Fiat money has its pluses, but it also has the big downside that governments don't have to rely on taxes to finance things.
From Dr. Lawrence Parks, Executive Director of the Foundation for the Advancement of Monetary Education (Parks has studied the money issue for more than 30 years. His writings have appeared in Pensions & Investments, The Economist, The Washington Times, The Freeman, The Free Market, American Outlook, The United States Congressional Record, National Review, and others. He has broad experience in academia, in business, and in finance. He holds a Ph.D. in Operations Research from the Polytechnic University. Additionally, he is an active member of many civic and social organizations including The United Association for Labor Education, The National Writer's Union, UAW 1981, AFL-CIO.): Read up, buddy.
Fiat money has its pluses, but it also has the big downside that governments don't have to rely on taxes to finance things.
From Dr. Lawrence Parks, Executive Director of the Foundation for the Advancement of Monetary Education (Parks has studied the money issue for more than 30 years. His writings have appeared in Pensions & Investments, The Economist, The Washington Times, The Freeman, The Free Market, American Outlook, The United States Congressional Record, National Review, and others. He has broad experience in academia, in business, and in finance. He holds a Ph.D. in Operations Research from the Polytechnic University. Additionally, he is an active member of many civic and social organizations including The United Association for Labor Education, The National Writer's Union, UAW 1981, AFL-CIO.):
"Fiat money is generally associated with a more statist society. If politicians dont have to consult citizens or tax them directly to fund government programs, such as wars, then politicians can, and do, implement whatever programs they wish. Thus, fiat money is a necessary ingredient for tyranny. Programs can be funded with money created by the banking system. In effect, politicians and banks embezzle the purchasing power of savings."
"Wars cost money. Since the only sources of revenues with commodity money are taxeswhich people tend to resistor borrowingwhich drives up interest ratesthere tend to be fewer and smaller wars. For example, it is less likely that the U.S. would have fought in Vietnam if President Johnson had to finance the war with taxes."Read up, buddy.
Fiat money has its pluses, but it also has the big downside that governments don't have to rely on taxes to finance things.
From Dr. Lawrence Parks, Executive Director of the Foundation for the Advancement of Monetary Education (Parks has studied the money issue for more than 30 years. His writings have appeared in Pensions & Investments, The Economist, The Washington Times, The Freeman, The Free Market, American Outlook, The United States Congressional Record, National Review, and others. He has broad experience in academia, in business, and in finance. He holds a Ph.D. in Operations Research from the Polytechnic University. Additionally, he is an active member of many civic and social organizations including The United Association for Labor Education, The National Writer's Union, UAW 1981, AFL-CIO.):
"Fiat money is generally associated with a more statist society. If politicians dont have to consult citizens or tax them directly to fund government programs, su
milw0rm is a group of "hacktivists" best known for penetrating the computers of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) in Bombay, the primary nuclear research facility of India, on June 3, 1998. The attack generated heated debate on the security of information in a world prevalent with countries developing nuclear weapons, the ethics of "hacker activists" or "hacktivists," and the importance of advanced security measures in a modern world filled with teenagers willing and able to break into insecure international websites.
If Google Answers were an independent company, Google would pay $100 million or more for it.
I believe that it is less "evil" to keep Google Answers than to end it so suddenly, at Christmastime, when many people depend on it for a living. Many Researchers are disabled or senior citizens, and every researcher does their own bit to help the world through their research. There is no reason for Google to give up on it rather than improving it.
Help keep Google Answers by signing this petition!
Jetico has a new piece of software in Beta which I am testing on an XP laptop and desktop. It works quite well! I would like to see a full third party review of the source though, as it is closed source.. but it is perfectly stable and I have not noticed any performance drops. Of course I am not much of a gamer and didn't do any benchmarks but it does work for me. It encrypts the entire hard drive so you even need a password to boot. (On Linux I use LUKS.) Check it out here.
Reminds me of a recent story Thatcher demanded that Mitterrand turn over Exocet missile disarm codes during the Falklands war. The Exocet is an Aérospatiale produced anti-ship missile which France had sold to Argentia. One was used to sink the HMS Sheffield, so the British wanted to be able to disarm them. Mitterrand reportedly complied.
From a book by Mitterrand's psychoanalyst, Magoudi:
"Excuse me," Mitterrand begins, apologising for his late arrival. "I had a difference of opinion to settle with the Iron Lady. What an impossible woman, that Thatcher! "With her four nuclear submarines on mission in the southern Atlantic, she threatens to launch the atomic weapon against Argentina -- unless I supply her with the secret codes that render deaf and blind the missiles we have sold to the Argentinians. Margaret has given me very precise instructions on the telephone."
Magoudi wanted to know how his patient felt about being "symbolically emasculated", as the psychoanalyst put it. "You mean that in the face of such aggressiveness you remain passive?" he asked.
"I will have the last word," Mitterrand replied. "Her island, it's me who will destroy it. Her island, I swear that soon it will no longer be one. I will take my revenge. I will tie England to Europe, despite its natural tendency for isolation. How? I will build a tunnel under the Channel. Yes. I will succeed where Napoleon III failed."
Once I had a shopkeeper not give me back correct change. It was a pretty shady guy actually in Istanbul, selling calling cards from a little shop on the street. I asked him for the right change back and he pretended not to realize what he had did.. so I reached into his cash register and took back my money and left (with the calling card of course). He did nothing. It felt great! It's all about the element of surprise in such situations.
According to Gostev, the rival hacker gangs did not seem to fully understand the exact nature of the vulnerability.
Otherwise it should have gone for much more than $4,000, even in a black market. Imagine an exploit where you can gain access to any Windows computer on Earth for the last several builds of Windows?
This is why we should set up companies to act as middleman and legitimately buy exploits. They would pay more and we would be able to get things patched quicker.
No discussion of polar bears is complete without mentioning Churchill, Manitoba, The Polar Bear Capital of The World. I visited at the end of October and had the chance to go out on a "Tundra Buggy" tour. It was quite exotic.. we saw 3 polar bear. There's also a guy who lives out on the tundra for a few months a year in a huge tundra buggy with satellite internet access.. He has a site: http://www.polarbearcam.com/
The buggies are amazing.. probably about 4-5 feet off the ground, HUGE tires, furnace inside to keep warm.. we ate dinner on board as well, with the bears just outside. Our tour guide was VERY professional and knowledgeable, we were quite impressed. It turned out he had also lived in Africa for many years and given tours there, etc etc..
Here's some fun facts about polar bear off the top of my head:
Their skin is actually black to absorb the sunlight (it's amazing how well adapted they are). The fur is really transparent but looks white in the same way a cloud looks white because of all of the water droplets.
They have suction cups on their paws to keep from slipping on the ice.
Churchill has had, I believe, only 2 or 3 fatalities in the past 30 years. One was a few weeks before I got there as a drunk wandered out of the town limits.
They are very careful about bear up there, for obvious reasons. Every night they fire off shotguns to keep the bears away. People living on the outskirts of town always have rifles in their houses just in case - they also put out traps.. basically boards with nails going through them.. to keep the bears away.
If a bear comes into town they will stun it and carry it away with a helicopter! We actually saw this happening! They move it further north IIRC... but if the bear comes back 2 more times, they put it into the "polar bear jail" which is in town (no tourists allowed sadly). They only water the bear in the jail, and do not feed it, otherwise the bear may view it as a rewarding experience.
I was surprised how nice everything was up there.. beautifully decorated hotels, at least on the insides. Food is expensive though and their economy is pretty much dependent on the bears, although they do export grain to Europe. The train takes 2 days from Winnipeg and is quite a slow ride, sometimes traveling at only 10 miles per hour. (They run 2 engines just in case one breaks down.)
I remember lots more about the bears and Churchill if anyone is interested.. just ask!
Oh - there was far less ice compared to previous years when I was up there. Everyone I asked said they weren't sure if it was global warming or just a temporary cycle. You can check the sea ice information for the Hudson Bay at the Canadian Ice Service site.
A few years ago I spent 2 weeks in the Outer Banks, NC. Naturally there was to be lots of lovely sun, ocean, beach, canoing.. But that could not deter me from logging into the Internet to check Slashdot! So I had to find a dialup ISP to take for a month so I could have access. I shopped around and found about a dozen, which all seemed very close as far as pricing and services. But, strangely, when I clicked (yes clicked.. no more lynx anymore) the subscribe links, I was always brought to a page which looked like the other pages! The domains weren't the same, and the layout of the page wasn't exact - but it was much more similar than any of the home pages had been. What gave the trick away completely though, was that the terms of service was exactly the same! And when I looked deeper, I found that they were all owned by the same company. Very strange yes. Amazing the lengths people will go to in order to let customers think they are getting a choice. But then again, it is just good business I suppose.
Oh, in the end I subscribed to AOL for a month. I would be ashamed to admit this but I promptly canceled them upon returning and paid $0.:) I hate to say it, but: THANKS AOL!
Seems that more and more security researchers are turning their attention to Google these days. There has been a spate of recent bugs published to the usual mailing lists in past weeks.
Title: Google Talk Denial of Service - BenjiBug Google Talk's automatic update mechanism (which can't be turned off) checks to see if the downloaded file matches a signature, but it doesn't check the size of the file. So it can be forced to compute a hash of a 1 gig file, crashing the machine.
Killer Empty Sender Message echo kill | nail -s Kill -r "" victim (at) gmail (dot) com [email concealed] crashes Google Talk
Not to mention the GMail bug discussed on/. recently
Ah, the perpetual beta..
Re:So why is Tamiflu withdrawn from customers?
on
A Flu Pandemic?
·
· Score: 1
Yup, it has a limited shelf life according to what is stamped on the box - usually November, 2009. But from my understanding, it is rare that a drug will actually become inert on the date of expiration. Many chemicals will be perfectly unchanged years after the expiration date has passed. Of course, this cannot be guaranteed with Tamiflu until additional studies are done. With the world market how it is, my guess is that those studies will be done at some point. (It *is* to the manufacturer's financial advantage to set an early expiration date.) To be safe, I keep the Tamiflu in a dry climate of normal room temperature. This should help to preserve it for as long as possible.
About 140 seconds on an AMD Athlon 2200+ (1.80 GHz, 1.25 GB ram)
Re:So why is Tamiflu withdrawn from customers?
on
A Flu Pandemic?
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
You raise some very interesting questions. Fortunately, I do not have to worry so much about the government restricting sales of Tamiflu, as I acquired a personal stockpile well over a year ago now. It does pay to be a geek and read the medical journals. Bird flu is quite a serious pathogen.. H5N1 may not be the exact strain which jumps the species barrier, but if we are to learn anything from history, there *will* be another pandemic. This is guaranteed unless of course you don't believe in evolution. Sadly, a Hegel quote comes to mind: "We learn from history that we learn nothing from history."
I'm quite surprised at some of the posters here laughing about a flu pandemic. I know it's popular to go for the +5 Funny moderation, but the knee jerk reaction of a scaremongering media isn't always correct. It would be wise to recheck some of your basic assumptions. Many posters have expressed their lack of concern, believing that their "strong immune systems" will save them. This is precisely the problem with H5N1 - it turns your own immune system against you (re: cytokine storm).
If you believe that the government program to stockpile Tamiflu will save you, think again. From what I have read, Bush plans to distribute supplies of vaccine and antiviral drugs to the elderly as a priority. I guess they must be a strong voting block.;) Yet the flu disproportionately kills off young people thanks to our robust immune systems. So I feel it pays to have a personal supply for yourself and loved ones (hey, I really love all of you out there and would like it if we could have infinite Tamiflu but that just isn't possible) - current murine models (H. Yen et al. Virulence may determine the necessary duration and dosage of oseltamivir treatment for highly pathogenic A/Vietnam/1203/04 (H5N1) influenza virus in mice. Journal of Infectious Diseases DOI:10.1086/432008 (2005).) show that Tamiflu is most efficacious when taken for 10 days rather than 5.
A few weeks ago I was visiting Canada, and had a chance to watch one of their national television interview shows. I forget the name but it was approximately "One to one" - where a (famous?) reporter interviews an expert on a currently hot topic in the news. The topic happened to be bird flu, and the expert interviewed was, IIRC, a top MD working at high levels of the government within the health care bureaus. Of course he was also really a PR guy and seemed famous also for giving 10,000 interviews a year. Anyways.. he said he personally had a supply of Tamiflu for himself and his family! When asked, "Is that because you are a medical professional and will be dealing with people who are sick and doing research on the virus... or because you think it is just common sense for anyone to do this to be careful?" - he replied, "A bit of both." Not the exact quotes of course and I am writing this while very tired... but if anyone wants me to dig out a transcript or the exact name and air date of the show I can easily do so. To make matters more interesting, the next day on the news I saw that Canada was totally restricting the sale of Tamiflu!
Now before anyone jumps on me for being a totally insane, dogmatic, selfish troll - I agree the government has a huge role to play, and it is important that people who are really sick do manage to get Tamiflu. If everyone were to stockpile it beforehand, there would be quite a shortage. But... it is very nice to be forward thinking and preparing for these events on the individual basis. After all, what is best for the entire society during an outbreak might not be best for you individually. As for resistance - yes - please don't abuse the drug and take it unless it is certain that you have no other options. We are already beginning to lose the war with antibiotics as they have been so overprescribed, let's not do the same with our new antivirals.
All in all - play it smart, educate yourself, and learn the true risks. I'm much more worried about influenza compared to terrorist attack. There is always the group that will follow the crowd in hysterics, and go overboard to protect themselves. But that doesn't mean they are *always* wrong. There is also the group which seeks to protect itself because it is the right course of action.
802.11b and 802.11g divide the spectrum into 14 overlapping, staggered channels whose center frequencies are 5 megahertz (MHz) apart. It is common to hear that channels 1, 6 and 11 (and, if available in the regulatory domain, channel 14) do not overlap and those channels (or other sets with similar gaps) can be used such that multiple networks can operate in close proximity without interfering with each other, but this statement is somewhat over-simplified. The 802.11b and 802.11g standards do not specify the width of a channel. Rather, they specify the center frequency of the channel and a spectral mask for that channel. The spectral mask for 802.11b requires that the signal be at least 30 dB down from its peak energy at ±11 MHz from the center frequency and at least 50 dB down from its peak energy at ±22 MHz from the center frequency.
Since the spectral mask only defines power output restrictions up to ±22 MHz from the center frequency, some people assume that the channel's energy doesn't extend any further than that, but in reality, it does. In fact, if the transmitter is sufficiently powerful, the signal can be quite strong even beyond the ±22 MHz point. Therefore, it is incorrect to say that channels 1, 6, and 11 do not overlap. It is more correct to say that, given the separation between channels 1, 6, and 11, the signal on any channel should be sufficiently attenuated to minimally interfere with a transmitter on any other channel. But this is not universally true. For example, a powerful transmitter on channel 1 can easily overwhelm a weaker transmitter on e.g. channel 6. In one lab test, throughput on a file transfer on channel 11 decreased slightly when a similar transfer began on channel 1, indicating that even channels 1 and 11 can interfere with each other a little bit.
Although the statement that channels 1, 6, and 11 are "non-overlapping" is incomplete, the 1, 6, 11 guideline has merit. If transmitters are closer together than channels 1, 6, and 11 (e.g. 1, 4, 7, and 10), overlap between the channels will probably cause unacceptable degradation of signal quality and throughput.
Democracy essentially says that the minorities shall not get what they want
That is why the United States is a republic, not a democracy. A democratic, representative republic, yes, but not a democracy. The tyranny of the majority is rather close to a democracy. Of course, republics aren't immune to the tyranny of the majority either.
Slashdot Mirror
Good thing I made a copy of it while it was in transit and just sent it along... real life man-in-the-middle attacks, yay! :)
Read up, buddy.
http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials_01/parks02170 1pv.html
Fiat money has its pluses, but it also has the big downside that
governments don't have to rely on taxes to finance things.
From Dr. Lawrence Parks, Executive Director of the Foundation for the
Advancement of Monetary Education (Parks has studied the money issue
for more than 30 years. His writings have appeared in Pensions &
Investments, The Economist, The Washington Times, The Freeman, The
Free Market, American Outlook, The United States Congressional Record,
National Review, and others. He has broad experience in academia, in
business, and in finance. He holds a Ph.D. in Operations Research from
the Polytechnic University. Additionally, he is an active member of
many civic and social organizations including The United Association
for Labor Education, The National Writer's Union, UAW 1981, AFL-CIO.):
Read up, buddy.
http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials_01/parks02170 1pv.html
Fiat money has its pluses, but it also has the big downside that
governments don't have to rely on taxes to finance things.
From Dr. Lawrence Parks, Executive Director of the Foundation for the
Advancement of Monetary Education (Parks has studied the money issue
for more than 30 years. His writings have appeared in Pensions &
Investments, The Economist, The Washington Times, The Freeman, The
Free Market, American Outlook, The United States Congressional Record,
National Review, and others. He has broad experience in academia, in
business, and in finance. He holds a Ph.D. in Operations Research from
the Polytechnic University. Additionally, he is an active member of
many civic and social organizations including The United Association
for Labor Education, The National Writer's Union, UAW 1981, AFL-CIO.):
"Fiat money is generally associated with a more statist society. If
politicians dont have to consult citizens or tax them directly
to fund government programs, such as wars, then politicians can, and
do, implement whatever programs they wish. Thus, fiat money is a
necessary ingredient for tyranny. Programs can be funded with money
created by the banking system. In effect, politicians and banks
embezzle the purchasing power of savings."
"Wars cost money. Since the only sources of revenues with commodity
money are taxeswhich people tend to resistor
borrowingwhich drives up interest ratesthere tend to be
fewer and smaller wars. For example, it is less likely that the U.S.
would have fought in Vietnam if President Johnson had to finance the
war with taxes."Read up, buddy.
http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials_01/parks02170 1pv.html
Fiat money has its pluses, but it also has the big downside that
governments don't have to rely on taxes to finance things.
From Dr. Lawrence Parks, Executive Director of the Foundation for the
Advancement of Monetary Education (Parks has studied the money issue
for more than 30 years. His writings have appeared in Pensions &
Investments, The Economist, The Washington Times, The Freeman, The
Free Market, American Outlook, The United States Congressional Record,
National Review, and others. He has broad experience in academia, in
business, and in finance. He holds a Ph.D. in Operations Research from
the Polytechnic University. Additionally, he is an active member of
many civic and social organizations including The United Association
for Labor Education, The National Writer's Union, UAW 1981, AFL-CIO.):
"Fiat money is generally associated with a more statist society. If
politicians dont have to consult citizens or tax them directly
to fund government programs, su
Most of the work was done by IBM for their QS20 Cell blade.
We're doing this for the human family.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milw0rm
milw0rm is a group of "hacktivists" best known for penetrating the computers of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) in Bombay, the primary nuclear research facility of India, on June 3, 1998. The attack generated heated debate on the security of information in a world prevalent with countries developing nuclear weapons, the ethics of "hacker activists" or "hacktivists," and the importance of advanced security measures in a modern world filled with teenagers willing and able to break into insecure international websites.
If Google Answers were an independent company, Google would pay $100 million or more for it.
I believe that it is less "evil" to keep Google Answers than to end it so suddenly, at Christmastime, when many people depend on it for a living. Many Researchers are disabled or senior citizens, and every researcher does their own bit to help the world through their research. There is no reason for Google to give up on it rather than improving it.
Help keep Google Answers by signing this petition!
http://www.petitiononline.com/ganswers
http://www.savegoogleanswers.com/
And last, but not least, the YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4E5btrmqyA
Jetico has a new piece of software in Beta which I am testing on an XP laptop and desktop. It works quite well! I would like to see a full third party review of the source though, as it is closed source.. but it is perfectly stable and I have not noticed any performance drops. Of course I am not much of a gamer and didn't do any benchmarks but it does work for me. It encrypts the entire hard drive so you even need a password to boot. (On Linux I use LUKS.) Check it out here.
Excellent point.
What about recording the smell of marijuana or cocaine and launching a massive Denial Of Service attack against Customs and the DEA?
:(
Woot! I hope I can read Slashdot from my cell in Gitmo.
Don't forget the attacks which have been discovered against AES! Twofish forever! Or better yet, layer algos on top of each other.
These flaws only occur in unlikely circumstances, but they will be useful tools when fighting our new computer overlords.
Agreed.
Reminds me of a recent story Thatcher demanded that Mitterrand turn over Exocet missile disarm codes during the Falklands war. The Exocet is an Aérospatiale produced anti-ship missile which France had sold to Argentia. One was used to sink the HMS Sheffield, so the British wanted to be able to disarm them. Mitterrand reportedly complied.
From a book by Mitterrand's psychoanalyst, Magoudi:
"Excuse me," Mitterrand begins, apologising for his late arrival. "I had a difference of opinion to settle with the Iron Lady. What an impossible woman, that Thatcher! "With her four nuclear submarines on mission in the southern Atlantic, she threatens to launch the atomic weapon against Argentina -- unless I supply her with the secret codes that render deaf and blind the missiles we have sold to the Argentinians. Margaret has given me very precise instructions on the telephone."
Magoudi wanted to know how his patient felt about being "symbolically emasculated", as the psychoanalyst put it. "You mean that in the face of such aggressiveness you remain passive?" he asked.
"I will have the last word," Mitterrand replied. "Her island, it's me who will destroy it. Her island, I swear that soon it will no longer be one. I will take my revenge. I will tie England to Europe, despite its natural tendency for isolation. How? I will build a tunnel under the Channel. Yes. I will succeed where Napoleon III failed."
I heard he was a fruitarian during his early days as well..
Once I had a shopkeeper not give me back correct change. It was a pretty shady guy actually in Istanbul, selling calling cards from a little shop on the street. I asked him for the right change back and he pretended not to realize what he had did.. so I reached into his cash register and took back my money and left (with the calling card of course). He did nothing. It felt great! It's all about the element of surprise in such situations.
According to Gostev, the rival hacker gangs did not seem to fully understand the exact nature of the vulnerability.
Otherwise it should have gone for much more than $4,000, even in a black market. Imagine an exploit where you can gain access to any Windows computer on Earth for the last several builds of Windows?
This is why we should set up companies to act as middleman and legitimately buy exploits. They would pay more and we would be able to get things patched quicker.
No discussion of polar bears is complete without mentioning Churchill, Manitoba, The Polar Bear Capital of The World. I visited at the end of October and had the chance to go out on a "Tundra Buggy" tour. It was quite exotic.. we saw 3 polar bear. There's also a guy who lives out on the tundra for a few months a year in a huge tundra buggy with satellite internet access.. He has a site: http://www.polarbearcam.com/
The buggies are amazing.. probably about 4-5 feet off the ground, HUGE tires, furnace inside to keep warm.. we ate dinner on board as well, with the bears just outside. Our tour guide was VERY professional and knowledgeable, we were quite impressed. It turned out he had also lived in Africa for many years and given tours there, etc etc..
Here's some fun facts about polar bear off the top of my head:
Their skin is actually black to absorb the sunlight (it's amazing how well adapted they are). The fur is really transparent but looks white in the same way a cloud looks white because of all of the water droplets.
They have suction cups on their paws to keep from slipping on the ice.
Churchill has had, I believe, only 2 or 3 fatalities in the past 30 years. One was a few weeks before I got there as a drunk wandered out of the town limits.
They are very careful about bear up there, for obvious reasons. Every night they fire off shotguns to keep the bears away. People living on the outskirts of town always have rifles in their houses just in case - they also put out traps.. basically boards with nails going through them.. to keep the bears away.
If a bear comes into town they will stun it and carry it away with a helicopter! We actually saw this happening! They move it further north IIRC... but if the bear comes back 2 more times, they put it into the "polar bear jail" which is in town (no tourists allowed sadly). They only water the bear in the jail, and do not feed it, otherwise the bear may view it as a rewarding experience.
I was surprised how nice everything was up there.. beautifully decorated hotels, at least on the insides. Food is expensive though and their economy is pretty much dependent on the bears, although they do export grain to Europe. The train takes 2 days from Winnipeg and is quite a slow ride, sometimes traveling at only 10 miles per hour. (They run 2 engines just in case one breaks down.)
I remember lots more about the bears and Churchill if anyone is interested.. just ask!
Oh - there was far less ice compared to previous years when I was up there. Everyone I asked said they weren't sure if it was global warming or just a temporary cycle. You can check the sea ice information for the Hudson Bay at the Canadian Ice Service site.
A few years ago I spent 2 weeks in the Outer Banks, NC. Naturally there was to be lots of lovely sun, ocean, beach, canoing.. But that could not deter me from logging into the Internet to check Slashdot! So I had to find a dialup ISP to take for a month so I could have access. I shopped around and found about a dozen, which all seemed very close as far as pricing and services. But, strangely, when I clicked (yes clicked.. no more lynx anymore) the subscribe links, I was always brought to a page which looked like the other pages! The domains weren't the same, and the layout of the page wasn't exact - but it was much more similar than any of the home pages had been. What gave the trick away completely though, was that the terms of service was exactly the same! And when I looked deeper, I found that they were all owned by the same company. Very strange yes. Amazing the lengths people will go to in order to let customers think they are getting a choice. But then again, it is just good business I suppose.
:) I hate to say it, but: THANKS AOL!
Oh, in the end I subscribed to AOL for a month. I would be ashamed to admit this but I promptly canceled them upon returning and paid $0.
Seems that more and more security researchers are turning their attention to Google these days. There has been a spate of recent bugs published to the usual mailing lists in past weeks.
/. recently
Title: Google Talk Denial of Service - BenjiBug
Google Talk's automatic update mechanism (which can't be turned off) checks to see if the downloaded file matches a signature, but it doesn't check the size of the file. So it can be forced to compute a hash of a 1 gig file, crashing the machine.
Killer Empty Sender Message
echo kill | nail -s Kill -r "" victim (at) gmail (dot) com [email concealed]
crashes Google Talk
Google Talk cleartext proxy credentials vulnerability
Google Talk stores the GMail login details securely, but not the proxy authentication credentials
Not to mention the GMail bug discussed on
Ah, the perpetual beta..
Yup, it has a limited shelf life according to what is stamped on the box - usually November, 2009. But from my understanding, it is rare that a drug will actually become inert on the date of expiration. Many chemicals will be perfectly unchanged years after the expiration date has passed. Of course, this cannot be guaranteed with Tamiflu until additional studies are done. With the world market how it is, my guess is that those studies will be done at some point. (It *is* to the manufacturer's financial advantage to set an early expiration date.) To be safe, I keep the Tamiflu in a dry climate of normal room temperature. This should help to preserve it for as long as possible.
About 140 seconds on an AMD Athlon 2200+ (1.80 GHz, 1.25 GB ram)
You raise some very interesting questions. Fortunately, I do not have to worry so much about the government restricting sales of Tamiflu, as I acquired a personal stockpile well over a year ago now. It does pay to be a geek and read the medical journals. Bird flu is quite a serious pathogen.. H5N1 may not be the exact strain which jumps the species barrier, but if we are to learn anything from history, there *will* be another pandemic. This is guaranteed unless of course you don't believe in evolution. Sadly, a Hegel quote comes to mind: "We learn from history that we learn nothing from history."
;) Yet the flu disproportionately kills off young people thanks to our robust immune systems. So I feel it pays to have a personal supply for yourself and loved ones (hey, I really love all of you out there and would like it if we could have infinite Tamiflu but that just isn't possible) - current murine models (H. Yen et al. Virulence may determine the necessary duration and dosage of oseltamivir treatment for highly pathogenic A/Vietnam/1203/04 (H5N1) influenza virus in mice. Journal of Infectious Diseases DOI:10.1086/432008 (2005).) show that Tamiflu is most efficacious when taken for 10 days rather than 5.
I'm quite surprised at some of the posters here laughing about a flu pandemic. I know it's popular to go for the +5 Funny moderation, but the knee jerk reaction of a scaremongering media isn't always correct. It would be wise to recheck some of your basic assumptions. Many posters have expressed their lack of concern, believing that their "strong immune systems" will save them. This is precisely the problem with H5N1 - it turns your own immune system against you (re: cytokine storm).
If you believe that the government program to stockpile Tamiflu will save you, think again. From what I have read, Bush plans to distribute supplies of vaccine and antiviral drugs to the elderly as a priority. I guess they must be a strong voting block.
A few weeks ago I was visiting Canada, and had a chance to watch one of their national television interview shows. I forget the name but it was approximately "One to one" - where a (famous?) reporter interviews an expert on a currently hot topic in the news. The topic happened to be bird flu, and the expert interviewed was, IIRC, a top MD working at high levels of the government within the health care bureaus. Of course he was also really a PR guy and seemed famous also for giving 10,000 interviews a year. Anyways.. he said he personally had a supply of Tamiflu for himself and his family! When asked, "Is that because you are a medical professional and will be dealing with people who are sick and doing research on the virus... or because you think it is just common sense for anyone to do this to be careful?" - he replied, "A bit of both." Not the exact quotes of course and I am writing this while very tired... but if anyone wants me to dig out a transcript or the exact name and air date of the show I can easily do so. To make matters more interesting, the next day on the news I saw that Canada was totally restricting the sale of Tamiflu!
Now before anyone jumps on me for being a totally insane, dogmatic, selfish troll - I agree the government has a huge role to play, and it is important that people who are really sick do manage to get Tamiflu. If everyone were to stockpile it beforehand, there would be quite a shortage. But... it is very nice to be forward thinking and preparing for these events on the individual basis. After all, what is best for the entire society during an outbreak might not be best for you individually. As for resistance - yes - please don't abuse the drug and take it unless it is certain that you have no other options. We are already beginning to lose the war with antibiotics as they have been so overprescribed, let's not do the same with our new antivirals.
All in all - play it smart, educate yourself, and learn the true risks. I'm much more worried about influenza compared to terrorist attack. There is always the group that will follow the crowd in hysterics, and go overboard to protect themselves. But that doesn't mean they are *always* wrong. There is also the group which seeks to protect itself because it is the right course of action.
Phrack magazine awhile ago had an article about building a Low Cost and Portable GPS Jammer.
From wikipedia:
Channels and international compatibility
802.11b and 802.11g divide the spectrum into 14 overlapping, staggered channels whose center frequencies are 5 megahertz (MHz) apart. It is common to hear that channels 1, 6 and 11 (and, if available in the regulatory domain, channel 14) do not overlap and those channels (or other sets with similar gaps) can be used such that multiple networks can operate in close proximity without interfering with each other, but this statement is somewhat over-simplified. The 802.11b and 802.11g standards do not specify the width of a channel. Rather, they specify the center frequency of the channel and a spectral mask for that channel. The spectral mask for 802.11b requires that the signal be at least 30 dB down from its peak energy at ±11 MHz from the center frequency and at least 50 dB down from its peak energy at ±22 MHz from the center frequency.
Since the spectral mask only defines power output restrictions up to ±22 MHz from the center frequency, some people assume that the channel's energy doesn't extend any further than that, but in reality, it does. In fact, if the transmitter is sufficiently powerful, the signal can be quite strong even beyond the ±22 MHz point. Therefore, it is incorrect to say that channels 1, 6, and 11 do not overlap. It is more correct to say that, given the separation between channels 1, 6, and 11, the signal on any channel should be sufficiently attenuated to minimally interfere with a transmitter on any other channel. But this is not universally true. For example, a powerful transmitter on channel 1 can easily overwhelm a weaker transmitter on e.g. channel 6. In one lab test, throughput on a file transfer on channel 11 decreased slightly when a similar transfer began on channel 1, indicating that even channels 1 and 11 can interfere with each other a little bit.
Although the statement that channels 1, 6, and 11 are "non-overlapping" is incomplete, the 1, 6, 11 guideline has merit. If transmitters are closer together than channels 1, 6, and 11 (e.g. 1, 4, 7, and 10), overlap between the channels will probably cause unacceptable degradation of signal quality and throughput.
Democracy essentially says that the minorities shall not get what they want
That is why the United States is a republic, not a democracy. A democratic, representative republic, yes, but not a democracy. The tyranny of the majority is rather close to a democracy. Of course, republics aren't immune to the tyranny of the majority either.
Alexis DeTocqueville wrote some good essays