own ignorance as an excuse to belittle the actions of those who have decided to stand up and say (do) something.
"is another Kent State, and you will never see a protest again."
I attended Kent, was there in May1970. I was there in May1971 also. It's worth noting that the D.C. march that year was postponed by about 2 weeks to allow for the 4May1971 rememberance in Kent.
I was part of the "Kent Krazy" (so named by pundits) contingent who went to D.C. that year.
Just so you know, more than 5000 ppl were arrested; "after" the KSU massacre a year before.
Janet Napolitano was interviewed by Charlie Rose a couple of weeks ago and I was floored when she started talking about how DHS was going after domestic 'persons of interest' (the illegal enemy combatant ) who lurk withing our borders with their "IED's"
Considering that a cherry bomb or M80 could be an IED, or just about anything really, it spooked me that her fervor seemed to be focused on citizens.
Adding the sprinkles of tech, 50 or more 'fusion centers' and laws like this turd make me suspect that the U.S. is soon going the China route of totalitarianism; and sooner than later.
I was under the impression that having no single leader (or even the need for 'leaders') was the purpose of both (conservative) anarchy and (liberal) communism extremes. A right to exist and a right to share the wealth.
Belief in the need for leadership only draws the wrong crowd. I hope this is just a 'dry-run' for things to come. What is happening in the streets cannot be expressed by any proxy for the collective group. We're ALL pissed off. You know our demands. Stop the Lies, give back the loot you've ripped off and maybe avoid jailtime. Give us truth and maybe will give back reconciliation.
anybody compelled enough to be drawn into this should be OK with it too. You're correct, it's hardly Chicago'68 (or more recent elsewhere).
The whole purpose of protesting is to get knocked around and arrested in the second place; first being to stop traffic.
Property destruction, while sometimes inevitable, sometimes warranted is usually only a last-ditch resort out of desperation.
Regardless, i'm starting to believe that if the mission is gridlock at a cost of bruises and bail money and trips to the courthouse; then why not just have flashmobs of people who rented a car, drove into town, park in the streets and walk away.
Call in and report the car missing even. Save everyone the hassle of confrontation and there aren't enough tows in the city to keep it from being an all-day affair. Then have a 2nd wave do it the next day, and the next after that.
Bet towing a car, finding lot space, etc... is more difficult than busting a person and processing them in court!
"and heard and saw either Ron Paul libertarians
new agee types"...
If by new agee you mean a modern equivalent to SNCC, SDS, NLF, e.g. today's lefty terrorists:)
sharing the same space with goldman anarchists and goldwater libertarians then maybe they'll be a bridge to the new front on the people's war on "crony capitalism"
Like me to reply to an AC, but you've got it wrong. Not smarter at all; or, by your NT definition of smart, outright retarded (lets say contrarian). Its just recognizing different patterns, different ways of connecting dots. Not better just different.
Stupid and Smart co-exist quite nicely in my multi-tasking asymetric reality.
For me at least, fitting in, 'asimilating', means 'bark less, wag more' and mindfull of the post-it
note stuck to my frontal lobe. Remembering to remember.... Being present, intentional, conscious.
Controlling my penchant for total honesty, curbing my desire for clarity, and caring less about the need for understanding and being understood; e.g. trusting the process more.
Otherwise, I get in trouble; just a matter of time. The charm wears off and and I turn into an 'effing stupid aspie'
Recent insight:
My resume used to say 'good problem solver' until i realized that more than 1/2 my problems were of my own making
"Now a days a president has only one, solid good chance to have a [memorable] legacy" /. so i'll add my .02
It hasn't been raised on
Vietnam
No president since, incl BOB, has been free of its shadow. Barack goes to bed at night refraining
"i'm not going to be remembered as the guy who lost another war". In fact, quaint and old as it is, I'd say that the bulk of USA's ills are comming from the blowback of the 60's.
From 3 assinations to gov dope dealing to agent-orange. Those memories may not be in most people's headspace, but you can bet it looms large from highest command to the homeless and incarcerated.
Obama needs the military for his legacy more than he needs the people who elected him. "His war" is what drives him at the end of the day.
No public option, no closing gitmo, renditions, domestic surveilance, sucking bankster ass...
With a big sigh of relief GWB wispered in BOB's ear: "at least i managed not to lose a war, that's all yours now"; and now the full magnitude of body bags and returning vets with missing bits
(to say nothing of the costs of what we owe them)
being 'his legacy' intrudes upon his sweeter dreams of being the great mediator.
Banish the warmongers and everyone will have better health care.
Considering that the evolution of conglomeration has many corps larger/richer than most countries,
their kingdoms are no less contested territory. Then, take the Carlyle Group; small and very powerful. They, like their ilk, squeeze, pressure, co-opt and trade corps like pawns in a park-bench/avenue chess game.
It must be so, otherwise so many people would not be 'failing up'.
Immediate employees are no less disposable than the floor worker, boards are adversaries to be mastered. Our zions of industry are a clique unto themselves, for themselves exclusively.
The oilygarchs are big game hunters, corporations are their prey, their trophies. We, in their minds, are inconsquential, predictible, controllable and disposable liabilities. Their job is to devalue the work we do. Our 'Managers' are not standing up for us, but taking whatever gravy they can before it all falls apart in a complex heap.
Who has power will become an interesting question
Corporations, like their shell counterparts, have no meaning whatever. They are a body of faith in the system. What's now possibly an offshore Postal Box might have left a big, empty, toxified wasteland in their wake as they disolved, went bankrupt (by design), and morphed into some global hydra-headed consumption machine looking for investors.
I've heard that of the Fortune 1000, of those HQ'd in the US, around half have some foreign investment. Of that 1/2, half again are (+-5) 50% foreign owned. Our government have sold us as a bill of goods for foreign sovereign debt.
Follow that money, the x-fer of public wealth.
The privatized consumption machine that made 6% look pitiful in all aspects.
While GM (triad?) was shrinking itself into GMAC
in MI, it's Chinese head exec was on camera talking up stunning growth and profits.
Corps are streamlining themselves into paper holding companies because they know only the bankers, the institutional investors, have the power. Corps gone mobile. Elites gone virtual.
Us, left to clean up a mess after realizing there is no spoon.
Sorry, needed to vent; found myself here.
You have the power, use it where you can.
Only people have power; corps were 1st given that status only bec it was too easy for the 'owners' to slip away and not be held personally accountable. These days that is impossible. The executives, their boards, institutional investors, their hedge-fund cronies in Greenwich, they dont care how their investment is spent, only in the promised returns, too smart or too connected or too big to fail, numb to the sorrows that come from its yields and dividends.
How much power does it take to wield disaster capitalism from rice paddy to waterfront city.
To economically impose debts upon a corrupted country only to come back as vulture funds to bleed em dry a 2nd time.
How much power does it take to orchestrate a massive bailout, get free, 0% money to sit on and leverage, and not only survive a bad economy - but be better off for it.
I'd like to think that sharing data is neutral, the human condition. It's just asking to be shared if it has any value. Unfortunately i suspect we have lost (if ever had) all self-restraint when it comes to more and more of it. .... oh such a sad empty pitch in broken english.
Gleaning info like bit-coin mining, a great obsession that seldom leads to making things better, even with more informed choices.
We all seem to listen to what we want (are programmed to hear).
Our loss of privacy is just a by-product of that addictive need. Growing State and Corporate Intelligence espionage (for lack of beter word),
the data is just another commodity.
For little peeps like me, it means that, despite signing onto the NCL, i get calls from "david" (maybe jitender?) in "TN" (maybe mumbai?) informing me that i 'requested online information about diabetes' and wanted a contribution for research and do i have diabetes? or someone i know, or
Well spoke. But the binary is that either (both those conditions are met) or not; marked now in inverse proportion; true being a 'less good' and 'more bad' place.
I conclude its more about having the ability to control what i (a citizen) want divulged and that in accepting public office one sacrifices any claims to privacy by default.
Considering the levels of hypocracy comming from the entrenchments; the entire point of politics seems to be bargaining with skeletons in closets.
Otherwise, our Supreme Court today would be held in Contempt of Country; most of Congress would be
ridden shamed out of D.C
History books will not be kind
Diebold's are voting machines where you choose from a list. My machine is more like an ATM, which could be open-sourced and provide a reciept. Hell, a State could even provide a website that lists the "Yea" voters that you could double-check on.
Your idea about juries is a good one, I like mine because it includes everyone in the process.
I second getting rid of federal elections too! It harks back to a time when D.C. was a far-off place ,reached by horseback and many days ride from one's home district. Then, it made sense. Today it makes no sense at all.
I say we replace our congresscritters with a big LCD screen in their chair in the House.
That screen represents the peoples' voice back home. And, back home, instead of a congresscritters' office, we could have a bi-partisan committee that serves to inform the public of current legislation and play an active role in shaping it according to the voice of its citizens.
Voting on laws is done via ATM-like machines distributed around the State at convenience stores
(or state-liquor outlets). Swiping your license is a "Yes" vote, not voting is a "No" vote.
This implies that a citizen must go out of their way to vote FOR a thing they happen to want.
The votes get counted and weighted againt the voter registration list. A majority vote == Yea
and the next day (voting day in D.C) the LCD shows a big green thumbs up:)
The idea of congress was a necessary evil when it was first created and for which we no longer have a need. Our borked system can only be repaired with direct democracy. This would be a step in the right direction.
my .02
With Infragard waiting in the wings....
I used to be a big supporter of Patrick. He was the one person I thought I could trust to stand up for the little guy.
Now, after 8yrs of BushCo and 4+ of hardcore neo-con politics, I suspect he's just working on his exit strategy. Not unlike CDodd. I doubt he'll be running for re-election next term.
I just wish he made a better choice in this regard because he's going to be on the wrong side of history. Sad for someone, who as elder statesman, could have left a better legacy.
Great Comment! Easy points to deliver, hard to argue (IMO).
Maybe the upside of this will be the driver for more opensourse iron-n-wire, boards and components.
Support for Buglabs and kindred ilk.
The whole point is to make them (like MSM) irrelevant.
And, I suspect GP means internal/private/home domains AOT actual subdomains (which could be virtual hosts called anything)
I'm posting to anon believing it goes to dev/null
and will provide me the means to reference my opinon/thought on something few if none will read.
Regardless, removing the need for having to maintain an identity in triplicate as a penalty of domainnames is reason enough to find a better way.
Having no real control, let alone real ownership, of this wordcombo-cum-extension leaves your image/brand/identity (goodwill) leakey and unreliable.
I envision the adoption of IPv6 as central to the fix. Next would be wide-spread adoption of GPG keys and supporting public keyservers which could be used to auth IPv6 DNS records. The authenticity and confidence of the (signed) keys, combined with TLS/SSL serverhost keygs, would replace the need for IPv4 DNS (maybe?)
Heck, gpg info could even be embedded into html docs, rss feeds and the like. Messages to different levels of keyholders(?).
GPG signatures and keys; associated to the v6 addr of the serverhost and even (perhaps) the server.
xould shift domain names (wordcombos) to a different paradigm. The DN would become a Name field of a key on a keyring.
The URI would be contained in a key field and translate into a URL. Extensions ending in tld names would rollback to IPv4 translation.
IPv6 DNS servers could be supported via private usenet server, or gopher, or fidonet.
They could also be adopted by major supporters of decentralization, greater choice, more transparency and lower costs.
I agree that a catalyst is necessary to make this happen and I know what that series of events entails. But thats another subject.
But your note regarding the living room seems to me to be a pureplay to keep games alive. .002
M$ interests, reflected in Nokia/WinMo/GPS/Skype
all points to their continuing push to entrench themselves in the automotive market
my
After 2 decades of lurking the net, leaving breadcrumbs in forums, irc, nntp, and blogs; I have come to conclude, with others, that the meat of any story lies in the commentary more than the story itself.
More important, the best parts of the commentary may have no bearing on the subject/topic of the story but are often tangential. This is mostly news stories AOT how2's and responses as answers
(like wrongdiagnosis.com or earthclinic.com)
So, sticking to 'news' stories, a story, any comment - my take is that they, if not all writing, are just 'wordballs'; balls of words.
In and of themself, meaningless; the o/p of someone's mind; like trees falling in a forest. They only generates value respective to some 'being there', the 'conversations' they inspire.
But the interesting things is that these stories often start conversations unrelated to the subject;
but far more interesting.
The daily headlines really do not show where the best conversations are. And I don't have all day to spend on /. poring over all news du jour (I've easily spent a couple hours just on 1 story).
what's interesting is that there is no accounting for 'taste'. Nobody knows what someone is interested in. And, what is interesting may lie deeper in a thread than is apparent. (After all, filtering by interest/informed/ (tag) is not always really accurate but only recourse to wading thru perhaps 100's of posts, dozens of pages. Just to find some juicy points; or for me, more links that I would not have thought to find on my own, but at the cost of sending me into another spidey-hole.
So, I've found a way for the wordballs generated by a story to be measured independent of internal workings; the 'rapport' of a conversation, using moderation points, tagging, link refs, etc as sparklines to help the viewer (me) decide where the more interesting conversations are.
This 'meta-system' would present me with a visual
graphic of the days stories measured by the scope and quality of the responses, regardless of actual content.
Ive fleshed out the details of this system and it feels like a fun project. A meta-site (SlashMash)
that graphically overlays a visual map of each headline's activity.
In deference to those who extoll usenet, this proj could even run a Dnews site that lets users meta-moderate this abstraction (based on the wordball URL) which w/could facilitate fact-checking or another part of the system that provides better credentialism; meaning that it knows who is authoritative.
To go further into the deep, combine /. with a slew of other websites, find ways to connect them, and then go hog wild. Or reference wordballs to archived history and, or go 6 degrees from Kevin Bacon. Lots of possibilitites, very entertaining in and of itself as well as a vehicle to finding the gems of the net.
Get Entrance via XDMCP and be enlightened17 .02
For a setop or tablet try illume for realestate management.
my
judging from the extreme way CR/IP is devolving, I'd say is just as much about the ability for a musician to create work w/out getting sued for 12 bars that sound 'similar' to some 12 others in some 40 year old song owned, not by the original author, but by some record label, who with their army of lawyers, see a new revenue stream w/in their grasp.
Thanks for that. Life gets interesting once you realize that everything you thought you knew was basically WRONG. That accuracy is fungible and subject to change.
Its a reality made painfully obvious thru Internetworking and
people, i've come to believe, just don't want to think too much anymore. Hard enough just to get them to really listen.
Causes me to wonder if the net promotes irrational behavior more than mitigates it.
my .02