And I don't think it could be thought of as spyware.
Spyware is supposed to be unknowingly reporting information about you, whether it was mistakenly installed by you or it crept in from somewhere else.
An application, or kernel option you flick on like a switch, which you install, and that reports information you know about, to people you understand are going to use that information, can't be called spyware unless it also happened to report how much pr0n you have as well as the kernel's amount of usage.
I think it would be a neat option to have in the kernel in general. Off by default, all us geeks who want to say "look! here! I'm running Linux!" could turn it on and it could report our uptimes and what kernels we're running.
We could "stand up and be counted" to show our support for Linux and give the various distributions a rough idea of what we think about them.
Or any sort of combat situation. The closest I've come is when an arsehole tried to mug me - broke my nose but didn't get anything so I wasn't even a little bit stressed by it.
Now, don't automatically dismiss my next thoughts because of that though. I'd like to try and say a few things and hopefully get my point across clearly.
Firstly, War is Hell. There is no doubt about that. To take a man - and I say that as a general sexless term - and put them in a situation where they could, at any moment, suddenly be dead, can not be good for their nerves in the first place.
Imagine being on a camping trip with your buddies. You've had a few beers, caught a couple of fish, and are generally relaxing around the camp fire while waving off the odd mosquito and keeping warm in your goretex (or whatever) jacket.
"The mosquitos seem a bit heavy tonight." says one of your friends as you hear a particularly loud whining noise, and then his face is half-gone and he's dead.
There's no thoughts that come of something like that. It's just "flight or fight" time. You can run, or you can kiss the dirt and crawl into your tent.
Your goretex jacket is suddenly army greens. The mosquitos crack through the air. People are shouting directions, orders, for medical help, and just generally screaming in pain. Your fishing pole has become a large calibre, semi-automatic weapon, hard to tell if it's loaded or even what the exact calibre is in the bad light from the fire and with dirt on your hands. The tent is a fox hole or low trench with a shitty green tarp overhead.
It's hard to think, to see clearly. You're scared - scared of dying, scared of living in pain, scared of ending up alone, scared of getting captured. There's the smell of mud, burning wood, maybe blood. At any moment a grenade might drop in and remove a limb if it doesn't kill you right away.
And this, why you're out here, is because some guy in another country had decided that his piece of land wasn't big enough, or because he had to show "johnny foreigner" who's the boss.
You're probably not even in your own country, defending it against invaders.
"What the fuck am I doing here? What's going on up top? Why did I ever join? Will I ever see my wife again? Was that Hank that just screamed? Oh God I don't want to be here!"
I don't know if this is a quote or a paraphrase from someone else but someone'll probably say it one day - "Those who would make war, would not if they had to fight it."
I don't agree with war in general. I think it lost most of it's honour and principles of necessity when kings stopped going into battle with their soldiers. At the same time though I do feel sympathy for those who've been through war. I can only imagine in a small and pathetic way, like above, what it's like to be in the middle of a battle.
If this new approach, using VR to confront and wear away the affects of Shell Shock, can work, I hope it get used and helps all those that fought in wars and came out broken. I hope they can rebuild their minds and put them to use in a new, and productive endeavour, remembering without terror what they once went through so they can hopefully dissuade the next generation from joining up the "defense" forces.
There shouldn't be war any more. Our final act in the military should be to disband it as a fighting unit, gather up all the veterans with shell shock, and try to heal them.
International commerce and the almighty dollar is the new weapon in our information age. Maybe when this time is over and we're scrabbling for the bits after a societal collapse we'll need to fight again, but now, there is no need for it.
If a man is terrorising a society, take out that man. If a dictator is harming his people and they've cried out for help, take out that dictator. We have the technology today, when used correctly, to end wars before they even start.
Idealistic and naive, maybe, but I'd like to at least dream that we won't all end up one day completely fucked because of some scared little egomaniac sitting in an irregularly shaped office barking orders into a phone. Maybe if they had to fight, we wouldn't.
"Could you pick up some steaks on the way home? I was thinking about cooking steak and veges with gravy." becomes "Cows in the paddock, soylent green grocer tap-dances on water."
Then you GPG encrypt it at anything above 4096 bit.:)
And while I like Kevin and Kell, User Friendly, Penny Arcade, Player versus Player, and Piled Higher and Deeper, there is one comic I've found on-line which is my favorite.
It has black humour, confronting topics, and it's furry, but it's not warm and cuddly furry by any stretch of the imagination.
Actually, considering it costs more to buy a nice prius than it does to put in one hell of a solar system or windmill, I'd say you're doing more for the environment AND your pocketbook by putting in alternative energy at home. Maybe you can even sell some of it to your neighbor, too. Though that's probably just as illegal as my first suggestion, even though it'd be a Good Thing for all parties involved (minus the coal-burning power plant down the road).
Where I live, here in Queensland, if you want to generate electricity at your home, all you need to do is buy some little box and get an electrician to connect your generator - solar, wind, hydro maybe - through the box into the grid through your meter.
Then you let the power company know about it so their guy checking the meter doesn't look at the power box funny when it's measuring backwards.
There's a few people in Brisbane, one on tv a while ago, who have this set up with solar panels on their roofs. They quite often get a cheque from Energex - the power company - instead of a bill because they generate more power than they use - using more at night but generating heaps during the day while the kids are at school and both parents are working.
Personally, I'd like to own several different types of vehicle. I look at hovercraft's and think "that'd be fun" and occasionally visit the Skycar web page to see how the M400 is coming along.
But I think for me, for maximum in ease of control, stability, MPG (or KPL), and long term endurance, I'd be best with a horse.:)
The control's easy and I ain't going to be riding that thing into a post if I do something stupid like ride drunk, I'm a freak in the sense I find a horse's back comfortable to sit on, it refuels as it goes along sometimes (but I'm never in a big hurry, planning on being early all the time), and if I have two, I have grow a new one later.
Until we get nanobots, cars are gonna be a bit more difficult in those regards.
That's one of the things I've been thinking about - unsecured, remotely controlled or pre-scripted drones being used as launch points for an attack.
Seriously, a corporation such as Monsanto, Microsoft, IBM, Nestle, Douwe-Egberts, wouldn't give a shit about who's attacking them, just stopping the attack.
If something comes to the publics attention, "It's jonesy's fault! He took personal, unauthorised measures to retaliate."
As a whole, The Corporation doesn't give a shit. It will "live on", so to speak. Employee's can be replaced, and Customers will forget about problems they've had in the past, smiling with wonder at the marketing for the future.
And if company's end up fighting other company's through the Internet, so what? We're heading for an electronic arms race anyway, we may as well be entertained as we journey in this hand-basket to IT hell.
I said `an Aliens (3 I think) script with "Story By William Gibson" on it.'
During the documentary, called Alien Saga btw, you hear that there were a number of writers who submitted scripts, as well as William Gibson, and the man who's script was used, Joss Whedon.
I'm familiar with Case, I've got Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive, and Burning Chrome. I did have All Tomorrow's Parties too but it disappeared one day from my flat.
It didn't click that FASA used Gibson's Matrix. They're similar, but I never thought to piece them together because Gibson's is more vague than the FASA extrapolation - but of course FASA's going to expand on it, they're making it into a "real" thing.:)
Here's a funny co-incedence (sp?). I was watching a documentary today on the Alien Series, and, during a piece of film-splicing with scripts floating across the screen, you see an Aliens (3 I think) script with "Story By William Gibson" on it.
Even if you're not into Role Play Games, in particular pencil and paper ones, check out the section on the Matrix in Shadowrun - no, it's not a knock-off of the movie, Shadowrun was first written some time in the early to mid eighties.
Despite the computer models being very different from real life, a lot of the ideas for security and counter-security are things that seem to be popping up these days.
Apologies for bad definitions. It's been a while since I played SR.
Passive security measures, IC, such as Barrier can be seen in simple password prompts and other methods of identifying those who wish to enter a system. Tar Babies are similar to Honey Pots, delaying the attacker in an area where they can scanned and identified.
We don't yet have the whole Direct Neural Interface Data Socket, or Jack yet, but Black IC in the game - killing the hacker themselves - and Grey IC such as Blaster - just disabling or destroying a Decker's (SR Hacker) computer - could be equated to something in real-life infecting the attackers computer with a nasty, possibly hardware-destructive virus.
The interesting thing is that IC in Shadowrun was developed as a by-product of re-creating our modern day internet and, initially, having the Hacker use the new, prototype Decks by way of being in a sensory depravation tank with various electrodes connected to their body to detect input, and wearing headsets and visors for output.
FASA raised some interesting questions for me when I was first playing the game because at the time, I was using a 386sx based machine with MS-DOS and Windows 3.11wfw. Just imagining the three-dimensional, semi-realistic (realism in the SR Matrix relies on the server's power, not the clients) Matrix of Shadowrun got me right into working and playing with VRML a couple of years later.
...We have roving Intrusion Countermeasures (Or IC) inside our system. Not just passive measures, but semi-autonomous active measures.
We already have a form of White IC - simple detection, non-aggressive measures. How long before we have more active Grey IC - Tar Babies (similar to today's honey pots), Tar Pits, Blaster - and ultimately, Black IC - seeking out the source of the intrusion and in turn, destroying the origin of attack?
Would a big, multi-national corporation get punished for "accidentally" frying the computer of someone who was thought to be intruding into the corporation's computers? I seriously doubt it.
`Well gee whiz, why didn't anyone do this before? It's so obvious.'
It's like when you're a kid and you're trying out your new watch with the glow-in-the-dark hands by holding it up to the light and then turning the light off to see the neat little dots.
It's like the ball-bearing. For years grease, at first animal and then more refined, was used to keep wheels from burning on axles, probably after a carter with roast pork or chicken greased fingers had to make an emergency repair.
Some years later, bullets are being made for muskets and early pistols by using molds, and dropping small amounts of lead down the inside of a tower into tepid water.
What was the thing that triggered the mental connection between wheels and balls to allow the wheel to spin much more freely?
What was the trigger that prompted someone to look at a fluorescent light bulb and think,
`Hey, if we put some sort of glow-in-the-dark shit in that, it'll work even when it's off!'
I love these little inventions because you never really think about them and make the connections, but then once someone does, it all just seems so simple and obvious.
I think it's a perfect example of the humorous theory that ideas are just out there, like bits of benign radiation just zipping about the cosmos, and every once in a while they pass through the right person's head and trigger off all the right neurons to germinate that idea inside that person's mind.
`Eureka!'* He cried as he leapt from the bath, his face aglow with sudden clarity of thought.
I had a job working for an ISP in Brisbane for two and half years. My main duties were simply to provide tech support for dial-up customers - this was before DSL actually became useful in Queensland - and give the system admin a hand if needed it.
It was great, I loved it. I was using Windows 98 at home and tinkering with Debian, running my dial-up through my little Debian server box that I'd built using the old machine after a christmas upgrade, and after working at the ISP for a year I was right into tooling around with the system.
I was doing minor work on the Debian-based servers at my job - learning more than what I'd played with at home on DNS, Bind, Sendmail, Apache, PHP, MySQL, and so on - and taking that info home and playing some more. I had a web site running on my desktop machine at work - all the systems were Debian boxes - and admin'ing it from home.
My boss gave me little challenges like "figure out why this domain name doesn't resolve" and "fit Linux on this machine with Apache, MySQL, PHP, and Sendmail, and turn it into a working server with a simple website" (a 486DX-33 with 8MB RAM and a 100MB HDD). I was having a ball.
Then completely out of the blue, the old boss leaves, and I get a new boss, and the first thing that happens is I get this thing to sign, presented to me by my boss's lawyer.
"We'd like you to sign this."
"Well what is it?" I ask as I pick up the three page document.
"Oh, it's just a standard work agreement between you and your employer."
"Oh he's not my employer, he's just my Boss." I joked and read the paperwork.
Right there, on the last page above where I'm supposed to sign is (not a direct quote) "upon cessation of employment with [company], the employee cannot work for a competing company in the area of computer technical support or internet commerce for twelve months".
I said to the lawyer "this is a fucking joke, right?" and pointed out the line. He said it wasn't.
Now I didn't know about the ability to cross-out and initial disagreeable clauses in a contract until it's finally decided at the time so I just handed it back and said,
"You can tell [Boss] that he can stick that up his ass. Show me the contract that says he pays me, I work for him, end of fucking story."
He seemed kind of shocked and said that the other guy - the younger system admin at the time - had signed it. I retorted with a paraphrased old saying of my parents, "if everyone jumped off a cliff, I'd say they were fucking idiots."
He mustn't have told my Boss that because I continued working there until the business went bust, and they never mentioned the contract again.
I miss that job, and my first Boss there. I was learning shit and getting paid for it. I could talk to the customer without a script, and actually solve their problems. I was allowed to bring my own computer into work and use it instead of the slower machine I had on my desk - the entire system being used for the records of customers being designed to work solely through any web browser, all server-side scripted. I was even encouraged to try and duplicate, at home, the shit we were doing at work and figure out how to make it better.
And I loved the way my Boss came in each morning. He was an military man, army I think, and he'd walk passed the offices to his own and say "Good Morning Men." You could hear the capital letter on each word. And he was a geek too. He'd built the system we were using, and me and the system admin that worked there basically touched nothing to restore broken funtionality. Something broke, it was hardware, and since not much broke, we didn't really have to work hard. I wasn't paid great, barely $400 a week for 38hours, but I didn't care about that. I had fun.
Yep, I just double-checked this on Google calculator because the numbers didn't look right to me. Here in Australia a pint is 570mL, in your choice of that barrel-shaped dimple glass or the taller, smooth glass with the slight width increase near the top.
According to Google,
570 millilitres = 20.0611872 Imperial fluid ounces, and 570 millilitres = 19.2739929 US fluid ounces.
I generally like to have four pints of XXXX Bitter of an evening at the pub, unless I don't have anything to do later in which case I may have six or seven.
Does the Kegbot account for if you've had a meal when checking your fluid intake level? I can typically have eight or nine pints after a big meal.
And there's a lot of heated debate in here. I'd like to throw in 20 cents*.
Pertaining to the article, I don't like that rats were hurt, but I do like that they could heal them again. I have this strong aversion to directly harming or killing independantly living organisms, and yes that includes bugs too.
To the people throwing back and forth the whole "harvesting from fetus's" debate, I'd like to ramble.:)
Firstly, I find biology an interesting subject, particularly cellular level growth, and I'd like to offer a little challenge.
Get a friend to obtain some pictures of,
An image of a small, internal cancer - malignant or benign, doesn't matter.
A 300 cell lizard embryo.
A 300 cell chicken embryo.
And
A 300 cell human embryo.
Now, pick out which is which.
"Don't tell me you're comparing a child to cancer you sick bastard!"
No, I'm not. What I'm saying is that three of those things are developing into independantly living organisms, and one is dependant upon a host which it may or may not harm.
Here's the rub. Two of those examples begin their lives as parasitic organisms, and either may harm or kill their host.
Think about that for a second. A mother has as much chance of dying from complications as the unborn child has, like a person with a cancer growing on the wall of their stomach may or may not be seriously affected by that cancer depending on whether it's benign or malignant.
This doesn't make a baby equate to cancer, and neither does it mean a cancer is the same as an early stage human embryo, but they are both comprised of human cellular tissue and technically alive as they grow inside their host.
"So what, you're saying a guy can't have a cancer removed because it's like a baby?"
No, what I'm saying is that you cannot use the argument that a 200-300 cell embryo can't be aborted and it's stem cells harvested just for the fact that it would be killing a collection of living human cellular tissue. Cancer is technically a living being in the same regard, using oxygen and nutrients from your body to feed itself the same way an unborn fetus does, and I don't see people up in arms over killing cancer.
Maybe we should. It might be fun even if only to see the looks on peoples faces as we loudly shout "stop the murder of human cellular growth!", and then explain we're not anti-abortion, we're anti-cancer removal and disposal.
Personally, I think human life begins on a cellular level at conception, or when that first cancer cell goes "boing" and it's growth inhibitor switch snaps.
However, I think individuality starts when the organism leaves it's host and it's own body looks after respiration, digestion, and motor functions.
"Perhaps a baby is a person when it's still in the womb and kicking."
Nah, I think that's evidence of neural pathway growth and adjustment in the brain happening during a kind of purely personal, mentally internal driven "proto-dream" state, like dreaming of nothing. Sure, some things may seem to make the baby "happy", or more active in the womb, but that could just be purely reactionary inside the developing brain. I wouldn't advocate unnecessary abortion at that stage anyway, even without the opinion that the baby is it's own person, but I don't think we're going to know much more until we understand the brain better and how it ties in to the rest of our bodies.
I don't really have much more of an opinion I can state on the whole issue other than, politics and science shouldn't mix, and like that dude on television said "life is full of uncertainty, women need to have options, and abortion has to be one of those options". I'm a guy, I'll never be in a decision where abortion will directly affect me, but I may one day be in the position where I need some stem cells to fix an otherwise permanent injury, and I'd like to be able to get that help.
This whole thing reminds me of the Terry Pratchett novel Jingo.
Overnight, an island basically pops up out of the sea, right smack-bang equidistant between Klatch and the city-state of Ankh-Morpork, and suddenly everyone's arguing about going to war to "knock johnny foreigner" off of their bit of land.
Damn shame there's no roundworld equivalent of Sir Samuel Vimes who's going to go and arrest everyone forcing the argument over this for "disturbing the peace", "loitering with intent to cause an affray" (occupying the island with troops), and basically throw the dickheads claiming it as their own into prison for 30 days.
It would be nice if Hans Island just sunk into the ocean and disappeared. Wouldn't the people claiming the place as their own have egg on their faces then?
Is there a special edict or provision in some obscure american governmental policy to extend the current administration beyond it's term in office if there is a "danger of destabilization of the nation" from an election during a time of national crisis?
I just had the horrible thought that something is going to happen about 6 to 9 months before the 2008 national elections, some sort of "terrorist incident" that will prompt,
The current administration to either stay in office, and possibly be "absorbed" by the Department of Homeland Security, "for the sake of keeping the nation safe and secure during this time of abject opposition by the rest of the world to our way of life".
A new type of PATRIOT ACT III, more horrific and lucricrous than H.P. Lovecraft, Neil Gaiman, and Bruce Campbell combined could ever dream up.
Mandatory RFID tagging for all foreign born citizens, followed a few months later by "voluntary" tagging of nationally born US'ians. Mandatory - "All your friends are against anonymous terrorists being within our country, why aren't you" - rfids for all citizens enforced once the entire nation is about 50 to 60 percent registered.
By 2015 there is no separate police force. All police and special police have been absorbed into the Department of Citizen Reassurance and Advanced Protection. They operate with military precision and, even worse, military forethought. Countries allied to the United States are actively "encouraged" to introduce their own version of PATRIOT III.
Everything you read, hear, see, watch on the television, or see on the internet is no longer passively monitored by whatever happens to be around, but actively watched, collected, and colated for a massive NSA-run computer system to "flag" possible "problems" within the community.
The entertainment industries loudly shower the government with praise for looking after it's citizens and abolishing all those "nasty terrorist sponsoring thieves" after piracy becomes a qualifier for export to Guantanamo Bay, now the largest prison in USA territory.
Some time before 2020, the Department of Homeland Security and Governmental Process has created a list of non-allied countries that still harbour terrorists, in their opinion, and begins a scare campaign to encourage these countries to start "bagging and tagging" their own citizens. During this campaign there is an uprising of concerned citizens who still have their constitutionally protected guns. This uprising is quietly squashed by the government as an example of the fact that a "well regulated militia" now has no chance in hell of shaking a corrupted government off of it's perch, and the media downplays the incident as another, more modern, Waco incident.
By 2030 half the world is either United States territory, or the governments are so alike to the Department of Homeland Security and Governmental Process that there is effectively no difference.
You're probably thinking, "this guy's a fucking tinfoil hatter", but it just occured to me that all of the current things happening - the prevalence of monitoring already going on, rfid tagging of products and now foreign visitors, petitioning by the agencies to have rights to search and seizure beyond constitutionally allowable levels, the "right" of the US government to bundle up anyone to Guantanamo Bay under the guise of calling them an "Enemy Combatant" without any sort of due process, and the fact that the current admin doesn't seem to give a shit if they lie about why they're going to do something and then get caught out because they can always say "We did it to stop terrorists!" (and many people believe them) - all seem to point to some sort of major restructuring of the current US government soon that will make Fascism seem like a welcome alternative.
Several years ago a lot of us laughed at the DMCA coming into operation. A few years ago some of us doubted t
A few months back I saw in Crazy Clarks these sets of cheap - AU$2 - headphones that had an fm radio inline on the lead, and then a little while later in the same brand they had something similar - AU$3.95 - for various mobile phones but with a microphone and an answer button so you could use it as a hands-free lead as well.
I can't think of a reason why these would be in Crazy Clarks - a famed cheap-as-shit shop around here in Queensland, along with Silly Solly's and a few other places - and not in places like Best Buy, Radioshack and CompUSA in the USA.
If you've got an iPod or music player without a radio, and you want the radio, have a look around for these headphones. I'm guessing the earbuds aren't that good, but you could always cut-and-splice on a better pair.
People seem to be focused on size, but SHAPE is just as, or even more important. What you you rather carry in your pocket, a SQUARE, or a FLAT RECTANGLE (IE: shuffle, sony thing, etc.)
Imagine a corner of that stupid thing digging into your leg. No thanks.
Well, if you look closely you see it has got that little half-loop sticking out on one side which I presume is for attaching to a ringlet, so you could use it as a key chain attachment or clip it to your belt - like I do with my keys to prevent Pocket Key-Rip Syndrome*.
An interesting test would be to see how long this player lasts while attached to an active person. Jogging, cycling, running, moving around the office, going out places, and so on, to see how well the circuitry and case holds together.
Obviously you're not testing for skipping because, I'm guessing, it's using non-volitile (sp?) RAM to hold your music. It's just a test to see how durably the player is put together.
* All your pants have a relatively small hole in the front pockets from your keys cutting through the liner.
Slashdot Mirror
And I don't think it could be thought of as spyware.
Spyware is supposed to be unknowingly reporting information about you, whether it was mistakenly installed by you or it crept in from somewhere else.
An application, or kernel option you flick on like a switch, which you install, and that reports information you know about, to people you understand are going to use that information, can't be called spyware unless it also happened to report how much pr0n you have as well as the kernel's amount of usage.
I think it would be a neat option to have in the kernel in general. Off by default, all us geeks who want to say "look! here! I'm running Linux!" could turn it on and it could report our uptimes and what kernels we're running.
We could "stand up and be counted" to show our support for Linux and give the various distributions a rough idea of what we think about them.
Hey, some viruses are good ones, like the Love Virus, Luck Virus, or the GPL. :)
*Dreams of being a professional "bum" in a certain six mile long, three mile wide interplanetary mining ship...*
"Beelzebub has the source code put a-side for me-ee-ee, For meee... For meeee!"
I'm sure someone here can take the lyrics and turn it into a cool parody. :)
I lack the imagination. :/
"Clusters in Space-ace-ace-ace."
Or any sort of combat situation. The closest I've come is when an arsehole tried to mug me - broke my nose but didn't get anything so I wasn't even a little bit stressed by it.
Now, don't automatically dismiss my next thoughts because of that though. I'd like to try and say a few things and hopefully get my point across clearly.
Firstly, War is Hell. There is no doubt about that. To take a man - and I say that as a general sexless term - and put them in a situation where they could, at any moment, suddenly be dead, can not be good for their nerves in the first place.
Imagine being on a camping trip with your buddies. You've had a few beers, caught a couple of fish, and are generally relaxing around the camp fire while waving off the odd mosquito and keeping warm in your goretex (or whatever) jacket.
"The mosquitos seem a bit heavy tonight." says one of your friends as you hear a particularly loud whining noise, and then his face is half-gone and he's dead.
There's no thoughts that come of something like that. It's just "flight or fight" time. You can run, or you can kiss the dirt and crawl into your tent.
Your goretex jacket is suddenly army greens. The mosquitos crack through the air. People are shouting directions, orders, for medical help, and just generally screaming in pain. Your fishing pole has become a large calibre, semi-automatic weapon, hard to tell if it's loaded or even what the exact calibre is in the bad light from the fire and with dirt on your hands. The tent is a fox hole or low trench with a shitty green tarp overhead.
It's hard to think, to see clearly. You're scared - scared of dying, scared of living in pain, scared of ending up alone, scared of getting captured. There's the smell of mud, burning wood, maybe blood. At any moment a grenade might drop in and remove a limb if it doesn't kill you right away.
And this, why you're out here, is because some guy in another country had decided that his piece of land wasn't big enough, or because he had to show "johnny foreigner" who's the boss.
You're probably not even in your own country, defending it against invaders.
"What the fuck am I doing here? What's going on up top? Why did I ever join? Will I ever see my wife again? Was that Hank that just screamed? Oh God I don't want to be here!"
I don't know if this is a quote or a paraphrase from someone else but someone'll probably say it one day - "Those who would make war, would not if they had to fight it."
I don't agree with war in general. I think it lost most of it's honour and principles of necessity when kings stopped going into battle with their soldiers. At the same time though I do feel sympathy for those who've been through war. I can only imagine in a small and pathetic way, like above, what it's like to be in the middle of a battle.
If this new approach, using VR to confront and wear away the affects of Shell Shock, can work, I hope it get used and helps all those that fought in wars and came out broken. I hope they can rebuild their minds and put them to use in a new, and productive endeavour, remembering without terror what they once went through so they can hopefully dissuade the next generation from joining up the "defense" forces.
There shouldn't be war any more. Our final act in the military should be to disband it as a fighting unit, gather up all the veterans with shell shock, and try to heal them.
International commerce and the almighty dollar is the new weapon in our information age. Maybe when this time is over and we're scrabbling for the bits after a societal collapse we'll need to fight again, but now, there is no need for it.
If a man is terrorising a society, take out that man. If a dictator is harming his people and they've cried out for help, take out that dictator. We have the technology today, when used correctly, to end wars before they even start.
Idealistic and naive, maybe, but I'd like to at least dream that we won't all end up one day completely fucked because of some scared little egomaniac sitting in an irregularly shaped office barking orders into a phone. Maybe if they had to fight, we wouldn't.
To use codes and cyphers.
"Could you pick up some steaks on the way home? I was thinking about cooking steak and veges with gravy." becomes "Cows in the paddock, soylent green grocer tap-dances on water."
Then you GPG encrypt it at anything above 4096 bit. :)
Fun for the whole police department.
And while I like Kevin and Kell, User Friendly, Penny Arcade, Player versus Player, and Piled Higher and Deeper, there is one comic I've found on-line which is my favorite.
It has black humour, confronting topics, and it's furry, but it's not warm and cuddly furry by any stretch of the imagination.
Jack
"River, what are you doing?"
"I'm fixing your symbol."
Actually, considering it costs more to buy a nice prius than it does to put in one hell of a solar system or windmill, I'd say you're doing more for the environment AND your pocketbook by putting in alternative energy at home. Maybe you can even sell some of it to your neighbor, too. Though that's probably just as illegal as my first suggestion, even though it'd be a Good Thing for all parties involved (minus the coal-burning power plant down the road).
Where I live, here in Queensland, if you want to generate electricity at your home, all you need to do is buy some little box and get an electrician to connect your generator - solar, wind, hydro maybe - through the box into the grid through your meter.
Then you let the power company know about it so their guy checking the meter doesn't look at the power box funny when it's measuring backwards.
There's a few people in Brisbane, one on tv a while ago, who have this set up with solar panels on their roofs. They quite often get a cheque from Energex - the power company - instead of a bill because they generate more power than they use - using more at night but generating heaps during the day while the kids are at school and both parents are working.
Personally, I'd like to own several different types of vehicle. I look at hovercraft's and think "that'd be fun" and occasionally visit the Skycar web page to see how the M400 is coming along.
But I think for me, for maximum in ease of control, stability, MPG (or KPL), and long term endurance, I'd be best with a horse. :)
The control's easy and I ain't going to be riding that thing into a post if I do something stupid like ride drunk, I'm a freak in the sense I find a horse's back comfortable to sit on, it refuels as it goes along sometimes (but I'm never in a big hurry, planning on being early all the time), and if I have two, I have grow a new one later.
Until we get nanobots, cars are gonna be a bit more difficult in those regards.
That's one of the things I've been thinking about - unsecured, remotely controlled or pre-scripted drones being used as launch points for an attack.
Seriously, a corporation such as Monsanto, Microsoft, IBM, Nestle, Douwe-Egberts, wouldn't give a shit about who's attacking them, just stopping the attack.
If something comes to the publics attention, "It's jonesy's fault! He took personal, unauthorised measures to retaliate."
As a whole, The Corporation doesn't give a shit. It will "live on", so to speak. Employee's can be replaced, and Customers will forget about problems they've had in the past, smiling with wonder at the marketing for the future.
And if company's end up fighting other company's through the Internet, so what? We're heading for an electronic arms race anyway, we may as well be entertained as we journey in this hand-basket to IT hell.
I said `an Aliens (3 I think) script with "Story By William Gibson" on it.'
During the documentary, called Alien Saga btw, you hear that there were a number of writers who submitted scripts, as well as William Gibson, and the man who's script was used, Joss Whedon.
I'm familiar with Case, I've got Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive, and Burning Chrome. I did have All Tomorrow's Parties too but it disappeared one day from my flat.
It didn't click that FASA used Gibson's Matrix. They're similar, but I never thought to piece them together because Gibson's is more vague than the FASA extrapolation - but of course FASA's going to expand on it, they're making it into a "real" thing. :)
Here's a funny co-incedence (sp?). I was watching a documentary today on the Alien Series, and, during a piece of film-splicing with scripts floating across the screen, you see an Aliens (3 I think) script with "Story By William Gibson" on it.
Actually I nicked them from Shadowrun. :)
Even if you're not into Role Play Games, in particular pencil and paper ones, check out the section on the Matrix in Shadowrun - no, it's not a knock-off of the movie, Shadowrun was first written some time in the early to mid eighties.
Despite the computer models being very different from real life, a lot of the ideas for security and counter-security are things that seem to be popping up these days.
Apologies for bad definitions. It's been a while since I played SR.
Passive security measures, IC, such as Barrier can be seen in simple password prompts and other methods of identifying those who wish to enter a system. Tar Babies are similar to Honey Pots, delaying the attacker in an area where they can scanned and identified.
We don't yet have the whole Direct Neural Interface Data Socket, or Jack yet, but Black IC in the game - killing the hacker themselves - and Grey IC such as Blaster - just disabling or destroying a Decker's (SR Hacker) computer - could be equated to something in real-life infecting the attackers computer with a nasty, possibly hardware-destructive virus.
The interesting thing is that IC in Shadowrun was developed as a by-product of re-creating our modern day internet and, initially, having the Hacker use the new, prototype Decks by way of being in a sensory depravation tank with various electrodes connected to their body to detect input, and wearing headsets and visors for output.
FASA raised some interesting questions for me when I was first playing the game because at the time, I was using a 386sx based machine with MS-DOS and Windows 3.11wfw. Just imagining the three-dimensional, semi-realistic (realism in the SR Matrix relies on the server's power, not the clients) Matrix of Shadowrun got me right into working and playing with VRML a couple of years later.
We already have a form of White IC - simple detection, non-aggressive measures. How long before we have more active Grey IC - Tar Babies (similar to today's honey pots), Tar Pits, Blaster - and ultimately, Black IC - seeking out the source of the intrusion and in turn, destroying the origin of attack?
Would a big, multi-national corporation get punished for "accidentally" frying the computer of someone who was thought to be intruding into the corporation's computers? I seriously doubt it.
Where you look at it and think,
`Well gee whiz, why didn't anyone do this before? It's so obvious.'
It's like when you're a kid and you're trying out your new watch with the glow-in-the-dark hands by holding it up to the light and then turning the light off to see the neat little dots.
It's like the ball-bearing. For years grease, at first animal and then more refined, was used to keep wheels from burning on axles, probably after a carter with roast pork or chicken greased fingers had to make an emergency repair.
Some years later, bullets are being made for muskets and early pistols by using molds, and dropping small amounts of lead down the inside of a tower into tepid water.
What was the thing that triggered the mental connection between wheels and balls to allow the wheel to spin much more freely?
What was the trigger that prompted someone to look at a fluorescent light bulb and think,
`Hey, if we put some sort of glow-in-the-dark shit in that, it'll work even when it's off!'
I love these little inventions because you never really think about them and make the connections, but then once someone does, it all just seems so simple and obvious.
I think it's a perfect example of the humorous theory that ideas are just out there, like bits of benign radiation just zipping about the cosmos, and every once in a while they pass through the right person's head and trigger off all the right neurons to germinate that idea inside that person's mind.
`Eureka!'* He cried as he leapt from the bath, his face aglow with sudden clarity of thought.
* `Hand me a towel!'
I thought this had already been settled.
There is no fucking spoon!
I had a job working for an ISP in Brisbane for two and half years. My main duties were simply to provide tech support for dial-up customers - this was before DSL actually became useful in Queensland - and give the system admin a hand if needed it.
It was great, I loved it. I was using Windows 98 at home and tinkering with Debian, running my dial-up through my little Debian server box that I'd built using the old machine after a christmas upgrade, and after working at the ISP for a year I was right into tooling around with the system.
I was doing minor work on the Debian-based servers at my job - learning more than what I'd played with at home on DNS, Bind, Sendmail, Apache, PHP, MySQL, and so on - and taking that info home and playing some more. I had a web site running on my desktop machine at work - all the systems were Debian boxes - and admin'ing it from home.
My boss gave me little challenges like "figure out why this domain name doesn't resolve" and "fit Linux on this machine with Apache, MySQL, PHP, and Sendmail, and turn it into a working server with a simple website" (a 486DX-33 with 8MB RAM and a 100MB HDD). I was having a ball.
Then completely out of the blue, the old boss leaves, and I get a new boss, and the first thing that happens is I get this thing to sign, presented to me by my boss's lawyer.
"We'd like you to sign this."
"Well what is it?" I ask as I pick up the three page document.
"Oh, it's just a standard work agreement between you and your employer."
"Oh he's not my employer, he's just my Boss." I joked and read the paperwork.
Right there, on the last page above where I'm supposed to sign is (not a direct quote) "upon cessation of employment with [company], the employee cannot work for a competing company in the area of computer technical support or internet commerce for twelve months".
I said to the lawyer "this is a fucking joke, right?" and pointed out the line. He said it wasn't.
Now I didn't know about the ability to cross-out and initial disagreeable clauses in a contract until it's finally decided at the time so I just handed it back and said,
"You can tell [Boss] that he can stick that up his ass. Show me the contract that says he pays me, I work for him, end of fucking story."
He seemed kind of shocked and said that the other guy - the younger system admin at the time - had signed it. I retorted with a paraphrased old saying of my parents, "if everyone jumped off a cliff, I'd say they were fucking idiots."
He mustn't have told my Boss that because I continued working there until the business went bust, and they never mentioned the contract again.
I miss that job, and my first Boss there. I was learning shit and getting paid for it. I could talk to the customer without a script, and actually solve their problems. I was allowed to bring my own computer into work and use it instead of the slower machine I had on my desk - the entire system being used for the records of customers being designed to work solely through any web browser, all server-side scripted. I was even encouraged to try and duplicate, at home, the shit we were doing at work and figure out how to make it better.
And I loved the way my Boss came in each morning. He was an military man, army I think, and he'd walk passed the offices to his own and say "Good Morning Men." You could hear the capital letter on each word. And he was a geek too. He'd built the system we were using, and me and the system admin that worked there basically touched nothing to restore broken funtionality. Something broke, it was hardware, and since not much broke, we didn't really have to work hard. I wasn't paid great, barely $400 a week for 38hours, but I didn't care about that. I had fun.
Yep, I just double-checked this on Google calculator because the numbers didn't look right to me. Here in Australia a pint is 570mL, in your choice of that barrel-shaped dimple glass or the taller, smooth glass with the slight width increase near the top.
According to Google,
570 millilitres = 20.0611872 Imperial fluid ounces, and 570 millilitres = 19.2739929 US fluid ounces.
I generally like to have four pints of XXXX Bitter of an evening at the pub, unless I don't have anything to do later in which case I may have six or seven.
Does the Kegbot account for if you've had a meal when checking your fluid intake level? I can typically have eight or nine pints after a big meal.
And there's a lot of heated debate in here. I'd like to throw in 20 cents*.
Pertaining to the article, I don't like that rats were hurt, but I do like that they could heal them again. I have this strong aversion to directly harming or killing independantly living organisms, and yes that includes bugs too.
To the people throwing back and forth the whole "harvesting from fetus's" debate, I'd like to ramble. :)
Firstly, I find biology an interesting subject, particularly cellular level growth, and I'd like to offer a little challenge.
Get a friend to obtain some pictures of,
Now, pick out which is which.
"Don't tell me you're comparing a child to cancer you sick bastard!"
No, I'm not. What I'm saying is that three of those things are developing into independantly living organisms, and one is dependant upon a host which it may or may not harm.
Here's the rub. Two of those examples begin their lives as parasitic organisms, and either may harm or kill their host.
Think about that for a second. A mother has as much chance of dying from complications as the unborn child has, like a person with a cancer growing on the wall of their stomach may or may not be seriously affected by that cancer depending on whether it's benign or malignant.
This doesn't make a baby equate to cancer, and neither does it mean a cancer is the same as an early stage human embryo, but they are both comprised of human cellular tissue and technically alive as they grow inside their host.
"So what, you're saying a guy can't have a cancer removed because it's like a baby?"
No, what I'm saying is that you cannot use the argument that a 200-300 cell embryo can't be aborted and it's stem cells harvested just for the fact that it would be killing a collection of living human cellular tissue. Cancer is technically a living being in the same regard, using oxygen and nutrients from your body to feed itself the same way an unborn fetus does, and I don't see people up in arms over killing cancer.
Maybe we should. It might be fun even if only to see the looks on peoples faces as we loudly shout "stop the murder of human cellular growth!", and then explain we're not anti-abortion, we're anti-cancer removal and disposal.
Personally, I think human life begins on a cellular level at conception, or when that first cancer cell goes "boing" and it's growth inhibitor switch snaps.
However, I think individuality starts when the organism leaves it's host and it's own body looks after respiration, digestion, and motor functions.
"Perhaps a baby is a person when it's still in the womb and kicking."
Nah, I think that's evidence of neural pathway growth and adjustment in the brain happening during a kind of purely personal, mentally internal driven "proto-dream" state, like dreaming of nothing. Sure, some things may seem to make the baby "happy", or more active in the womb, but that could just be purely reactionary inside the developing brain. I wouldn't advocate unnecessary abortion at that stage anyway, even without the opinion that the baby is it's own person, but I don't think we're going to know much more until we understand the brain better and how it ties in to the rest of our bodies.
I don't really have much more of an opinion I can state on the whole issue other than, politics and science shouldn't mix, and like that dude on television said "life is full of uncertainty, women need to have options, and abortion has to be one of those options". I'm a guy, I'll never be in a decision where abortion will directly affect me, but I may one day be in the position where I need some stem cells to fix an otherwise permanent injury, and I'd like to be able to get that help.
* Like 2 cents but with more rambling.
This whole thing reminds me of the Terry Pratchett novel Jingo.
Overnight, an island basically pops up out of the sea, right smack-bang equidistant between Klatch and the city-state of Ankh-Morpork, and suddenly everyone's arguing about going to war to "knock johnny foreigner" off of their bit of land.
Damn shame there's no roundworld equivalent of Sir Samuel Vimes who's going to go and arrest everyone forcing the argument over this for "disturbing the peace", "loitering with intent to cause an affray" (occupying the island with troops), and basically throw the dickheads claiming it as their own into prison for 30 days.
It would be nice if Hans Island just sunk into the ocean and disappeared. Wouldn't the people claiming the place as their own have egg on their faces then?
`Haha, you silly bastards lost an island!'
And it's not very nice for you American citizens.
Is there a special edict or provision in some obscure american governmental policy to extend the current administration beyond it's term in office if there is a "danger of destabilization of the nation" from an election during a time of national crisis?
I just had the horrible thought that something is going to happen about 6 to 9 months before the 2008 national elections, some sort of "terrorist incident" that will prompt,
By 2030 half the world is either United States territory, or the governments are so alike to the Department of Homeland Security and Governmental Process that there is effectively no difference.
You're probably thinking, "this guy's a fucking tinfoil hatter", but it just occured to me that all of the current things happening - the prevalence of monitoring already going on, rfid tagging of products and now foreign visitors, petitioning by the agencies to have rights to search and seizure beyond constitutionally allowable levels, the "right" of the US government to bundle up anyone to Guantanamo Bay under the guise of calling them an "Enemy Combatant" without any sort of due process, and the fact that the current admin doesn't seem to give a shit if they lie about why they're going to do something and then get caught out because they can always say "We did it to stop terrorists!" (and many people believe them) - all seem to point to some sort of major restructuring of the current US government soon that will make Fascism seem like a welcome alternative.
Several years ago a lot of us laughed at the DMCA coming into operation. A few years ago some of us doubted t
A few months back I saw in Crazy Clarks these sets of cheap - AU$2 - headphones that had an fm radio inline on the lead, and then a little while later in the same brand they had something similar - AU$3.95 - for various mobile phones but with a microphone and an answer button so you could use it as a hands-free lead as well.
I can't think of a reason why these would be in Crazy Clarks - a famed cheap-as-shit shop around here in Queensland, along with Silly Solly's and a few other places - and not in places like Best Buy, Radioshack and CompUSA in the USA.
If you've got an iPod or music player without a radio, and you want the radio, have a look around for these headphones. I'm guessing the earbuds aren't that good, but you could always cut-and-splice on a better pair.
Well, if you look closely you see it has got that little half-loop sticking out on one side which I presume is for attaching to a ringlet, so you could use it as a key chain attachment or clip it to your belt - like I do with my keys to prevent Pocket Key-Rip Syndrome*.
An interesting test would be to see how long this player lasts while attached to an active person. Jogging, cycling, running, moving around the office, going out places, and so on, to see how well the circuitry and case holds together.
Obviously you're not testing for skipping because, I'm guessing, it's using non-volitile (sp?) RAM to hold your music. It's just a test to see how durably the player is put together.
* All your pants have a relatively small hole in the front pockets from your keys cutting through the liner.
Hehe, Ab Fab meets /.
"Windows Vista, for old retired geeks who piss their pants at point releases."