Posts by Walking Turtle 147 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Apr 2008
I shall indeed gin me up a Flash app for me iPhoney PopTart 'n' put it into th' dang iThang mese'f.
Meanwhile, I shall first need t' start wanting an iPhoney-poptart i' th' first place, th' which Burning Desire I just ain't got th' pep t' muster at th' moment... Many entirely welcome irons now in-hand today be much hotter 'n' that'n, thank'ee.
Got me thinkin' o' Penguination 'n' Boffinry agin... Arrrarrr. ;)
...with the most egregious serial offenders first, shall we? Bush/Blair/Cheney/Rummie et al rise to mind... (Contemporary equivalents included; bring y'own batteries.) Get around to the Karadich- and Amin-level butchers after...
We all might or might not end up safer goin' that way (I think so, mese'f) but either way, there'd be sure to be a difference.
"If it is deterrence you want, surely death by torture would be even better?"
Why, that very question is being (ahem) *researched* every day by (hak-kaff) *scientists* and their MIL-spec helpers at Gitmo, Bagram, Abu Ghraib, the Salt Pit, Camp No, and a half-dozen or so nameless US Navy prison vessels steaming in endless circles here and there all about the globe while the (ahem) *research* is taking place, now ain't it so?
One might think that by now, a decade-plus on, the torture (erm, ahem) *research* results might likely indeed indicate no particular reduction in resistance activity levels, erm, that is, (ahem) the *terrorism* rate, but where are those results anyway, HM?
"Deterrent" my sainted tainted damp puckered rictus-riddled dahlia. Human life and basic consciousness does not work in such a manner as presupposed by that wee theory, to be sure. As to the Ohio man: Same exact principle, only on a different level, is all.
The killing must stop, yes it must. ALL of it. (All is all.)
And that is all.
Pre-assault = Labile and Dangerously Naive.
Post-assault = Resistant and Post-Traumatically Distressed.
Caveat: Post-traumatic dissociative symptoms may mimic those of degenerative schizophrenia, which is a different condition entirely. Accurate differential diagnosis is essential to the successful outcome.
That suffering creature, by the look of the sores in the picture, has something much more serious than a superficial case of hair-shedding "mange". Those mounded-up volcano-cone wounds speak deafeningly to this one of a massive deep-seated full-body infestation by flesh-eating Sarcoptic Mites. They eat their way out of the host's body once their numbers increase past a certain critical mass, much as honeybees swarm once the hive is near-overpopulated.
Millions of 'em, all throughout the body. Lumps under the skin that walk about at an inch an hour when stimulated have been observed by YT. That poor bear is more than passingly likely crying out from the pain of being eaten alive from the inside outward, imvho.
For Goodness' sake, wouldn't you?
The cure for this condition, be it in beast or man samesame, is known as Transdermal Ivermectin. Five ml/cc concentration, one cc/10-kilo dosage. (One cc per 22 lbs body weight, in other words.) Available without prescription from any veterinary supply house on the Web, although party-line MD Doctors do tend to vigorously disapprove of the saving of ones' own life by ones' own hand via Smart Shopping and Intelligent Googling. All that self-serving and barbarous AMA party-line hasbara aside, half a pint of Iver-On and/or similar competing preparations (an adequate amount indeed; save the rest for post-drainage liniment to be wise) tend to run about $25-30. USD at this writing. Shop smart and save - ripoffs from various Vi9gra-pushing Pill Hausen are Out There too. But Farmer Brown does not fool around when Bossy is suffering - help in called for on the spot, and Free Vi9gra be reliably damned. Transdermal Ivermectin is where it is at when the bugs go that thick.
Two doses, timed apart by 72 hours (minimum, 96 hours maximum) eradicates first the living colonies and then their hatchling spawn. The compassionate zoologist and Smart Human Being alike will then energetically go after that which attracted the bugs to the meat in the first place: Fungus eradication is the key to a full permanent recovery. Wipe out the fungus and thus the pheromones otherwise emitted, and the mites no longer smell out the meat for dinner - the forest floor and soi are really all they need in order to survive as a Beneficial Species. (We'd be over our heads in dry leaves and twigs as well as lawn-thatch were it not for their rightful place and activity there.)
So how to "de-fungulate" the meat? For the human, the metabolic product of live non-dairy Acidophilus bacteria as abundantly found in homemade Saurekraut (two cups of the fresh juice a day for a few short months, or until all evidence of fungus is gone) in concert with top-rate hygienic methods, a healthy diet and additional vitamind will generally do it. Just buy the white cabbage wholesale; shred, salt and ferment the stuff as directed on many a Web recipe site. Hold the nose and learn to like it for the effect if not for the rich, pungent aroma and flavor.
As for the bear: I doubt that that sufferin' critter might ever be induced to willingly swallow the stuff, although I have been surprised a few times before - critters seem to know what isw good for 'em more often than the Naked Ape humanoids, all in all. A proper course of azole treatment just might be the right thing for that guy, one thinks. Not that I wouldn't put a bowl of kraut juice in the cage, though. (How else to know?)
I do tend to think fermented Bok Choi juice (aka 'kimchee') might do just as well in Another Part of the World, come to think of it - a matter of availability, maybe taste and likely price too, is all.
So please, might someone better-connected that this one to the relevant local Chinese authorities kindly pass the word on regarding this? This is all that this one can do tonight; just can't stand to sit idly by enjoying BOFH while anyone at all (non-human or indeed otherwise) suffers needlessly. Once that poor thing is all cured up and has their fur back, I for one do expect he'll remember with gratitude for the remainder of their natural life. :)
a few years back when there was still a Seeming of Magick attached to the then-nuovo Web 2.0. A friend and I literally squicked-out a wiretapping eavesdropper who had (I had long suspected from Peripheral Backward-Pressing Business Effects, but had been vociferously tagged 'paranoid' over by self-interested others no longer in my association, with no real way to prove anything prior to this incident) hooked into the telco trunkline pair serving this one's office. Friend asked quite innocently, "So what do *you* think of Web Two Point Oh?"
In a heartbeat there emerged the Definitive Impression by way of Telling Response: "Web Two Point Oh!", this one emitted in stentorian tones, with Nothing Aforethought at All. "Your Badger - on DILDO BRAINS!!"
The which entirely spontaneous Telling Utterance, oddly enough, was met on-the-spot with exactly one rather loud and apparently quite horrified gasp, followed hard on its heels by not a mere ninety-volt broken-contact click but instead a full-scale brick-force mechanical "KLUNK!" as the sudden-disgusted wannabee Criminal Interloper hastily slammed the receiver of their own mal-connected instrument down full-force into its cradle, entirely missing the switch-hook on the first pass. (Cheap Chinese phones often do that...)
We both re-learned the Full Genuine Eternally True Meaning of the time-honored "ROFLMAO" expression anew immediately and for at least five minutes following. Howled and pounded and stomped and hooted like, well, the Wild Human Injuns that we is, really.
As for the AOL/Bebo thang: Prior Spontaneous Evaluation surely applies, to that one as well as to (imvho) all manner of Social Cloud Networking Holes, no matter what snibbsy tag such thangs be given by their dreamers-up.
Nice to be informed that Web 2.0 itself is really only made of Badgers' Paws, though. :)
@ Ugotta B. Kiddingme:
"That, sir/madam, would have been a perfect post EXCEPT for one sentence:
"And NO MORE Controlled Demolitions of multiple inhabited office towers EVER AGAIN, let alone the mass murders of the occupants thereof being passed off as *FOREIGN* deeds of terrorism?"
Really? Finally got that tinfoil hat back from the cleaners, did you? Come now, sir and/or madam. That one oddly constructed sentence completely ruined an otherwise excellent post."
== == == ==
Excuse me a moment, O Beloved Benighted One, whilst yet I clean the coffee off me poor wee slickit shiverin' pet mousie. (Fortunately the system hardware was spared this time.)
Not that I for one ever expect mere forensic evidence, most if not indeed all of which is resident in the Public Record, to ever convert thine own opinion to mine. For indeed,
All folk convinced against their will
Are of the same opinion still.
All in all, O Beloved Benighted, I for one am of the considered opinion that the hard-won and extensively peer-reviewed forensic evidence that has emerged over the prior decade of concerted top-down assault on We the Normal and Non-Faultily Intelligent People of America (and indeed all around the entire world) strongly supports the proffered though isolated-and-then-denigrated assertion.
OTOH, such a sneering /ad/ /hominem/ make-wrong assault, especially when held forth as any manner of countervailing opinion, reliably raises a number of Red Flag points to any non-faultily intelligent observer, now does it not? Not to mention veering the forum, which is about the Bush Administration's State Secrets Doctrine and the like, 'way off-topic if pursued further.
Beyond that, should we ever indeed choose to carry the point any further, such instant schoolyard-bully vileness as that terribly sorry context-distortive bit surely (at least to some whose excitement someone with a Joking Handle might wish to either avoid or manipulate, depending) reliably lends itself quite well indeed to some rather telling real-world speculative musings as regards likely motivations, sensible frames of reference, and even (big shame if ever indeed so; kindly refer to the full spirit of the other, not-objected-to Factual Bits for the full-featured general notion) Pay Grade of one behaving as many a Counterintelligence Operative (or shill or patsy or what-have-you) indeed will.
With respect, such vituperative "volunteers" as one occasionally finds here and there Webside, a-posting in such a genre against all manner of reason and forensic science, seldom if ever go so far as that without (shall we delicately put it) a wee taste of the Imperial Treasury (or Imperial Coercion, depending) first taken in hand (or on the chin, depending), now do they ever?
Either way, an Old Turtle feels for and prays for them all. Good morning!
As for that (indeed potentially hat-size, yes) piece of fine oven-tempered though denigrated tinfoil: Actually, it's back from the baker's shoppe with a fresh wedge of still-warm fairy-cake safe inside. Would thou, O Beloved Benighted, be so kind as to have a seat within this-here utterly fine and *entirely* harmless Total Perspective Initiation Device while the maintenance tech renews the necessary connection? Always good of one to do so, thank you.
BTW, both of the two gender-designators presently available in the English Tongue do indeed express a certain basic respect for the person addressed, all that did follow in the subsequent force-wrong attempt notwithstanding. But that is Turtle Business and really need only concern other Turtles, shan't it?
Now if one will kindly just swing the TPV unit's door shut and hold tight for a few nanos, this will not take long at all... The Light comes on by itself, yes. :)
Hey, I was up for a light workout anyway. No harm done! So nice try at any rate. Jinnantonix for you? My pleasure! Just another cup of sweet-and-light coffee for me before I go, and a nice fat cricket to keep me mousie company too, if available, thank you...
Gotta' love an Open Forum. It is indeed a most beautiful day, isn't it? :)
Now may we have ALL our prior privacy back in one unbroken and seamless piece, please?
And HONEST PAPER BALLOTS with proper oversight, even on recounts, with NO MORE top-down nullifications and NO MORE abuse of the IT industry by means of the Diebolding of our sacred though desecrated elections, Sir?
And our wonderfully strong and beautiful "Truth in Labeling" laws applied to ALL those corporate-packaged cabbage-products in Human Suits, both while campaigning AND post-election, please?
And - oh yes - a wholesale return of the Rule of Conscience and Law (and Conscience!) to ALL our NeoTard-infested Halls of Governance and Regulation, such that we shall have NO MORE lawless willy-nilly mortgage securitizations, "Too Big to Fail" bailouts, First-Strike Wars of Aggression and multi-trillion Phantom Share cases such as the "CMKM/CMKX versus the SEC" suit now under litigation in open court? And no more Enron-style Brownouts for Profit? And NO MORE Controlled Demolitions of multiple inhabited office towers EVER AGAIN, let alone the mass murders of the occupants thereof being passed off as *FOREIGN* deeds of terrorism?
Um, a full-scale return to REAL public education, including a VERY sharp veering-away from the post-Reagan "Setup for the Punchline" decades of dumbings-down that now every day reliably affront our own normal non-faulty intelligence and destroy our childrens' very viability as Functional Genuine Human Beings would be really good too. Sir, can and indeed shall we now arrange for these things IMMEDIATELY?
Your Honor, kindly DO let these things be done, so that all of the above Elements of Humble Petitioners' Mass Prayer are at once buttressed and fortified well out of and away from the present-day FAIL Zone! Let us truly and with genuine compassion this Easter Season seriously consider the lives of our children and the available quality thereof, shall we, Sir?
Oh and by the way, Your Honor, what ARE those merry, fun-loving "Ethnic Pennsylvanians" now doing with all that International Settlements money anyway? Aren't we s'pozed to be paying for ten years of bought-on-credit cheap plastic crap and toxic baby formula (not to mention the pet food, Heaven rest 'em all) with /those/ trillions, just like honest consumers who are not criminal bums always prefer, Sir?
Thank you, Your Honor, for the initial sharp, strong and entirely beautiful blow against the Criminal Empire that you HAVE struck today! Surely there shall be many more in the years to come! Granted only those entirely necessary things and all that naturally follows from them, Your Honor, surely normal sanity shall return to our nation and to our world, shall it not?
It is a beautiful day. :)
...can surely be minimized all along the Avian Backbone by upgrading every AtmosWeb node to VuuDuu Linux on a suitably deceased Badger, imvho. Just slip a pair of proper Gigabit ethernet cards in where the Duppy Card and Sound Cards once might have lived; the result will prove both immobile and rackworthy as well as quiet in operation.
http://www.strangehorizons.com/2004/20040405/badger.shtml for those of us who are just catching up on the Advancing RetroConceptual Edge of NeoTech these days. ;)
"Why the hell should you or I have to inform anyone that we are conducting ourselves in a lawful manner?"
Because you and I and all our beloveds, friends and neighbors too have all been softly, silently and snarkily put into the NeoPosition of being presumed GUILTY of CRIME on sight now these days, instead of the Right Thing being presumed as was so in the past.
It is a process that has a name. The Name of the Process is called "ponerization". Google [ "Political Ponerology" + Lobicziewski + download + .pdf ] and glom the whole book from Red Pill Press.
Parallel reading: "The Mask of Sanity" by Hervey Cleckley MD. Ditto re the .pdf download - it is evidently now donated to society at large by the author as a Survival Manual. I get the same "feel" from reading about Lobiczievski, who now is a very aged man, as well.
Signs of the times imvho. Because one must *have* the truth in order to *handle* the truth, is why.
The Boffin, because to gain a useful understanding of evil without becoming a practitioner thereof ones' own self at all in any given lifetime is a High Attainment of the Genuine Science. All others are predictably gone to the Dark Side and got a quindillion dirty-gained quatlooz stashed away in Antigua or somewhere no doubt.
...is within each and every last blinkered nobbled limpin' one of us. Consciousness is continuous; Life is everlasting. This is so for you yourself, Gentle Reader, because because you contain within yourself the entirety of all Creation. (Nothing less, nothing more, nothing else is either necessary nor indeed worthy.)
Item: You and I and all our siblings and neighbors are all without exception from Heaven, that being our origin from the beginning, just for start-point. "Christ in you, the Hope of Glory" expresses a Greater Truth than many Born to the Cross might at first realize in the universal Human Experience at the core of all our individual beings.
Skull it out from there with Best Quality Sacrament aforethought, Gentle Reader; the ever-emerging Forbidden Truth'll dance a big ol' happy John 8:32 Dance with ya' sooner or later, every time. Plenty Cosmic Giggles up for grabs along the Way Home, too. Just keep the Faith fulltime (don't ever false out) and keep on/busy knowing/remembering who you *really* are - and how free we all still always are, no matter what. And Not Dead Yet, as well!
And live accordingly. Don't fight your own best blood and/or Spirit. Go with 'em and *live*.
Always a Saving Remnant; always Genuine Sacrament on Earth - some good way or another at all times for those who will take up with Efffective Prayer while living well on Earth. Leary and Owsley inter alia planted very good seed in some fine fertile ground, here and there Back in the Day imvho. (
'Twas legal then. The paney dose,
doth spark and spinkle on the tip
o'Tonguey, then with Inner Nose,
the Meta-Fnords... Decrypt.
The Clear Point was *always* to Bring It Back Alive. Some of us did. Too many to mess with. Best Example Ever. Not Dead yet. Hope o' Glory Good Morning! Trippin' Hyppeez Won. GrayFace zilch nada longtime now.
Warning: Ones' advanced degrees in this historically ancient line of study in Human Development don't come cheap. Being proved by History agaian and again to have been right about things thirty years into the "future" just does not pay the rent all by itself; I ain't up for a crucifyin' today either.
So hunger and thirst after it and trust Heaven for the longterm result over a lifetime or don't bother dabblin', but there's never any other time like the present moment, is all I can tellya'. One CAN get There from pretty much No Matter Where. ;)
@AC Tuesday 7th July 2009 14:59
"Who's going to be the first person to write to the company congratulating them on what a wonderful product they have, inquiring how they make the eggs so round, but requesting they make them runny and in the hard white packets next time since they bought the eggs to make an omelet, only were unable to do so in spite of several attempts by them and their mother/friend/boss/doctor useing instructions from a number of different recipe books?..."
See "Idiot Letters" byPaul Rosa (isbn 0-386-47508-x) for the Inside Scoop and real-life hardcopy on and of that very fine culture-jammin' artform. (One might later realize that one has not wanted for tee shirts nor coffee mugs for many years now, one day, but it is not wise to hold the breath for so very long.)
"...Preferably in the style of AMFM."
[josh] Um, is that the premium dashboard radio option on this rig? Can I get a Blaupunkt in-dash all-in-one, with MWSW too? [/josh]
I for one tend think amfM, on the other hand, might have even more Advancedly Intelligent (likely non-faulty too) things to take up and/or do.
Just to call the man by his right name. A distinction with a difference. Recognition is sweet. To go is to return etc inter alia et seq et al.
Mine's the one with the roll of international postage stamps and box of envelopes in one pocket, and a portable replicator for quasi-garbly Latin-derived Infinitely Inclusive Meme Abbreviations in the other. (Touch gently; teeth like cats...)
...that pioneered on the Amiga, we of the Coalition would not EVER heve been able to nail the State Officer ("man", my tuchus) who walked up and stomped MY FRIEND Ray D. in the chest with his Florsheim Imperial Wing Tip while ol' Ray lay captured by the Security Forces, face-up and handcuffed on the State House mezzanine lobby floor, then fled the scene amid a flurry of poppin' flashbulbs on that Very Wild an' Wooly Beacon Hill Police Riot Day, lo these many years ago.
We fingered that pasty pencil-necked face COLD. C-Limited NTSC viddy capture box did just fine on the stock Amiga 1000, no less.
We got ALL our Normal Citizens' Civil Rights nailed down solid AND signed off on the following year, albeit at the high-hand price of all our Commonwealth Universal Dental Coverage (BOO ON YOU for THAT, "Honorable" Former Governor William F. Weld, now of the MURDEROUS Council on Foreign Relations!). NOBODY of Legislator standing wanted another one of *those* swarmin' brutal police actions to explain away, especially even to their OWN sons and daughters.
Fact: Although I for one am not in any way up for marryin' anyone else any time soon, it is GOOD to know that Love did at last find a Way - in part due to the Advanced and Affordable NTSC Video Frame Capture Tech o' th' Amiga Personal Computer being THERE FOR US, reliably enabling us all to SAVE OUR OWN DAY and MANY LIVES too.
Moral: See a brutality, SNAP a brutality! Don't ALLOW any Crime Against Humanity to "just slide". VIGILANCE is the price of LIBERTY. Great Britons: SHAKE OFF YOUR CHAINS.
And introduce him to King Sunny Aday, the Talking Drum Master of Nigeria and one Brave Man in his own rite. For that man, too, is a King!
Let his drumskin do the talkin' where his foreskin can't any more. Listen with care and the Great Mystery of Nigerian Bush Kingship becomes clear as can be.
So he was Ibo in his prior life, poor chap? Ah, the vicissitudes of Human Culture...
Phil Koenig posted, on Saturday 6th June 2009 20:54 GMT as follows:
> I nominate that last missive for "Comment of the Year" status... :-)
Thank you for that signal honor, Friend Koenig. Nomination accepted; one only hopes the core point is well taken all up and down the Non-Faulty Shear Line of Genuine Human Intelligence, so to term it, all the way to the point of Restorative Corrective Action. Minus that, I think we got right near bupkus left to fall back on in times of Rampant Abject Tyranny, be it of the velvet- or steel-glove variety.
CotYear? OK. Again, thanks! Miz Bee'll flog it herself if Herself really really likes it, of course. ;)
Oh YES Your Honor! Please, YES. WE the PEOPLE of these terrorwar-assaulted and Untied States are WEARY as can BE of being evermore ruled over and overruled, over and over and over again, by pinstripe-clad Phederal tinpot twatdangles such as these!
The trouble with them all is only, y'see, that they all tend to become all nervous and terrified and fulla' bullyboy shriekdown kinderscheiss at the mere sheer *prospect* of any emerging GOOD EXAMPLE actually making it out inyto the Light of Day.
That is correct, Your Honor! Infandous indeed, but it is now so. For setting and keeping to the Best Civick Example Ever Made Available under Heaven, We the People are now tagged "Terrorist" by these Florcheim Imperialists and DHS toady-bums. Ah, but jail is still by rights for SECOND-raters, now is it not just, Your Honor?
Indeterminate Minimum Sentence for all such, PLEASE, with time off for successful completion of Civics and American Government 101, even though that course was last taught in the US school system about 1973 or so, then abandoned amid a blaze of Writhing Telly-Vision Spandex and Fashionable Designer Druggage while the Friedman Chicago School Fraudulent International Securitization Finance Ponzi-Go-'Round was at last cranked up to full whirling "Just-Runnit-om-Empty" tilt.
Additional time off recommended, Your Honor, for ANY such Phederal defendant EVER becoming able to demonstrate POSITIVE commitment to as well as competent proficiency in the Bill of Rights. Until then, AWAY with them ALL to Deepest Darkest Club Fed! Oath-breaking KNAVES of the WORST sort, these ones!
WHAT? The CONSTITUTION and Bill of RIGHTS is now OUTLAWED TOO? (Ohyuh. Bush Legacy Executive Orders, left not-yet-rescinded...) But Your HONOR...
Mine's the Secret Suit Coat with the Suitably Secret Doctrines in the Secretly Suitable Pockets. Nope, y'can't spot 'em. They're Secret. Stick out all over the place in every direction, they do, 'cause they're just so durn secret. (Gottit.)
@MahatmaCoat (26th May 2009 16:53 GMT)
Gropecunt Lane, meet Harry Baals Drive. Harry, Grope. Grope, Harry.
Mr. Harry Baals, per The Evil Googles, once mayored over Fort Wayne Indiana USA. Fort Wayne is a fine place to visit, live there or no. (Once did and now do not.)
Hands across the water: Done. Coat!
Mine's the one with the still-serviceable 6SN7 and 5U4 vacuum valves in the one pocket, and the smelly tubular rubber foam thingie for pulling 'em out of their phenolic octal sockets while hot in the other. (It has been that long, but oh what that rubber foam did smell like... Brings a certain lane and a certain drive to mind, together at last.)
Right here in Old-Timey America, us Injuns took instant pity on the po' new-arrived laboring-class folk in their chains and helped 'em out where we could. Some of the results live on to this day. http://www.luckymojo.com will set all visitors thereunto right straight per the Holye Historickal Hoodoo Explosion that ensued.
Poor ol' Whiteman has been fighting a Secret Terrorwar against an Invisible Enema Within ever since. But flail and moan and clench-up tho' he might, it still goes off with a rumblin' "BUMP!" here and there in the night. Po' ol' Massa' Bwana STILL cain't sleep so good no mo'.
Um, there's still some Afro/Celt folk on Earth, now ain't there? Sorted!
Mine's the one with the Grumpy Green-Face Bottle in the pocket. And the nice fat High John nut; yes, thanks that's it. :)
@ weapons
By Chris Posted Monday 11th May 2009 16:18 GMT
> "I'm sure everyone who has flown out of a UK airport remembers being asked "Are you carrying a weapon or anything that can be used as a weapon?" "
In me own globetrotting days, when flying the (formerly mostly-) Friendly Skies, I too became bored with that line of questioning at the departure gate. Got to thinking about it, of course.
The reply that worked best (always with full eye contact and a b-i-g happy smile) seemed to be, "Why yes, in point of fact, I certainly do! It's called a Fully Liberated Human Mind [with the fore- and middle-finger tapping at the right-hand temple while maintaining eye-lock on the checker], and mine is right here. Would you like to see the whole thing right now?"
Always good for a bit of "OMG!/WTF?/ohChrist..." full-stop eye-rolling, a quick look whether any super was looking on, and otherwise a guaranteed "Thank you and have a nice flight!" wave-thru. Which did keep the smile on my face. (Oh look - it's back again!) :)
Dunno' how well that approach'd work these days when outbound from Heathrow, though. Nanny-neener's a buggah, to be sure. (Mine's the one with the antique Boarding Pass stubs in the pocket.)
Ancient Wisdom of the Human Race describes the Thing Then Unheard-Of yet again. Sorted!
As for that meet-up with the Bilderbergers mentioned by Spiteful God @ 17:50 GMT: That does it. Given only the accuracy of Spiteful God's assertion, the ol' "Don't Be Evil" GoogleMotto is here and now declared Officially and Infandously Hypocritical, per Backchannel-Informed Fiat of Walking Turtle, All the appropriate caveats and boyctts do thus hereby apply to every emptor.
Gah. Blarg. Plugh!
Mine's the one with the somewhat battered copy of the Complete Works of Aesop in the pocket. Rght next to the paperback of Sun Tsu's Art of War.
By Colin Millar Posted Tuesday 12th May 2009 13:34 GMT
> They're breeding turtles from mars
It's Turtles All the way Down and Up as Well, actually. The planet would fall into the gutter and Out the Black Hole were it not so. :)
Kindly refer to the US Public Broadcasting Service's low-budget "Fundraiser Prioduction" of "The Lathe of Heaven" by Ursula K. LeGuin (or just grab the book; it's a fine read) for further introduction to our off-the-moon if not exactly off-the-wall genre and species at leisure. (Enjoy!) Tuly, if an object is desired, Help is Available.
@ aMfM re all those "utterly worthless Zero-Recourse Securitized Fractional Reserve Credit Default Swap Derivative Instrument[s]" [quoting YT immediately above]:
> "It is only utterly worthless if you cannot Use the Locked In Capital Value/Latent Credit Potential. In the Capable Hands of SMARTer Minds with Alternative Thinkers/BetaTinkerers, is their Worth Transformed and Realised as an Invaluable NeuReal Funding Stream.
My brother, is that thing which is apparently herein spoken of not well known in the "More Honest Than Them Guys" Financial Services World Circles as the "Greater Fool Theory" of Financial Instrument Marketing?
> "The Simple Transfer of Large Sums of Accumulated Bad Credit Debt/Toxic Waste to a New Breed of Virtual Capital Spender/AIMarket Champion/NINJA Venturing Entrepreneur rather than allowing the Obscene Numbers to Clogging up Dumb Books with the Price of Past Dastardly Deeds which went MetaPhysically Boom in the Busted Reality Cycle."
Ah, would that such a Great Stockpile of Asset Resource were real to begin with! Alas, in the "No Recourse" field of Investment Intrumentation, there is, sadly, for the Last Man Left Holding any given item(s) of that Remarkably Infandous Asset Class, NO WAY to gain the ownership of the "Securitized Collateral" OR any "Derivative Revenue" that the poor struggling-and-underwater sap paying off that Alt-A Baloon Mortgage might actually Pony Up. As in *all* Ponzi-inspired operations (no matter how well-heeled the Florsheim Imperials of the prior-owner-cum-paid-off Seller), the One Left Holding in any such casino-grade game of Musical Money-Chairs is left holding a portfolio of *non-collectible* and ILLEGAL (because of the "No Recourse" clause buried in the Fine Print on Page 187 or thereabouts of the unlawful instrument/"contract") Financial Paper by then.
Which is why we have the "Credit Crash" today. Virtually nobody is left on THIS planet who is so foolish as to pay a penny on the face-value dollar any more, at all, even IF (bigger 'if' every day, that) there is a penny left non-extracted in the pocket to begin with(!)
As that market cycles spins, rinses, lathers and repeats the extractive scrub-down, It goes from
"Buy Low, Sell High" (in which one Great Fool[er] is paid with money from the pocket of another *greater* fool[er] to
"Buy High, Sell Higher" ("Greater Fool Theory" Stage Two) to
"Buy High, Sell NOTHING right quick". Stage 3 emerges while the Greatest Fool is sleeping in a bed of self-congratulation and Anticipatorily Drooling in their dreamy futile hope of a BIG Breakfast of Greed. Or just sleeps dead sound all night long, patiently awaiting their Big Pension Payout from their "Godot Global Securitized Securities Faceless Heartless Nudnik Financial Corp LLC" Investment Account.
But ol' Godot ain't here YET, man!
> "Ergo, and the Moral in the Tale, Invest Monetized Toxic Waste Assets in NINJA Venturing Servers and Services, which is an Interesting Enigmatic Chicken Egg Parallel, is it not?"
Ninja, of course, was born on the Chinese Heartlands when the Emperor ordered ALL weapons confiscated all throughout the land. But simple peasant farmers MUST have flails and sickles, or no more be farming farmers, and the Emperor buys his bread from the Farmer through Miller and then the Baker, all of whom MUST have tools at hand or NO BREAD. Resisting oppressive force by means of the use of Common Household Materials and Supplies is indeeed an ancient art-form of Sheer Survival.
But Ninja Servers running CyberMatic Derivatives Market Trading Software like commodity futures are run? I think the trouble with that is that by such an implementation one bites ones' own hand deeper than that of the Infandous Financial Criminal Overlords against whose depradations we ALL *should* have been struggling from the beginning. I also think that there IS NO MARKET for this class of fraud-backed instruments any more, to begin with.
With the exception of the "Too Big to Fail" crowd, which these days is apparently doing the financial-instruments equivalent of taking in each others' dirty washing under WashMaster Geithner's Permissive Regulatory Eye, there is no monetization to be had from any part of that entire mass (seven forests' worrth in gross fake-parchment weight globally, aggregating it all by my own wee estimate) of "Derivative Paper".
It's a bit Like the old Smithy's Enigma as I for one have found it. A Blacksmith must own and use a pair of tongs in their daily work*. So since a Blacksmith must have Tongs, and Tongs are made by Blacksmiths, WHO made the First Pair of Tongs?
* The which is *PRODUCTIVE*, like a Glassblower's trade is PRODUCTIVE and thus *enriching* to all, unlike any and all manner of Modern Financial Operations, which are merely EXTRACTIVE in their nature and leave the poor customer *poorer* as the result of the Compounded Interest under the Rule of 78.
Speaking strictly as one who amazed "Them All" by standing up in Econ 101 and *refusing* to accept the basic Friedman/Chicagoschool Cyber Model of Infinite Wealth Creation Leveraging at ANY but the human-sustainable 1:1 of Ben Franklin /et/ /al/ (and who took the 33-year Heretick's Exile from the ol' Alma Mater while the cause-and-effect of it all played itself out crashwards) I can only respond in one coherent way:
Virtual Money for Virtual Reality! Virtual Reality Forever for the Psychotically Financialized, I say! (Hang 'em high and let 'em dry.) HARD GOLD CASH for ALL the Rest of Us, thankyou veddymuch!
Second Life, anyone? Gerithner, Bernanke, Greenspan /et/ /al/ /inter/ /alia/ could play for days on end while incarcerated @ Club Fed as they all rightfully should be under Glass-Steagal, now much needed yet again post-repeal+post-bubblecrash. (The Fexxxers of Sadville await, Gentlemen; bring latex protective gear aplenty to the logging-in; here comes Bubba to maintain security now...)
Or did a weary Turtle misread some part or all of the above?
Love ya' non-conditionally and with plenty recourse, my Brother aMfM! :)
> "He acknowledged that ISPs should be allowed to charge more for more bandwidth, but he also insisted that consumers should be properly notified beforehand. "You can't just surprise someone with a bill."
<hairy-eyeball>
One takes it that the "can't" in this case is an expression of a newly-reconstituted FTC policy-and-*permission* set that in no way reflects on the *ability* of the people Still Left Standing with the bill-printing machines to Just Do Whatever just like When Dubya' Was King, correct? (US gummint folk do seem to tend to publicly confuse the two and then act surprised later when things reliably unfold according to the Lower and Inhuman Nature instead of in compliance with Decreed Permission to the detriment of all, one has observed again and again.)
</hairy-eyeball>
On a parallel note: I mind well the summer 2003 day that a certain Chicago bill-collection agency with business offices only a few blocks from the IL Attorney-general's office came after YT on the office phone with a large invoice for alleged telecom services that I had neither ordered nor authorized, complete with a snurly-spoken promise to have my office phone disconnected "within 24 hours" if I did not immediately authorize payment from my (near-empty) checking account to Themselves right then and there over the phone. But since passing a fraudulent financial instrument is a criminal act, I did not agree to the demand at all. (This is how and where the Global "Reject ALL Terror" John 8:32 Walkin' Talkin' InterTurtle 'net Campaign was born, btw, for all you odd-parsed square-pantsed faulty-intel-mired Terrorspy Blowback Watchers out there @ NSA.)
Instead of consenting to the crime, though, I spoke straight away with a phone company account rep. To their eternal credit, she handily passworded the account access. (Open-to-near-all is apparently still the default to this day, to that terrorspy-compliant telco's eternal oh nevvermind). So it was quickly sorted, happy, justice done by mine own first-time-for-everything hand. (That thuggish ham-fisted Chicago-based collection agency is still pounding sand afaik.)
So maybe Mr. Liebowitz was speaking of the chilling effect of all manner of now-common Dubya'-era aggressive and definitely consumer-affecting commercial tactics and "legal extortion" attempts as the above, as well as surprise billing for unexpected entertainment packages/products as explicitly stated? Now, that is Something Completely Different, to be sure.
I think I shall just go have a looksee at that notion. Times occasionally do change, after all. Must say, though: In some ways, it does seem that some few of Mr. O's appointee team* just might actually be genuinely competent and appropriately sound of moral fibre. (Or damn convincing stage artists; hard to know with certainty as always, ever since Reagan broke that gate and let the NeoClowns come pouring into our formerly-mostly-harmless normal world on his coat-tails.)
* Apart from those insider-cronying financial "officers" of his. Those ones, due to the intrinsic criminal fraud inherent in the massively larcenous "Hypothecate-and-Leverage"** method of "restructuring"(FNORD) truly do stink unspeakably at both ends.
**Spin, massage and lather until the generated bubble bursts; wqash hands of the entirety (deny deny deny) and repeat as soon as possible, liquidating National Assets as necessary until Only One Operator is Left Standing. (It's been the Rothschild interests left in such a maha-favored position as that, time and again over many, many centuries of boom-busted bubbles, has it not?)
Would ever I love to see a proper Trade Commissioner put to the task of normalizing the US "Too Big to Keep Proper Books" Banking Sector? (Two hints: Pope:Rome?; bear:woods?.)
Happiest thoughts I've had about any US administration's agency in the past decade, this latest NetNeut bit. So is this man real, or is he merely "capable" like Cheney, Yoo and Libby?
We'll see. Pint's gone dry anyway. Must scurry off; got more Genuine Intrinsic Value to up and create again, tonight. Coat...
Tonight, mine's the one with the rapidly-emptying box of "Nader ffs the f NOW!" lapel pins in the one pocket. My very fine, very shiny new $250.00 one-shot "Stimulus Payment" (thank you s-o-o MUCH!) in small-denominated US currency, all neatly wrapped in a very pretty-and-fine-looking, gilt-edged and utterly worthless Zero-Recourse Securitized Fractional Reserve Credit Default Swap Derivative Instrument printed on Very Crackly Pseudo-Parchment ain't to be found in the other one, though. (Invested the cash back into the Overgrown Hobby. Wiped me own both ends plus the floor with one or another of all the Ponzi-inspired pages of the Infandously Contrived Instrument; it's all mere dunnage for the dunny now, and no stench here!) :)
and thank'ee. AC@21:42 GMT is right.
"Just the driver"? Standard-issue good-ol'-boy wisecrack where I live. It's a pun - the expert "drives" the action - but Ossifer Plod hath no punny-bone in his gone-black 'n' schwizzled little heart; he apparently Just Don't Get Those'uns, ever, except among other uniformed ones.
Then it can go quite pun-ugly; this one once happed into one of those bully-bull-bull-sessions, years ago. Had to wait (respectfully listening with rising horror) before addressing the business at hand.
All police operations that depend on sucker-play, Non-Cooperative Game Theory and the Hegelian Dialectic for their ongoing sustenance really should now cease, or face discontinuance. They sure most likely won't - but sure as tish stniks, so help me they should.
After this coming to light, I shall insist on a public "Hold Harmless" notice first being published in the local paper's Legal Notice section before ever I consent to touch *any* evidentiary laptop against which Ossifer Plod might desire to ever engage my own tools, keys and expertise to open for the Publick Good and the Sake of the Children.
Needn't have much from academic bona fides at all to see where the Civic Duty Road now leads, these days. (Chuck-holes galore.) Social contract is now even further broken - sorry, dunno much 'bout these newfangled Vista/wotzat boxen anyway, and do not want to, ever at all, any more, now.
MISTER Plod: Go crack yer own evvy-dense. You BLEW it *bigtime*. No trusted party any more in YOU!
IMHO: Police officers who operate in such a manner as was done in this instance should be given to practice the "Want fries with that?" speech until they Get It Right - and then punch into that fine corpy burger stand right regular on-shift and on-time every day, for the Prevailing Wage. (See prior comment re recyling a job-lot of Former Investment Bankers for tantalizing details of the Ideal Burger Scene.)
...until Big Dick Cheney told a few members on the House floor to "GFY".
At first there was some squealing (like-a-pig) and shrieking (like with rape), but then the Legislative Anatomical Barriers were all Veep-ily overcome in a Spirit of Buy-Partisanship. Such great moans and sights of ecstatic forbidden pleasure (because altogether treasonous) did then nightly emit from the Veep Suite, and Miz Condi's offices too...
Now, in the NeoDawn's early Light, our poor bedraggled and utterly corrupted Corporatized Terrorwar Congress is merely and simply post-eff'd; not even any afterglow left. But "penetrated" certainly is an appropriate word in all but AIPAC/ADL company, too.
Both bills'll most likely get rubberstamped in the dead of night with zero public input nor any manner of constructive, reality-based debate, is my take on it. (Boondoggle, anyone?) Damn shame, too. This'un's no Ninesey-'Levvensey Insider Demolition Collapse Kerfluffle. Those towers were strong and quite well reinforced to begin with; it took lots of Thermate, a leetle bit o' ShadowGov-loyal (aka *criminal*) inter-agency co-operability, and some BIG alibis to pull those three buildings straight down at near-freefall speed.
The digitally-operated US national power grid is not so very robust as the weakest of those three office towers, by all accounts. But gee, the Bush-era Enron Rolling Blackouts sure do concretely illustrate the criminal blackmail threat potential, now do they not? My, my, and Dubya' was Best Friends with ol' Kenny-boy afore fergettin' all about him, wasn't he just?
All in The Family!
Opinion: Someone should right quick now just Cut The Bushes Out From Under the National Grid Structure, just like removing a newly-fingered world-class Bad Apple's prior international immunities is done.
That zero-additional-IT Lawful action, if ever invoked right *quick* before the (black-op) pig flu and errant (black-op) Air Force Ones of this gone-mad age get their acts "topped" by a ShadowGov-instigated continent-sized black-op blackout would imvho reliably tend to protect the entire US grid for many, many years to come against the Worst and Most Capable of the World Criminal Elite's rather large Bad and Capable Personnel inventory.
So really, how much Really New IT is *really* needed in order to put every Power Grid controller and telemetry box's "spare" comms ports into "Stealth Mode"? (ShoreWall FIrewall is free and stands up fine against all manner of Chinese portscans on my own desk, just like Everyone Else's does.)
Add a decent Grid-wide port-knocking protocol, with steady tho' apparently random-scheduled rejiggering of what knokkity-combo opens whose gates when (like Conficker did/does but benign as all Heaven) would just top the initial tighten-um-up phase off just fine, now wouldn't it?
Saw a decent-looking spec for one of those a week ago. For Linux, just like Shorewall. Equally $price-free to own and mod-up to suit, at that.
Aside: All boxcutter blades and Miraculously Surviving Passports can just go back and respectfully, factually address the criminal-elite ShadowGov minds that invented 'em and then forbade all forensic examination of the crime scene, I do declare.
In fact, the rising image of Hedley LaMarr hiring up all his Willing Coalition of baddies to up and lay a can o' whup-ass kerfluffle all over defenseless Rock Ridge for The Railroad's sake per the "Blazing Saddles" line of thematic action is too much to resist. Indeed, by the lights of some few well-credentialled accounts, that comic-played scene still stands as being too true a Cinema-Fictional Metaphoric/Symbolic Parallel to dismiss out-of-hand.
Mark my words: Unless *all* the Oleander Bush scions, sprouts, shoots, seeds and ROOTS are *all* cleaned out from the vicinity of *ALL* such National Necessities *immediately*, the next attack on the US will indeed prove to the no-spin mind (yet again) to have been an Inside Job.
Until that blessed day, I think, Congress can legislate whatever IT bills it sees fit until blueness of face in the 'leccy-less Blackmail Gloom does appear. No remedy until the Connecticut Carpetbaggers of the Lone Star State are at last taken into check and custody, I for one do dare to think and so say.
> ..."So my 100K+ seat client doesn't really use Linux & BSD, then? News to me"...
Jake, if ever I should find myself in the unlikely position in this life of actually needing to know how to scale up to such a thing and all Google-izations just fail the concept, I think I'd lke to ping you next.
Until then, I'll keep the faith and count my blessings. Thanks for the good word. :)
Duly noted and thanks for the graciousness of your reminder. To be sure, I had overlooked that (to myself) mega-upscale aspect. Our tallest building is only maybe twenty stories; people who mostly don't do much business at all just live in it. We just aren't so very mondo-corporatized as that in this our own green and pleasant region of the planet, is what.
So what *is* the upper directory limit under Linux today, anyway, please? (I had not actually thought of things on your own sphere's apparent scale, ever, is why I must ask.) :)
Actually, you know, a full-scale Enterprise Installation in these green and pleasant wilds'd be anywhere from ten to forty-fifty desktop machines and a server box in-house as well, if it's a credit union or somesuch job. Just guessing, but I expect that range is well within today's Linux/*nix capabilities. One or two principals, three or four machines plus a printer ot two and a NAT router/gateway is pretty much as big 'n' scary as anyone hereabouts needs it to be, most every time. "Growth for Growth's Sake" just isn't "where it's at" in these parts. There's probably even still a bit of Colonial Scrip still stuffed into the walls and/or under the flooring of some of the older houses here and there. Been found a time or two before. (This is country livin'.)
Nice to meet, anyway. Thanks again for the tip, too. I'll keep your reply in mind as things progress/devolve Out There. Coat... Yeah.
Mine's the one with the well-worn Mandriva distro, magnetic-needle compass and tin of waterproof strike-anywhere matches in one pocket, also there's a handily small though fairly accurate transdimensional star-map of our somewhat harmless-in-spots galactic locale in the other. And the towel, of course - yeah, that's the one. :)
The Linux Life for me!
Had another one only last night. This one needed the entire O/S replaced due to the end-user not having patched the Mandriva 2008.0 live-CD installation at all since first install. (Inadequately effective instruction on my own part at the time contributed to that, in all honesty.) Still, it lasted most of a year that way, in daily use - not too shabby for a free'un.
Upgrading to 2008.1 "Spring" with KDE 3.5 (live-cd again) and again demo-ing the (now vastly improved) updater's action once installation and first-run config were done (ten minutes max for that last) was more work for "The Robot" than for myself. Got credible promises to properly patch/update it this time, too.
Result: That ol' nVidia-equipped H-P box is purring like a kitten again. The newly acquired all-in-one printer that prompted the call in the first place took off and ran like a champ right out of the box. All parties come out happy as can be, with NO loss of the prime user's homework, bookmarks or other work files at all, despite my having full-formatted the system partition (there's the key!) as one step in the replacement install.
Of course, we've all got friends who have not been so fortunate in similar circumstances with the corpy O/S from Redmond; the Patented Unitary DIrectory Structure from Hell that that corporate product features under its Very Shiny Bonnet is the difference that matters in that regard.
Summary: Linux (Done Right) builds strong friendships; strength of this sort defeats all manner of enemies in a sweetly preemptive way. With all enemies defeated, we have productivity and peace in the 'hood all day and all night too! So install Linux always, and enjoy sweet productive peace in (your own bit of) the world today!
It just works out that way. Why place yet another hard-pressed American home at risk with a massively-hated and 2-3asy-to-pwn corpy O/S when we have THIS? Happiness, contentment, intelligent convo all along and a full belly too, with smiles all around - who might ever want more?
> "...and if you're using loonix then shut up and get back to your 0.1%-of-the-market-desktop-broken-driver-always-10yrs-behind rubbish."
...of which the last time AH sat down and had a go with it was what year? With what distro?
Yes, this one is aware of what Mr. Eric S. Raymond published to the Net re his own experience setting up CUPS and a remote printer Back In Them Days. But gee, that was a long time back. The KDE GUI wizards are pretty darn good about such things these days, one finds. (The Mandriva product's pretty good with the wizards, too; just think like one is a just little bit French et voilá.)
Really, quite entirely unlike in a certain other well-known world, community response time to Real Problems in the luxy Tux-y world is, to my own sense of it, right snappy these days. Serious problems solved within days of detection and in full public view; a few weeks at most, not months. No organizationally-oriented walls of official denial and all, which I for one do find entirely palatable.
BTW & FWIW: The most recent printer installations I have done with Linux have breezed right through. Oddly, in one case, although the (very nice tho' pre-owned) printer itself produced a test page via its own ROM indicating a great lack of ink (expensive to remedy and unwelcome timing too), the "stupid" "looney" (ohgimmeabreak) system-generated one blazed out in full living detail and color. (Might not last so very long and I told the customer so, but my oh my what a delightful and useful immediate result anyway.)
I for one do think it is important to keep 'em out of the landfill as long as can be, especially if still electrically perfect. (Others' mileage still varies on that point.) So having a decades-of-cybertech-aware hardware recognition algo built right into O/S on the Whirling Metal ain't all that bad, izzit? The HD that the system's written on just migrates cheerily forward in time to plug into the disc interface on the Newer and Faster Box with very little if any tweeking.
I have done that move time after time with three or four major Linux distros, some from necessity and others just to see if it was so. (But I would not dare attempt such a thing with Slackware, or even attempt Slackware Itself, BOB help me...)
Last couple of times I tried that selfsame move with a Redmond product on the metal, I ended up perforce reverting to the Old Box just to keep the embedded functionality available to the upgrade-hungry owner. "I'm sorry, Ma'am - seems best to just enjoy the box you have for the money we are talking; most of your useful and familiar (Win98) apps just won't run on what they sell these days (XP); neither will your hard drive itself boot up at all on any newer mainboard or box I might provide you, without installing the system all over again, which will reliably wipe out all your apps and documents too. It's because of differences in the two boards' hardware that are apparently detected only at the time of installation, and there go all your apps and work files if we do that...".
It went just as poorly with an early XP Pro migration attempt in another later instance. (That customer at least had saved the app CDs, but to no avail since the O/S CD was no longer functional due to inadvertent prior scuffing.) But have things improved in that field from that prior sad-making point, these days?
Boffin. Because on this score, I have already been there too much already. Not likely to return; asking just to know, is all. No, Alien this time. Been treated as one all my life; have developed fine substantive countermeasures from the years of it... Ah, well, happyface'll do and next item... It's a tangent anyway.
"Cost savings are debatable since to use Linux servers and other FOSS you need to invest in showers and deoderant for the scruffy neckbeards needed to drive them."
Deodorant and showers, even face-cloths and soap we mostly already have for ourselves, these days. As for the darkish dirt apparently embedded in my own whitish Funny Hat, well, that is MY dirt. I *own* that dirt. It is my property, MY Real Estate. I got it fair and square in the Old Fashioned Honorable Way - I EARNED it.
Keeps my entire head clean, that hat. Rummaging about in dusty basement-level chassis boxes and racks here and there, one needs such gear as that.
I'll be rid of it once I am entirely done with it, thank you. The dirt, that is. The hat is even prettier when clean, and a permanent trademark feature as well. Nobody'd recognize me at the bank any more if ever I ditched it, y'know?
Alien. For the Long Strange Irreplaceable Trip that it has indeed been... Gotta' luvvit. :)
..."Penny-pinching will hit six main categories, according to Napolitano: "acquisition management, asset management, real property management, ...
All three are indeed sensible fields to mow a little bit shorter in hard times.
...employee vetting/credentialing, hiring/on-boarding,...
Now that bit worries me. Slashing ones' vetting of potential new hires and skimp-verifying the credentials tendered thereby is Just Asking For It. On a *massive* scale. Ditto for the hiring-in and training-up process, which is what "on-boarding" is in NeoSpeak. (Might as well have called it 'same-paging', since Being On the Same Page is too important to miss out on in them circles...)
So now we have it. The enterprising top-dog street-goons and bully thugs who have run out of juicy loaded civilians to rob for their daily bread now get their very own Federal agency bailouts, handed to them on a BIG plate, served up by one of the more secretive and sinister waiters in the NeoCon "Washington Consensus"' extra-judicial/-legal/-Constitutional agencies indeed.
Oh but wait there's more. (sigh.) Later, once this NeoWave of fully trained-up DHS Stasi are all at last accepted as "normal" by the ever-malleable US populace, she or her successor (matters not) can then embark on a "Massive Cleanup of Incompetence and Fraud" at the DHS, dutifully and noisily exposing all those dodgy "oopsie mybad" credentials and backgrounds with full Mainstream Media support. And a cheering tho' pre-cowed public.
Mission accomplished! The American public savaged by her ham-fisted Stasi goon squad at the borders until more than half beaten down, then half or more of the former DHS employees turned out, by now fully Federally trained, into our civilian midst so as to ostensibly again make America "safer" by Privatizable Means... For the elite class, is the part that is *always* Left Not Said. That's the top 0.5% and none of the Rest of Us, which was the plan all along, don'cha' know by now?
...and information technology."
FOSS LINUX UBER ALLES! (Uh-oh again.)
Gah. NeoO/S of the NeoCon NeoGodz. I can hardly wait. But the penguin in my coat pocket's the one with the thirty-three-year forward stare and ain't called any of these moves wrong yet, Heaven help us all.
Think it'll take that long? Hmph. Well, at least the Missouri Fusion Centre's latest and most inflammatory report (Google "MIAC Report"+militia) was rescinded... For the moment.
"They [Sys-Con] have questionable unethical practices when it comes to dealing with authors and content," Aral Balkan tells us. "And if anyone calls them out on it, or criticizes what their doing, they attack them with so-called articles on their site."
Actually, this as-reported two-fists-and-a-ballbat approach to Web authoring and site content management sounds just a leetle too similar to that reportedly employed with stunning regularity and effect against all too many US senators and reps by various agents of a certain political lobbying group known here and there as "AIPAC" for one to fail to notice... Looks like mebbe' the Global Unitary Khazaristani Shriekdown Squad might have gained itself a few Turkish understudies...
Just noticin'. Pope-shooting won't do it though, let alone the liquor not the loosie-ladies.
Blocklists? Infrastructure Adjustment? Torches, pitchforks and scimitars...? One way or a decent 'nother, though, I for one'd be surprised if this thang lasts even six months.
Coat. Off to the Villians and Monsters Death Pool site to see who got there to log this'un into the wagering before myself. Yes, the one with the fez and scimitar's it, thanks.
Turkish Delight, anyone?
Should GSV hit my town *AND* drive by MY ambulating body (quite unlikely but ya' nevver know)(tm), I hope to have the good sense (and one hand free) to lift the well-decorated beret atop my noggin a few inches, revealing the "Indict Dick and Dubya'" logo on the baseball cap directly beneath it. With the other hand, the Appropriate Salute.
Hm. Skinny finger of full figo? Decisions, decisions...
That robust prospect, once leaked upstream to the Chocolate Factory 'loompas, oughtta' keep 'em off *our* streets, one thinks with some hopeful warmth.
Although the manner in which the modern telly is manufactured (tiny components with No Wires mass-soldered to the surface of the PC board) is not so very friendly to the notion, the appropriate circuitry can still be readily be modded up on any breadboard or discrete-component external amp. The external kit can then still be plugged straight into the headphone or A/V audio output jack on most telly boxes, I think. If not so for any given case, well, the ol' wire-cutters, jacket-strippers and soldering iron etc are still not too hard to find, even these days.
Here's how it works: The standard means of adjusting output volume, of course, is to adjust the strength of the audio detector's output siganl to the input of the first audio stage or all-in-one chip, depending. Whether this is done via an honest rotary-shaft carbon potentiometer or some wankily opaque multi-step digital pushbutton Flash Gordon scheme, the essence is the same in all cases.
Now let's instead provide the audio amp in question with an Audio Gain Normalization (AGN) negative feedback loop, similar to the Automatic Gain Control loop that maintains video quality. This loop runs from the loudspeaker output circuit back to the input of the signal amp that drives the output stage. An additional transistor may be needed to put the phase of the feedback signal to rights; one can work that out while the lid is off the box.
Then fix the audio input signal from the detector stage into the signal amp at the appropriate arbitrary level for normal programming (and not the commercial) audio. Hook the necessary variable volume control kit into the AGN line, though, and NOT the main signal line.
With such a scheme as this, the broadcasters' upping the audio modulation swing at the transmitter, which normally will blare the advert at increased volume, will then (due to the dynamically regulated *GAIN* of the new-built/modded circuitry) have zero effect.
Sort of re-levels the ol' Playing Field, hm? Set it and forget it. Share and enjoy! Works equally well for condom, beer, petrol and peckerpill adverts alike. Although maybe we should let the condom adverts boom on through...
Paris, because HER soft 'n' sultry voice'll make it through to the viewer every time. Until commercial break.
> Why, you jump in the air just as it hits of course!
And then watch in amazement as the Earth rises at supersonic velocity to Just Slam Yo' Ass... For the life of me, I for one do have a remarkably challenging time thinking of exactly what any UN commission might ever do to substantively mitigate any such cosmic event's inevitable local consequences, whether immediate or long term.
Anyone from the UN reading this? Earth to Commission Control... We have a question... Y'got'cher ears on?
Coat. Mine's the one with the 2-meter handheld in one pocket, and the Citizens' Band rig with the gooset-up final amp in the other... One of those Mountainous Things hits or even grazes our watery blue-green unfashionable and Mostly Harmless planet, though, there's really no point to either, I think.
It's a ride until it's over. Then it's still a ride. Maybe with a joke in between...
UK, the 'Merkins may be a little bit behind from where y'all are, Urban Surveillance Infrastructure-wise, but the "brighter" ones are catching on:
http://www.augustreview.com/images/stories/miacreport.pdf
See the 18 March edition of http://www.augustreview.com for the whole story. The top State Terrorizers reliably deny ever doing such a thing - and then they do it, every time. Calling everything what it is not at all times while going about "making it real" as they go along. Standard sodding sandlot bully psycho-warfare paradigm.
PARADIGM, I said. Has not someone of late semi-solidly and semi-secretly jiggered the Compass to draw ovoid? Was not that "Square" Craftily cut and calibrated at exactly 93 Degrees, Brothers? So what manner of Enduring Structure can EVER be made by the use of such INFERIOR builders' tools as THESE, HM?
I'd lay a nice wager the Level stands half a bubble off plumb, too. Is it not a Gravity Vortex of Mammon-driven Falsity that cants the very Plumb-Line so?
By the Master's Ring on my Hitch-hiker's Thumb, truly the stench of it all is entirely and utterly infandous in ways that MP George Galloway (Respect Party) could NEVER be, even on his WORST behaviour all day long! AWAY with it all! (But not with Mr. Galloway; let's have MANY MORE of his kind sort all up and down the line, PLEASE!)
As for "Looking Suspiciously at" those HIDEOUS CCTV cams: Seems to be no need to actually TAKE any TerrorPix - just pantomiming the shutterbugging action with a BIG SMILE for the hairy-eyeballed plods in the climate-controlled booth Squarely Above You should do it. No need to lock the mainstay phone; just use a spare with nothing at all in the contact DB, hm? Heh - batteries neither included nor required for this one. Just recording the serial number and being sure to get one's personal property back in-hand once it has been plodded-into seems right from here, is all.
Um, also, one gathers from http://www.bullyonline.org that the Gentle Brits have these days got anti-bully laws on their books that red-blooded 'Merkins wouldn't happily allow - anything wrong with applyin' 'em in a broad yet sharply specific sense to the sad sado-security situation on that side of The Pond? Should London be counted as the Big Workplace, then surely the co-infandous "Wackie Jacqui" Smith is indeed the Big Bully who over-arches and HARASSES all Londoners in THEIR WORK-PLACE?
Just gathering a little wool against the coming winter, is all. Let all their weapons turn against them. Every last intruding oppressing überscrutinizing nosey one of 'em. Help Make It So where you can. And SHAME on them ALL!
Mine's the one with the somewhat fragile pint bottle of home-made whup-ass in the pocket, and the entirely dead but Very Shiny cellular cam-phone in the other... Oh hello, Mr. Fawkes! How was your flight? Good to see you here! Lookit, these chaps need a wee hand for a bit...
URL and all text thereof saved intact to the Shiny Whirling Metal. IMHO the Esteemed Minister from Oz deserves every byte - and TWO SHOES for HIM as well - and I'm not even Islamic! Sooo *very* Worth Keeping!
Come The Day, mine's likely to be a (relatively short) Longfellow rework. I have prepared to deliver; the appropriate article will inevitably follow. A Turtle is a patient beast; patience helps one defeat ones' enemies year 'round. :)
Pizza now. (Yum!)
...'cause THEY sure don't. Let the Manifestly Blind now be led by the Sighted, for once and for all.
Having become, shall we say, "grudgingly accustomed" to the notion of expedient Gummint irreality-uber-alles ever since Billyboy Clinton said what he said about "what your definition of 'is' is", I have for years searched high and low for clear points of orientation on the "political spectrum" from which to firmly express my own convictions of right and wrong when it comes to sound and human mass social governance. But I found myself hit over the head again and again by the extremely constrictive and irreality-based "Left-versus-Right" scale that is to this day pumped daily into our gasping, truth-starved brains per the 'way-too-prevalent mass media confusopoily of Bre'r Murdoch.
Then came http://www.politicalcompass.org and all that just Went POOF. Just as it always deserved to. Rupert Murdoch, GFY and DO IT NOW!
Knowing substantively and objectively where one stands in relation to Brown, Thatcher, Duhbya', the Pope o' th' Day, the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela (as well as some few well-known others) can and does make a BIG difference in ones' full and hearty certitude come the balloting. Now let us pray that there arise some candidates with some actual differences 'tween 'em.
Fact: Knowing where one is "at" in relation to ones' World Leading Contemporary Peers strongly helps one resist all manner of false-framed media-driven inner propagandization. Knowing thyself creates resistance to all manner of tyranny! Resistance defeats all manner of tyrannical enemies! Know thyself and defeat all your enemies!
Effective resistance through self-knowledge. Fifty key questions with no middle-ground nor copping-out allowed or you don't finish and no red spot on the X/Y axis-map for YOU! Utterly anonymous as a Web site can be and impossible to twist or fool with in any way. (I tried and was defeated instantly.)
YES! Know thyself and defeat all our enemies! We KNOW these high-handed ones are shite-filled wack-a-jack jackasses from the get-go. (Like Mexican pinatas only not exactly filled with any tasty candy...) So let the enema of our enemy indeed be our friend, I say! I am strongly and happily of the specific opinion that the politicalcompass.org Web site operation is exactly such an enema as is longtime called-for by many, many of ussss. Indeed, it is so!
Best poly-sci-based specialty Web app I have ever seen. 100% John 8:32 compatible; safe and savory as hot buttered home-made toast. Highly recommended by the Global Funny Hat Medicine Society and the ICKR Curmudgeonry Licensure Agency as well as this "Wild Injun" in Neo'Mer'qa. Built scientifically by free-minded scientists with TRUE HEARTS, no less!
http://www.politicalcompass.org - because ANY dimension of reality is a criminal thing to suppress. One and all: Your Liberation is at hand. Just go.
@ Sarah Bee Posted Friday 20th March 2009 10:32 GMT
> Walking Turtle is to amanfromMars as Athlete is to Snow Patrol.
Both of whom (as well as Jake) yet be strangers to myself - have I not been paying attention, Ma'am? Or should we make further introductions? :)
Aside: I love this pub. Last time I enjoyed the company and myself as much was on the "Bill's Bar" forum on the old (dial-up @ 9600 baud) Boston Citi-Net BB, now sadly long since gone West. (Sara, I think you would have realy liked Bill S, who owned and moderated both the board and the tangle of '486 octo-thingies in the hall closet that it ran from.)
It is good to have found that the old ambience still lives. (Issa' mirak-oo!) :)
@ jake Posted Monday 16th March 2009 16:27 GMT
> @Walking Turtle
> By jake Posted Monday 16th March 2009 16:27 GMT
> I know amanfromMars, and you're not him.
That's nice. Are you two friends?
Indeed I am not amanfromMars, although I tend to like his presentations very much. I do not try to be anybody else - being myself is an effortless thing, actually. Pretending to be someone other than ones' self squanders precious time and energy. (Have you tried it?)
I am, in fact, Walking Turtle. Um, was there some prior confusion on that point? Indeed, is there a point to the above assertion of differentiation, pray tell? If so, kindly do state it explicitly. :)
Talk to me.
The New American Century's NeoDeal, with its distinctively American feature of Circular Rollover Financed Re-Corporatization of Americxa's NeoGummnint Über Alles at exactly Everyone Else's Out-Of-Pocket Expense, shall continue apace and unabated albeit Sub Rosa until full Ownership Class morale is entirely restored. Return to your daily task of rolling your own Sub-Securitized Treasury Derivatives Portfolio over onto your OWN neighbor NOW!"
I watched in horror as the Bastard Sons of Casino LePonzi gorged themselves on the rendered fat of all the land until all the fat of it was all gone. Then gorged they themselves again on each other. Then came unto me the voice of an Angel like unto Thomas Jefferson's Talking Jackdaw, and saith the Big Black Bird, blacker than any tar-barrel, many things seldom uttered unto the Sons of Man...
I think that guy's in for a dose of his own formeer employer's harshest medicine - the obstinate denial of the need for a given patch for months on end has been a staple of El Reg fare here before. (Vista...)
OTOH, he might have some clout when it comes to making sure that certain patches are indeed in the pipeline... Then again, with the Power to Reveal and Conceal (ESPECIALLY that latter!) at his sole command, will he even NEED to do the Right Thing? Or might he just merely instead learn how+why it is that the floor around the Homeland Security rug is so well-swept?
Or (Bob hasten the day!) at last throw up the hands and embrace Slackware instead? (Well, OK, then Linspire Enterprise Edition; there's a mandatory license fee there too hey what!) Either distro'd be an improvement in certain respects, methinks. Ah, and the RETRAINING activity at a PROFIT... This guy could bring on a New Age of IT Prosperity, hm? (But I think he will not.)
State Corporatism and her Musical Button-Down Bedmates. Send in the clowns? (Don't bother; you know why...)
@ Michael Habel Posted Friday 13th March 2009 23:35 GMT
> Say what you like about Bush, but at least he wasn't surrounded by Criminals,
Um, 'scuse me, but are you sure you wouldn't like a wee little double demitasse o' nice hot black-as-coal Espresso Latino so's to help overcome the evident lingering effects of all that corporate-interest-trumpeting "Red Corporate State Media-Driven Faux Noise Kool-Aid® that looks to be echoin' all around in that hollowed-out ol' bully-bashed noggin o' your'n? Here. Careful; it's fresh and hot.
OK, well, so here's the cream. Sugar maybe next cup, later. After the noggin clears, y'know. Don't want to overamp and blow out what genuine mind might be left underlying all the corpy scheiss-a-ganda, y'know.
Lemme' know straight-up when the echo-chamber effect dies down so we can talk intelligent and non-faulty, OK? If ever so, then GOOD!
amfM, I'm 100% with YOU on THIS one.
Follow the BIG Money.
Or what now passes for it in these Untied States, anyway. It comes down to a sub-rosa two-tier system, in fact. Gold and other intrinsically valuable items for the elite, and debt-instruments in dollar denominations for the Rest of Us. Meanwhile the US International Settlements Account (aka "Accounts Payable") still stands deeply in arears.
Even under Obama the Magnificent, the Merciful, the Panacaea of Purportment. (Heaven help him.)
See http://www.edwardharle.com/news for the definitive running account of the affair. Takes sorting, like any other complex matter. But it sorts, and not in Uncle Sam's favor at all, I am sad to mention.
Meet the New Crims. Same circular-rollover "Ponzi" MO as the Old Crims. Only more slickerer.
I think Mr. Obama should blow the BIG WHISTLE and then bail to the bunker until it is again safe for an honest man to come out. Once the Bushista/Clintonista faction that pretty much composes his Cabinet has been properly charged, arrested and frog-marched out the White House front door by Federal DoJ agents, he'd only have the murderous Banking Sector's disgruntled reps and their gunsels to duck and avoid.
He should do so before the UN hires Interpol to do the job, no less, imho. Elsewise, the misprison of the felony might taint Himself, to be sure.
Glad I am not in his shoes. But I think that is what by rights the man *should* do.
RE: @Walking Turtle (@AC 12:27)
> That was pretty radical.
Indeed. But things were not so far removed from where I was "at" when it all started, fifty-odd years back. Successive successors to the Big Chair in the Oval Office and entire scads and hordes of Congress-dwelling critters over time just sort of walked away from me, apparently in order to leave a trail of public destruction and impunity in their high-handed wake. All making things up as they went along, and no particular regard for any objective science or for that matter reality Itself.
IMHO the USDC thingie has indeed degenerated to the level that of late only force, fraud and bribery seem to be allowed to prevail under the present cluster of fscks all sticking together in order to stick it to us all, off and away in the upper right quadrant of that *excellent* mapping-out on http://www.politicalcompass.org.
In fact, not entirely unlike many others, I have stood my ground for decades on end and watched in horror while striving to adjust to the changes. I think the normal adjustment process that normal peoiple undergo on the realizeation that the bullies just are not going to stop robbing and beating up on the skinny kids unless someone strong and beautiful tells them again and again in a strong and beautiful language that they ALL both understand and respect to STOP IT NOW.
This adjustment having been accomplished, so much the better. I for one do aver that I, too, am still re-composing that language - it seems to have been extinguished on this peace-forsaking planet of late.
A BIG tip o' th' Funny Hat BTW to yourself (you alone should know who you are!) and the http://www.politicalcompass.org site crew as well! That bit of Webwork strikes me as nothing but genuine Poly Sci polling done right. Not that how I mapped out has anythng to do with that; indeed it does not. BUT:
I do suppose ones' having grown to know that one stands 50% to the left of (and on the same level with) His Holiness the Dalai Lama (and these days can prove it, no less) is perfectly adequate "radicalization" for one lifetime. I'm satisfied, anyway.
Nothing but the best of company. You know what to do with the terror. :)
Re AC @ 21:13: You are correct in your perception. Your perception is inherently trustworthy. Those who seek to advance their own agenda over your own best interest by means of the abuse of their power are many and clever. They have college educations. The unstated but entirely real goal is to (by any means necessary) remove from your life the very Things Worth Keeping in this life.
Such subtle-though-deadly bullies as those always start by insisting that the target population's very sound *perception* itself is (softly) mistaken, (now louder) wrong, then (full cry) "Radical" with a capital R. It has to do with the means of effectively boiling a frog, actually. (I for one think that Britain and the US have both already been boiled quite nearly to a fare-thee-well.)
Politicalized animals the world around all seem to harbor this odd tendency to treat all others as well as their own kind with basic inhumanity, reducing all to the animal level whenever the oppoprtunity may emerge. The National Hegelian Dialectic of any nation is reliably furthered by all such "emergency" situations, colluded or otherwise.
In the larger sense, this animalizing/dehumanizing behavior is called, "denying the Spirit". Think about it: Is not the contemporary spectrum of no-difference distinctions in modern political ideology indeed a massively dispirited thing? Indeed, who in their right mind would willingly VOTE for it? Odd that the voting turnout is still dwindling, ain't it? (Hardly, sez I.)
That is why I for one think it is entirely fair play to tag those who embrace such perception-numbing practices (media saturation, contrived doubletalk, idology posed as science, Stasi-fication of OUR Internet etc) on the way to fulfilling their innate agenda as fundamentally "deceptive" and treat them all according to their agenda and works. All such as those will reliably deny and attempt to nullify all that normal and (to their kind) inconvenient perceptive ability which we use within our own selves every day in order to survive and even <shout!> LIVE QUITE WELL INDEED WITHOUT THEM. </shout!>
They are predators. But are we all rabbits, chickens and sheep here? (I think not.)
To all such essentially criminal attempts at political and/or moral deception I, for one, must perforce respond in the only manner that I think a fully functional adult human being honestly can. This is to instruct, implore and insist to all comers that I, even if nobody else in this nobbled and axis-blinded world does so, at all times conduct my own self in ways that:
Increase the Peace. Thus to...
Reverse the Curse. Which is best done by one first determining to...
Reject ALL terror. Besides,
(You KNOW you WANT to.)
John 8:32 is STILL Just All Right by ME, no matter what (or whose) cultural icon, Holy Book or Manual of Engineering may embody it.
Kindly DO feel free to go forth and do likewise at all times. You shall find that you are in the funnniest-hatted and very best of company of all.
Fscking radical as all Heaven, that core notion, eh? But crush Heaven's *fully informed* harmony, even in a velvet glove like that fscking "kinder, gentler" ICSR report of current note suggests be attempted (instead of gunning down every dissident Web site operator in the world+dog in the high-handed Pinochet+Reagan/Duhbya/WackyJacqui style), and what have you got left on earth then, hm?
Look around you. Your perception is trustworthy; that is the point. Well then. Sorted!
But anything remotely like it at a price that I can shell out handy and painless - YES.
I already drive an electric. It's an open-chair design with realllly nice joystick controls and built-in regenerative braking. It's rigged to haul a next-to-largest size storage tub full o' ghibli on the rear deck of the battery box. It tows both a conventional two-wheel aluminum dolly and a converted steel-frame golfing-bag caddy cart as a trailer to boot.
It'll pull fair-size tree stumps if it's the right kind of trees. :)
It does 6 MPH on level ground. Good for forty-fifty miles or so full tilt on a series-connected pair of conventional 12-volt RV-sized LeClanche batteries. A tiny wingding camping-grade mini-generator'll extend the range considerably (at the cost of some tiny amount of gasoline or preferably propane per mile).
It's unique in my town and (oddly enuf) seems to command some proper respect from others who are still putting Big Thunder into Heavy Iron on our aging 'Merkin back roads. It hauls groceries, odd-shaped chunks of Just Anything I Need, and especially those heavy cylinders of oxygen from the supply house five miles off. Just fit the trailer and bungee the cargo to suit.
A little better road speed'd be nice, is all. I am still shopping as well as figgering the soup-um-up on what I already own and love. At thirteen grand fully loaded, the factory-made c-Zen thingie is very impressive to me own sensibilities. It is quite the foward-looking retail product as I see it. I'd LOVE to fit all the auxiliary kit to my own wee rig!
By the time I am at last grown in my overgrown hobby /cum/ enterprise (custom boro glass work) all the way to the ability to pay cash for such a thing, though, what I buy'll likely just need new batts and a little technoTLC such as only us Funny-Hatted Things can provide. Heaven hasten the day! Meantime, it's Fearsome Awersome Black Turtle. To others, she's only a heavy duty electric wheelchair made for the quadriplegic market - but she has heart. Things such as that should not rust on the back porch, let alone go to the metals pile at the town dump.
Even once all upgraded to something like the C-Zen, though, there will be forseeable limitations. For example, I could no longer drive my electric vehicle directly into the interior of the super or the bookstore. I'll still want good old Black Turtle for that move. Open tops are more fun anyhow.
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