City and Verizon officials said that while the backup system in place for 911 was functioning properly, it failed to pick up the calls because it was designed to catch a technical error, not a human error that would be interpreted as simply a change of instruction.
Like i said - i really didn't know what to make of it. I don't know the physics very well, and i certainly don't remember the details of the TMI event. I didn't look at much else on that site, so i can't speak for that, either. But what struck me was that comment about the air being blue. Really strange, and not what one would really expect to hear from someone bullshitting about this. It's just so odd. Even it was Cerenkov radiation, i can't see as how it would be that intense.
When i read your post i thought i'd offer it up for you or someone else with more knowlege than me about the science to ponder.
Incidently, i've seen the reactor pool at the Chalk River plant, in Ontario. Definitely blue. And there's a kid's mitten at the bottom;-)
BTW, i sent an email to the publisher of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist, suggesting they might want to host Elena's files. I gave him both the/. article and the mirror links.
I recently was sent this link by a friend. One of the witnesses says,
And I looked outside. It was so blue! It was so blue! I couldn't see ten feet ahead of myself! I got scared.
I really didn't know what to make of that. The testimonials seem honest to me, but the comments about the air being blue just seemed weird. What do you make of that?
During the negotiations (over the reparations, settling of borders, etc. of the various European nations) between Britain, US, France, and Italy after the first world war, much of the treaty for Austria was copied verbatim from that for Germany. Consequently, the Austrians were amazed to find that they were forbidden from having any submarines.
That's actually a very old method of passing messages. I can't remember the exact term for it, though. It's also the method used for the 'Bible Code', 'Cipher of Genesis', and other such quackery (you could do the same thing with the Curious George books, too, if the series were long enough:-).
What you do is have your msg. receiver(s) obtain a specific edition of some book (one which won't seem out of place with that individual). Next, prepare your message. Go through, letter by letter, and match them with 'random' letters (optionally after some other enciphering has been performed) from your book. Count down by line, over by letter, including spaces.
Now, you've got yourself a numerical ciphertext. Do some other post-processing - turn the string into BigDecimals, ROT-13 it, whatever. You can also count letters left-to right and/or bottom-to-top for fun. The important thing is that this all be established with the receiver, obviously.
Now, you just send the message. Use one-time pads for one last change. The book - together with all the other encoding steps - is your key. The receiver just deciphers the message by reversing the process. The more different steps, the more difficult the message will be to decipher.
But the book is the most important part of the key. If someone figures out all of the other steps, they've still got to figure which book (and edition) was used. I'm sure this method is still widely used. Very lo-fi.
Well, just send an email, then. Seriously - the whole point of steganography is to hide data in the 'random' bits you get with compressed JPEGs. SVG is friggin' world-readble plain-text that's interpreted at the client (ok, that describes *any* data read by a client, but still).
Hiding messages in SVG is more ridiculous than redacting data in PDFs by placing a black box over the text.
The fact that Bush has oil ties is irrelevant. Has the U.S. taken a SINGLE DOLLAR from Iraqi oil? No. Therefore your tinfoil-hat theory is nothing but hyperbole.
Er, did i say that? No, i didn't. Was i implying that the occupation of Iraq was a consequence of the Admin's plans for consolidation of their startegic presence in Central Asia? Yep.
I believe the adminstration absolutely believed the weapons were there, and that it is pretty embarrassing that they haven't found any stockpiles.
All the more so because many in the intelligence community keep saying that they did *not* believe that Hussein had re-started any of his bio/chem/nuke weapons programs. Read what Ray McGovern, Karen Kwiatkowsk, and Joseph Wilson, among others have to say in this regard. Note that i'm emphatically *not* communist/liberal/anti-capitalist. Read this essay by Chalmers Johnson for a bit of background if you don't understand where i'm coming from.
Nonetheless, the European attitude of appeasement and their support for terrorists like Yassar Arafat are inexcusable and ignorant.
I'll set aside the fact that Europe is a very crowded place which has seen more than its share of war - that's just too big a subject to get into here, and we're already *well* OT. Suffice to say that, sometimes, appeasement looks like the only likely way to survive for the moment. Look at all the shit that went down during and after the first world war. A fucking, bloody mess, that was. Sometimes, appeasement was pretty much all that could be hoped to work for the moment. And, while we're on the subject of appeasement, consider that the US, at various times, found more than enough reasons to side with some very ugly characters. Trying to tar Europe with that brush only reminds us of the US' actions in that regard.
And what's all this about terrorists? Oh, right - Hussein was the mastermind behind 9/11. Riiighht...
Just ask the victims on the trains in Madrid. (Don't even THINK of excusing those attacks as retaliation for the war in Iraq. Those were INNOCENT people.)
Fuck you, too. Where do you get off suggesting that that's my opinion on that. I find that extremely offensive.
And here's an exercise for yourself: try to imagine how it is that I'm in complete agreement with you:-) You're 4 points are all valid ones. I agree that having US troops stationed abroad has been necessary. What i disagree with is the latest administration's adventure in Iraq. Does the US need to consolidate power in Central Asia. You betcha they do. This is all about resources and strategic positioning. Am i happy about it? No, not really. But i happen to try to look at things realistically. So, i agree with you.
But, why, for instance, can the US admin. not explain to us why it's okay to base forces in Kazakhstan without first pushing Nazarbayev out of power and fostering democracy for the people there? See here for some background.
They revel in their ignorance and are more ready to listen to people from other countries than they are to their conscience.
I agree with the first part, though the second half loses me. I've met quite a few people who seem to wear their ignorance as a badge of honor, though.
In that regard, Bush himself has stated that he doesn't like to read the papers and instead relies on those around him to fill him in. That's bloody absurd, and should have been a wake-up call to the nation that he is a danger to us all. He was 'elected' to lead the executive branch. Yet he has failed in that regard. The otheres in the admin. are leading him around by the nose.
Come on, you really haven't gotten out much, have you? Whatever you've been doing with yourself to keep you from seeing a bit more of the world than your own country, it certainly cannot have been reading any history. Yes, the US' involvment in the second world war (since you insist on bringing that up) was a great help to a great many people. But how does that justify the current US administration's actions recently? Have you no idea of the reasons they went into Iraq? Do you not remember them lying to the public? Lying to the UN? Hell, BUGGING the UN? That several people from within the administration have come forward to say that these lies occurred? That the admin. was already working on a plan to create an excuse to invade Iraq BEFORE sept 11, 2001?
Have you not noticed that the admin. is made up of oil executives? For chrisakes, the Nat. Security adviser has a fucking oil tanker named after her! Do you really believe that garabage they're saying about doing all of this for the people of Iraq?
Really, read a book sometime. Watch something besides that pablum you get on the corporate networks. Meet a 'foreigner'. Take a trip.
Most reports I have heard say that most people from countries outside of the US view many US products (McDonalds, Microsoft, Nike, others) as international producs and don't really associate them with the US.
You're forgetting that governments think in terms of strategic value. You would have a very difficult time trying to find a government anywhere outside the US which saw McDonalds, et al. as anything but US corporations. They let them in because there are economic benefits.
Software/IT infrastructure is a very different issue. There are very powerful strategic considerations to be made by any government regarding this.
Oh, and don't forget about about the purported NSA key. Whether it's true, or not (and you'll notice that i linked to a page which attempts deal with the story without a lot of hand waving, btw) , the bottom line is that many governments (the US' *very* much included) wear their foil hats when it comes to important, strategic considerations.
I think that what he's saying is that, given there are *a lot* of people/governments/companies in the world who are *quite* pissed at the current US administration (and not *necessarily* with US businesses), it's quite logical that open-source has an advantage over the (closed-source) software products made available by US companies.
Oh, please. Suggesting that Mr. Andreesen is "anti-American" (or even condoning that attitude) is equivalent to the narrow-minded hysteria about people being somehow un-patriotic for disagreeing with the US' war in Iraq. He was simply stating what he feels is a fact - that some governments/companies will see open-source as a viable alternative to being bound to a US company's product.
Crying foul over that point being raised is disingenuous, at best.
A few years ago, while waiting for my transaction to complete, the machine next to mine made some noise and rolled out a $20. Then i got the cash from my own machine. There was no one who had just left that other machine, there was no session still happening on it, and no card was ejected. Just a free $20.
Being a programmer, i would have a *very* difficult time believing this if someone else told me, but there you go. And it was great that the only other witness to this was the head of my then-company's IT dept:-)
I agree completely. That's why i posted this article. I'd love to see WotW redone; just not with T.Cruise and that guy who wrote that dreck for J.Park. Speilberg is a toss-up. I just hope it's *not* a contemporary setting. If that's how he does it i don't know that i'll even see it (like i didn't bother with Independence Day, Starship Troopers, or that nonsense with Bruce Willis on the shuttle). I love sci-fi too much to bother.
Uh, no - Hydrogen is H. By "H2 molecule", maybe you're thinking of H2O (water)? There's also an isotope of H - 2H - called Deuterium. But H is comprised of one atom. He is - funny enough - also comprised of exactly one atom. But it has two electrons. All of the elements are single-atom phenomena, with varying numbers of 'parts'. Molecules are diferent animals entirely, made up of mixtures of different elements.
Slashdot Mirror
City and Verizon officials said that while the backup system in place for 911 was functioning properly, it failed to pick up the calls because it was designed to catch a technical error, not a human error that would be interpreted as simply a change of instruction.
Like i said - i really didn't know what to make of it. I don't know the physics very well, and i certainly don't remember the details of the TMI event. I didn't look at much else on that site, so i can't speak for that, either. But what struck me was that comment about the air being blue. Really strange, and not what one would really expect to hear from someone bullshitting about this. It's just so odd. Even it was Cerenkov radiation, i can't see as how it would be that intense.
When i read your post i thought i'd offer it up for you or someone else with more knowlege than me about the science to ponder.
Incidently, i've seen the reactor pool at the Chalk River plant, in Ontario. Definitely blue. And there's a kid's mitten at the bottom ;-)
BTW, i sent an email to the publisher of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist, suggesting they might want to host Elena's files. I gave him both the /. article and the mirror links.
I recently was sent this link by a friend. One of the witnesses says,
I really didn't know what to make of that. The testimonials seem honest to me, but the comments about the air being blue just seemed weird. What do you make of that?During the negotiations (over the reparations, settling of borders, etc. of the various European nations) between Britain, US, France, and Italy after the first world war, much of the treaty for Austria was copied verbatim from that for Germany. Consequently, the Austrians were amazed to find that they were forbidden from having any submarines.
Just to clarify - you're sending the *key*. The message (*all* of your messages) is 'in plain sight', within the copy of Moby Dick over on the shelf.
That's actually a very old method of passing messages. I can't remember the exact term for it, though. It's also the method used for the 'Bible Code', 'Cipher of Genesis', and other such quackery (you could do the same thing with the Curious George books, too, if the series were long enough :-).
What you do is have your msg. receiver(s) obtain a specific edition of some book (one which won't seem out of place with that individual). Next, prepare your message. Go through, letter by letter, and match them with 'random' letters (optionally after some other enciphering has been performed) from your book. Count down by line, over by letter, including spaces.
Now, you've got yourself a numerical ciphertext. Do some other post-processing - turn the string into BigDecimals, ROT-13 it, whatever. You can also count letters left-to right and/or bottom-to-top for fun. The important thing is that this all be established with the receiver, obviously.
Now, you just send the message. Use one-time pads for one last change. The book - together with all the other encoding steps - is your key. The receiver just deciphers the message by reversing the process. The more different steps, the more difficult the message will be to decipher.
But the book is the most important part of the key. If someone figures out all of the other steps, they've still got to figure which book (and edition) was used. I'm sure this method is still widely used. Very lo-fi.
I didn't say it had to be "secret".
Well, just send an email, then. Seriously - the whole point of steganography is to hide data in the 'random' bits you get with compressed JPEGs. SVG is friggin' world-readble plain-text that's interpreted at the client (ok, that describes *any* data read by a client, but still).
Hiding messages in SVG is more ridiculous than redacting data in PDFs by placing a black box over the text.
The fact that Bush has oil ties is irrelevant. Has the U.S. taken a SINGLE DOLLAR from Iraqi oil? No. Therefore your tinfoil-hat theory is nothing but hyperbole.
Er, did i say that? No, i didn't. Was i implying that the occupation of Iraq was a consequence of the Admin's plans for consolidation of their startegic presence in Central Asia? Yep.
I believe the adminstration absolutely believed the weapons were there, and that it is pretty embarrassing that they haven't found any stockpiles.
All the more so because many in the intelligence community keep saying that they did *not* believe that Hussein had re-started any of his bio/chem/nuke weapons programs. Read what Ray McGovern, Karen Kwiatkowsk, and Joseph Wilson, among others have to say in this regard. Note that i'm emphatically *not* communist/liberal/anti-capitalist. Read this essay by Chalmers Johnson for a bit of background if you don't understand where i'm coming from.
Nonetheless, the European attitude of appeasement and their support for terrorists like Yassar Arafat are inexcusable and ignorant.
I'll set aside the fact that Europe is a very crowded place which has seen more than its share of war - that's just too big a subject to get into here, and we're already *well* OT. Suffice to say that, sometimes, appeasement looks like the only likely way to survive for the moment. Look at all the shit that went down during and after the first world war. A fucking, bloody mess, that was. Sometimes, appeasement was pretty much all that could be hoped to work for the moment. And, while we're on the subject of appeasement, consider that the US, at various times, found more than enough reasons to side with some very ugly characters. Trying to tar Europe with that brush only reminds us of the US' actions in that regard.
And what's all this about terrorists? Oh, right - Hussein was the mastermind behind 9/11. Riiighht...
Just ask the victims on the trains in Madrid. (Don't even THINK of excusing those attacks as retaliation for the war in Iraq. Those were INNOCENT people.)
Fuck you, too. Where do you get off suggesting that that's my opinion on that. I find that extremely offensive.
Very amusing way of putting it :-)
And here's an exercise for yourself: try to imagine how it is that I'm in complete agreement with you :-) You're 4 points are all valid ones. I agree that having US troops stationed abroad has been necessary. What i disagree with is the latest administration's adventure in Iraq. Does the US need to consolidate power in Central Asia. You betcha they do. This is all about resources and strategic positioning. Am i happy about it? No, not really. But i happen to try to look at things realistically. So, i agree with you.
But, why, for instance, can the US admin. not explain to us why it's okay to base forces in Kazakhstan without first pushing Nazarbayev out of power and fostering democracy for the people there? See here for some background.
They revel in their ignorance and are more ready to listen to people from other countries than they are to their conscience.
I agree with the first part, though the second half loses me. I've met quite a few people who seem to wear their ignorance as a badge of honor, though.
In that regard, Bush himself has stated that he doesn't like to read the papers and instead relies on those around him to fill him in. That's bloody absurd, and should have been a wake-up call to the nation that he is a danger to us all. He was 'elected' to lead the executive branch. Yet he has failed in that regard. The otheres in the admin. are leading him around by the nose.
And that's why I've always had the Preview pain switched off.
That's such an apt mis-spelling.
The world can kiss my butt then.
Sorry, your head's in the way
Come on, you really haven't gotten out much, have you? Whatever you've been doing with yourself to keep you from seeing a bit more of the world than your own country, it certainly cannot have been reading any history. Yes, the US' involvment in the second world war (since you insist on bringing that up) was a great help to a great many people. But how does that justify the current US administration's actions recently? Have you no idea of the reasons they went into Iraq? Do you not remember them lying to the public? Lying to the UN? Hell, BUGGING the UN? That several people from within the administration have come forward to say that these lies occurred? That the admin. was already working on a plan to create an excuse to invade Iraq BEFORE sept 11, 2001?
Have you not noticed that the admin. is made up of oil executives? For chrisakes, the Nat. Security adviser has a fucking oil tanker named after her! Do you really believe that garabage they're saying about doing all of this for the people of Iraq?
Really, read a book sometime. Watch something besides that pablum you get on the corporate networks. Meet a 'foreigner'. Take a trip.
Most reports I have heard say that most people from countries outside of the US view many US products (McDonalds, Microsoft, Nike, others) as international producs and don't really associate them with the US.
You're forgetting that governments think in terms of strategic value. You would have a very difficult time trying to find a government anywhere outside the US which saw McDonalds, et al. as anything but US corporations. They let them in because there are economic benefits.
Software/IT infrastructure is a very different issue. There are very powerful strategic considerations to be made by any government regarding this.
Oh, and don't forget about about the purported NSA key. Whether it's true, or not (and you'll notice that i linked to a page which attempts deal with the story without a lot of hand waving, btw) , the bottom line is that many governments (the US' *very* much included) wear their foil hats when it comes to important, strategic considerations.
Boy, that one really touched a nerve.
I think that what he's saying is that, given there are *a lot* of people/governments/companies in the world who are *quite* pissed at the current US administration (and not *necessarily* with US businesses), it's quite logical that open-source has an advantage over the (closed-source) software products made available by US companies.
Oh, please. Suggesting that Mr. Andreesen is "anti-American" (or even condoning that attitude) is equivalent to the narrow-minded hysteria about people being somehow un-patriotic for disagreeing with the US' war in Iraq. He was simply stating what he feels is a fact - that some governments/companies will see open-source as a viable alternative to being bound to a US company's product.
Crying foul over that point being raised is disingenuous, at best.
A few years ago, while waiting for my transaction to complete, the machine next to mine made some noise and rolled out a $20. Then i got the cash from my own machine. There was no one who had just left that other machine, there was no session still happening on it, and no card was ejected. Just a free $20.
Being a programmer, i would have a *very* difficult time believing this if someone else told me, but there you go. And it was great that the only other witness to this was the head of my then-company's IT dept :-)
(we split the $20)
You're correct. And i'm an idiot.
I agree completely. That's why i posted this article. I'd love to see WotW redone; just not with T.Cruise and that guy who wrote that dreck for J.Park. Speilberg is a toss-up. I just hope it's *not* a contemporary setting. If that's how he does it i don't know that i'll even see it (like i didn't bother with Independence Day, Starship Troopers, or that nonsense with Bruce Willis on the shuttle). I love sci-fi too much to bother.
Uh, no - Hydrogen is H. By "H2 molecule", maybe you're thinking of H2O (water)? There's also an isotope of H - 2H - called Deuterium. But H is comprised of one atom. He is - funny enough - also comprised of exactly one atom. But it has two electrons. All of the elements are single-atom phenomena, with varying numbers of 'parts'. Molecules are diferent animals entirely, made up of mixtures of different elements.
reminds me of this toy (was it a "transformers" toy?) I had when I was a kid
Jesus, i thought for a sec there you were going to say you swallowed it or something.
And, hey? Watch out for your keyboard, huh? *That'd* be bitch to clean up.
Slashdot: this tech + reconition to text + scripting
hmmm... reciting the ASCII goatse. (and i just know there's a Soviet Russia in here somewhere)
Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do...
It would have been *much* funnier to see shatner pogoing around, yelling, "OOhH! oOHHH!!" instead of just yanking at that collar around his neck.
But that's just me...
Seems to me this could *create* some difficult working conditions.
Could the erosion of democracy itself be far behind?
You're soaking in it.