Sunday, February 19, 2006

The Last Blogger BLOGDIAL post

This is a mirror of the BLOGDIAL archive of posts from 2001 to 2006. For posts from 2006 to 2012 and onward go to: http://irdial.com/blogdial/ Thank you.

ID Cards Ruin Marriages

How an Oyster card could ruin your marriage

Lipstick on the collar may point to infidelity, but a check of your travel card can reveal where and when it happened

By Steve Bloomfield

Published: 19 February 2006

Oyster cards, the "smart" little blue thing in London commuters' wallets that enable them to travel at will around the capital, have another, unexpected function. They could also be a one-way ticket to the divorce courts.

For the cards, introduced by the London Mayor, Ken Livingstone, in 2003, don't only let you on to public transport - they also record your every journey. And, private detectives and lawyers report, that is information the suspicious are accessing to track their partner's movements.

And they are increasingly finding that the night she said she was working late in the City, she was actually hopping off the Northern line at Morden, staying there for some hours, before returning to town at 11.17pm. Or when he said he was playing football on Hackney Marshes his informative little Oyster card reveals that he was really catching a bus in Parsons Green.

The electronic lipstick-on-the-collar is revealed to anyone - the holder or their partner - who takes the card to a machine on the Underground or keys in its serial number on a website to get a read-out of every journey taken in the past 10 weeks.

One private investigator said: "Oyster cards won't tell you that the bloke's been cheating on his wife, but it will show if he's been in one part of town when he's supposed to be somewhere else. It is an easy thing to confront your partner with. It doesn't look like you've been snooping around too much."

The use of the cards is the latest weapon in the growing high-tech arsenal of tools used by suspicious partners. A telltale sign such as lipstick on the collar has been replaced by technological snooping such as placing a tracking device on a mobile phone.

Several internet sites now offer mobile phone tracking as a service to worried parents keen to know the whereabouts of their child. But private investigators said spouses who suspect that their partner is cheating are increasingly using mobile phone tracking sites.

Although an SMS message is sent to the mobile that is being tracked confirming the process, if this is deleted before the "target" sees it he or she has no way of knowing they are being followed.

Peter Heims, spokesman for the Association of British Investigators, said technology was transforming the private detective industry.

"Trackers are used on husbands all the time," he said. "You can get one with a magnetic bottom which you stick to the underside of the car. It will track the vehicle via satellite and is accurate to within 10 feet. A lot of companies now use this to check where their travelling salesmen have been."

From software that records every single tap on your lover's keyboard to DIY lie-detector kits, the market for catching a cheating spouse is now bigger than ever.

A company called OverSpy will let you monitor everything your partner does on computer by sending you email reports of the websites visited and emails sent.

Another firm has software that allows someone to retrieve secretly text messages deleted from a partner's phone. All that's needed is the SIM card.

A quick search reveals more than 14,000 websites that will help uncover a partner's infidelities, whether it is opening letters secretly or tapping a partner's mobile answerphone.

Proving adultery is no longer necessary for a court to grant a divorce. But the growth in technology in this area has enabled partners to check their suspicions in a way that was never possible before.

Divorce lawyers said they were sceptical that Oyster cards would be used in divorce proceedings, but accepted that it could lead more people to realise their relationship was over.

Lisa Fabian Lustigman, a family lawyer at city firm Withers LLP, said: "I would never instruct a private investigator to try to track down someone's Oyster card records to prove adultery. I don't think it would be overwhelmingly helpful."

But it has already happened in Hong Kong, where a similar scheme was introduced eight years ago. Suspicious husbands and wives obtained print-outs of their spouse's travel card to use as evidence in divorce proceedings. In the former British colony, the "smart" cards are used for shopping as well.

If London follows Hong Kong's example, Oyster cards will soon become even more useful for the distrusting partner.

Transport bosses in London hope to expand the concept here, allowing card holders to pay for their shopping in nearly 4,000 shops with their travel card. The records of where a person has shopped, as well as where they have travelled, will then be stored on the card.

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/transport/article346378.ece

[...]

Amazingly, this 'Steve Bloomfield' did not make the obvious connection to the proposed ID card scheme. As we know these cards will be used to check your entry on the register in real time, by swiping them through a card reader at your bank, at the post office, at your doctors office, at the pharmacy, in an off licence, supermarket etc etc. Each time your entry on the register is accessed, a record will be kept of what entity swiped your card and where and when it was swiped, at a minimum. This means that anyone who wants to know where you were, what you were doing etc etc could go to court and demand access to your NIR records to see where and when and to whom you had presented your card (or where you card was presented, because obviously your card can be swiped without you being there). This can then be used in a court case against you. The proposed ID card is like an Oyster for your whole life. Oyster collects data about your travel on the TFL system as a part of its function; the ID card will collect information about your entire life, as you use it every day just to do the most simple of things, like buy a pack of cigarettes or a pint of beer of a box of aspirin. And what is even more astonishing, is that the Home Secretary can revoke your ID card. Your ID card (and hence, your identity) does not belong to you, it belongs to the state, so if for any reason, the state revokes your ID card or suspends your NIR record, you will not be able to withdraw your own money from the bank. How anyone can be for this is simply beyond belief.

Saturday, February 18, 2006

The True Face of True Majority

Support Democracy, not the Middle East

Dear Irdial,

Citgo

Want an easy way to help America's poor stay warm this winter? Buy Citgo gasoline.

Find a station near you.

Of the top oil producing countries in the world, only one is a democracy with a president who was elected on a platform of using his nation's oil revenue to benefit the poor.1 The money you pay to Citgo goes primarily to Venezuela - not Saudi Arabia or the Middle East.

"Citgo is not just another oil company," says Citgo CEO Felix Rodriguez. "With Venezuela's state oil company, of which we are a subsidiary, we share a broad social mission." So buy Citgo gasoline and support democracy in South America:

Find the Citgo station closest to your home address.

And this winter Citgo is helping out less fortunate Americans, too.

You already may have seen the headlines about how Citgo, unlike every other oil company in the U.S., is making cut-rate heating oil available to struggling families in the Northeast. The Energy Department predicts a nearly 26 percent jump in heating costs this winter compared with last year,2 and despite a year of record oil company profits, the country's heating oil assistance fund is falling behind.3

Citgo has stepped in to help out. They're selling heating oil at discounted rates to poorer communities in Massachusetts and the Bronx, NY, and working on deals to keep low-income homes in Rhode Island and Vermont warm, too.

So while you're out on the road this month, you can help some fellow Americans by filling your tank with Venezuelan gas. Here's a link to find the nearest one of the 14,000 Citgo gas stations in the U.S.:

Find the Citgo station closest to your home address.

Naturally, if you can get where you're going without a car, do so. And we'll continue to work for a country with more renewable energy options. But in the meantime, help your Northeast neighbors by supporting Citgo when you drive.

Find the Citgo station closest to your home address:

http://www.truemajority.org/find_station.php

Thanks for all that you do,

Matt Holland TrueMajority

[...]

Well well well. Here we have some americans who are saying that the middle east oil companies should be boycotted, until 'they act like us'. Of course, everyone everywhere is saying that YOU Matt Holland and your countrymen should act like the rest of the world, and until you do so YOU and YOUR COUNTRY and its CURRENCY should be boycotted. I think this is entirely correct. A world that is bipolar, like a magnet, is a good thing. Magnetic Monopoles, unnatural in the marcro world, should be shunned. That means, no New World Order, no world government, and no trading with people that cannot bring themselvs to behave (ie not murder indiscriminately for money). That means no Islamic republic or Islamic Monarchy dealing in any way with non Islamic countries. It means the entire world boycotting the usa. It means the usa, totally minding its own business in every way, including not dumping its billions of charity dollars on other countries. I wonder what people like True Majority, who call for a boycott of other peoples countries just because they choose to govern in a different way to the usa, would think about a world wide shunning of the usa over its imperialist aggression. Would they be in favour of it? Would they even call for it? Now that would be something.

Defeated At Birth

#Starting up bitch tits... wget http://podcast.dr.dk/mozart/Mozart_symf_41.mp3 wget http://podcast.dr.dk/mozart/Mozart_symf_41_high.mp3 wget http://podcast.dr.dk/mozart/Mozart34_IPOD.mp3 wget http://podcast.dr.dk/mozart/Mozart34_HIFI.mp3 wget http://podcast.dr.dk/mozart/Mozart_symf_40.mp3 wget http://podcast.dr.dk/mozart/Mozart_symf_40_high.mp3 wget http://podcast.dr.dk/mozart/Mozart_symf_23.mp3 wget http://podcast.dr.dk/mozart/Mozart_symf_23_high.mp3 wget http://podcast.dr.dk/mozart/Mozart_symf_15.mp3 wget http://podcast.dr.dk/mozart/Mozart_symf_15_high.mp3 wget http://podcast.dr.dk/mozart/Mozart36_IPOD.mp3 wget http://podcast.dr.dk/mozart/Mozart36_HIFI.mp3 wget http://podcast.dr.dk/mozart/Mozart_symf_39.mp3 wget http://podcast.dr.dk/mozart/Mozart_symf_39_high.mp3 wget http://podcast.dr.dk/mozart/Mozart_symf_17.mp3 wget http://podcast.dr.dk/mozart/Mozart_symf_17_high.mp3 wget http://podcast.dr.dk/mozart/Mozart_symf_35.mp3 wget http://podcast.dr.dk/mozart/Mozart_symf_35_high.mp3 #Done! You crazy Mozart lovin' sucka... before I start, copy and paste that text into a file, call it motzart.sh and run it to leech the Danish broadcasters free Motzart celebratory concert. Now, to AT's rhetorical questions. So why should I be scared? Because you are a human being. Because you don't want your door to be kicked in in the middle of the night and have yourself taken off to a torture house because you blogged someting. Anyone who doesn't think that this can come to pass has no idea of what sort of world this is becoming. It is already happening all over the place, and if you do and say nothing, you or someone you know, (which is the same thing) will be next. The US & UK gov. will carry on regardless, whether I choose to defy them or not. This is a lie. This is what monkies say when it rains in the jungle, and they sit there getting wet instead of moving into the protection of trees just a stones throw away. This 'Whatever' generation, these milk blooded, transparent skinned Eloi cattle make me sick. The lack of imagination, the lack of history, both ancient and modern, the lack of guts, self respect, dignity...its almost like they are another type of human to the ones living in and born around the '60s. I can't stand them, their talk or their defeatism and their lack of spirit and dangerous weakness. WHERE IS MY BUTTON GOD DAMN IT!. PRESS PRESS PRESS PRESS! DOWN DOWN DOWN! DIE DIE DIE DIE! OK so I think that ID cards could, and will, be brought down by mass disobedience if they are instated, and the statistics of US tourism declining due to US-VISIT might make the US repeal this policy, but can we stop the banks & shops mining our data? Is there any point? I went to my bank a few weeks ago. They have a new policy of not giving you your own money unless you have ID, if the amount is above a certain arbitrary level. A man in the que in front of me asked for �1000 cash from a cheque. He had banked at this branch for over 20 years. Everyone knew him. The man went ballistic when they refused to give him his money. He turned his back on the teller, and refused to move till they gave him his cash. They brought over the manager. He told her, "if I don't recieve my cash immediately, I am going to shut my accounts". They handed him his cash without showing ID. Banks more than ANY instituion will do EXACTLY what their customers want. People doing a 'run' on a bank is enough to destroy them in a single week. If enough people demand it, they will put in place any facility you desire. People with experience in the private banking world understand just what the true nature of the relationship between customer and bank really is. It's your money in the bank. You should be able to set your own level of security from a basket of choices - signature only, two forms of ID, or just recognition by a teller; the choice should be yours, because you are the CLIENT and they are the SERVANT. People today, especially in the UK have a distorted image of what a bank is; the status of bank manager is vastly over inflated. He is nothing more than a head waiter at a restaurant serving cash. This falsely elevated status probably has to do whith the apalling lack of competition in high street banking as traditionally found in the UK, either way, there is alot you can do to change the behaviour of banks and the policy they have towards your private data. All you have to do is ASK for it, and if they will not give you what you want, organize a run on your bank and then... start your own bank. I find it hard to express my deeply routed feelings to my peers, they think I'm being overly paranoid, resisting for the sake of it and missing out on opportunities to prove some phyrric principles. Then you need better peers. Actually, they are not your peers at all, they are inferior to you in every way that counts. People like you, who have principles (even if its in principle) are head and shoulders above the masses, the ignorant, the impotent, the defeated at birth. You are the standard bearer, the guardian of everything that is right. Just by speaking the words you are doing your part to keep the true nature of man's relationship with his fellow man and his institutions in its proper place. Don't be discouraged. Do not let their poison enter your blood and corrupt your clean spirit. There is not a single tyranical government, system or group of people that has not been brought down and ground into dust. Should this great country turn to the dark side, it too will either perish in its entirety or its great people will rout the evil monsters that are trying to make Britain into a mirror of the Soviet Union. People like you are the agents of change. Never let the lie of 'there is nothing you can do' find a resting place in your head. Its a total lie.

Thursday, February 16, 2006

Which Linux Distro?

which Linux distro to choose/use? I am running Fedora Core 4. I have previously run Red Hat (way back with the picasso release), Mandrake, SuSe, and Debian and I just tried out Ubuntu. I did'nt like Ubuntu at all, Mandrake was very usable, SuSe is ok, and Debian wouldn't run my mouse (no /dev/mouse/ after installing). Fedora does it best for me so far, running Gnome 2.10. You want lots of packages built for your distro, and Fedora has lots of momentum and many packages. You can do everything on a Fedora Box, including running an iTunes server, run any windoze app faster than the same hardware running XP via Codeweavers Crossover play any movie with Xine and VLC, really, there is no reason to use anything else. I currently get 60 day uptimes before I break somehthing. Its as solid as a rock, no doubt about it. If I had to try another distro, I would have a crack at Gentoo, but I don't have the time or the spare hardware.

HMG wants a back door to Vista

UK holds Microsoft security talks
By Ollie Stone-Lee BBC News political reporter

UK officials are talking to Microsoft over fears the new version of Windows could make it harder for police to read suspects' computer files.

Windows Vista is due to be rolled out later this year. Cambridge academic Ross Anderson told MPs it would mean more computer files being encrypted.

He urged the government to look at establishing "back door" ways of getting around encryptions.

The Home Office later told the BBC News website it is in talks with Microsoft.

Unlicensed music

Professor Anderson, professor of security engineering at Cambridge University, was giving evidence to the Commons home affairs select committee about time limits on holding terrorism suspects without charge.

He said: "From later this year, the encryption landscape is going to change with the release of Microsoft Vista."

The system uses BitLocker Drive Encryption which can be linked to a chip called TPM (Trusted Platform Module) in the computer's motherboard.

The system is aimed at preventing tampering with computers but it would also help prevent people from downloading unlicensed films or media.

"This means that by default your hard disk is encrypted by using a key that you cannot physically get at...

"An unfortunate side effect from law enforcement is it would be technically fairly seriously difficult to dig encrypted material out of the system if it has been set up competently."

Guessing passwords

Professor Anderson said people were discussing the idea of making computer vendors ensure "back door keys" to encrypted material were made available.

The Home Office should enter talks with Microsoft now rather than when the system is introduced, he said.

He said encryption tools generally were either good or useless.

"If they are good, you either guess the password or give up," he said.

The committee heard that suspects could claim to have lost their encryption key - although juries could decide to let this count this against them in the same way as refusing to answer questions in a police interview.

A Home Office spokesman said: "The Home Office has already been in touch with Microsoft concerning this matter and is working closely with them."

Increased awareness about high-tech crime and computer crime has prompted the Home Office to talk to IT companies regularly about new software.

Government officials look at the security of new systems, whether they are easy for the general public to hack into and how the police can access material in them. [...]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4713018.stm

Convinced yet?

If you run Vista, you are a total fool. Not only will you need new, crippled harware to run it, but it will be compromised out of the box. Does HMG REALLY think that M$ is going to make a double-crippled version just for the UK, and that if this happened, that the machines would be unpatchable, or that no one would order a demi-crippled copy of Vista from abroad? Does anyone think that the NSA has not already had a meeting just like this with M$? And finally, in true BBQ style, they misrepresent Ross Anderson by saying that, "He urged the government to look at establishing "back door" ways of getting around encryptions." This is his position in his own words:

    [...] is there any chance of giving us a bit more detail into your proposals for backdoors?

  • 4. Jack | February 15th, 2006 at 17:11

    Yes, I?m curious about this as well. It?s not every day that a security expert calls for a backdoor!

    However, I see from your webpage that you are no fan of ?trusted? computing. Is that, perhaps, why you are calling for a back door in Vista? So that Vista users will be able to circumvent the restrictions enforced on them by TCPA, by obtaining their own private key?

  • 5. Ross Anderson | February 15th, 2006 at 17:12

    I?m in favour of court-mandated shortcuts past rights-management systems, on competition-policy grounds. In our APIG submission I wrote ?In cases of abuse, judges must be able to order rights-management mechanisms unlocked?.

    I don?t see the Vista security mechanisms as being security for me, but as security for them. It?s just not the same as the key escrow debates of the 1990s - in which I opposed key escrow on principle. The technology?s being used for different things here.

    If you want privacy, use PGP - or better still, some low-observable communication technology, such as throwaway prepaid mobile phones or webmail accounts

    Ross

And there you have it a three minute burst of research clears up the smear. Total misrepresentation, just as we expect from that down-dumbing, LCD pandering, police state facilitating lie factory and its deluded servant-nincompoops, like the author of this piece. Think about it, what on earth is a 'political reporter' doing writing a piece that is about a DRM / Encryption system without the help of someone who is computer literate? Shabby shabby SHABBY!

Wednesday, February 15, 2006

Advanced Microscopy

Structure of epilson15 bacteriophage, a virus that infects Salmonella. One end of the DNA genome (blue) is poised for injection into a host cell. (Photo courtesy / Wah Chiu)
The bacteriophage T4 is preparing to infect its host cell. The structure of bacteriophage T4 is derived from three-dimensional cryo-electron microscopy reconstructions of the baseplate, tail sheath and head capsid, as well as from crystallographic analyses of various phage components. The baseplate and tail proteins are shown in distinct colors. Credit: Purdue University and Seyet LLC. The animation is based on both recent discoveries and extensive earlier work by a large number of investigators. A full list of contributors is available at the conclusion of the animation. See: http://seyet.com/t4phage/leiman-et-al.movie-2.mov (20.7MB).
This composite image shows the combined structure of Coxsackievirus A21 and a "receptor molecule" called ICAM-1, or intracellular adhesion molecule 1. The virus is one of the viruses that causes the common cold, and the receptor molecule enables the virus to attach to and infect host cells. ICAM-1, located on the surfaces of cells, is represented in blue, and the virus is represented as red. Researchers at Purdue University have determined the structure of the virus-molecule complex by combining images taken using X-ray crystallography and cryo-electron microscopy. (Graphic/Department of Biological Sciences, Purdue University)

Simple Mathematics and ID cards

The Failure of US-VISIT US-VISIT is the program to program to fingerprint and otherwise keep tabs on foreign visitors to the U.S. A recent article talks about how the program is being rolled out, but the last paragraph is the most interesting: "Since January 2004, US-VISIT has processed more than 44 million visitors. It has spotted and apprehended nearly 1,000 people with criminal or immigration violations, according to a DHS press release." I wrote about US-VISIT in 2004, and back then I said that it was too expensive and a bad trade-off. The price tag for "the next phase" was $15B; I'm sure the total cost is much higher. But take that $15B number. One thousand bad guys, most of them not very bad, caught through US-VISIT. That's $15M per bad guy caught. Surely there's a more cost-effective way to catch bad guys? My previous essay on the topic: [...] Schneier shines his logic light once again. My emphasis. This can be transfered directly to the ID card fiasco about to (maybe) be unleashed on the british public. It will cost BILLIONS and only a handful of people will get caught, for the most minor of 'offences'. Millions of brave men voluntarily gave their lives so that we could live like free men. Are we now going to throw away our birthright just to (theoretically, because the scheme will categorically not do this) catch some guys who might or might not kill 100 or so people? Or 3000 people? And are we going to give up our privacy and freedom just to (theoretically, because the scheme will categorically not do this) catch a few thousand benefit fraudsters? Or people who have not paid their road tax? (referring to the blanked surveillance of all roads in the UK) I think not.

Now its your turn.

Economics must not dictate situations which are obviously religious.

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Crucial thought on ID Cards

Why You Should Resist the National ID Card

Prison Planet | September 16 2005

This piece focuses on the introduction of the British national ID card but the same principles can be applied in any country.

1) A government engaging in escalating criminal actions and becoming more and more secretive should not be watching and tracking us as if we're all criminals. The same goes for CCTV surveillance. That's not freedom. Would you let a convicted murderer and pedophile watch your child 24/7?

The often peddled mantra of 'why should you care if you have nothing to hide?' is manifestly ridiculous in light of the fact that we have a government that has everything to hide and yet we're the ones under suspicion.

Should it concern us that our government shredded hundreds of thousands of documents before a 1st January Freedom of Information deadline? Why should the government care about freedom of information if they have nothing to hide?

But they did care enough to order this mass shredding.

We are told by the government to make our lives completely transparent or go to jail while the government itself becomes more secretive than ever before.

Why should they know everything about me when they won't tell me anything about them?

Would you walk up to a gang of criminals and give them your credit card and PIN number?

2) The government told us that the ID card would make our information more secure. Blair said this would protect, not infringe our liberties. And how did they propose paying for it? By selling the information of 44 million British citizens to private companies. How secure is that?

3) As a perspective on how governing powers use ID cards, consider the fact that residents of Fallujah in Iraq were finger scanned, given retina scans and ID cards just to be able to leave and enter the village. Every citizen is treated as a potential insurgent and is given an ID card. Is that how our government views us all, as potential insurgents?

So, what do you have to hide? is the wrong question. The question should be, why does the government need to know everything about me?

4) ID cards will not stop terrorism. Even the Home Secretary Charles Clarke admitted it after the London bombings. In addition, the Blair government has been caught faking terror alerts to push through increased power. Firstly in the case of the Ricin plot that never was and also an attack on Canary Wharf which was admitted to be totally scripted. Furthermore, the so-called London bombing mastermind was an MI6 asset. Reams of evidence point to the bombings being an inside job, one of the purposes of which was making British people accept ID cards. Large scale terrorist atrocities worldwide always lead back to government perpetrators. In this instance it is important to recall Herman Goering's quote,

"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."

5) Top criminologists have gone public to say that ID cards will actually result in an increase in identity theft, not a decrease as the government claims.

6) The introduction of the national ID card is one step further towards the mandatory implantation of ID chips in all British citizens. Does this sound outlandish? Implantable chip technology has been in existence for a decade and discussions on ID chipping humans is in the news regularly. Tommy Thompson, the former Health and Human Services Secretary in the Bush administration, had a chip implanted and is now touring the country lauding the virtues of ID chips. During the the confirmation hearings for John Roberts Jr., George W. Bush's nominee for Supreme Court chief justice, Roberts was questioned by Senator Joseph R. Biden on whether he would rule against a mandatory implantable microchip to track American citizens.

7) The purpose of government is to serve the people, not control them. Any scheme of national registration is alien to the basic fundamental principles of a supposed free country.

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/september2005/160905resistid.htm

[...]

Its not over. Labour's Poll Tax will be smashed!

BBC Poll: 75% Oppose UK ID Cards On Security Grounds

Paul Joseph Watson | February 14 2006

Far from being in the minority, a BBC website poll shows that 75% don't believe that ID cards will make the UK safer.

The government has been caught in the past manipulating phone polls to make it appear as if the majority of the country supports the introduction of ID cards when this is clearly not the case. [...]

BBQ.

Down the loo

Someone clever said:

What the hell is wrong with England?!? You people invented modern democratic society and civil rights, and you've been happily flushing it down the drain, piece by piece, ever since the end of WWII. (Would you really be any worse off at this point if the Nazis had won?) Gun control, CCTV, now ID cards--every time I look at America's problems, I can always cheer myself up by remembering that whatever we're doing wrong, you're guaranteed to do something worse.

And what kind of politics have you got going now where the Conservatives are for civil liberties and Labour are the fascists? That's just bizarre. [...]

http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=177286&cid=14711207 Remember; you are not obliged to obey an immoral law. In fact, its quite the opposite.

Monday, February 13, 2006

A total ass waiting in the wings.

Here we go....

He said the plans would prevent "one of the central features of terrorist activity", which is criminals' use of multiple identities.

The central feature of terrorist activity is the unrestrained violence of USUK against people in other countries. Period.

One 11 September hijacker used 30 false identities to obtain credit cards and $250,000, he said.

This is a private matter between lenders and fraudsters. It is not the state's responsibilyt to underwrite identity, and of course, this has NOTHING to do with 'terrorism'. The instant response will be, "they use these fradulently obtained monies to fund terrorist actifities". I call bullshit; these guys have no problem getting money from donations. This is not an issue.

"Since then the problem has, if anything, worsened," he said. "Over the last few years the major terrorist suspects arrested, typically, have had up to 50 false identities each." [...]
None of this has anything to do with eliminating the motivation behind 'terrorism'. A determined man with legitimate paperwork (as was the case in Spain - see how they leave out examples that do not support their bogus argumens) can do literally anything that a person with 100 false identities can. You are going to have to do MUCH better than this you total idiot!

Single security budget

The issue of glorification of terrorism will go before MPs on Wednesday - and Mr Brown warned that opposition to the plans would "send the wrong signal".

He said no-one should be able to "publicly celebrate and glorify what happened in London" following the 7 July, 2005 bombings.

why not?

"If we withdraw glorification from the definition of indirect incitement, or from the grounds for proscribing organisations, as is being proposed by opponents this week, this would send the wrong signal that we could not reach a consensus on how serious this issue of glorification is."

what??!?! the serious matter in this is VIOLENCE not 'the issue of glorification' The serious issue is senseless unjustified, unilateral, illegal, immoral VIOLENCE, as perpetrated by USUK. No one cares what consensus you do or do not reach. As long as you continue to prod that hornets nest, you are going to upset the hornets. Simple.

Mr Brown also said he was considering the possibility of a single security budget. [...] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4708444.stm

WOW. My emphasis, in bold and observaions in italics. Note the heading of this section, and how it only refers to the last sentence of the section!

How does that song by The Who go? "Here comes the new boss, same as the old boss". This wont go on forever...that is for certain.

You begin to feel an itching.....THERE!

Defence expert undermines Blair on safety of ID cards David Hencke and Vikram Dodd Monday February 13, 2006 The Guardian A British Nato and defence specialist today undermines Tony Blair and Charles Clarke's claims that the new identity cards database for 60 million British citizens is safe and secure.

The disclosure to the Guardian came as Mr Blair was flying home from South Africa overnight to vote this evening to introduce compulsory ID cards and give ministers powers to order all motorists to replace their driving licence with a new one requiring a biometric ID card.

Brian Gladwin, from Worcester, now a security consultant to US government agencies, said Mr Blair and the home secretary had got it wrong when they accused critics of producing "a technically incompetent report" on ID cards. They had accused the report's main author, a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics, Simon Davies, of bias because he is also a director of Privacy International, a human rights group that opposes ID cards.

Now Dr Gladwin, who led research into protecting foreign spies from compromising the country's most secure communciations system, has written to Mr Blair saying he was the author of the sections of the report dealing with safety and security. He pointed out that the "technically incompetent" data was subject to review by the LSE before publication by two "independent information security experts, both of whom are internationally recognised for their expertise".

He warns the new database will "create safety and security risks for all those whose details are entered on the system".

In a damning blow to ministers' claims of bias, he tells Mr Blair "in case you think that I am an opponent of ID cards, I should point out that I support an irrevocably voluntary, self-funded ID card scheme".

He reveals he would rather pay fines than join a compulsory scheme, saying "it is shameful that those who are less well-off will be forced to put themselves at serious risk for a system that serves no purpose that cannot be achieved in other, more effective and less costly ways". [...]

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/homeaffairs/story/0,,1708462,00.html

My emphasis.

Interesting, how the authors of a 'sexed up dossier' have the gall to accuse someone else of producing an 'incompetent report'. But then again, compare that to having the guts to committ mass murder in front of the whole world, well, its nothing isnt it?

Sunday, February 12, 2006

Mohammad has no Karma

http://www.ikarma.com/tour.asp Mo(e)hammad... has no Karma!

Stream video from iTunes shares in full screen

Now that you have your MT-Daapd setup running smoothly on your Linux box, you will find that MT-Daapt streams not only all of your music, but also all of your video files. Sadly, The current incarnation of iTunes will not: play AVI files play Matroska files play $file_type_not_handled_by_iTunes play any of the above in a separate window, or fullscreen So, what to do? You need Get It Together. Get It Together can play all of your musc, and most interestingly it can use your favourite external application to play whatever is being shared. That means that you can pipe the shared media through Xine or VLC, and BOOM! all of your formats are now streamable and playable, and in full-screen or a separate window! Then there is the icing on the cake: not only can you browse DAAP shares, but Get It Together can also download whatever it finds onto your local HD. No more of these iTunes hacks to be able to copy music from remote shares, this facility is built in to Get It Together. , , , ,

Streaming Solutions DAAP Style

accessTunes makes it easy to access your music anytime, anywhere. accessTunes starts sharing your iTunes Music Library as soon as you turn on your computer, making it available as a shared iTunes library on the local network, and accessible from anywhere in the world via the Web.

With accessTunes, you can listen to your roommate's music even if he doesn't have iTunes open, or listen to music from your home computer at work, even if you're on a PC.

Features:

  • Starts sharing music at computer startup, even before you login.
  • Shares music via iTunes Music Sharing and the Web
  • Password protection for both iTunes and Web sharing.
  • Can share your entire library, or just a few playlists.
  • Reports what songs are currently being streamed.

Requirements: accessTunes supports any Mac running Mac OS 10.3 or later.

http://www.bainsware.com/accesstunes/ That looks cool, and this looks really cool as a client:
When it comes to music, our latest HiFi innovation is a true multi-talent. With the push of a single button the Olive Musica records, tags and archives your CD. Plus you can burn and copy CDs, record from analog devices, listen to internet radio or update your iPod. All that without a PC.
Explore the new Olive Musica.

Volcanic Tongue

Saturday, February 11, 2006

Some new signs

Some new signs for you: IHT

The Empire...The Dark Times

Look closely at the inscription on the statue reads 2001-BLANK, indicating that the date when Bush will leave office isn't yet known, despite the fact that the 22nd Amendment to the US Constitution only allows incumbents to occupy the office of President for a maximum of two terms. [...] http://www.propagandamatrix.com/articles/february2006/110206lifetimepresident.htm An honest mistake?

Another History Lesson

http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/05/05/235845.php 'Another history lesson'...

Friday, February 10, 2006

Seventeen Percent

This silicon.com (http://www.silicon.com) story has been sent to you by Martyn
Thomas

Message from sender:

The Government seems to suffer from an inability to do sums. Could it be that
the generation who took the new GCSEs has now reached the administrative level
in the Home Office?

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Government ID fraud claims - are they all they seem?

By Andy McCue

Government claims that identity fraud in the UK costs �1.7bn a year have been
exposed as inaccurate, with the real figure less than a third of that total, a
silicon.com investigation has found.

The Home Office claims ID fraud "puts a �1.7bn hole in Britain's pocket" but
many of the figures used to come to that amount either have little to do with
ID fraud or have been exaggerated.

The first misleading calculation is the inclusion of figures from card
payments body APACS totalling �504.8m. The number equates to the simple theft
of a credit or debit card as well as genuine ID fraud.

APACS spokesman Mark Bowerman told silicon.com that ID fraud actually cost
the payments industry just �36.9m in 2004 and that for the first six months
of 2005 it has actually dropped by 16 per cent, mainly due to the
introduction of chip and PIN.

He said APACS classes ID fraud as when someone's account is actually taken
over by a criminal or a new account is opened up using someone else's name.

"The Home Office's definition of ID fraud doesn't match our definition. We
class it as a more serious crime that involves a great deal more hassle than
just having your card stolen and having to phone up the bank to cancel it,"
he said.

Today's figures include a total of �395m for "money laundering" despite the
Home Office report admitting the overall size of money laundered in the UK is
not known and that "no figures are available currently on the proportion of
money laundering that relies on identity fraud".

Missing trader VAT fraud totalling �215m a year at HM Revenue and Customs
(HMRC) has also been included in the grand total by the Home Office. But a
HMRC spokeswoman told silicon.com that the figure was only "illustrative" as
it is difficult to put a value on the actual ID theft element of the
offence.

Another figure included by the Home Office is �1.73m for the Police Service,
despite an admission that "it is not possible to estimate the overall cost of
identity fraud to the Police Service". But the Home Office has decided that
the 15,000 to 20,000 days it takes police to deal with anyone they term a
'bogus caller' - such as conmen trying to gain entry to homes - can be
classed as identity fraud.

The cost of administering security and ID checks and combating fraud on
passport applicants by the UK Passport Service (�62.8m) is also included by
the Home Office, despite that being a preventative measure and not ID fraud
in itself.

When all these non-ID fraud figures are taken out of the Home Office
calculations the actual total annual cost of ID fraud to the UK is just
�494m, although �372m is an undefined figure given for losses due to ID fraud
across the telecoms industry.

A Home Office spokesman defended the figures. He said the exercise is not
about justifying the introduction of ID cards. He admitted the figures are
not an "exact science" and that the methodology has its limitations but said
the �1.7bn is still a "conservative estimate".

He said: "We do need a better way of looking at the cost of ID fraud but
these are still big numbers and no one would deny that it is a problem.
People do need to be more careful about looking after their personal
details." [...]
Hmmm. The very first thing we are going to do is NOT put all our info in one place, with unique, irrevocable numbers where it can be harvested. Did you know that to score a 'B' in today's GCSE exams that you only have to achieve seventeen percent?

Wednesday Adams

I knew someone who had a girlfriend whose surname was 'Adams'. For fun, we used to call her 'Wednesday' after the character from the TV series The Munsters. This girl was undoubtedly a genius. She used to play all sorts of difficult 'in your head on the fly' word transformation games, was good at board games like Scrabble and maths and could understand anything you threw at her that would make most people's eyes glaze over. Unless it had to do with popular culture. This girl was absolutely detached from popular culture. If you made any reference to any film in conversation, for example ET, or The Godfather, she wouldn't understand the connection or joke you were trying to make. I will never forget the day that this dawned on us, and actually, it took months for us to figure out why this girl was so smart, but so 'weird'. Everything we took for granted as common points of reference was alien to her. We spoke the same language, and even lived in the Tri State Area for the same number of decades, but we were basically from different planets. This difference was not enough for him to almost marry Wednesday, (actually SHE wanted to marry HIM) but it did prove to be a most fascinating point of conversation. Why do I mention this? I have spent many hours playing Video Games, in all the Arcades that ever existed in Central London, and on almost all the console platforms from the Magnavox Odyssey (which I still have) right up to the Game Cubbe. When I talk to my peers about warfare, and flying over enemy territory nap of the earth, and I say, " can you imagine those guys over Tehran....GUNS! GUNS! GUNS!"....they know what I am talking about...to give a very simple example. I can use a shorthand language with them, and by simply repeating three words correctly, convey the adrenalin bliss of being spun round in an R360 shooting down dirty filthy pinko commies in their MIGs. Which brings us to Mario Kart. Mario Kart is the BEST racing game ever written. Its better than 8 player Daytona in an arcade (which is saying something). Its just pure fun, hour after hour, chaotic, noisy, randomish car racing. When I talk about 'The Rainbow Road', all those who played, for example, the original Super Famicom Mario Kart, will get a certain feeling, a little blissful bubble in their stomach, because they know what it means to have got there; to have beaten all the other levels, 50cc, 100cc, 150cc and then to have that part of the game unlocked, with its torturous tracks and then the glorius final tracks with the beautiful breathtaking music, and 'almost too hard to be serious' gameplay. But even THAT we were able to beat and master. And while I have a second, I have a story about the racing game Daytona. Back in the days of the west end record shops, a bunch of us went out for a lunchtime drink (if I remember correctly) and we ended up in an arcade, 8 of us playing Daytona linked up. One of us, thought it would be a laugh to drive the wrong way around the track. We were all lauging our heads off...anyway, on one race, I was winning, then at the very last second, there was a TERRIBLE accident, and one of the other driver's smashed up car flew into the air over me at the very instant we crossed the finish line. The machine gave me FIRST, and then two seconds later, it changed and awarded first to the guy whose car had sailed over me at the same time that I crossed the line, putting me SECOND!!!! I screamed like a rabbit thrown into a woodchipper. Everyone laughed their bollocks off...what a scream!!!!! Ummm what was I going to say....ah yes, get a Nintendo DS and Mario Kart!!!!

Mario Kart Revolution

What new version of an app (let alone a bloody GAME) would persude you to spend upwards of �100 on an OS upgrade just to be able to use it? I have to say, that it has always been worth buying a whole new machine for all the Mario games. for example, it was worth buying a Game Cube just to play "Mario Sunshine", and I will for certain be buying a Revolution to play the next Mario platform game, and of course, the next Mario Kart. Do I need to say that Nintendo != Micro$oft? of course not. I STILL have not got round to getting a DS, which is worth it for the Wireless Mario Kart DS alone, judging by the other verisons of Mario Kart that have rocked our world....speaking of which, have you ever played Mario Kard Advance? The music for the Bowser stage is out of this world!

Good rant value

Good News For Rapists & Criminals: British Government Bans Knives Launches PR 'amnesty,' encourages citizens to turn them in

Paul Joseph Watson/Prison Planet.com | February 9 2006

Not content with eliminating the last vestiges of private gun ownership, a policy which saw gun crime figures balloon, the British government has now declared war on knives. Criminals can now rape women safe in the knowledge that they now have absolutely no means with which to fight back.

The London Independent reports today,

"A five-week nationwide knives amnesty is being launched in the summer in an attempt to drive down numbers of stabbings."

"Under the amnesty, which will run between 24 May and 30 June in England, Wales and Scotland, members of the public can leave bladed weapons in drop-in bins which will be provided at police stations throughout the country without fear of prosecution."

Now I feel a great deal safer. The criminal who is prepared to break in your home and rip you to shreds in cold blood will finally see the error of his ways and comply with Charles Clarke's (pictured) PR campaign and turn in his knives.

We know that's not how it works. Self-indulgent do-gooders who think they're misbehaving by as much as crossing a road on a red light will pave the way for law-abiding citizens to be disarmed of even their trusty kitchen knife. What's next? Will we be allowed to own baseball bats? How about just forcefully wrapping us all in cotton wool and keeping us all in rubber rooms?

The criminals can now roam the streets safe in the knowledge that the woman they're brutally raping has no tools with which to fight back.

The PR campaign was preceded by stories of police approaching middle class middle aged women and initiating conversations about knife crime in an attempt to subtly interrogate the person as to whether they were carrying one.

As a woman who was caught up in such a situation wrote in the London Guardian,

"There are no more knives in circulation than there used to be. Perhaps there are better knives, titanium knives, knives with innovative serrations. Perhaps knives are more attractive or more acceptable as accessories. But it is no easier to get hold of a knife now than it was 1,000 years ago or to stab a person than it was in the iron age."

The London Telegraph reported today that traders in the southern English town of Bournemouth have been told by police not to bother them if shoplifters steal items worth under �75 ($170).

The police don't have any time for thieves but there are plenty around to harass middle aged women and people who wish to peacefully read out names of British soldiers killed in Iraq.

There are more than enough bobbies on the beat to apprehend 119,000 people under section 44 of the terrorism act. People including 82-year-old Walter Wolfgang (pictured) , who was forcefully dragged out of a Labour Party conference for calling Jack Straw a liar under the same terror law.

Coppers are more than happy to lounge around in the office and intimidate authors who commit the crime of disagreeing with homosexual adoption with bullying phone calls.

These are the real threats. Kitchen knives, peaceful political protesters, middle aged white women and people who have opinions and thoughts of their own.

I can now leave the house safe in the knowledge that my government has my best interests at heart and that they are keeping me protected from these dangerous elements of society.

[...]

http://www.propagandamatrix.com/articles/february2006/090206bansknives.htm

Good rant value, yes?

Thursday, February 09, 2006

Journalist Traitors are not 'Ordinary Criminals'

Yahoo! blamed for writer's jailing

Internet giant Yahoo! has been accused for the second time of providing evidence to Chinese authorities that led to the imprisonment of a writer.

Writer and veteran activist Liu Xiaobo said on Thursday that the company had cooperated with Chinese police in a case that led to the 2003 arrest of Li Zhi, who was charged with subverting state power and sentenced to eight years in prison after trying to join the dissident China Democracy Party.

A spokeswoman at Yahoo! Holdings (Hong Kong) Ltd said she had no immediate comment.

The Committee to Protect Journalists and media watchdog Reporters Without Borders called on Yahoo! to disclose information on all internet journalists and writers whose identities it has revealed to Chinese authorities.

Reporters Without Borders said in a statement: "The firm says it simply responds to requests from the authorities for data without ever knowing what it will be used for.

"But this argument no long holds water. Yahoo! certainly knew it was helping to arrest political dissidents and journalists, not just ordinary criminals," it said.

The case is the latest in a string of examples that highlight the friction between profits and principles for internet companies doing business in China, the world's number two internet market.

In September, Yahoo! was accused of helping Chinese authorities identify Shi Tao, who was sentenced last April to 10 years in prison for leaking state secrets abroad.

Yahoo! defended itself at the time, saying it had to abide by local laws, but declined to confirm or deny it had furnished the government with the information.

Internet search giant Google has also come under fire in the last month after it announced it would block politically sensitive terms on its new China site, bowing to conditions set by Beijing. [...]

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/D0F30D56-FF85-474D-8C32-0A9FDFC69D6D.htm

So, it would be OK for Yahoo! to dobb in 'ordinary criminals' but journalists are, as we know, above all laws, and reserve all rights to themselvs. They are, in fact, extraordinary criminals.

Aziz Duwaik Speaks

Aziz Duwaik, professor of urban planning at the Najah University of Nablus, won a parliamentary seat in the recent Palestinian legislative elections. His Change and Reform (Hamas) list won all nine contested seats in the southern West Bank town of Hebron at the district level, defeating the dominant Fatah party. Aljazeera.net spoke with Duwaik at his Hebron home. The following are excerpts from the interview. [...] People in Europe value their liberties ... And we value our religion and our prophet (peace be upon him). Press freedom is a great ideal. However, could one argue that Hitler and the Nazis were practising their freedom prior to the Holocaust? We know the Holocaust started with cartoons like this against Jews, and with books like Mein Kampf, and then came Kristallnacht ... and then we know what happened. These cartoons are a reflection of rampant Islamophobia in Europe, which is very similar and nearly as virulent as the anti-Semitism that existed in Europe, especially in Germany, prior to World War II. This anti-Semitism eventually led to the Holocaust and the deaths of millions of human beings. You see, when you send out thousands of hate messages against a certain ethnic or religious community every day, you make people hate these people, and when mass hatred reaches a certain point, nobody would object to the physical extermination of the hated community when it happens. Do you fear a Holocaust against Muslims similar to what happened to the Jews? Why not? The Holocaust was committed by human beings, not by citizens of another planet, and Germany, where Nazism thrived, was probably the most culturally advanced European country in the 1930s and 1940s. But Europe is now democratic, unlike Nazi Germany? Yes, but who told you those democracies don't commit genocide? America is a democracy, but we saw recently how this democracy invaded and destroyed two small and weak countries based on lies, while most Americans were duped into believing that Bush was doing the right thing. [...] http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/C727FDC4-85F8-4EBB-AA75-8BB2DF29C09A.htm

Can you imagine? Never mind that such a thing could actually happen, but that they believe that it could be on the agenda...When people are that scared literally anything can happen.

A dance for two

Pas de Deux? A Concerned Scientist Adventures in Ethics and Science Aetiology Afarensis B and B Bad Astronomy Blog badscience Burnt Orange Report Climate Change Action Cognitive Daily Dispatches from the Culture Wars evolgen For Science in Texas Gene Expression GreyThumb.Blog Living the Scientific Life Mike the Mad Biologist Moment of Science Neo Commons No Se Nada Pharyngula Prometheus Renewable Energy Generation Responsible Nanotechnology Science and Politics Science and Reason Science Blog ScienceBlogs Scientific Assessment Sex Drugs & DNA Skepsisfera Slashdot Stranger Fruit sustainablog The Art of Teaching Science The Chicago Astronomer The Intersection The Jeffersonian The Panda's Thumb The Post-Normal Times The Stem Cell Blog Uncertain Principles

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

The Mass

http://homepage.mac.com/helipilot/PhotoAlbum31.html

The Ultimate Insult

******* ********* wrote: > A brief response to your article: > > That said, the 1630 sounds dismal when compared to an > original 1/2 inch analog master. So the premise of your article still > holds. I wrote all of that in the late 90's; its still an interesting subject, though pretty much moot, as much of what I predicted has come to pass. Thankfully I had the opportunity to work in world class mastering suites, with the greatest audio professionals at the time, from whom I learned quite a bit. Now, on to the second half of your email! > > As to encouraging filesharing, as an artist I cannot begin to > imagine what you hope to accomplish with this. The Free Music Philosophy, which I believe you are referring to, was not written by me, but was adopted and adapted by us. We do not say that you should free your music if you do not want to, its your property and your choice, just as what we choose to do with our property is our right. > Filesharing is theft -- This is false. If we give permission to our users to share our music, they are not stealing. Period. There are also more subtle arguments as to why filesharing is not theft or stealing. > people are stealing from me personally on a daily basis and there is no > way to justify this. If you do not want your music to be shared, either by cassette copying, humming in the shower, street buskers playing it or it appearing on file sharing networks, then you need to keep it totally to yourself in your studio. Only then can you be sure that no one is making copies of it. Once you release (for example) a recording on a cassette, there is nothing you can do if someone makes a copy of it. This has always been true, and all the crying in the world won't make it not true. The people who used to profit from the publishing of printed scores whined when the gramophone was invented, saying that it would decimate their businesses. It was said that radio would kill the performance of live music. Now we hear the exact same noises, replacing 'radio', 'the gramophone', 'home taping', 'music rolls' with 'filesharing'. Filesharing is going to change everything in the music business, more than it already has. This is a good thing for everyone in the food chain. > The best excuse people can come up with is > something on the order of "well, dude, you can't stop it from happening > so that makes it OK." Nonsense. You cannot stop people from massacring > each other either, but that does not make it right to kill. That is a straw man argument. > By your > other argument that all music is built on someone else's and therefore > should be free for the taking, one would then have to say that all > killing is also built on history and therefore justifiable. Sam Ramudrala (who authored the FMP) was referring to the using of old music in the /folk tradition/ by analogy. I think this is pretty clear, and I agree with it. > I work on my music, for hours every day. And since > people like it and listen to it I also need to get paid for it or I will > not be able to keep making it. So if people listen to it and don't like it they don't have to pay for it? If so, that makes sense to me; pay for what you like only. iTunes, for all its faults, caters for this nicely. Those who download a bunch of tracks from a friend, hate them and then delete them take nothing from anyone. No one is saying that you should not be paid for your music in any way that you might be able to engineer that feat. You might sell your entire catalogue to ClearChannel and be paid on a per play basis. You might become a patronized artist. You could work on soundtracks for Hollywood. Or even Bollywood. There are now more ways than ever in which artists can be paid for their music. You need to adapt to The New Reality, and find a way that suits your output best. > The day I can download a free rent check > is the day filesharing becomes tolerable. Be serious! > Until that moment people are > stealing food off my table, cash out of my pocket, and it is not morally > nor ethically acceptable. Stealing means taking something and making it unavailable to the original owner. It doesn't mean anything other than that. A digital copy takes nothing from the original 'owner'. People who do not understand the time they are living in, equate stealing cars, food and other physical objects to copying music. This is absurd. No loss occurs when a digital copy of a file is made; and as such, it is in no way equatable with stealing. If someone sings one of your songs to another person on a street corner that is the precise same action. If someone writes out the lyric to your song and gives it to a friend, that is the precise same action. Computers in this scenario, do the work of a human brain and mouth singing a song to another human brain, or writing out a lyric. This is the sea change that is completely unfathomable to the lay man. SELLING ACCESS to files however IS stealing, because someone else is making MONEY from YOUR work, without your permission or paying a royalty to you. This is called 'Piracy'. If two people meet and swap tracks, that is a completely different thing, no money changes hands, there is no loss; in fact, there is a net GAIN for all, since TWO people have the files, and each is now an ambassador for that artist. Music swapping and filesharing are not 'Piracy' or 'Stealing or 'Theft'. The Thomas Jefferson example of a person with a candle lighting another persons unlit candle eloquently demonstrates this point. I wonder what the 'anti fileshare' brigade would think if someone came up with a machine that can replicate food. Would they say, "hey, you are going to put all the farmers out of work with this food replication; it must be stopped!". The food grocer says, "every time you replicate a can of beans, you are taking food out of my children's mouths". Chefs say, "people who share my recipe for Baked Alaska are stealing from me every time they replicate one; they must be stopped, otherwise, chefs will cease to exist". Of course, none of these people give a damn about the elimination of world hunger, and its the same with the people who are against file sharing. They are keeping people who are hungry for music, hungry. People can listen to much more music than they could possibly every buy, even for a dollar a track. Think about it. > I have heard the argument that somehow this > will crush the major labels -- more nonsense. They are richer than ever > and the artists are poorer as contracts have been rewritten to reduce > royalty rates in the face of internet theft. The answer to this is for people to become computer literate and to stop prostituting themselves to the major labels. Everyone knows how the majors work, but year after year, decade after decades, despite TV programmes and books being written about this subject, young people sign slave contracts in exchange for advances...you know the story. The majors are still huge because artists are stupid, and they have only themselves to blame when they find that they have had their legs bitten off by sharks after having jumped blithely into a shark tank. > My music is currently, > according to your definition, freed (against my will) No, that is not the case. Your property is yours to dispose of as you wish. However, if you write a poem and it is printed in a newspaper, millions of 'Pirate Brains' will copy it perfectly into their memories, and they might even repeat it verbatim to other people who will store it in their pirate brains perfectly. Does this make them thieves? Of course it doesn't, and the same goes for two thinking machines that dictate that same poem to each other over a telephone line. There is no difference between the two events, save that the memory of a computer really is perfect. Once again, if you do not want people copying your work, reciting your poetry or otherwise, making unauthorized copies of your material, you must not release it to the public in any way shape or form. Then you can rest easy that no one is 'stealing' from you. > -- I now see less > than one twentieth as much income from it. The idea that artists will > get a bigger piece of the pie now that we cannot be paid is about the > silliest thing I've heard, even topping some of the foolishness from the > Bush administration. Now you have gone too far! > > Sincerely, > ******* ********* > *** * *** ** **** ** * > ******* ** *** ***** ** > (***) ***-**** This is fascinating. You give me your street address and telephone number, but NO URL so that I can check out your music, recommend you to my mailing list, spread the word about you to my film producer contacts. You don't even have your own domain, so that I can infer your URL from your email address. This is precisely what the problem is. People from the 20th century music business simply do no have a clue about what is happening around them, they are like senile OAPs lost in a strange 'newfangled world'. This is why SONY dropped the ball so catastrophically with their useless range of portable players and software that would not play MP3s, and which tried to stop people from sharing music. The computer literate company, Apple, has given people more or less what they want, and are coming up to their one BILLIONTH file sold on iTunes. If you want to restore the level of income you used to get from your 20th century music life, you need to face up to the New World Order right now, or see your income dwindle to nothing. The world is not going to stop for you. It didn't for every generation of music industry people who faced new technology, and it wont stop now. The twentieth century and its inefficient ways are over. The buggy whip manufacturers have gone the way of the dodo, soon it will be the turn of the people inured to physical distribution of music as a way to make a living. All of this is a very good thing, and whilst your generation might not benefit from it, I assure you that the next generation is already taking advantage of it, and profiting from it. The fact that you do not know this is, frankly, astonishing. It's been over ten years since Napster first came on the scene and blew everyone's minds. All should now be aware that file sharing is good for everyone, just as radio, the gramophone etc etc were good. defense rests. ./a

These are very beautiful

Look at these beautiful sites: http://9rules.com/whitespace/ http://clickcaster.com gorgeous...

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Hegemony

Muslim Riots Aid Neo-Con Global Agenda "Clash of Civilizations" Advanced by Naive and Controlled Groups

Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones/Prison Planet.com | February 7 2006

The riots that are currently sweeping across Europe and the Middle East in response to caricatures of Mohammed that were originally printed in Danish newspapers are staged managed and are helping the Neo-Cons advance the "clash of civilizations" that they need to impose world order and imperial hegemony.

Images of Muslims with signs that read "freedom go to hell" and "Europe, take some lessons from from 9/11" are playing right into the hands of the Globalists by enabling them to hold up examples of how the Muslims are dangerous barbarians who wish to take away our liberties and need to be dealt with.

The elite is encouraging and fostering the spread of Islamofascism throughout Europe by allowing mass immigration in increasing levels year after year. It is in their interests to create a balkanized melting pot so they can use divide and conquer tactics to enslave all races under a centralized new world order.

The elite want us to be at each others throats while they dominate over the downtrodden and befuddled warring tribes. Race is the ultimate touchstone hot button issue and the Globalists have enacted policies of rampant uncontrolled immigration in order to force hostile cultures to intermingle. The outcome is always tribal warfare, as we saw in Bosnia and Kosovo.

The right of newspapers to publish these caricatures is unwavering and freedom of speech takes precedence over everything else. Violent Muslim demonstrators should be aware that they are sowing the seeds of their own destruction by allowing the media to portray them as freedom hating, brutal and out of control. This ensures increased support for future wars that primarily target Muslim and Persian majority countries.

During collection of material that is posted on this website, we regularly scan political cartoon and artwork archives such as Daryl Cagle's Professional Cartoonists Index. This is an archive for cartoons that appear in US newspapers nationwide on a daily basis. On numerous occasions over the past five years we have seen cartoons and caricatures that depict Mohammed. Why the sudden outrage now?

As Kurt Nimmo points out, the three most offensive cartoons that caused the outrage were not even printed in the Danish Jyllands-Posten newspaper but were added in and handed out by Danish imams who ?circulated the images to brethren in Muslim countries,? according to the London Telegraph.

It also appears highly suspicious that Muslims in Gaza City and other places had gained access to a plentiful supply of Danish flags to burn in front of the waiting world media as soon as the controversy broke out.

We have tirelessly documented previous cases where Muslim clerics and leaders were proven to be acting on behalf of Western intelligence agencies. Early indications strongly suggest that the original riots that led to worldwide demonstrations were staged managed.

Last November's French riots were used to advance a similar agenda that we see unraveling today.

The melting pot of multiculturalism does not work, it has never worked and it was never intended to work. The Algerians in France do not want to be part of the Western fabric because they fundamentally hate it to its very core. This is not helped by promotion of decadent and hedonistic lifestyles pumped out from every cultural and media orifice.

A sizeable proportion of the secular humanist Westerners who like to think of themselves as part of the establishment, when in reality they are unwitting tools of the true elite, have bought into the cuddly utopian philosophy that the West is a global village which welcomes all comers and has the enlightened innate ability to homogenize millions of different people of all different colors and creeds into one giant melting pot.

The reality couldn't be further from the truth and images of flaming buses, schools, nurseries, terror and panic betrayed that fact in France last November.

Establishment controlled Mexican groups such as Aztlan and Mecha advocate killing all whites and blacks and driving them out of the southern states by means of brutal ethnic cleansing. Flags and placards carried at marches depict white people having their heads cut off, as seen in the picture below.

Those that protest such groups are then attacked by the establishment media and labeled as racists, despite the fact that the Plan of San Diego, a rallying cry for the Hispanic Klan groups, advocates total eradication of any race but Hispanics.

Mecha's own slogan reads, "For the race everything. For those outside the race, nothing."

Again, this racial warfare only benefits a smug elite who are content to sit back and watch all the chaos unfold, leaving a terrified middle class to beg for a choking police state to be instituted as the only solution to the problem, a problem manufactured by elite control of so-called minority groups in the first place.

Violent Muslim demonstrators need to take a step back and consider what is important in the long term. The ability of western media to exercise freedom of speech and print cartoons, or unwittingly greasing the skids for a giant engineered backlash against the Muslim world that will see all Muslim nations subjugated and dominated under a tyrannical world government, along with every other race, color and creed. [...]

http://www.propagandamatrix.com/articles/february2006/070206muslimriots.htm

And its all for monopoly, On all those pretty sensibles....