We have a new aspirant, seeking admission

You must now vote on an aspirant who seeks entrance into this place. The candidate was given a choice of two questions, carefully designed so that a demonstration of the candidates stated field of interest could be examined. We determined this field of interest using Google. Examiners will note the following: The candidate failed to answer the question in plain english. The question was quoted in the body of the answer, demarked by >> The candidate chose NOT to answer this question:

2/ Anyone wanting to play electric guitar on a stage in a "Rock group" should be compelled to study Rock music to degree level. Those who have not made such a study are facilitating the zombification and pacification of audiences world wide with their regurgitated aural goo of plagiarised pabulum.

If you think this person is WORTHY simply post IN. If you think this person us UNWORTHY post OUT. ------ BEGIN CANDIDATE ANSWER ------- ANSWER (IN REDNECK) * * The origins of this term are Scottish and refer to supporters of the National Covenant and The Solemn League and Covenant, or "Covenanters", largely Lowland Presbyterians, many of whom would flee Scotland for Ulster (Northern Ireland) during persecutions by the British Crown. The Covenanters of 1638 and 1641 signed the documents that stated that Scotland desired the Presbyterian form of church government and would not accept the Church of England as its official state church. Many Covenanters signed in their own blood and wore red pieces of cloth around their necks as distinctive insignia; hence the term "Red neck", which became slang for a Scottish dissenter. >> 1/ >> "The anti commercial punk rock ethic of erasing the past as you go along." >> The further away from the Punk era we move in time, the more confused the >> picture of it becomes for people who were not there. The inverse of the >> inverse square law applies. More and more misinterpretations and lies are told about >> this era, which feed back on the false history geometrically, until finally, >> no one will be able to distinguish between The Sweet and The Sex Pistols. "Sumpin they kin�t play" is how Thelenious Monk replied when axed, "Whut in tarnation is yo' wawkin' on?". To create an abrasive an' spontaneous unnercurrent aginst th' nostalgic tide of th' mainstream o' t'frestrate assimilashun by th' cannibal carpenters of cultural capital, ah reckon. This hyar is perhaps th' unspoken doxology of them who glance backwards seekin' t'ketch th' balls of th' past outta th' co'ner of their eye. Whut in tarnation is th' histo'y in th' fust place? "Th' past... it's a... it's a credit card, cuss it all t' tarnation. Yo' know?" as Godard once said. Whut in tarnation were th' motivashuns fo' buyin' on credit? Whar were th' compromises? How yo' kin hoof it about larnin' fum an' remedyin' th' mistakes yo' made? I'll tell yo' two sto'ies. Both about times whar i met mah se'f. Th' fust takes place in Glasgow in 1992, th' second takes place in Alloa in 1989. (1992) Ah arrived at th' bar, fashionably late as usual, six packin' fum a bottle of Higlan' Park. Shet mah mouth! "Whut in tarnation's happenin'?" ah said, cuss it all t' tarnation. 'Jest wan'erin' aroun' lookin' at th' picts" i answered, cuss it all t' tarnation. ah wawked in a reco'd shop an' bein' ingaged in sech a dishoness proffeshun it was hard t'take ennythin' i said seriously. ah had sharp Celtic features an' a habit of warin' tank tops jest one size too small, ah reckon. "How is Henrietta?" i axed, referrin' t'mah sister. No reackshun. ah was already talkin' about mah dull day at wawk. (1989) Ah pushed mahse'f on over th' bucket. ah nevah said ennythin'. "Gimme yer fuckin' money" i said, cuss it all t' tarnation. ah put mah han' in mah pocket an' pathetically pulled out th' white linin' like some puny flag of surrenner. This hyar routine puntuated th' latter part of mah skoo days. By now it was an evahday occurance like mo'nin' assembly. ah wonnered who i'd bully when i was grew up. (THE PRESENT) Through histo'y we search fo' identity. But whut is th' identity of th' histo'y? Thet is a mighty impo'tant quesshun. Eff'n a histo'ical account obeys sartin cornvenshunal rules of docoomntary � no matter how abstracked- but at th' same time tries t'avoid artistic clich�s then it becomes in danger of bein' trapped in a se'f cornscious no mans lan'. Convenshun exists busted, identity kinnot be created: the�fo is it postible t'brin' this hyar honess wifout fallin' into abstrackshun? Wifout releasin' yer cooperashun o' yo'seff? In thet case, whut yo' sh'd does is does sumpin regardless of whether yo' reckon ennyone else will injoy readin' o' watchin' it. Documantary is honess histo'y writin'. It is a search fo' balls. Th' writin' of histo'y is nevah a fack wifout balls. Yo' kin try t'be honess as a creato', but whut remains? An oblique sto'y, an abjeck heroic? A subconscious homoerotic attrackshun t'th' subjeck�s subterranean magnetism o' simply a masturbato'y exercise in cardboard Jedus wo'shippin'? Supreme deconstruckshun is th' honesty of th' modern artist. Catago'ies is destroyed an' balls remain alive castrated, cuss it all t' tarnation. Whut in tarnation does we're hankerin' t'say wif lost sto'ies? Th' Sweet? Th' Sex Pistols? Whut in tarnation th' fuck! Fry mah hide! lets say yessuh t'magnetic shoes, no t'cocaine an' "mmmm" t'air hostesses breasts. Balls in a heroic coatin'! Fry mah hide! Thank yo' fo' yer patience an' unnerstan'in' Billy Bob Koper (th' name mah Mammy gave me an' by which i wished t'be addressed)

Computer illiteracy and making mince meat of thieves

If people are bootlegging your stuff, that means that there is a high demand for it. If you do not want people to give their money to someone else instead of you, then you have two ways of attacking them.

1/ You can sue them. You can do this if:

a. you can find where they are pressing and who they are. b. you have the money to do this c. if they are pressing a high enough number to make it worthwhile

2/ You can make their bootlegs worthless. You can do this by:

a. releasing your own official recording of the same material on CD or vinyl. b. release the same material for free online

The last one is especially attractive out of all the above options because the price of mounting this attack is near zero, whilst completely nullifying the value of bootlegs. Pressing your own range of bootleg beaters costs money, means distributing, and of course, when you run out of stock or cant get the goods into all the retail outlets, the bootleggers still have a space to exist in. Releasing the tracks online solves that problem, because they exist everywhere simultaneously. Also there are some network effects that can help the sale of the legitmately released studio works. Each MP3 that you release contains META information, including in the case of iTunes, photos. You should put information in there pointing to your website. These files will be ambassadors for you and your activities. More and more people understand the economics of running a smail label. This is why donations for good people are possible; if what you are doing is worthwhile, people will pay, wether its by buying a t-shirt or making an outright tip. This is a "no-brainer". Releasing your works online, especially the unobtainable ones is something that makes every kind of sense, especially when there are thieves out there pressing up bootlegs and making pure profit from your work. I have always found it to be of critical importance to be able to listen to the right people when I confront a situation that I dont understand or have limited knowledge of. Get the right people to do the right job, in every case, and your chances of getting it right increase exponentially. Listening to the wrong people can on the other hand, be suicidal. If someone is giving you advice about a subject, but demonstrates no knowledge of any of the relevant aspects of it, that person is not the one to give you a consultation. You need to find someone who live and breathes your problem. It must be their mistress, their life's blood, the first thing that they think of in the morning and the last thing they think of before they go to bed. They must be of the type that other people look to for guidance and inspiration. When you encounter that person, you know you have hit the g-spot.

Audioscrobbler was lastfm?!

I tried to sign up for Audioscrobbler, and found that no more accounts are being given out while they tweak the performance. It appears however, that we already have an account, opened Dec 2 2002!; I put in "irdial" to see if we had slipped by the restriction, and found a user "irdial" I tried to recover the password, and the dialog popped up coming, aparently from lastfm. Using my old lastfm login...worked. Audioscrobbler looks like it used to be lastfm; though I have not yet read this anywhere on the site. If you have a lastfm account, you can log in right now and use the system. and reading on...

(Last.fm and Audioscrobbler are run by the same guys) Include your Audioscrobbler username with the cheque unless you want to be anonymous.

bingo!

What a strange fellow!

Barrie. You KNOW that both the chaps from THESE records post here. You KNOW that they are the sole distributors of This Heat re-presses. You KNOW that the universal recomendation will be to get it at any cost. So the true question is.... WHY HAVE YOU ASKED THIS QUESTION?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

More apologies...

That a musician would love music, and take it seriously, is predictable enough - but to have been at it this long, and never fallen into the trap of thinking your generation was the best, of listening for plagiarism instead of flair, of defensively finding fault or of simply getting a bit tired . . . it's brilliant, really. [...] http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/features/story/0,11710,1236945,00.html No "generation is the best", however there have been some generations that did in these terms "flair without plagiarism"; what everyone with ears is hearing in todays crap is plagiarism without flair, music without flair. People without flair. Pretending that the world is what it is not is of no use to anyone, least of all to the idiots who persist in making garbage noises to the uncritical praise of LOOSERS LIKE YOU! NOW YOU WILL SEE!!!!

multipolyomni

I think it was mary13 who posted this game last autumn or summer. I had plenty of fun solving the puzzles, and was excited when I came across this game designed by the same people. The new one is a game for the band The Polyphonic Spree.

Mindlock

It all makes perfect sense!

Have you ever been to the palace at Versailles? These are the sounds that filled their hearts: http://discorem.free.fr/marais_marin_05.html

Marking it

On or about the transit of venus 2k4, the 12,000^th BLOGDIAL post was made. and so was the 60^th blogdial_banner. And it is now commemorated. Superbly.

To lend complex rationalisations to his simplifications...

The u-turn that saved the Gipper After Iran-contra, Reagan ditched the right and embraced Gorbachev Sidney Blumenthal Thursday June 10, 2004 The Guardian Ronald Reagan's presidency collapsed at the precise moment on November 25 1986 when he appeared without notice in the White House briefing room, introduced his attorney general, Edwin Meese, and instantly departed from the stage. Meese announced that funds raised by members of the national security council and others by selling arms to Iran had been used to aid the Nicaraguan contras. Anti-terrorism laws and congressional resolutions had been wilfully violated. Eventually 11 people were convicted of felonies. In less than a week, Reagan's approval rating plunged from 67% to 46%, the greatest and quickest decline ever for a president. On December 17 1986, William Casey, the director of the CIA, was scheduled to testify before the Senate intelligence committee. But he collapsed into a coma, suffering from brain cancer, never to recover. Lt Col Oliver North, Casey's action officer on the NSC, explained to a select congressional investigation that Casey had been the mastermind in creating an "overseas entity ... self-financing, independent", that would conduct "US foreign policy" as a "stand-alone". Called "the Enterprise", it was the apotheosis of the Reagan doctrine, the waging of a global war for the rollback of communism. The hardline secretary of defence, Caspar Weinberger, and his neoconservative underlings were summarily dismissed, the NSC purged. "Let Reagan be Reagan," had long been the cry of conservatives. Now they screamed that Reagan was either being held prisoner or had sold out. In interviews with investigators, Reagan said he couldn't recall what had happened. But he retained his utopianism and idealism that had propelled him from leftwing liberal in Hollywood to rightwing man on horseback, switching ideologies but never his temperament. At his first meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985, Reagan had perplexed him by talking about how they might work together if there were an invasion of aliens from outer space. Reagan had got his idea from a 1951 science fiction movie in which an alien warns of earth's destruction if nuclear weapons are not abolished. At the Reykjavik summit in October 1986, Reagan had agreed to eliminate all nuclear weapons (to the consternation of his advisers) until Gorbachev insisted that testing for the Star Wars missile defence shield be suspended. Two of Reagan's utopian dreams collided. But after the exposure of the Iran-contra scandal, Gorbachev dropped the objection to Star Wars. Instead, he crafted a practical arms reduction agreement, the intermediate nuclear forces treaty. And, despite opposition from conservatives, Reagan seized upon it. With script in hand, Reagan was Reagan again. In September 1987, he addressed the United Nations general assembly: "I occasionally think how our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world." That December, Gorbachev came to the White House to sign the treaty. Then, in June 1988, Reagan went to Moscow, where he declared that "of course" the cold war was over and that his famous reference to the "evil empire" was from "another time." Reagan did not bring about the downfall of the Soviet Union. But he lent support to the liberalising reform that hastened the end. In reaching out to Gorbachev, Reagan blithely discarded the rightwing faith that totalitarian communism was unchangeable and that only rollback, not containment and negotiation, would lead to its demise. Reagan was acutely self-conscious about his about-face and on his trip to Moscow he explained it. "In the movie business actors often get what we call typecast," he said. "Well, politics is a little like that too. So I've had a lot of time and reason to think about my role." [...] This is a great article from The Guardian. As for My emphasis: "The Enterprise"."The Project". "The Merchandise"

The 60th

Number 60. There is a relationship between 60 and 12,000. Is there not? Come up with a 60th BLOGDIAL banner, to DELETE the present placeholder. Or you suffer it, 1/60th of the loads.

Computer iliterates at it again!

Problem The real problem is computer illiteracy. Let me show you why.

Google offers 1 gig of storage, which is more than 100 times the storage offered by Yahoo or Hotmail, or any Internet service providers that we know about.

Yahoo and Hotmail are providers of wemail; email you access from a browser. They are not "internet service providers". There are many internet service providers that offer more than a gigabyte of storage, but almost no webmail services that offer anywhere near a gigabyte of space just for your email. In order to enter into a discussion about something, you ideally have to have at least a little knowledge about it. You have to be able to understand the detail. If you cannot, you cannot discuss it in any meaningful way.

After 180 days in the U.S., email messages lose their status as a protected communication under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, and become just another database record.

This is bad law, and has nothing to do with Gmail. Gather together a group to remove this law from the american lawbooks; dont penalise business because of it.

Google's relationships with government officials in all of the dozens of countries where they operate are a mystery, because Google never makes any statements about this. But here's a clue: Google uses the term "governmental request" three times on their terms-of-use page for Gmail and once on their privacy page. Google's language means that all Gmail account holders have consented to allow Google to show any and all email in their Gmail accounts to any official from any government whatsoever, even when the request is informal or extralegal, at Google's sole discretion.

This is a problem with governments and not with Google. In fact, any ISP can be asked to reveal information about you in exactly the same way. Throughout Europe new dictats have been issued saying that ISP Data, including emails sent and recieved must be retained for inspection. In the UK, they are going to hold your email for 7 years. Once again, these are problems created by government, not by the providers of services, who would very much prefer not to have to spend time and money looking through your dirty underpants at the command of some beaurocrat. Fix the REAL problem, which is intrusive government. But of course, that is a HARD PROBLEM to face up to and solve. Its easy to attack Google, get millions of hits and become an anti-google celebrity. People who attack google are actually cowards without the guts to address the fundamental flaws in this.

Google has not even formally stated in their privacy policy that they will not keep a list of keywords scanned from incoming email, and associate these with the incoming email address in their database.

Dont send email to Gmail. Write some tools that automagically return all gmail email.

For example, their cookie with the unique ID in it, which expires in 2038, has been tracking all of the search terms you've ever used while searching their main index.

Delete it. Write a tool that deletes Googles cookie every minute. YOU control your computer not Google; act like you have at least a little understanding, and take control of what you do. You of course, could use another search engine...oh you didnt know? There ARE other search engines!

If Google builds a database of keywords associated with email addresses, the potential for abuse is staggering. Google could grow a database that spits out the email addresses of those who used those keywords. ... Intelligence agencies would love to play with this information. The fact that Google offers so much storage turns Gmail into something that is uniquely dangerous and creepy.

Everyone who knows anything about any of this knows that ECHELON is already doing this. They already have a database of email addresses indexed against keywords. Now, a private corporation wants to take advantage of the same techniques, and all of a sudden, its a big problem. ECHELON takes this information from you, and you get nothing but spied upon. Google does it, and hundreds of millions of people get enfranchised with a powerful tool. How stupid do you have to be to not see that it is ECHELON that is the real enemy, that it is ECHELON which is the unnacountable, illegal, immoral abomination that is invading your privacy, and the privacy of everyone with email? You would have to be very stupid or a computer illiterate, or a coward to not see this and face up to it. Gmail is not a problem. Governments out of control are the real and present danger to your privacy.

Inappropriate ad matching

Irrelevant. Unless you are the person buying the ad placements. You cannot on the one hand say that the scanning is entirely wrong, and in the next breath say that its bad because its innacurate. Either its bad or its good, full stop.

Esther Dyson, queen of the digerati, gets it wrong "We're not going to have any choice but to send mail to people at Gmail just to function in the e-mail world," says Daniel Brandt, founder of the Google-Watch.org Web site.

That is a lie. You always have a choice. People who know better refuse to accept unencrypted email. Whats that I hear you say? Yes indeed, you can encrypt your email so that no one can read it while it is in transit to and from you. But you have to be one of the digerati to understand how it works :]

"And what guarantees do we have that all this won't end up on some bureaucrat's desk at some intelligence agency someday?"

Only a computer illiterate could say this. Governments can already do this without Gmail. Gmail doenst change anything at all, except to give people more useful webmail. Anyone who things that your email cant end up on a bureaucrat's desk doesnt know enough to enter this debate.

But those who support Gmail say such privacy concerns are not Google issues so much as constitutional ones, best addressed to Congress and law-enforcement agencies. "They've got a beef with the wrong person. The problem there is the FBI, not Google," says Dyson.

That is entirely correct. The digerati understand perfectly not only the issues of the technology involved, but also the legal aspects. They are smarter than you!

"And in the scheme of things, I'd rather have Google than my employer have access to my personal mail." -- Baltimore Sun, 20 May 2004

That is perfectly reasonable. You have to trust SOMEBODY if you want to be able to send email. You have to trust your postman and the postal service if you want to be able to send snail mail. This is what being alive in a group of people is about. The only way you can be in a position where you do not have to trust someone is when you live alone on an isolated island.

The point is this: Some two-thirds of all Google searches come in from outside the U.S., and Gmail will also have a global reach. We're not dealing with only the FBI (and yes, the same privacy advocates who oppose Gmail are dealing with the FBI), but potentially with hundreds of agencies in dozens of countries.

The real point is that cross border spying agreements were sealed before Gmail, and were inplimented in the form of ECHELON before any of these arguments were brought to your attention. Now that you know about them, you need to get off of the Gmail case and onto the much more difficult case of destroying ECHELON.

Google has no data retention policies,

Neither does ECHELON.

and never comments on their relationships with governments.

Neither does ECHELON.

The problem must be addressed at the source, which is Google.

no, it is ECHELON.

Elitist digerati do a disservice to the entire world when they assume such narrow points of view.

The digerati are the elite. It is a terrible burden to bear, especially when 90% of all the chatter (like gmail is too creepy) is so igmorant, impotent, pathetic and insufferably DULL. It is a truely narrow point of view to see Gmail only as a tool to read peoples email and track their behaviour. It has been clearly demonstrated that ECHELON and the slew of new directives and laws about data retention are the real threat to peoples privacy. These laws will force google to be evil, whereas in a world where these laws did not exist, all webmail providers and ISPs could simply tell beaurocrats to fuck off when they recieved a request for information on a user without a properly issued warrant. Gmail is too creepy is just a little too ignorant to be real. I suggest to you that it is a shill site created by M$ or someone connected to them, to try and destroy the viability of Gmail to give M$ time to ramp up the features of the utterly pathetic Hotmail, and forstall the mass exodus of users to a new, FAST, useful service, namely Gmail. This puts gmail is too is creepy into context, explains its existence and the very lame and PR-like name of this "protest" site. Gmail will be launched. Gmail will change the face of webmail. Deal with it. If you dont want some beaurocrat reading your email, defang your government. Its that simple. Dand Brandt is behind "Public Information Research" He is the registrant of the domain:

Registrant:
Public Information Research
PO Box 680635
San Antonio, Texas 78268-0635
United States

Registered through: GoDaddy.com
Domain Name: GMAIL-IS-TOO-CREEPY.COM
Created on: 06-May-04
Expires on: 06-May-05
Last Updated on: 06-May-04

Administrative Contact:
Brandt, Daniel namebase@earthlink.net
Public Information Research
PO Box 680635
San Antonio, Texas 78268-0635
United States
2105093160 Fax -- 2105093161
Technical Contact:
Brandt, Daniel namebase@earthlink.net
Public Information Research
PO Box 680635
San Antonio, Texas 78268-0635
United States
2105093160 Fax -- 2105093161

Domain servers in listed order:
NS3.WESTSERVER.NET
NS4.WESTSERVER.NET

Here is his Nambebase Social Network Look at the people he is connected to. Astonishing.

This is your football on drugs.

It's OK to smoke dope, England fans told Paul Kelso in Lisbon Friday June 11, 2004 The Guardian Portuguese police officers will turn a blind eye to England supporters who openly smoke cannabis during Euro 2004, having decided that a stoned crowd is easier to control than a drunk one. Lisbon police confirmed yesterday that England fans will not be arrested for puffing on joints on the streets of the Portuguese capital, following a recommendation from the Dutch authorities responsible for policing the English during Euro 2000. Four years ago England's match in Eindhoven, ironically against Portugal, passed off peacefully as many supporters took advantage of the Netherlands' liberal drugs laws. By contrast the game against Germany in the Belgian town of Charleroi was marred by violence, much of it fuelled by alcohol. Portugal has similarly relaxed legislation to the Dutch and the authorities hope it will help them police the 50,000 supporters expected to arrive in the country in the next few days. Possession of small amounts of cannabis is not illegal in Portugal but, technically, consumption is. However, having liaised with the Dutch, police will not act except in extreme circumstances. Isabel Canelas, a spokeswoman for the Portuguese police, said cannabis would be a low priority during the tournament. "Everyone knows that here everyone can smoke. The police are doing another kind of job and their priorities are different. "We won't be hiding behind doors waiting for someone to smoke a joint. We have to use common sense. If people are smoking but not kicking each other, not beating each other, and not making a problem, why on earth would an officer go and ask 'Is that cannabis?' "If you are quietly smoking and a police officer is 10 metres away, what's the big risk in your behaviour? I'm not going to tap you on the shoulder and ask 'What are you smoking?' if you are posing no menace to others. Our priority is alcohol. [...] http://football.guardian.co.uk/News_Story/0,1563,1236261,00.html

Gmail is too creepy

Gmail is too creepy

Bush/Zombie Reagan 2004

Bush/Zombie Reagan 2004

The Rebellion

Council opposes national ID cards County councillors in Devon are opposing the introduction of national citizens' identity cards. Councillor David Morrish put forward a motion to oppose the government's plan. He claims the scheme would not give Devon any additional security from terrorist attacks, nor reduce anti-social behaviour. Despite arguments that ID cards were similar to PIN numbers and could protect ethnic minorities, councillors voted by 20 to 13 to oppose the plan. Mr Morrish also claims the scheme, estimated to cost �3 billion, would mean a further financial burden on the people of Devon and could undermine council policies. He says there is no evidence the scheme would achieve its aims, adding that ID cards had not prevented the terrorist attack in Madrid in March. It will cost a fortune and lead to another expensive IT fiasco Cllr Brian Greenslade "We are sleepwalking into the future and before we go any further, we'd better stop and look at the map." [...] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/devon/3781189.stm My emphasis. Well well well. It looks like the impurification plans have not reached Devon. Pensioners in open revolt, Councillors voting to reject government dictat. Just in case you didnt know, the impurification measures have prooved to be 100% effective in Essex, where people believe that there is nothing wrong with creating a DNA database of everyone in the UK, they run around in spoilered Fords and think that living next to a motorway is preferable to living in a quiet location. And Im not making that last bit up inaaaaaaaaat! Oh my, check the third entry.

The Language of Love

'caricature of a car'...classic!! The French language is a beautiful thing, and in the hands of the literate, its a devastating instrument of great beauty. My favourite phrase in this vein was the one used to describe the suggestion of the placing of the pyramid at the louvre by Im Pei. It was made by someone, and sadly, I cant find it online, but it went something like this (and I am paraphrasing very poorly

"This Egyptian symbol of death has no place in the heart of French culture"

The disdain in the actually spoken phrase was so perfectly transmitted, that even in translation it was almost like a musical phrase dancing into your ears. The French are wonderful, complicated, vibrant and by God, they know how to eat!

Stuff and more stuff

Who has an MP3 player here? Not yet. I think I will ask for one for my birthday, and I would really like to have an iPod, especially for skiing. Does anyone collect apparently pointless ephemera? No, not anymore. Well, maybe the odd rock or pinecone, but I try not to keep anything that is "pointless." I don't have the space, and I prefer functional items, or sentimental things, to fill my rooms. I do collect plants, but I think they are essential.

Yahoo! News - Paris Goes After SUVs

Paris Goes After SUVs Wed Jun 9, 9:22 AM ET PARIS (Reuters) - Bulky four-by-fours could be banned from clogging up the chic streets of Paris after a top official in the capital's left-wing government described them as a polluting "caricature of a car" unsuited to city life. An anti-sports utility vehicle (SUV) resolution passed by the city council could lead to a ban on the popular vehicles in about 18 months if it is included in an overall project to improve traffic flow in the city, Deputy Mayor Denis Baupin said Wednesday. "You have to wonder why people want to drive around in SUVs," Baupin, a Greens party member, said on Europe 1 radio. "We have no interest in having SUVs in the city. They're dangerous to others and take up too much space." The city council voted Tuesday to urge Socialist Mayor Bertrand Delanoe to consider banning SUVs, which have become popular in recent years and now make up about five percent of the French car market -- just below the western Europe average. [...] Yahoo! News - Paris Goes After SUVs 'caricature of a car'...classic!!

Well Deserved!http://www.andante.com/article/article.cfm?id=23801

Gy�rgy Ligeti and B. B. King Accept 2004 Polar Music Prize Agence France-Presse - 26 May 2004 STOCKHOLM, May 24 (AFP) ? Sweden's prestigious Polar Music Prize was on Monday [24 May] presented to B. B. King for his contribution to the blues and to Gy�rgy Ligeti for his innovations in classical music. [...] Ligeti, 81, was too weak to make the trip to Stockholm, so his secretary accepted the prize on his behalf for his role in expanding the frontiers of classical music. Hungarian-born, like his famous forerunner and influence B�la Bart�k, Ligeti helped breathe new life into a music form that peaked in the 19th century with the great symphonies, but then moved away from the mainstream ? making room for popular music forms like the blues, B. B. King's domain. The Academy credited Ligeti with "stretching the boundaries of the musically conceivable, from mind-expanding sounds to new astounding processes, in a thoroughly personal style that embodies both inquisitiveness and imagination". Often using traditional instruments in an unconventional way, Ligeti also sometimes shunned instruments altogether, writing pieces like a Symphonic Poem for 100 Metronomes, which in a live performance ends when the final tick has been heard. In addition to the prize, King and Ligeti received a check for one million kronor (US$131,000; 110,000 euros) each. [...] http://www.andante.com/article/article.cfm?id=23801

Ligeti As a Child

Ligeti as a child. http://www.gyoergy-ligeti.de/fotos/index.html

New OSX measures

Have you noticed that you can no longer just drop an application into your application folder? You now have to "authenticate" before OSX allows you to drag an app there. Makes sense. By the way, if you are running Mozilla on fully patched OSX, dont bother with RC3 it has some sort of performance "feature" that slows it down to molasses.

The Man we call "H"

poken to people about Gurdjieff, I have never talked about dieting - though I have talked about diet. Yes yes yes, but what have you said about diet?

Welcome to WORK MAGAZINE

Reality Check

Virtually every significant problem facing the American people today can be traced back to the policies and people that came from the Reagan administration. It is a laundry list of ills, woes and disasters that has all of us, once again, staring apocalypse in the eye. How can this be? The television says Ronald Reagan was one of the most beloved Presidents of the 20th century. He won two national elections, the second by a margin so overwhelming that all future landslides will be judged by the high-water mark he achieved against Walter Mondale. How can a man so universally respected have played a hand in the evils which corrupt our days? The answer lies in the reality of the corrupt society Abbey spoke of. Our corruption is the absolute triumph of image over reality, of flash over substance, of the pervasive need within most Americans to believe in a happy-face version of the nation they call home, and to spurn the reality of our estate as unpatriotic. Ronald Reagan was, and will always be, the undisputed heavyweight champion of salesmen in this regard. Reagan was able, by virtue of his towering talents in this arena, to sell to the American people a flood of poisonous policies. He made Americans feel good about acting against their own best interests. He sold the American people a lemon, and they drive it to this day as if it was a Cadillac. It isn't the lies that kill us, but the myths, and Ronald Reagan was the greatest myth-maker we are ever likely to see. [...] Like the song said; "Working for the bad guys"

America can right itself - this is its strength.

In an extraordinary sealed case, the ACLU has challenged the FBI's unchecked authority to issue "National Security Letters" (NSLs), which demand sensitive customer records from Internet Service Providers and other businesses without judicial oversight. Before the Patriot Act, the FBI could use the NSL authority only against suspected terrorists and spies. Thanks to Section 505 of the Patriot Act, the FBI can now use NSLs to obtain information about anyone at all. The ACLU filed the lawsuit under seal to avoid penalties for violating the NSL statute's broad gag provision, a provision that the ACLU is challenging on First Amendment grounds. While our challenge to the NSL provision was filed on April 6, it took nearly three weeks for the ACLU to reach an agreement with the government that allowed the disclosure of anything at all about the case. A redacted version of the complaint is now publicly available, but many details about the case are still under seal. The ACLU believes that the public has a right to more information about the government's use of the Patriot Act and is committed to unsealing more information about the case as quickly as possible. View a special feature about the case, including the redacted complaint. [...] Even though America has gone to hell in a handbasket, it might still be able to right itself. Its built in mechanisms that allow legal challenges to bad law can fix problems like the Patriot Act, so that in the end, even if its after decades, the true center of gravity in the USA can be restored. Theoretically. In the EU is there the right to legally challenge and overturn the endless stream of insane directives? Where is the right of this crucial type of legal challenge codified in the new constitution? For all countries in the EU, should there not be an "European Civil Liberties Union" to protect the rights of all Europeans? The answer is, sadly, that such a group is impossible. First of all, even if it were to exist, there is no legal framework with which such a group could challenge and change EU law. Secondly, European citizens have vastly different ideas about what liberty is, and so it would be impossible to form an independent group with a consensus on almost any subject. The Belgians have no problem with carrying an ID card. The French see nothing wrong in being guilty until proven innocent, and so on and so on. This fundamental mismatch means that a body that oversees all of these disperate groups can have unlimited power, because none of the member states have a consistent enough view on what a persons rights are to form a pan-European group to protect those rights. Europe is hopelessly broken. But you know this.

Cut... the... blue... wire...

Mr Thomas told the MPs: "This is beginning to represent a really significant sea change in the relationship between state and every individual in this country." It was now clear the scheme was not just about identity cards but about a national identity register, he said. "It is not just about citizens having a piece of plastic to identify themselves. "It's about the amount, the nature of the information held about every citizen and how that's going to be used in a wide range of activities." [...] BBC

And so, what do you recomend people do to not be subject to this outrage? Someone has to join up the dots and say; "This we cannot and should not do. This we will not do. We will not obey this order. You are mistaken. You are dismissed."

Thank you for the reports!

Being Libran (Venusian), of course I am interested in her transit. And it has been a funny flowing day, right place, right time, and sunny! Hopefully I will be able to watch real-time in 2012. BTW, finished me book, and now I am creeped out. I haven't read sci-fi in a while, perhaps it was a pat line, but damn disturbing all the same. Apocalyptic. I think I need to go play in the garden to get it off me.

That was quite a treat!

That really was a spectacle; I wonder what the Astrologers predict for children born during the transit?

Its beautiful!

I can see Venus and two small sunspots; photos shortly. I am using a small telescope, projecting on to a piece of A4. To think, in the UK, a perfect day to see this...what are the odds?!

The things people will do with this!

Bullshit Bullshit, Cut Him Down, Cut Him Down

McAfee founder returns with 'legal p2p radio' By Tony Smith Published Monday 7th June 2004 16:49 GMT A former McAfee CEO appears to have found a way around the legal minefield hindering anyone attempting to enter the music sharing market: by a licence to webcast content. Mercora is a P2P - "person to person", is how it defines the term - network that allows users to share songs without actually downloading them. It's an approach the company dubs "P2P radio". The software allows users to share and catalogue digital photos, and provides instant messaging functionality too. But it's focus is sharing music. Essentially, it streams the music files on a user's hard drive out onto the Net. Other Mercora users can tune in and listen. The company's reckons it's safe to do so because it has acquired a non-interactive digital audio webcasting licence as mandated by the notorious Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). "This license pertains to the digital performance rights of sound recordings and the associated reporting and royalty payments to SoundExchange (the independent non-profit organization that represents over 500 record companies and associated labels)," Mercora says. "We have also obtained all US (and in some cases international) musical composition performance rights through our licenses with ASCAP, BMI and SESAC." The upshot, it believes, is that "you (the end user) do not have to worry about... the reporting and royalty payments that are due to these various organizations". [...] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/06/07/mercora_p2p_radio/ This is absolute nonsense. For the licence they have acquired to apply, each user must apply for a licence on an individual basis since when she allows her files to be streamed, she becomes the broadcaster. Then of course there are the issues of broadcasting from one jurisdiction to another. Its a minefield. They will be attacked almost instantly, or at the very least, they will have their licences revoked and the attacks will start on the people running this program. Even if its later found to be OK to do this by some drunken judge somewhere, they will be litigated into oblivion like napster. You cant use the Devil's tools to fight the Devil®.

Blunkett the iprisoner, imposter, impudent, imprudent, imbecile

From the excellent http://www.infiniteideasmachine.com/

"My" MP spends too much time on the frikkin TV

* Spoke in parliament 23 times in the last year ? 480th out of 657 MPs. * Asked 5 written questions in the last year ? 485th out of 657 MPs. * Replies to 52% of messages sent via FaxYourMP.com within 14 days ? 386th out of 588 MPs. * Has attended 42% of votes in parliament ? 623rd out of 658 MPs. (From Public Whip) * This MP occasionally rebels against their party ? 142nd out of 650 MPs. (From Public Whip) And as you have all seen, each MP has an RSS feed attached to it!

Wow, this is a brilliant idea

This is a brilliant idea; "They Work For You" takes the Hansard and makes it commentable. It is also beautifully laid out, with the photographs of each MP next to their words. MPs would be able to read the comments on what they have been saying in the house, and then get feedback of the public. The only problem is, that they dont give a flying fuck about what the public thinks or wants. The new barrier to government paying attention to what the public wants is over two million people. We now know that any demonstration made up of a number less than a number that is higer than that will be ignored^*. This means that any single issue that is reported in Hansard and which illicits less than two million comments will be completely ignored. If we lived in a world that worked right, this tool would be a wonderful addition to the democratic process. IF. Of course, this could change things. You could get alerts on subjects you are interested in, and then blog them to spread corrections. Newspapers might use it to catch lying. It could alter the way people vote by the downstream effect these and other information routes take. So really, it is a very worthwhile thing to create and participate in, because of the effect it will have on the population, and not the direct effect it will have on parliamentarians. http://www.theyworkforyou.com * if the number of demonstrators D is not greater than 2,000,000 nothing will happen. we know that if D = 2x10⁶ nothing will happen.

a+b but must factor c

Alex, I would go with you but I am too far away. Boo hoo!

"More than meets the eye"

Transformers...Spin on your head! Starscream!!!!!!!!!

Venus Transit Auto Updading Image

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Monday in Chicago

Monday in Chicago

Notcon Presentation went well enough

I did a presentation on P2PQ today at Notcon it went well enough, and the hall was 90% full. Some interesting speakers there, and some proptotypical geeks, speaking fast, with accuracy, and that sort of subdued energy under control that geeks exude. I love it. I met a most interesting and energetic PHD who spoke after me, who has all of his cards sorted correctly Ash Argent-Katwala is his name; had a very intesting conversation about his speciality, performance metrics, and bittorrent, and whats wrong with software clients in terms of usability. He has some brilliant no brainer ideas about how clients can and should give you more feedback about where you are in a queue. Ill leave it to him to explain it all. We also talked about how the BBC is integral to British Society™ and how we should all rally behind it; I agreed, and said further that if BBC Techology would start a software development group, I would gladly pay double licence fee. They already have a video codec in development that is available, including the source - I am all for this, and for the expansion of these efforts so that the public can benefit from our licence fee. This is separate from the great news that they are going to eventually open up the archives so that everyone can watch programmes at leisure. All in all, a refreshing experience - and the student bar has some really good beers on tap....beeeeeeeerrrrr....

Quick break, must continue reading

Oryx and Crake. 1 hour 15 minutes, 102 pages. Coffee's ready now, must go! I love a good summer book, don't you?

BT Just dont get it...STILL

According to the Guardian, BT is blocking access to illegal pron websites. Before anyone goes beserk, remember these are the same people who tried to patent hyperlinking. The have not got half a clue between them. Read on:

British Telecom has taken the unprecedented step of blocking all illegal child pornography websites in a crackdown on abuse online. The decision by Britain's largest high-speed internet provider will lead to the first mass censorship of the web attempted in a Western democracy. The move, previously thought to be at the limits of technical possibilities of the internet and prohibitively expensive, was given the personal backing of BT chairman Sir Christopher Bland at a board meeting last month after intense pressure from children's charities. Known as Cleanfeed, the project has been developed in consultation with the Home Office and will go live by the end of the month, The Observer can reveal. Other major players in the internet market, such as Energis and Thus, which owns rival Demon Internet, are said to be preparing to block banned sites. Subscribers to British Telecom's internet services such as BTYahoo and BTInternet who attempt to access illegal sites will receive an error message as if the page was unavailable. BT will register the number of attempts but will not be able to record details of those accessing the sites. [...] The Guardian

That's just about the stupidest...to say that they wont be able to record who is watching what is just a lie. We all know that its possible to do this. Its the same sort of lie BT tells when they say that they cant block telemarketers. Of course the CAN block them they just WILL NOT because every time you pick up the phone, they make money. But I digress. All these "measures" do is educate people about proxies, and make the illegal traffic dissapear. To stop that happening, you have to start to block proxy servers, and then you are well on your way down the slippery slope. Also, none of these bad guys are going to be put out of circulation by this, they will still be out there, using IRC, Proxies, IM, Waste, and anything else thats out there to use. I detest these animals as much as anyone else does (standard disclaimer) but it would make FAR MORE SENSE to use that traffic to round up these pigs rather than simply block the traffic. The net really is a net if these imbeciles had any idea of what that means. Bowing down to pressure groups is an astonishing lapse of common sense on the part of BT, but once again, not very surprising. Of course, next the music industry morons will produce a list of sites that they want blocked, and so will every other group with an axe to grind. Can you imagine; you will have to route your traffic through RUSSIA in order to see the whole internet! Who would have believed it?

The 12,000th post on BLOGDIAL

Thank you to all the members of BLOGDIAL. This is the 12,000th post on this Blog. To commemorate reaching this milestone, I give you, the members of BLOGDIAL, a taste of Charles Baudelaire translated by Aleister Crowley I have said it to you all in public and private, you are the best! THE LONGING FOR INFINITY Those who know how to observe themselves, and who preserve the memory of their impressions, those who, like Hoffmann, have known how to construct their spiritual barometer, have sometimes had to note in the observatory of their mind find seasons, happy days, delicious minutes. There are days when man awakes with a young and vigorous genius. Though his eyelids be scarcely released from the slumber which sealed them, the exterior world shows itself to him with a powerful relief, a clearness of contour, and a richness of colour which are admirable. The moral world opens out its vast perspective, full of new clarities. A man gratified by this happiness, unfortunately rare and transient, feels himself at once more an artist and more a just man; to say all in a word, a nobler being. But the most singular thing in this exceptional condition of the spirit and of the senses -- which I may without exaggeration call heavenly, if I compare it with the heavy shadows of common and daily existence -- is that it has not been created by any visible or easily definable cause. Is it the result of good hygiene and of a wise regimen? Such is the first explanation which suggests itself; but we are obliged to recognise that often this marvel, this prodigy, so to say, produces itself as if it were the effect of a superior and invisible power, of a power exterior to man, after a period of the abuse of his physical faculties. Shall we say that it is the reward of assiduous prayer and spiritual ardour? It is certain that a constant elevation of the desire, a tension of the spiritual forces in a heavenly direction, would be the most proper regimen for creating this moral health, so brilliant and so glorious. But what absurd law causes it to manifest itself (as it sometimes does) after shameful orgies of the imagination; after a sophistical abuse of reason, which is, to its straightforward and rational use, that which the tricks of dislocation which some acrobats have taught themselves to perform are to sane gymnastics? For this reason I prefer to consider this abnormal condition of the spirit as a true grace; as a magic mirror wherein man is invited to see himself at his best; that is to say, as that which he should be, and might be; a kind of angelic excitement; a rehabilitation of the most flattering type. A certain Spiritualist School, largely represented in England and America, even considers supernatural phenomena, such as the apparition of phantoms, ghosts, &c, as manifestations of the Divine Will, ever anxious to awaken in the spirit of man the memory of invisible truths. Besides this charming and singular state, where all the forces are balanced; where the imagination, though enormously powerful, does not drag after it into perilous adventures the moral sense; when an exquisite sensibility is no longer tortured by sick nerves, those councillors-in-ordinary of crime or despair; this marvellous state, I say, has no prodromal symptoms. It is as unexpected as a ghost. It is a species of obsession, but of intermittent obsession; from which we should be able to draw, if we were but wise, the certainty of a nobler existence, and the hope of attaining to it by the daily exercise of our will. This sharpness of thought, this enthusiasm of the senses and of the spirit, must in every age have appeared to man as the chiefest of blessings; and for this reason, considering nothing but the immediate pleasure he has, without worrying himself as to whether he were violating the laws of his constitution, he has sought, in physical science, in pharmacy, in the grossest liquors, in the subtlest perfumes, in every climate and in every age, the means of fleeing, were it but for some hours only, his habitaculum of mire, and, as the author of "Lazare" says, "to carry Paradise at the first assault." Alas! the vices of man, full of horror as one must suppose them, contain the proof, even though it were nothing but their infinite expansion, of his hunger for the Infinite; only, it is a taste which often loses its way. One might take a proverbial metaphor, "All roads lead to Rome," and apply it to the moral world: all roads lead to reward or punishment; two forms of eternity. The mind of man is glutted with passion: he has, if I may use another familiar phrase, passion to burn. But this unhappy soul, whose natural depravity is equal to its sudden aptitude, paradoxical enough, for charity and the most arduous virtues, is full of paradoxes which allow him to turn to other purposes the overflow of this overmastering passion. He never imagines that he is selling himself wholesale: he forgets, in his infatuation, that he is matched against a player more cunning and more strong than he; and that the Spirit of Evil, though one give him but a hair, will not delay to carry off the whole head. This visible lord of visible nature -- I speak of man -- has, then, wished to create Paradise by chemistry, by fermented drinks; like a maniac who should replace solid furniture and real gardens by decorations painted on canvas and mounted on frames. It is in this degradation of the sense of the Infinite that lies, according to me, the reason of all guilty excesses; from the solitary and concentrated drunkenness of the man of letters, who, obliged to seek in opium an anodyne for a physical suffering, and having thus discovered a well of morbid pleasure, has made of it, little by little, his sole diet, and as it were the sum of his spiritual life; down to the most disgusting sot of the suburbs, who, his head full of flame and of glory, rolls ridiculously in the muck of the roads. Among the drugs most efficient in creating what I call the artificial ideal, leaving on one side liquors, which rapidly excite gross frenzy and lay flat all spiritual force, and the perfumes, whose excessive use, while rendering more subtle man's imagination, wear out gradually his physical forces; the two most energetic substances, the most convenient and the most handy, are hashish and opium. The analysis of the mysterious effect and the diseased pleasures which these drugs beget, of the inevitable chastisement which results from their prolonged use, and finally the immortality necessarily employed in this pursuit of a false ideal, constitutes the subject of this study. [...] http://users.lycaeum.org/~sputnik/Ludlow/Texts/Rats/poem.html

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group portrait

me and some friends. we each made our own pics: myself
my lady
my roommate
mr. hodge

You cheater!

That doesnt look like you Dav!!!!

Holy Double Assumption

Hey, i just made a sarcastic post saying "ladyboy" and linking to a googleimages page of ladyboys but WTF, I dont have any proof that meau² is a male!!!! Im sure that i read something to that effect...or am I on crack tonight?!!! When you assume you make an ASS out of U and ME!!

Passfaces is now being taken seriously ... finally.

Passfaces I first heard about them in 1999; they have now morphed into a new company and are finally being taken seriously.

Passface? Cognometric* Authentication Real User's Passface? system is a cognometric method of personal authentication - based on the measurement of an innate cognitive function (of the human brain), specifically: its ability to recognize familiar faces. As with passwords and PINs (knowledge-factor authenticators), with Passfaces? there is a shared secret between the user and the system. However, instead of relying on users to memorize and recall strings of characters and/or numbers, it employs (photographs of) faces as its "alphabet" and requires only familiarization and recognition on the part of the user.

Its a truely brilliant idea, very very exiting.

kewl app

It reminds of a game we used to play in school, the girls would draw these elaborate selection sheets of dresses, shoes, hairstyles, and you would pick your favorites, and then your friend would draw the picture for you. So fun!

One question: "Does it Smell?"

These waterless urinals are plainly more efficient than the ones currently in use in most bathrooms nationwide. They can save up to 45,000 gallons of water and more per year per urinal. They also require less maintenance, and are less prone to plumbing problems. They have no moving parts. Urine is contained under a special biodegradable liquid called BlueSeal. According to the manufacturer, some high profile installations include Liberty Island, New York; Petronas Towers, Malaysia; and The Jimmy Carter Library, Georgia. http://www.reactual.com/

GW Broken; over the brink and into full Insanity

Insanity is as insanity does: President George W. Bush?s increasingly erratic behavior and wide mood swings has the halls of the West Wing buzzing lately as aides privately express growing concern over their leader?s state of mind. In meetings with top aides and administration officials, the President goes from quoting the Bible in one breath to obscene tantrums against the media, Democrats and others that he classifies as ?enemies of the state.? Worried White House aides paint a portrait of a man on the edge, increasingly wary of those who disagree with him and paranoid of a public that no longer trusts his policies in Iraq or at home. ?It reminds me of the Nixon days,? says a longtime GOP political consultant with contacts in the White House. ?Everybody is an enemy; everybody is out to get him. That?s the mood over there.? In interviews with a number of White House staffers who were willing to talk off the record, a picture of an administration under siege has emerged, led by a man who declares his decisions to be ?God?s will? and then tells aides to ?fuck over? anyone they consider to be an opponent of the administration. [...] http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_4636.shtml Just one question; is his piss blue?

Cocojin invasion 2020 - just you wait!

Women need men like fish need bicycles. [...] Her assistant, Miho Higuchi, who has kept silent throughout the conversation, suddenly blurts out: ''Never again!'' A mother of three, she divorced her husband because he refused to do anything to help her clean house and take care of the kids. In fact, Japan's divorce rate rose steadily to 2.3 divorces for every 1,000 people in 2002 from 1.3 in 1990; it appears to have dropped a bit last year, partly because fewer people have been getting married. (The divorce rate in the USA was 4 per 1,000 people in 2002. ) As for men, they seem bewildered by the rising assertiveness of Japanese women. ''Men are getting weaker,'' says Takayuki Tokiwa, 23, a student at a Tokyo vocational college. ''Women don't have to rely on men anymore. They can live on their own.'' Masahito Wakauchi, 24, would seem to be a good catch. He has fashionably wavy hair and a good job with an advertising agency in Tokyo. Is he dating? Wakauchi shakes his head sadly. ''It's very, very difficult'' to meet women these days, he says. Rather than risk rejection or summon the energy to maintain a modern relationship, many Japanese men simply pay for affection in the country's ubiquitous hostess bars and brothels. Others prefer virtual women online to the real kind. ''They seem to find the relationship cumbersome. . . . You have to be attentive to your partner,'' says Kunio Kitamura, president of the Japan Family Planning Association's Family Planning Clinic. ''A quick way to get satisfaction is so-called cybersex.'' [...] ???!!! I laughed out loud. As their population falls and there is no one left to clean the streets, the "cocojin invasion" will begin. No one will be left to maintain their temples. Their culture will be gradually erased, and, if other countries are anything to go by, they will be sorry. All so that the selfish and stupid young can have less responsibility and save themselvs from imaginary "humiliation". Of course, this article could be more Japanese-as-stereotype hogwash, but if it isnt... USA Today

Now you have a place to dump them

http://www.monochrom.at/piracy/

"aussie bloke" meme spread by AP who now retract

AP Meteor Crash Report Was a Hoax By Joe Strupp Published: June 03, 2004 12:20 PM EST NEW YORK Associated Press editors were forced to retract an earlier report that a meteorite might have hit near Olympia, Wash., this morning after discovering that a source, one Bradley Hammermaster, claiming to be an astronomy professor, had perpetrated a hoax. "An early report that a meteor might have hit turned out to be false," said AP spokesman Jack Stokes. "It looks like a version (of the story) was killed because it talked about a meteorite hitting." He said AP was reviewing how the error occurred. The original story, which AP released at 7:03 a.m. EST, stated that someone identified as Bradley Hammermaster, and purported to be a University of Washington astronomy instructor, had told KIRO Radio in Seattle that a piece of meteor "about the size of a small car" had hit just before 3 a.m. PST. The radio station also quoted the man as saying "a team was being assembled to head for the area where the object was believed to have hit near the tiny southwestern Washington community of Chehalis." This version was picked up by dozens of news sites, most of which later deleted the Hammermaster references. The bogus report followed genuine reports of bright lights being seen along a 60-mile stretch of the Puget Sound, which National Weather Service and U.S. Coast Guard officials were investigating as either a streaking meteor or other outer space activity, AP reported. [...] Editor and Publisher

Nigritude Ultramarine brought me to this.

VisitorVille: Web Site Intelligence for Creative Thinkers Visitor Analytics + Web Site Statistics + Traffic Monitoring + Live Help + Clickstream Analysis Have questions about your web site's effectiveness? Come to VisitorVille for answers. VisitorVille is a cutting-edge program that takes a radical new visual approach to web analytics. VisitorVille makes data mining simple and accurate, easily performing tasks that are impossible to accomplish using traditional web analytics solutions. http://www.visitorville.com/

Alex-t comes up with another one - awesome!

Check some of those banner ads...blind surfing is something else!

Another type of Light bulb; these should become mandatory

The nanotube light bulb: bright idea By Lucy Sherriff Published Friday 4th June 2004 14:56 GMT Chinese scientists working in collaboration with Louisiana State University have demonstrated a light bulb in with a carbon nanotube filament. As well as being the only real change in design in the last 125 years, the nano-filament bulb has several advantages over traditional tungsten. Firstly, the researchers, lead by Tsinghua University's Jinquan Wei, found that the nano-filament emitted more light than tungsten at the same voltage. It also has a lower threshold for light emission: a mere three volts, as opposed to six for Tungsten. The bulbs still worked after being switched on and off 5000 times, and could operate at 25 volts for more than 360 hours. The filament also behaves as a precise resistor over a wide temperature range: producing consistent resistance at up to 1750 Kelvin. The experiment involved replacing the tungsten filament with a highly pure carbon nanotube version. The team made the tubes by chemical vapour deposition. After soaking in alcohol, the tubes self-organise into long filaments. The new filament was sealed, under vacuum, into an ordinary 40 watt bulb. According to PhysicsWeb, the researchers say that although more work is needed, the bulbs could be commercially available in the next five years. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/06/04/nano_bulb/ Buy your nanotubes here: http://carbonsolution.com/products.htm

"Carbon Solutions offers specialty chemical manufacturing in all aspects of carbon science - please contact us for any needs that you have in carbon materials, particularly carbon nanotubes. Carbon materials currently offered for sale:"

Minimum order $100 Here is an article on another type of filament that promises to save bookoo energy:

A newer technology that uses light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, in car blinkers, traffic stoplights, and other types of lamps attains up to 25 percent electricity-to-optical energy efficiency, Lin says. In contrast, he estimates that bulbs with photonic-crystal filaments might convert as much as 60 percent of their power to visible-light output. In other words, 6-, 9-, and 15-watt photonic-crystal bulbs would produce more light than today's 40-, 60-, and 100-watt bulbs do.

All ordinary incandescent bulbs should be outlawed, and these new bulbs rushed to market to replace the billions of bulbs wasting electricity every second, minute and hour of the week.

Minutes to Go: "Aussie Bloke" meme spreads like wildfire.

I am going to leave your readers (if you decide to post this) with several links, and information that I have been able to pull about this "end of the world" scenario. It is not just Aussie Bloke who is talking about these inbound comets, there are also some very disturbing signs happening which leads one to believe that either there are some incredible coincidences going on, or Aussie Bloke is right, and we will have "hell on earth" in June. By the way, here are the days and the events which are supposed to happen on them: * June 8-9 Dust Cloud begins to reach the Earth and darkening of the skies. * June 18-20 1st impact * June 24-25 2nd impact * June 27-28 3rd impact of the "anomaly" [...] BushCountry.org and more on the "aussie bloke".

Blogger is a bit buggy

Putting posts in at the wrong timeslot, making multiple posts...blogger has some bugs that need to be ironed out. If you have the chance, take a look at Aeon Flux I had forgotten how good it is. Its been re-released on DVD so it should be easy to get a hold of.

Shoulda got Gmail!

Hotmail incinerates customer files Last modified: June 3, 2004, 2:03 PM PDT By Evan Hansen Alexandria Felton logged on to her Hotmail account last month and was shocked to find that all of her saved files were gone. At stake was years' worth of personal and business correspondence, photos and the itinerary for a recently purchased trip, the San Jose, Calif., health care worker said. Frantic, she called the Microsoft-run e-mail service, only to get worse news: Due to "system events," the files were gone forever, and there was nothing to be done about it, a technical support staffer eventually replied. "It's scary," Felton said. "These services are easy and free, so people don't even think about using them. But they should know there are risks. I won't store so much stuff on Hotmail again." [...] News.com NOW YOU WILL SEE!!!! p.s. I bet if the police asked for these files to be retrieved that they would be able to restore them from a backup somewhere. Perhaps she should have made a complaint against herself saying that she was a cop investigating a turrst...they would have bent over backwards to find the files.

Supplying Solutinos (a new particle didnt you know?)

Took ten seconds to find. What disturbed me were the personal attacks hurled on Lovelock, some people saying essentially that he is "a crazy old man who has lost the faith". What we need instead are deployable solutions and not useless soundbites like these:

"Lovelock is right to demand a drastic response to climate change," said Stephen Tindale, executive director of Greenpeace UK.  "But he's wrong to think nuclear power is any part of the answer.  Nuclear creates enormous problems:  waste we don't know what to do with; radioactive emissions; unavoidable risk of accident and terrorist attack." Tony Juniper, director of Friends of the Earth, said, "Climate change and radioactive waste both pose deadly long-term threats, and we have a moral duty to minimize the effects of both, not to choose between them" (McCarthy, London Independent). Googled

Amazing that the "T" word was pulled out of the hat by the Director of Greenpeace; is there not one sane person left alive on this planet? Any response to such a surprising suggestion from a man like Lovelock should be met with real, tangible counter proposals, not empty words - they havent even got the bottle to make vapourware proposals. People give credibility to facts, not soundbytes. Amazingly, the only sound countering the suggestion that Nuclear power is a viable short term solution, in every case where this story comes up, are the same two talking heads with meaningless soundbytes. The Friends of the Earth website has as its focus, the new film "The day after tomorrow". Then later on it has this gem:

Can we stop climate change? Only if we all - Governments, organisations and individuals - take real action to combat it.

Yeah Babe. We are all for "real action", but what that means in this case, is doing what Ecover do: research and development into products that do what needs to be done, and then marketing them. Instead of climbing up Big Ben, going to endless conferences and being rowdy, these people need to form R&D groups to create the things we need to solve real problems. And it would not take alot of money. Did you know that the first artificial virus was created for around $200,000? Thats not alot of money at all, and I mention this specifically because it looks like biology is going to be behind the solar revolution. There is already work availble to make Organic Solar Cells That looks fascinating. You can bet that all of it is patented. If money isnt put into R&D for the benefit of all there are going to be serious consequences for everybody. BP are puttting millions into Solar Power research. They want to create highly efficient solar power units that they sell to you, install at your home and then CHARGE YOU FOR THE ELECTRICITY THAT THE UNIT PRODUCES.....FROM THE SUN.. Imagine if these solar cells use a patetented technology. That would mean that it would be impossible for anyone else other than BP to deploy these cells, (unless it was under licence). They would be in a position to prevent the world wide rollout of highly efficient, royalty free solar power cells providing free electricity for at least 20 years. Now. A small team funded by environmentalists world-wide could produce that same innovation and then patent it to protect everyone on earth from the work being monopolized. This is the sort of thing that we need to see being done. Whining to governments is a waste of energy. Make the goods that people need and they will buy them; Ecover have prooved this. Make a solar cell kit that will reduce my electricity bill and increase the value of my property and I will buy it. Grid consumption goes down as a consequence. Its really that simple!

Time keeps on Slippin,,,

http://work.netopia.ro/antonio/ceasuri/3.swf

The 21st Century Religious Wars: Another Battlefield

Danish professors of statistics aren't known for lighting fires under anyone. But there was Bjorn Lomborg sparking an inferno in 2001 with his book The Skeptical Environmentalist, in which he methodically demolished widely held ideas that the earth was, well, going to hell. Since then, Lomborg has fought a running battle with the eco establishment, which calls him a 21st-century Dr. Pangloss. But Lomborg doesn't deny the existence of global scourges; he just wants to face them honestly. Which brings us to the Copenhagen Consensus, his ambitious effort to set priorities for the top 10 issues facing the world: climate change, disease, war, education, financial instability, corruption, hunger, population, water, and trade. The project has tapped nine respected economists - four of them Nobelists - to create a hot list for spending limited resources. Wired spoke with Lomborg from Copenhagen, where he directs the Danish government's Environmental Assessment Institute. [...] http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.06/lomborg.html The language of the questions is particularly irritating; what is interesting however is how this is cast as a matter of religion. He is called "a Heretic", the article talks about "going to Hell" and Evolution "...eventually getting through the Church". Some followers of environmentalism certainly have all the characteristics of religious fanatics - especially the ones whodon'tt know anything about physics and chemistry. I have personally heard some simply astonishing nonsense about Chernobyl; for example, two weeks ago, I was told, in complete seriousness that, "If you go anywhere near Chernobyl you will dead within minutes". This person also believes that the world is on a one way ticket to self destruction. It is impossible to discuss anything about the issues surrounding energy consumption (and most recently, Lovelock's idea that we have to turn to Nuclear power generation as a stop gap) rationally with these types because being against Nuclear Power is an article of faith with them. If you asked them what an elements half life was or what The Periodic Table is, they wouldn't know, and for certain, you need to know about this stuff to be able to assess and discuss the risks. Which is what it is all about.

Ray Bradbury Hates Michael Moore... and thats a Bore!

"Michael Moore is a loathsome, scum-sucking, reactionary, elitist nutpig." http://blogs.salon.com/0001561/2004/06/02.html#a5394 Insult of the year. All the animus swirling around M. Moore is a little worrying. People in america, at least some of them, HATE him. Shooting the messenger?

End Registration Requests...At Last!

Somebody had to do it: http://bugmenot.com/ Use that to get around those pesky and infuriating registration requests!

Why Deregulation of Public Services is a Bad Thing®

Energy Traders caught boasting about manipulating energy market. (CBS) When a forest fire shut down a major transmission line into California, cutting power supplies and raising prices, Enron energy traders celebrated, CBS News Correspondent Vince Gonzales reports. "Burn, baby, burn. That's a beautiful thing," a trader sang about the massive fire. Four years after California's disastrous experiment with energy deregulation, Enron energy traders can be heard ? on audiotapes obtained by CBS News ? gloating and praising each other as they helped bring on, and cash-in on, the Western power crisis. "He just f---s California," says one Enron employee. "He steals money from California to the tune of about a million." "Will you rephrase that?" asks a second employee. "OK, he, um, he arbitrages the California market to the tune of a million bucks or two a day," replies the first. The tapes, from Enron's West Coast trading desk, also confirm what CBS reported years ago: that in secret deals with power producers, traders deliberately drove up prices by ordering power plants shut down. [...] CBS whether the boys behind it are nasty or not, it is wrong for publicly owned utilities to be sold to investors so that they can squeeze everyone. Horrible!

Where no one can find you

POP3 access for Gmail!!!

Pop Goes the Gmail Gmail > POP3 and SMTP > Gmail converter PGtGM runs on the tray of your computer, converting gmail emails from webbased HTML data into POP3 emails that most email clients, such as outlook, OE and Opera can read. http://jaybe.org/pgtgm/ It had to happen! I TOLD you someone somewhere is working on Gmail hacks!!

Looks good, doesnt get hot either.

This lamp is cool. It throws all the light downwards. No glue needed, comes flat packed. Something in me wants to make me make lamps. Take four red capsules. In ten minutes, take two more. Help is on the way.

The Draft is coming; fight it NOW or fight to for your life on the battlefield

I was having a chat with someone who didnt believe me when I said that the Draft is comimg back. I wish I was wrong, but its all too real:

Pending Draft Legislation Targeted for Spring 2005 The Draft will Start in June 2005 There is pending legislation in the House and Senate (twin bills: S 89 and HR 163) which will time the program's initiation so the draft can begin at early as Spring 2005 -- just after the 2004 presidential election. The administration is quietly trying to get these bills passed now, while the public's attention is on the elections, so our action on this is needed immediately. $28 million has been added to the 2004 Selective Service System (SSS) budget to prepare for a military draft that could start as early as June 15, 2005. Selective Service must report to Bush on March 31, 2005 that the system, which has lain dormant for decades, is ready for activation. Please see website: www.sss.gov/perfplan_fy2004.html to view the sss annual performance plan - fiscal year 2004. The pentagon has quietly begun a public campaign to fill all 10,350 draft board positions and 11,070 appeals board slots nationwide.. Though this is an unpopular election year topic, military experts and influential members of congress are suggesting that if Rumsfeld's prediction of a "long, hard slog" in Iraq and Afghanistan [and a permanent state of war on "terrorism"] proves accurate, the U.S. may have no choice but to draft. [...] College and Canada will not be options. In December 2001, Canada and the U.S. signed a "smart border declaration," which could be used to keep would-be draft dodgers in. Signed by Canada's minister of foreign affairs, John Manley, and U.S. Homeland Security director, Tom Ridge, the declaration involves a 30-point plan which implements, among other things, a "pre-clearance agreement" of people entering and departing each country. Reforms aimed at making the draft more equitable along gender and class lines also eliminates higher education as a shelter. Underclassmen would only be able to postpone service until the end of their current semester. Seniors would have until the end of the academic year.

Congress.org and there you have it. 2005 will be the year that the draft returns to the USA. You will be sorry if this goes through, and there will be nowhere for you to run.

...and they shall desire to die, and death fleeth from them

And in those days men shall seek death, and shall in no wise find it; and they shall desire to die, and death fleeth from them. http://www.longevitymeme.org/ A sea turtle can live 200 years, but not a man. A parrot live 150 years. hmmmmmmmmmm!

Professeur T. DOA. He was KEEL'D

Means lost in French, and for whose benefit did you write that??!??! I didn't know the 'No Sex' thing either. I just thought that's what happens to married people. I hav to KEEL you! == "Gagnier" != "Perdu" Hear the fairground music?

I RECOMMEND These shows to yousah

bore UNLIKELY if they are of the quality of that last one! Resonance does not have a live playlist like WFMU, which I love because it means that I can find the music that is playing in about 10 seconds after hearing it. I RECOMMEND that you listen to WFMU. http://www.wfmu.org particularly on a Wed. when Ken is playing. I also RECOMMEND OCDJ, Monica, The Cherry Blossom Clinic, Inner Ear Detour, MY WORD, almost all of them are worth listening to! Ken though always plays at leasts one extremely cool thing, and ALWAYS has a laugh up his sleeve.

F911 Gets Release on "unprecedented number of screens"!

Michael Moore is finally guaranteed an American audience for his controversial anti-Bush documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11. LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. and IFC Films have struck a deal to distribute the film nationwide on Friday, June 25. After the Walt Disney Co. blocked its subsidiary Miramax from releasing the film in May, Miramax co-chiefs Bob and Harvey Weinstein bought the rights in order to find entertain different avenues for distribution through their Fellowship Adventure Group. "With Frodo (Harvey) and Sam (Bob) now in charge of the Fellowship, I welcome the addition of Lions Gate and IFC to our quest in bringing good family entertainment to the viewing public," says Moore. "Not only am I in good hands, I am grateful to them now that everyone who wants to see it will now have the chance to do so -- thanks to the record number of screens on which they plan to open it." [...] http://www.zap2it.com/movies/news/story/0,1259,---21708,00.html

NoSex==Bad; Sex==Good

My child, "No Sex" means "No Joy". "No Dice" means "No Joy". "No Sex" means "No Risk" means "No dice". "Ogg Vorbis" is Sex. "No Sex" means "No Ogg Vorbis" means "No Dice". "Perdu".

Did you see what just happened?

Did you see that??!?!? I heard something awesome on the radio, and told everyone about it the instant it finished. A^t found sommat kewl by t'same dude and kept it STUMM. Now. Which one of us is the EVIL ONE?!? I am going to have to KEEL you!!!!

I just heard something REALLY good!

The rip off artist Title: "microwave oven" CD: New Clear Days Label: Inflatabl Here it is... Here is the website... That shiz works for me...what can I say?

A flaw in the new blogger system

There is a flaw in the new blogger system. If you leave your blogger window open for hours and hours, come back to it and post, your entry will appear at the time when you first loaded the form. This means that your posts will be injected into the stream way down and out of order. Reload the form page just before you want to post, to make sure your shiz is put in line properly!

Ogg Streaming in iTunes?

• iTunes 4 compatable Ogg Vorbis decoder plugin for Quicktime 6.2+ under MacOS X 10.2+
  This will allow you to play Ogg Vorbis music with iTunes. This version uses the latest Ogg Vorbis and Core Audio SDK and has been only lightly tested. It was compiled with a much newer compiler and seems to be a wee bit faster.

http://wfmu.org/wfmu_ogg.pls No sex.

Connecting The Dots

Database on U.S. Visitors Set for Huge Expansion Reston Firm's Contract Worth Up to $10 Billion By Anitha Reddy and Sara kehaulani goo Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, June 2, 2004 The Department of Homeland Security yesterday awarded a contract worth up to $10 billion to Accenture LLP to oversee and expand a massive U.S. program to track millions of foreign visitors as they cross American borders. The project, called U.S. Visit, collects and stores information about foreigners entering and exiting the country on visas through airports and seaports. The data, including digital photographs and fingerprints, are stored in an electronic database and shared among some government agencies to ensure that visitors do not overstay their visas and to help authorities capture suspected terrorists and criminals [...] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7961-2004Jun1.html For those who like to connect the dots, Accenture purchased Navitaire, the ASP company that does the reservation back end ("Open Skies") for 40 different airlines, including RyanAir. This is a perfect dovetail; Navitaire can expand on Open Skies to encompass all of the needs of the gre4t s4t4n, using its expertise in reservation handling. Even if Open Skies is used solely for collecting data, its a match made in hell. Accenture of course has wide experience in CRM and everything database. They get to fleece the American public, nay, anyone traveling to the USA one sheep at a time. A contract for 10 Billion, that will do nothing more than trap a few criminals, do nothing to stop "terrorism" and invade everyones privacy on an unprecedented scale. Of course, once the world gets a grip on this, the system will catch no one at all, since both the moral and immoral will cease to travel to the US; the former as a matter of principle, the second as a matter of survival. This means that other places in the world will grow in dynamism, as everyone is steered away from America as a place to meet and do things. I personally know people who have left the USA precisely because it has now become a profoundly unfriendly place to live in.

No Space Anywhere That Is Not Normailzed

Denmark backs hippie idyll plans Christiania was a 'no-go' zone for police until a few months ago Danish politicians have agreed a law that paves the way for a new legal basis for Christiania, the enclave famous for its alternative lifestyle. The enclave's future has been in doubt since the government said it wanted to "normalise" the counter-cultural zone. [...] Christiania is one of Copenhagen's biggest tourist attractions. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3768199.stm

Fucking Google It

Fucking Google It

Top Hats

Zone Alarm Blocking UR Portz

Zone Alarm is blocking one of the ports / IP range that you need to have open, or blocking the app that access the service you need. You will have to manually open that port/IP range in your Firewall -- Zones tab.

Wheras, we are desireous of a fresh clean slate....

Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?

A Moral Scientist

The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci Day-by-day Da Vinci. Read the pages of the Notebooks by RSS, one at a time. How by a certain machine many may stay some time under water. And how and wherefore I do not describe my method of remaining under water and how long I can remain without eating. And I do not publish nor divulge these, by reason of the evil nature of men, who would use them for assassinations at the bottom of the sea by destroying ships, and sinking them, together with the men in them. Nevertheless I will impart others, which are not dangerous because the mouth of the tube through which you breathe is above the water, supported on air sacks or cork. http://www.interconnected.org/home/more/davinci/

Universal Disgust and Disdain

It's Time for Regime Change at the New York Times A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL June 1, 2004 While at least half of this nation is demanding regime change for America in 2004, liberals who can't start a Sunday until they hear the thud of the New York Times hit the ground should wake up. Regime change in the media should begin with the New York Times. Yes, the New York Times editorial board has maintained its traditional liberal stances, for the most part. We'll grant you that, particularly in comparison to the generally pro-Bush Washington Post editorial board (with some indignation finally starting to show up there over the Iraqi war crimes issue). But even the New York Times editorial board supported the war in Iraq, and it has, until just a few weeks ago, been generally devoid of a sense of outrage over the dishonest, lying, treasonous, inept, and corrupt Bush Administration. So, we're not about to let America's "paper of record" off the hook. Even so, if the New York Times editorial policies, have been, in general, somewhat liberal, its news section has often been an insidious vehicle for Republican spin since, at least, the early 90s. Make no mistake about it, the current NYT admission [LINK] that it might have abandoned some basic journalistic principles in its reporting of fiction as fact in regards to the Iraq War -- most noticeably in the blatantly uncorroborated confections of Judith Miller [LINK] -- is as disingenuous as the articles that they want us to believe they are admitting should not have been posted in the first place. [...] http://www.buzzflash.com/buzzscripts/buzz.dll/sub2

Looping Through Hashes, A Vague Bit Of Help

This is vague, but it looks something like this:

foreach $key (keys %your_hash) {
        print " $somecrap{$key} related to $key.\n";
}

Thats partially from memory; you HAVE to get "Learning Perl" - its a quick way to learn much Perl, and it has lots of examples that you can recycle. There is also a Perl cookbook which sounds good, but which I have not seen.

The Problem, Perfectly Outlined.

How dare Al Gore disgrace this nation By Boston Herald editorial staff Friday, May 28, 2004 He never mentioned Nicholas Berg. Or Daniel Pearl. Or a single person killed in the World Trade Center. Nor did former Vice President Al Gore talk of any soldier by name who has given his life in Iraq. And he has the audacity to condemn the Bush administration for having ``twisted values?'' Gore spent the bulk of a speech before the liberal group MoveOn.org Wednesday bemoaning Abu Ghraib and denouncing President Bush's departure from the ``long successful strategy of containment.'' Yes, the very same strategy that, under Gore's leadership, allowed al-Qaeda operatives to plan the horror of Sept. 11 for years, while moving freely within our borders. Gore even had the audacity to defend the perpetrators of the prison abuse - by name - while denouncing President Bush [related, bio] for ``humiliating'' our nation. How dare he. How dare a former vice president of the United States go beyond disagreeing with the current president's policies - a right of anyone in this free country - and denounce Bush as ``incompetent.'' How dare Gore say that Americans have an ``innate vulnerability to temptation... to use power to abuse others.'' And that our own ``internal system of checks and balances cannot be relied upon'' to curb such abuse. And this man - who apparently has so much disdain for the nature of the American people - wanted to be elected to lead it? It is Gore who has brought dishonor to his party and to his party's nominee. The real disgrace is that this repugnant human being once held the second highest office in this great land. http://news.bostonherald.com/opinion/view.bg?articleid=29658 This a perfect example of "the problem" in the USA right now. They have people who publish newspapers that cannot read. They require quasi religious recitation of the principles of their new war God; "911", "soldiers giving their lives", "its a different world now", and of course, the most important of all, "all criticism is heresy". This is the molasses mindset that americans have to break out of if they are ever going to escape this war forever scenario that has completely engulfed them - if they do not, they will drag the civilized world down with them. People say that it is now impossible for W to get back into the white house. If people like this can STILL support their corrupt, fundamentally evil, government, then there is every possibility that we will all suffer another four years of this insanity, as unthinkable as that may be.