Saturday, May 29, 2004

...Overhearing some people last night apparently 'the man from These Records talks for hours about Gurdjieff and dieting'and one is helpless to escape from his tractor beam like intensity (I paraphrase somewhat)
Can this really be true?
posted by meau meau , 6:58 AM....


That's The Man from The Bermuda Triangle, not myself,
the above could be said to be true though...

a.these
posted by THESE , 6:43 PM Þ 

posted by mary13 , 5:04 PM Þ 

D-S-I-C-O
posted by alex_tea , 2:17 PM Þ 
posted by Irdial , 12:41 PM Þ 

Overhearing some people last night apparently 'the man from These Records talks for hours about Gurdjieff and dieting'and one is helpless to escape from his tractor beam like intensity (I paraphrase somewhat)

Can this really be true?
posted by meau meau , 6:58 AM Þ 
posted by Ken , 1:35 AM Þ 
Friday, May 28, 2004

Tax threat in bid for new school
Parents are threatening to withhold taxes in an effort to get government funding for a new secondary school.

This is the latest twist in a long-running campaign by parents in Brixton, south London, where there is no secondary school.

Their hopes were raised when it was suggested that one of the new city academies might be a suitable solution.

But no site is available and the parents say they are being told by ministers to "buy your own school". [...]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/3757285.stm

Now, this must be applied to every decision that govt makes.

Imagine for yourself, an automagically re-proportioning list, like a shopping list, where you can set the amount of your money that govt spends on your services. Need more schools? put more into that. Dont want to pay for war? Slide "defense" to 0. More hospitals? Slide it up.

When you are happy, the proportions that you selected are sent to each branch of govt independent of central govt (so they cant steal it).

Then of course, each dept must be held to the same accounting standards that businesses are. No official secrets act to hide behind; after all, when you go to the supermarket, you expect to be given a detailed recipt right? This is no different.
posted by Irdial , 7:19 PM Þ 

California is a republican state isn't it?

Arnold Schwarzenegger is the Governor of California. That thought disturbs me with increasing intensity.

From the BBC article linked in Akin's post:

The final decision on whether it becomes law falls to California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger who can approve it or decide to terminate it.

Ho ho ho.
posted by alex_tea , 2:32 PM Þ 
posted by meau meau , 2:15 PM Þ 

Samson's hair...

...just keeps getting longer.

Samson, your hair
Glistening, like sun
Oh would that it were mine
posted by Alun , 1:56 PM Þ 

The article says the legislation will only allow real-time scanning/parsing of messages but if they'd bother to use it they'd see that this is what happens isn't it? - it's hard to tell when all my ads (mine, all mine) appear as they're all for pigpee products, but they don't appear when you log in only when you open a message.

California is a republican state isn't it?
M$ contributes greatly to the republican party does it not?
posted by meau meau , 1:50 PM Þ 

Google faces Gmail advert limits

Citing privacy worries, Californian senators have approved a bill that limits Google's plans to scan messages and include ads based on what it finds.

Google said it was working with law-makers on a way to both answer privacy concerns and run a viable service.

Before becoming law the bill will go to California's Assembly for further discussion and possible amendment. [...]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3756603.stm

Computer illiterate, visionless morons are actually writing law to stop Google unleashing Gmail, when their own law enforcement is pushing and pushing for the power to snoop on your private communications on behalf of the RIAA and MPAA:

The 'Pirate Act'
DOJ could file civil suits under proposed law
The so called "Pirate Act" (previously mentioned here) could go before the senate for a vote as early as next week, according to ZDNet.
This latest legal gambit by the RIAA and its proponents would give the Justice Department the ability to wiretap, and then file civil suits against file traders - while leaving the door open for subsequent RIAA suits. Opponents complain the controversial law is being rushed through the legislative system with little debate. Introduced only two months ago, not a single hearing was held before the Judiciary committee forwarded it to the Senate for a vote. According to OpenSecrets.org, both of the bill's supporters, Senator Orrin Hatch and Senator Patrick Leahy are no strangers to entertainment industry campaign contributions.


This is of course, in addition to the shenanigans of ECHELON/NSA/GCHQ, who already scan all of your email, which Congress doesnt seem to care a whit about.

Lets also think about this:

If Gmails release is delayed long enough, it will give Micro$oft time to try and stave off the inevitable death of Hotmail - inevitable if Google is allowed to release Gmail without interference.

All the people who misguidedly attacked Google over Gmail scanning mail to show ads may have allowed Micro$oft a chance to save the life of Hotmail. Those idiots, they are TYPICAL of the visionless people who cannot see two weeks into the future, those morons who all despise M$ may have just guaranteed its continued dominance of the webmail sector!

Now, do you not think that it is a possibility that Micro$oft has had a hand in writing these Gmail killing laws? No one doubts that the RIAA and MPAA are behind the anti file sharing laws that are being bought into the law (I missed out the "r" deliberately).

THINK THINK THINK you bloody idiots!
posted by Irdial , 12:43 PM Þ 

Well my voting papers arrived today (well some time yesterday so I picked them up in the evening, which is as good as today), they are using a double envelope system, the votes go in one envelope and the witness verification of identity plus the first envelope goes in the second.
And it's all barcoded - which is ... nice for covert data collection by the worldwide computer god mind control data state

So my vote will possibly be safe, but it will have used at least six times as much paper as necessary (and multiply that by everyone in our EU constituency).
posted by meau meau , 9:43 AM Þ 

Features

* Built on BitTorrent 3.4.2
* Remembers recent downloads and where you have saved them to, making resumes quick and easy
* Shows detailed download statistics
* Shows detailed information about torrent files

* User interface for torrent generation allows you to specify torrent comments
* User interface for starting a torrent tracker on your Mac
* Most BitTorrent options are fully customizable
* Supports Unicode torrents


http://sarwat.net/bittorrent/Tomato.dmg
posted by Irdial , 9:30 AM Þ 

posted by Irdial , 7:07 AM Þ 

Someone send me a mail...

j--------dottt-------snowdendavies---------AT------------gmail.com
posted by captain davros , 1:53 AM Þ 
posted by mary13 , 12:27 AM Þ 
Thursday, May 27, 2004 

Hello,

Thank you for all of your feedback and suggestions -- we are
forwarding them to the appropriate team. We certainly appreciate
hearing from Gmail users and encourage you to continue to let us
know how we can improve the Gmail experience.

You might be interested to hear that we are announcing these
upcoming features:

- Automatic forwarding of your email to another account
- Plain HTML version of Gmail
- Import/export Contacts

We hope you enjoy Google's approach to email.

Sincerely,

The Gmail Team



My emphasis.

Now. That is so insanely generous it beggars belief. I'll explain why.

I have been trying to ween a good friend off of AOL for years. Finally I convinced her to do it. I set up a pop account for her, installed Thunderbird as her client and then went to AOL to try and get all of her messages forwarded to her new emial address. On careful inspection...

There is no way to do this inside AOL.

There are some services external to AOL that you can PAY for to do this, but from inside AOL, a service that you PAY MONEY FOR, you cannot automatically forward your mail to another account!!!! THAT my dear friends, is what we call EVIL. AOL locks in their users, and makes it impossible to for you to leave once you are in their grip. Gmail by doing this allows you to leave if you want to, and you can take your address book with you, another thing that AOLers cant do that they should be able to do, with a PAY service.

Did I mention that Gmail is Free? Oh yes, you knew that. Gmail is free not only in cost, but in freedom.
posted by Irdial , 7:03 PM Þ 

Im not sure if Gmail is using collborative spam filtering

I think it is, it would be stupid not too. I doubt they're using pure Bayesian because it's not as effective as using it in conjunction with other methods, like SpamAssassin does.

You hear people on SpamAssassin and other spam boards and lists boasting about having a 10GB hoard of email to feed to their filters. Imagine the size of Gmail's hoard once it gets going. Amazing. They can also build up a huge blacklist and other rules.

Looks like someone at Microsoft has had the same thoughts, although the link to the PS file is a 404... This looks interesting and here's a Slashdot discussion.
posted by alex_tea , 5:36 PM Þ 

Can you have bit torrent streaming?

No, BitTorrent downloads the file randomly, so you never have a finished file until you've got the whole thing. Annoying, but it also makes BitTorrent great, the random downloading thing because that's how it works.

presumably the equipment to make this possible
A CD Burner and an inkjet printer? I don't understand how this could be so difficult to achieve. You'd need a fast computer with a fast, large harddrive and a nice audio card. Take a stream off the sound board into the computer. Make a note of the timecode of the breaks in songs and the set list. Once the concert's over feed that info into your recording app and create a SDII file. Burn that to CD-R, 24x, 48x, 52x, It's going to take a couple of minutes or more. Get one of those duplicating machines and you can do multiple discs at once.

Inkjet print the CD-R labels and makeshift sleeves, bung them together, sell...
posted by alex_tea , 5:23 PM Þ 

automagically

I just checked my Gmail spam box, and there are three messages in there that I never saw.

Im not sure if Gmail is using collborative spam filtering, but theoretically, all it takes is one person marking a message as spam for millions of people to have that message automagically filtered for them. The rule is simple; If the message marked by someone as spam is seen by another person, then filter it. you could of course threshold it so just to be sure.

Mozilla should do something like this; there are many people training filters every day, each on an individual system. If we could link these together to a central server, then it could be a ver powerful collaborative spam filter system.

Gmail could of course, sell this spam filtering technology to third parties, effectively eliminating spam for them overnight. They could do this with a simple plugin that works with your mail client.

Imagine that; "Google/Gmail solves the world-wide problem of spam"

Do I even have to say the words? Hmmm, Ill let someone else do it!
posted by Irdial , 5:18 PM Þ 

Now that what I call.. shit, It's exactly the same sort of selfish protectionism that makes Monsanto hated by even moderate GM food enthusiasts. If they buy the patent they have a right to a royalty from whoever takes direct advantage of whatever the patent is for (presumably the equipment to make this possible) that isn't a right to restrict use of the patent application to whoever pays your ransom.

Alternatively artists could be uploading their work onto the internet.
Can you have bit torrent streaming?

But today I know absolutely nothing.
posted by meau meau , 4:38 PM Þ 

Got my first Gmail spam.

Went straight to the spam bin, automagically. Hmm...
posted by alex_tea , 4:38 PM Þ 
posted by captain davros , 4:33 PM Þ 

The throne must be higher.

It must be higher
than anything else in this room.
posted by meau meau , 2:54 PM Þ 

posted by Josh Carr , 2:54 PM Þ 

Perhaps you could focus on why...


The privatisation of the Royal Mail was a total and complete mistake. I have worked in places where ther is no mail delivery service, and from first hand experience, I can confirm that it absolutely sucks not to have your mail delivered to you.

The Royal Mail should be run for the benefit of all, and should be organized by the state for the benefit of all. This does not mean that you cannot send your mail by private courier. That is your right. But for everyone to have access to efficient mail, a subsidised, publicly owned mail system is essential. That is common sense

The same goes for the railways btw.

Please dont even go there and say that internet access, telephone, Google, schools $modern_service should be privatised. Why bother?

BTW, and thats a big BTW, did you read about HMG changing the rules about who can be a charity and who can not? In the future, if the proposed bill passes, you will have to PROVE how you benefit society before you can get charitable status.

This is being done soley to destroy the British Public School system, which Labour could not overtly outlaw thanks to the EEC granting people the right to educate their children in any way they see fit, including but not limited to private schools.

I remember seeing a programme about new labour facing up to the post Thatcher reality, where a bitter, hard core, classwar reading, "luxury" car scratching sour graper parliamentarian was told by a lawer that "It is now impossible to ban Eton and the like thanks to the European Bill of Rights". So now they have concocted this evil scheme to shut private schools down by the back door. Poor old Diane Abott and that other imbecile who would not send her child to school with the toughs but who insisted as an article of socialist faith that the very same bad schools were good enough for everyone else, will now have to bite the bullet. Or rather, their children will have to face the bullets :]

Most private schools in the UK are run as non-profit charities. This is how they all manage to say afloat. If this wretched bill passes, the private schools will all have to add 30% onto the fees, which translates to: get thy child to class with the hip hop hooded hoards hypocrite Labour MPs!
posted by Irdial , 2:34 PM Þ 

"You doubt me because I have not yet had my coronation"
posted by Irdial , 2:17 PM Þ 

Perhaps you could focus on why a realtively successful nationalised service, was privatised but allowed to keep a monopoly status even though the service it provided deteriorated profoundly. After this the Service Provider cut its provision in order to meet some bogus targets and after failing to meet even those made a huge profit?

Royal Mail posts major profits at expense of customers

They made sure my tax return arrived late.

REALtively.

Edit: It seems RM is not privatised as such - just an autonomous entity that has state backing to be primed for privatisation, I got confused by the double name change and splitting of mail delivery services and the Post Office, .........

-

All my votes are REQUIRED to be postal votes this time round. A major pain because the polling station was sited closer to home than the nearest post box, RM is not reliable. And most sinisterly of all my vote will be registered AFTER I have shown my decision on the voting paper, I know if someone really wanted to know how I voted they could have done it beforehand with my voter reference number, but this makes it so much easier for some unknown council worker to take direct interest in peoples votes and perhaps lose/despoil ones they don't like. I wonder if anyone will be daft enough to use a pencil.
posted by meau meau , 2:12 PM Þ 

i feel my will to live oozing away

even my will to be pedantic is grimacing; a butterfly sneezes in a hackney market and i wince - the world around me is altered forever as my inner pedant discovers the joy of letting go

these twain world views shall ne'er meet, i fear

i'm slinking off to await the utopian paradise that shall greet us all on the day google launches gmail proper, and to ponder on the hell that was earth before chemically regulated erections and round-the-clock decorating programmes
posted by Alun , 1:37 PM Þ 

it's webmail, 100m use it already, the world has already been changed by this exact service

Gmail is different. :] It is not "this exact same service" by any stretch of the imagination.

the only real gmail specific advantage I've seen so far is the one pointed out by doublemeau - transfer/storage of large data files

Just because you have not seen it, doesnt mean its not there. This probably has something to do with you not having tried Gmail!!!!

Anyone who is used to having their own computer, may find it hard to imagine what it must be like for people without computers to not be able to store a practically unlimited number of electronic documents permanently. Gmail makes this possible. For free. That is special.

it's not new tech, it's a massively rich company

There you go again! What does the fact that they are "massively rich" have to do with the utility and world changing nature of the service?!

offering a loss-leader to draw in customers from competitors, and you can bet yahoo and ms are planning the same thing

You dont understand why Gmail is different to Hotmail and Yahoo mail. It is a profoundly new take on webmail. Thats why everyone is so exited about it. Hotmail and Yahoo mail will not be able to replicate Gmail; only Google has the ability to pull something like this off. That is why they are unique. That is why they dominate search, and why they will dominate webmail. And it will in no way be a "loss leader"; by selling contextual ads, Google will make a profit on Gmail.

if one offers 20Gb and a penny every time you use it, is the world changed?

Yes indeed, because Google will have ushered in the Holy Grail of micropayments, which no one has yet managed to do sucessfully. Being able to charge a penny for a message (or webpage) would change the entire world profoundly.

gunpowder
steel
antibiotics
combustion engine
powered flight
silicon chips
telecommunications

All true

the latest bmw

The "latest BMW" is going to be a mass production Hydrogen powered car. That will change the world dramatically, for the benefit of mankind, and BMW will make a huge fortune in profit.

semtex

Has certainly changed the world.

viagra

A hard man is good to find. More people who couldnt have sex, now having sex. A profound change. Even on the level of the amount of SPAM everyone has to filter dealing with people trying to sell it. It has entered into eveyones language and popular culture. The world before Viagra is different to the world after Viagra. That is for sure.

superjumbojets

SARS? More people travelling and carrying disease, money and everything else. This new generation of plane will have a profound effect on the world.

osx

Ups the ante. M$ has to respond to it. Everyone (else) uses Windoze. The world without Aqua and OSX is different to the one with it. QED.

nokia 9999

Test it yourself. Does this phone bring in a new feature that will trickle down to the many millions? Where can you see these features (if they are there) having an effect on the way people do things?

sky tv

Sky TV is actually the result of several important discoveries and technologies, and is an example of how a corner of the world has changed beyond recognition thanks to a few men in a lab.

Cryptography made it possible to create pay per view TV, which was pioneered outside the UK. Now, where once there were only a few channels (all of which went off at 12PM), there are hundreds, and there is a way to make money off of them directly from the viewer, in conjunction with traditional advertising.

The whole world is different thanks to PIC technology, Cryptography, Cable TV and Sattelite, and it has happened in the space of 15 years. Cable TV and Sattelite made it possible for CNN to exist; a station that has changed everything for news broadcasters facilitated the world domination of Ted Turner in the spread of information via TV news. The same goes for Murdoch and FOX. There cannot be a single person outside of America that cannot see what a profound change FOXNews has made to the world.
posted by Irdial , 12:58 PM Þ 

Gmail is a clear case of a service that will change the world.[...]

poppycock!
it's webmail, 100m use it already, the world has already been changed by this exact service
the only real gmail specific advantage I've seen so far is the one pointed out by doublemeau - transfer/storage of large data files

it's not new tech, it's a massively rich company offering a loss-leader to draw in customers from competitors, and you can bet yahoo and ms are planning the same thing
if one offers 20Gb and a penny every time you use it, is the world changed?

if that counts as world-changing then so be it

some qualifiers in my mind would be...
gunpowder
steel
antibiotics
combustion engine
powered flight
silicon chips
telecommunications

not...
the latest bmw
semtex
viagra
superjumbojets
osx
nokia 9999
sky tv
posted by Alun , 12:29 PM Þ 

modify [definition of world-changing]

I think not. The world is constantly in flux. For example; in Nigeria, the majority of people did not have access to a telephone. Now, thanks to GSM, Pay as you go and cheap handsets, that country is the biggest growing market for telephones in the world. MTN (South African telecoms provider) is making a fortune out of the calls. That is a good thing. People without telephones get hooked up, and someone makes a profit. Nigerian becomes a better place. People being able to talk to each other changes the way governments can govern. That is world changing.

3000 people are wiped out in an audatious outrage, and the world "is changed forever". I could just as easily base a false calclation on the number 3000, to prove that only 3000 people can change the world. But you know this.

'only' 945 million of 6.4 billion people are estimated to be online

Your point? Because everyone doesnt have electricity, a company should not devise a new way to deliver it and make an astronomical profit?

and i wouldn't argue that the internet has been world-changing

We're getting somewhere!!!

however, that 'world' is hideously western-centric

Only to the westerners. People all over the world will flock to Gmail, without a care about who else in the middle of nowhere (to them) is online or not. They are concerned about their local needs, who provides the best service, and who they want to communicate with. What a man thinks about it in Spokane is of no interest to them. If they know where Spokane is, they cetainly dont care what he thinks; they just want access, and services.

Once again, the world is in flux. The internet will be brought to many many more people before we are "done". Its important to think not only about right now, but what is going to happen in the future, where people are going to be, what they will want, and how we can provide it to them. And make a profit. Or not. Its our choice to do one or the other - a luxury.

Gmail, as it grows and eats the other, lesser webmail providers will change the way everyone thinks about webmail. It will change what everyone expects from it. It will enable and empower people everywhere to communicate more efficiently, and that is a powerful thing. It will change peoples lives, and it will change the future.

SMS was originally implimented by engineers soley to test the GSM network. Now people have used it to co-ordinate the downfall of governments, organize protest and do many other cool things. If you were asked at GSMs inception, wether or not SMS would change the world, you would have cited the number of people without phones etc etc to make the case that it would not happen.

And you would have been wrong.

The world has been changed forever by SMS. That is a fact.

Gmail is a clear case of a service that will change the world. People will do political and economic things with it, just as they do with SMS.

The history of these technologies is clear, and is repeated again and again. A new technology starts off with no one having it, spreads to everyone eventually and everything is different after it has run its course.
posted by Irdial , 11:24 AM Þ 

Improving a service used by 100,000,000 people is, by any definition, world changing

100/6430*100=1.5552%

subtract [those with computers]
subtract [those pop accounts]
subtract [those who won't switch to gmail]
subtract [insert western/disposable/high-income associated factor]
recalculate [number of webmail users whose world could be changed]
modify [definition of world-changing]

some context
'only' 945 million of 6.4 billion people are estimated to be online
and i wouldn't argue that the internet has been world-changing
however, that 'world' is hideously western-centric
over 500 million online are in north america and europe
read it and weep
posted by Alun , 10:38 AM Þ 

Kissinger records offer parallels to war in Iraq
Transcripts reveal effort to suppress atrocities by U.S.
By ELIZABETH BECKER
New York Times

WASHINGTON -- News had just broken of an unimaginable atrocity committed by U.S. soldiers, and the secretary of defense and the national security adviser debated whether there was any way to stop newspapers and TV news programs from showing graphic photos of the victims.

"They're pretty terrible," Melvin Laird, the secretary of defense, said of the color photographs of the men, women and children killed in the My Lai massacre in South Vietnam.

Henry Kissinger, the national security adviser, responded that one of President Nixon's top aides had "heard that the Army is trying to impound the pictures -- that can't be done."

A transcript of this 1969 telephone conversation, with its uncanny echoes of the Iraq war and the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, at least in the fact of the photographs, if not in the severity of the wrongdoing, was released Wednesday by the National Archives as part of 20,000 pages of records of Kissinger's telephone conversations. The documents cover the years from the beginning of his service in 1969 until August 1974, when Nixon resigned. [...]

Google News to read them all

This is no surprise to anyone old enough to remember those times. What is unforgivable is that a "newspaper of record" like the New York Times could have forgotton this lesson, and not applied it to the Iraq affair. The whole tone of this piece, which is full of ommissions by the way, is not anywhere near instructive enough.

Kissinger and Nixon committed war crimes and crimes against humanity and got away with it. This is not about "uncanny echoes of the Iraq war" (which is of course not a real war, but an occupation) it is about business as usual, standard operating procedure, and the unnacountability of the us administration, which allows them to commit mass murder and face no consequences.

The New York Times made that apology soley to repair its reputation in order that they may lie and lie again, and continue to be believed. That apology was not an act of contrition, and this release of documents, a scalpel with which to disect the administration, instead was dipped into an inkwell to write a glossed over piece of irrelevant trash.
posted by Irdial , 8:40 AM Þ 
posted by Ken , 12:37 AM Þ 
Wednesday, May 26, 2004

Chemical products : STRONTIUM HYDROXIDE OCTAHYDRATEM

Chongqing huaqi Fine Chemical Co., Ltd. is engaged in the research, development and production of strontium salt production series and other mineral fine chemicals.
a Sino-Japan joint venture established in 1995, is engaged in developing, manufacturing and trading of strontium salt products. Enjoying self import and export right, preferential policy for foreign-invested venture, advantage in production scale, technology and production structure, the company acts as an important manufacturer and distributor of Sr salt in the country. Its chemical factory is located at the foot of the beautiful Bayue Mountain, occupying 2.33 hectare, with annual output of strontium carbonate 4500t, and 3000t of strontium nitrate, strontium hydroxide, strontium chloride, strontium sulfate, strontium ethanoic, etc. The factory owns total quality control(TQC) system, strict administration and qualified technical team. Products produced with high technology is of good quality. For example, strontium carbonate has low contents of sulfur and calcium; strontium nitrate, strontium chloride and strontium hydroxide have low contents of Ba, Na and Ca.
strontium salt

1. STRONTIUM HYDROXIDE OCTAHYDRATE Molecular formula: Sr(OH)2.8H2O97% Min.Properties: cubic crystal without color, the relative density is 1.90, be the substances when been heated to 100c.Use: separate cane sugar from gooey, refine of beet sugar, to make strontium salt, develop the dryness Properties of oil and oil paint.

2. STRONTIUM OXALATE molecular formula : SrC2O4 .H2O99% Min.Properties: white crystal powder, lose crystal water when heated to 150c,dissolved in muriatic acid and nitric acid.Use: to make strontium salt.Packing: 25KG net plastic woven bags or as requested.

3. STRONTIUM ATETAT molecular formula : Sr(CH3COO)2.1/2H2O99.0% Min.molecular weightProperties: white crystal powder. Losecrystal water when heated to 150c,charcoaled under high temperature. Change to carbonic acid strontium after heated. dissolved in water, the water liquid is neuteal .micro dissolved in ethanol .use: used in analysis reagent and medicine.Packing: 25KG net plastic woven bags or as requested.

4.STRONTIUM FLUORIDE molecular formula : SrF2Properties: white powder, dissolved in 8500 times water, micro dissolved in muriatic acid ,cannot dissolved in hydrofluoric acid and propyliodone.Use: used in making medicine to substitute other fluorid. Packing: 25KG net plastic woven bags or as requested.

5.STRONTIUM CARBONATE HIGH PURITY Properties: white powder, dissolved in rare muriatic acid and rare nitric acid and give out CO2,micro dissolved in water contain CO2 and ammonia salt liquor, cannot dissolved in water. decompose to CO2 and oxidation strontium when heated to 900c.Use: electron component, skyrocket material, to make rainbow glass, and other strontium salt preparation

6.STRONTIUM CHROMATE Properties: yellow crystal or powder. dissolved in muriatic acid ,nitric acid ,acetic acid and ammonia, micro dissolved in water. be oxidative, be poison.Use: oxidant, glass, ceramic industry.Packing: 25KG net plastic woven bags or as requested.

7.STRONTIUM PEROXIDE Properties: white or canary powder , cannot dissolved in water, dissolved in rare acid and create hydrogen peroxide.Use: used in the mixture of fireworks.packing: 25KG net plastic woven bags or as requested.

8.STRONTIUM CARBONATE IN GRANULAR Properties: white powder, dissolved in rare muriatic acid and rare nitric acid and give out CO2,micro dissolved in water contain CO2 and ammonia salt liquor, cannot dissolved in water .Decompose to CO2 and oxidation strontium when heated to 900c.Use: electron component, skyrocket material, to make rainbow glass, and other strontium salt preparation.Molecular formula : SrCO3 +BaCO3 98.0% MIN.Packing: 1000KG flexible container bag or as requested.1>Properties: similar to strontium carbonate powder 2>Uses: similar to strontium carbonate powder3>Specifications: SrCO3 + BaCO3 98%min 4>Packing: 1000kg bag

9.STRONTIUM HYDRATE PHOSPHATE molecular formula : SrHPO4 99% Min molecular weight: 183.62Properties: white powder, dissolved in muriatic acid and nitric acid and cannot dissolved in water and alcohol ketone.Use: used in medicine industry and analysis reagent, can be used to shine material .packing: 25KG net plastic woven bags or as requested

10.STRONTIUM PHOSPHATE molecular formula : Sr3(PO4)2Properties: white powder, dissolved in 1536c,cannot dissolved in water ,dissolved in muriatic acid and nitric acid.Use: used in electron industry and medicine industry.packing : 25KG net plastic woven bags or as requested

11.STRONTIUM SALFATEB 99% MIN.C 97% MIN.Use: white crystal powder, rare dissolved in dense acid, rare dissolved in water ,cannot dissolved in alcohol and rare vitriolUse: analysis reagent ,the saturation liquor mensurate barium, red flame.

12.STRONTIUM CHLORIDE HEXAHYDRATE? common hexahydrate chloridize strontium(SrCl2.6H2O 99.0% Min.)Properties: white pin shape crystal. taste bitter, airslake in dry wind, deliquescence in wet air. dissolved in water ,rare dissolved in ethanol and acet. lose 4 molecule crystal water when heated to 61.4c,to be monohydrate salt on 100c.melting point:115c.dampproof,airproof saved.Use: medicine industry ,domestic industry, strontium salt preparation.Packing: 25KG net plastic woven bags or as requested. ? high pure hexahydrate chloridize strontiumPacking: 25KG net plastic woven bags or as requested.(SrCl2.6H2O 99.0 ~ 103.0%

13.STRONTIUM TETRABORATE molecular formula : SrB4O7 99% Min. Properties: white powder, cannot dissolved in water, dissolved in muriatic acid and nitric acid.Use: in porcelain enamel industry and glass industry.

14. STRONTIUM CARBONATE POWDER Properties: white powder, dissolved in rare muriatic acid and rare nitric acid and give out CO2, micro dissolved in water contain CO2 and ammonia salt liquor, cannot dissolved in water.decompose to CO2 and oxidation strontium when heated to 900c.Use: electron component, skyrocket material, to make rainbow glass, and other strontium salt preparation.? carbonic acid strontium in powder.(SrCO3 97.5% Min.)Packing: Plastic woven bag of net 25KG or as requested. ? carbonic acid strontium in powder.(SrCO3 98% Min.)Packing: Plastic woven bag of net 25KG or as requested. ? carbonic acid strontium in powder.(SrCO3 98.5% MIN.)Packing: Plastic woven bag of net 25KG or as requested.

15.STRONTIUM NITRATE Properties: white grain or powder. dissolved in water, rare dissolved in ethanol. Oxidation. Mixed with organics will self-ignite and explode. Use: fireworks .Communication signal in sea and on land. match.? nitric acid strontium I type(SR(NO3)2 99% Min.)Packing: 25KG net plastic woven bags or as requested. ? nitric acid strontium II type(SR(NO3)2 99% Min.)Packing: 25KG net plastic woven bags or as requested ? nitric acid strontium III type(SR(NO3)2 99.5% Min)Packing: 25KG net plastic woven bags or as requested

16.STRONTIUM BROMIDE molecular formula: SrBr2.6H2O99.5%;99.0%,98.5%Properties: colorless or white crystal powder ,deliquescence nature, dissolved in water ethanol and amyl alcohol ,changed to be the substance without water, the dissolved point is 88c,poison,airproof saved. Use: analysis reagent, pharmacy industry

Contract person: Weilin
Chongqing Xianfeng Sr Salt Chemical Co., Ltd.
http://www.cqchemical.com
Mail Address : Chemical products : STRONTIUM HYDROXIDE OCTAHYDRATEM

That is a spam which just arrived in my Gmail inbox! Not only is it the strangest spam I have ever recieved, but the whole thing was spelt out twice in the body of the email!!
posted by Irdial , 7:53 PM Þ 
posted by Ken , 7:35 PM Þ 

As Billy Preston used to sing.


Google is not Bechtel. Above: The Bechtel London HQ, Hammersmith.


gmail will not be the liberating tool of freedom implied earlier

If the only thing Gmail does is increase the value of webmail by a factor of two (and Gmail does much much more than that) it will be worthwhile.

as do you, alex, meau, alison........ and all those geeks offering their firstborn child just to ride the wave
gmail know their market, and it is blogdialian way before it is utopian

We are PLAYING with Gmail. We dont use it as our central email, and probably never will. Its interesting for those of us that are involved in innovation to play around with something like Gmail, because we can see how clever people are solving hard problems.

Already Alext has written some scripts to encrypt and decrypt messages from a webmail window; no doubt others are doing similar things. Certainly, after having used Gmail myself, I am able to recomend it over Hotmal and all other webmail services. I can say this because I have tested it personally; personal experience of what I am talking about.

so not exactly a move out of the goodness of their hearts

Your point? Money is bad? Profit is bad?

i don't feel a need to use gmail

none of us need it but we know people who can make use of it, and we know all about it having tested it.

"for the benefit of google", not customers

The two things happen simultaneously. The relationship is symbiotic. The effects of mistreating your customers is more brutal and instant online than offline; just take a look at what has been happening to SixApart, the company that makes Movable Type. They wrote a bad licence for Movable Type 3, and within 48 hours people had switched the software that runs their blogs to other software, and then blogged to the world about it. If Google doesnt behave properly, people will simply click a few links and move to a better service.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with running a business for its own benefit and the benefit of its shareholders. Doing that is completely different and separate from companies deliberately doing bad things, like Micro$oft, Haliburton, Raytheon, Bechtel, Lockheed, The Carlyle Group, BP, Exxon...the list is long. Business is not bad, but bad people can do bad business; we have to make that distinction, otherwise, the "I know better than you what you should do with your life" brigade is the one that controlls your life. And thats not life, thats living death.

was also surprised at the world-changing claims for ... "just e-mail"

Improving a service used by 100,000,000 people is, by any definition, world changing. The ripples from this will propagate outwards and touch many people. Thats pretty clear.

The day is light.
The night is dark.
Salt is salty.
Water is wet.
Google is good.

And no matter what anyone says, thats the truth!!
posted by Irdial , 7:09 PM Þ 

The Golden Bough by Sir James Frazer
free to read
finally read it
this book is stupendous
a stunning account of anthropological change from belief in magic, through the development of religious practise and the progression towards a 'scientific mind'
recommended to all interested in understanding the development of human nature and society, beliefs and power
posted by Alun , 5:33 PM Þ 
posted by Ken , 5:29 PM Þ 

another gmail thing.

I (still) have dial up at home, I can upload an 8Mb attachment (say) to gmail at work and save it on the gmail servers and distribute it to whoever at a later date, just like that - even when I check my mail at home. OK that's good for me but it is also good for a network of people without a PC, or people in countries where there is state controlled access to websites/services etc and having certain info on your own PC could spell serious badness.

People in such situations are able to use purely web based services to create and now distribute significant amounts of content. And not having to own a PC.

Gmail is a offering an acceptable service that can be used in good ways. It is being offered by a company that is 'respectable' so far, we'll see how that changes when the shareholders start shaking things up. And I'm grateful to be in a position to choose.

I'm not giving up my POP account or rerouting any mail to gmail
posted by meau meau , 3:32 PM Þ 

a: Certainly, if the disenfranchised get email, they will be able to organise, like the Spanish did with their cellular phones, toppling the corrupt puppy dog Anzar.

b: if the disenfranchised haven't used web-based freemail in the 8 or more years since hotmail started (96?) then i doubt a fancy UI and more storage is going to flick their switch

a: There are over 100,000,000 users of web based email

exactly
gmail will not be the liberating tool of freedom implied earlier

a: and it's target market for gmail is people like me and my friends

b: Thats absolutely and demonstrably not true, since you have your own POP email as you described!

as do you, alex, meau, alison........ and all those geeks offering their firstborn child just to ride the wave
gmail know their market, and it is blogdialian way before it is utopian

and the dutch auction is projected to earn google more money than the standard IPO because they know demand will be astronomical, and launching beta gmail in a blaze of publicity will only up the baseline price, so not exactly a move out of the goodness of their hearts

urgh

i feel like a pedant
i love google as a search engine
i don't feel a need to use gmail
i was just a bit surprised about the rose-tinted view of a company worth billions whose first priorities will be to share-holders
all the sec filing says is that that priority will likely be fulfilled long- rather than short-term
great business management does put google among the unconventional companies, but also note that business decisions are made "for the benefit of google", not customers, not those without computers or those with several g5s
was also surprised at the world-changing claims for (apparently an excellent) product which is in the end, as stated here, "just e-mail"


here endeth the pedantry
posted by Alun , 2:47 PM Þ 

Apologising is one thing, changing your behaviour is another. Let us now see the New York Times come to the defense of Syria and Iran.

But haven't you heard the whole Iraq invasion was concocted by Iran and the current shaming of the US is entirely a filthy Syrian plot?

Pin the Tail on the Donkey!
posted by meau meau , 1:29 PM Þ 

New York Times: we were wrong on Iraq

Claire Cozens
Wednesday May 26, 2004

The New York Times today issued an extraordinary mea culpa over its coverage of Iraq, admitting it had been misled about the presence of weapons of mass destruction by sources including the controversial Iraqi leader Ahmad Chalabi.

In a note to readers published today under the headline 'The Times and Iraq', the editors of the newspaper said they had found "a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been".

"In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged.

"Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged - or failed to emerge," they continued.

The paper said it was encouraged to report the claims by "United States officials convinced of the need to intervene in Iraq".

But today for the first time it admitted that accounts of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in Iraq were never independently verified.

"It is still possible that chemical or biological weapons will be unearthed in Iraq, but in this case it looks as if we, along with the administration, were taken in. And until now we have not reported that to our readers," the paper said.

The Baghdad offices of Mr Chalabi, the one-time favourite of the Bush administration as a future leader of Iraq, were raided last week by Iraqi police over alleged links with the Iranian intelligence forces.

The New York Times today admitted he had introduced reporters to exiles bent on "regime change" in Iraq.

And it said that when other journalists wrote stories that appeared to contradict claims of a WMD programme in Iraq, their reports were buried.

The paper said editors should have challenged reporters on their information but were "perhaps too intent on rushing scoops into the paper".

"Accounts of Iraqi defectors were not always weighed against their strong desire to have Saddam Hussein ousted," the Times added. [...]


The Guardian


This is not Chalabi's fault. All of the leaders in Iraq consistently said that there were no more weapons in Iraq, and that people were spreading lies about them. This was said over and over and over, and the NYT ignored this deliberately and took the word of Chalabi, a nobody, over the word of Tariq Aziz and eveeryone else that vociferously asserted that there was an orchestrated campaign to destry Iraq.

All the people who wrote those stories should be made to apologise in public or resign immediately. They are guilty of warmongering, and by saying that the Iraqi leadership was lying about WMD, they are guilty of libel.

I wonder what we will start to see when that revolting rag reports on Syria and the immoral, unreasonable and senselss sanctions that have just been imposed on that country by the USA.

Apologising is one thing, changing your behaviour is another. Let us now see the New York Times come to the defense of Syria and Iran.

Filthy lying dirty cowards!
posted by Irdial , 12:50 PM Þ 

Haystack: So BLOGDIAL, it hurts!

Haystack even BIGGER than Mozilla, how do they do it?
posted by meau meau , 11:17 AM Þ 

1. Create a list of movies you want, and a list of movies you own

2. Send your movies to your peers, and receive movies in your mailbox

3. Send them on to the next peer to receive more

A P2P service where the "protocol" is your mail man.

2$ per trade. Whats wrong with this Picture?
posted by Irdial , 9:15 AM Þ 

ChristianExodus.org has been established to coordinate the move of 50,000 or more Christians to a single conservative state in the U.S. for the express purpose of reestablishing constitutional governance. It is evident that our Constitution has been abandoned under our current federal system. The efforts of Christian activism have proven futile over the past five decades and, whereas desperate times require desperate measures, we are now in the most desperate of times. The federal government is considering whether marriage, the foundation of civilization since Creation, should be reserved solely to a man and a woman. Christians must now draw a line in the sand and unite in a sovereign state to dissolve our bond with the current union comprised as the United States of America.


ChristianExodus.org Participation Guidelines

1. ChristianExodus.org shall not require dues or contributions of any kind for participation.

2. ChristianExodus.org shall require all prospective participants to sign a Declaration of Intent indicating:

1. that they will move to the state designated according to the rules laid out in these Guidelines, (Commitment Levels 1 & 2)

2. that they will vote for their State?s independence from the union in response to legalized gay marriage, (Commitment Level 3)

3. that they will be bound by the Guidelines, and

4. that they will give their fullest effort to the reestablishment of government founded upon Christian principles that protect life, liberty and property.

The Declaration shall expire five years from the time of signing should the designation of the state or legalized gay marriage not have occurred by that time.

3. Once 50,000 people have signed the Declaration of Intent (Commitment Levels 1 & 2), voting shall commence on a state where all participants will move and register to vote. The three States under consideration are Alabama, Mississippi and South Carolina. The voting shall proceed according to Simple Condorcet's Method*. All ballots shall be made public to avoid subterfuge; miscounted ballots shall be corrected before the outcome is officially declared.

4. Members may "opt-out" of their commitment if one of their "opt-out" states is chosen as our destination.

5. Once membership again reaches 50,000, after all "opt-outs" have been removed, participants shall move to the state decided upon as expeditiously as possible and absolutely within three years of meeting the 50,000-member threshold. The move shall be aborted if 50,000 signers are never acquired.

6. If these Guidelines are amended, anyone who has signed to an earlier version shall be given an opportunity to withdraw his consent.

* Condorcet's Method works by allowing voters to rank all the states from #1 to #10, and these rankings are used to compare each state to every other state in one-on-one contests. If a state does not lose any one-on-one contest, it is the winner. If no state is unbeaten, then smallest-magnitude defeats are eliminated until a state is unbeaten. For more information see the Election Methods website. [...]

My emphasis. This is similar to another group that wants to create a state free colony in New Hampshire.
posted by Irdial , 8:54 AM Þ 

MBTA set to begin passenger ID stops

MBTA transit police confirmed yesterday they will begin stopping passengers for identification checks at various T locations, apparently as part of new national rail security measures following the deadly terrorist train bombings in Spain.

Although officials would release few details about the initiative, the identity checks will mark the first time local rail and subway passengers will be asked to produce identification and be questioned about their activities.

Officers have been training for the security checks since May 11, transit officials said. MBTA Police Deputy Chief John Martino confirmed via e-mail yesterday that officers have been training with State Police at South Station this week. [...]


"If the MBTA did not do everything it can to protect transit users, it would be a dereliction of our duties and responsibilities as public servants," he added.

Ann Davis, Northeast regional spokeswoman for the federal Transportation Security Administration, refused to confirm that T's ID checks are part of a new national rail security program announced Thursday by federal officials. Those new security initiatives are scheduled to start tomorrow, in response to terrorist train bombings in Madrid that killed 191 and injured 2,000.

"We don't want to map out for potential terrorists how we intend to protect the rails," she said. [...]


The American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts has since sought more information about the policies of Massachusetts Port Authority and State Police governing such searches, but ACLU officials say they have had little cooperation from either agency.

"About a year ago they admitted they were using training based on an Israeli security model of behavioral profiling or selection which they declined to either explain or to otherwise amplify what it means," said John Reinstein, legal director for the ACLU of Massachusetts. "We asked for the records and they said that's no longer a public record because anything that has to do with security is no longer a public record."

boston.com

My emphasis. You cant make this sort of nonsense up...oh sorry, you CAN! 1984, THX1138, Rollerball, $dystopian_tome_or_film
posted by Irdial , 6:50 AM Þ 

Music?
Ursonate!

New !!!
The profuse swear words drew me in, but the furious funk attack made me stay.
posted by Barrie , 12:52 AM Þ 
Tuesday, May 25, 2004

6,430,595,264

wjat is your . ?

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh!

too many 0s!
posted by Irdial , 11:05 PM Þ 

"Haystack is a tool designed to let every individual manage all of their information in the way that makes the most sense to them. By removing the arbitrary barriers created by applications only handling certain information "types", and recording only a fixed set of relationships defined by the developer, we aim to let users define whichever arrangements of, connections between, and views of information they find most effective. Such personalization of information management will dramatically improve each individual's ability to find what they need when they need it."

Haystack: So BLOGDIAL, it hurts!
posted by Ken , 10:18 PM Þ 

There are over 100,000,000,000 users of web based email.
There are 6,430,595,264 people on the planet. But you know this?
posted by Josh Carr , 10:11 PM Þ 

if the disenfranchised haven't used web-based freemail in the 8 or more years since hotmail started (96?) then i doubt a fancy UI and more storage is going to flick their switch

There are over 100,000,000 users of web based email. But you know this?

and it's target market for gmail is people like me and my friends

Thats absolutely and demonstrably not true, since you have your own POP email as you described!

it's profit-driven, ... are the ones they hope will click the linked ads bringing in the revenue and driving up the stock price

Google makes money on ads each time they are displayed; wether anyone clicks on them or not is irrelevant. Profit is not a bad thing®. Google has never and will never do something soley to meet financial performance goals, and if you read their SEC filing, you would know this! They explicitly say that they will not play that game. Everything that they have done (especially the Dutch Auction in this case) and are doing leads us to believe that they are not lying.

that it's a good product and available to poor people is a happy coincidence

That is certainly not true, since the Gmail creators have said they wanted to create a better webmail, which is used mainly by people without computers - and even if it IS a coincedence, they are bringing a good thing into being, and that is...a good thing.

When Google do something bad, let us rip them to shreds. If not, let us praise them for the good that they do.

Here ends the lesson.
posted by Irdial , 8:01 PM Þ 

How is this any different from the PGP web of trust?

The PGP "Web of Trust" is a way of ferifying to you that a PGP public key belongs to the person who you think is the owner of that key. Trusted introducers sign Jane's key. If you can trust the authenticity of the singers key, you can trust that the signed key belongs to Jane.

Trust is the only thing that a signed key conveys to the user of the "Web of Trust". Nothing else can or should be implied by a signature on a key. You cannot tell if the persons who signed a key have ever met, are friends, are having sex or anything else about them. All you know for sure is that one person or persons have vouched for the authenticity of a particular key.

Orkut and Friendster however do a very different thing. They actually map out real relationships between people. These are networks of people you explicitly say that you personally know and or work with, and the context of that set of relationships, along with other juicy information is what makes Orkut a very different beast to the "Web of Trust".

The PGP "Web of Trust" contains none of this personally identifying and linking information, and as such is clean. The more people who sign your key the more trustable it is, making it impossible for someone to do social engineering attacks on your private messages or transactions.

PS

Use a real title please!!!
posted by Irdial , 7:38 PM Þ 

Orkut explicitly links people together, by their own hand, in a unified system, so that millions of people and their relationships to each other are made crystal clear to whoever has access to Orkut. You, by using it, weave the very net that is going to trap you and haul you into the boat. Doing the work of the secutiry services is Not A Good Thing®, and I dont want any part of it. My relationships are private, not for sale or obsservation and scrutiny. If anyone wants to connect the dots they can do this without my help.

How is this any different from the PGP web of trust?
posted by alex_tea , 6:17 PM Þ 
posted by Ken , 5:34 PM Þ 

Someone clever just email'd me:

Gmail is amazing technology, but doesn't it frighten you at all? The fact that you had problems with services like Orkut/Friendster etc. (and for good reason) makes me believe you'd have the same reservations about a service like Gmail.

No; Gmail is completely different to Orkut. Gmail is like any other email provider; you use it to send and recieve messages only. An email provider that is also an attacker could create a relationship map of you and everyone you know from your messages (traffic analasys) but anyone can do this with your inbox once they get a hold of it. They can also do it with your filofax or diary. Of course, at each end of the diagram, they will get a dead end each time the end point is not in their system. Orkut eliminates this problem completely.

Orkut explicitly links people together, by their own hand, in a unified system, so that millions of people and their relationships to each other are made crystal clear to whoever has access to Orkut. You, by using it, weave the very net that is going to trap you and haul you into the boat. Doing the work of the secutiry services is Not A Good Thing®, and I dont want any part of it. My relationships are private, not for sale or obsservation and scrutiny. If anyone wants to connect the dots they can do this without my help.

At the end of the day, even though the FAQ says otherwise, what the technology essentially does is read everyone's email.

Google have to make money out of Gmail. They came up with the idea of contextual ads by scanning the message body. If no one likes it, they can choose not to use Gmail. They could always encrypt their messages of course, defeating the scanners (and creating millions of hits for encryption product ads). The choice is yours not to use Gmail, or to use it in any way you see fit.

If Google comes up with another way to make money from Gmail, this whole argument might be moot. Lets see what happens.

And, yeah, I know the capability exists with all the other mass mail services like Hotmail, Yahoo, blah blah blah. But, I personally think this is quite scary.

People seem to be confuesed with what surveillance is all about. Google Automaticaly scanning your email to serve you ads is DIFFERENT to MI5 and GCHQ scanning your email for keywords. The latter involves a violation of your privacy, the former is something you CHOOSE to engage with. The former is happening with a PRIVATE company, the latter is being done by THE STATE, which you PAY FOR and which is out of your control. The former is beneficial, the latter is EVIL.

People have lumped email scanning into a single, messy, conflated group marked as "evil" whereas the REAL evil is in the removal of your choice to refuse to have your mail scanned by the security services.

I know that no 'human' is actually taking the time to go through one's email, but the capacity is there to not only target market to people based on what they frequently read/write about (lame), but also to earmark people who, say, use a blacklisted word, share a particular image, and so forth. Yikes!

Google cant make money out of people who use "blacklisted words". They also dont make money by clatting on someone who is trading pr0n. GCHQ however looks for these words in all the worlds emails, they see the bad pr0n and NEVER turn these pigs in! THIS is what everyone should be complaining about, not a private company scanning mail for profit only, that has promised to keep your email private.

If Gmail ever violated their privacy policy, and it was proved in court, they would be sued for $500,000,000 and the plaintiff would win. They would also destroy their flawless reputation. They will not do this.

I don't really use it as my primary email account since I still have my ********** address (I need it for work), but on the flip side of the conspiracy coin, I have to say, as with all things Google, it's a very well done webmail client with a revolutionary method of browsing beyond your personal messages.

And its free for everyone. The ads are unobtrusive. Humans dont ever read the mail. You can encrypt the messages if you want. And all the rest of what makes Gmail fantastic.

Maybe if the technology could be ported on to people's personal mail servers, I'd be a bit less nervous? Your thoughts?

My thoughts are this; ECHELON scans the worlds emails, which are read by an army of people, and no one complains about it. The greatest company in the world brings a new and innovative product to the hundred million users of webmail, and people start whining about privacy, instead of writing tools to make gmail work the way they want it to work, or better yet, devise their own system with the same features, give it away for free and dont charge for it - like that will ever happen.

The true enemy of privacy has to be addressed; unnacountable, mass, cross jurisdiction scanning of the worlds email by USUKAUS.

Tools need to be written. Be frightened of the RIGHT thing, which is not necessarily the thing right in front of your face.

Speaking of tools, a simple browser plugin that can copy text from a browser and pgp decrypt it with the press of a button would solve this Gmail email-scanning "problem". Keys could be kept on a USB keyring; plug it in whenever you want to get your encrypted Gmail.

Once again, the tools are out there. They cost little (hardware) or nothing (software). Dont whine, write software!
posted by Irdial , 5:30 PM Þ 

you can listen to the tls album (well, long clips)

not sure about it so far


saw the bays recently
to see what the (small) fuss was about
they put a smile on my face
but it's nothing 'new'
in fact the smile came from old memories dredged up

more 'fuss' next monday
going to see sunburned hand of the man
hmmmm
not sure about that either, really

on the stereo -
debussy preludes played by richter
old-fashioned love by john fahey
the dub series of 2 10"s by one of panasonic from a couple of years back
lee perry collections
vespertine by bjork
dancehall at louse point by john parish and pj harvey
country music by country people

have been feeling summery and guitary

re; gmail
the thrill of the new
if the disenfranchised haven't used web-based freemail in the 8 or more years since hotmail started (96?) then i doubt a fancy UI and more storage is going to flick their switch
but, hey, i wait in hope to be proved wrong
however, i don't agree that anyone should kid themselves into thinking google is an anachronistic altruistic megacorp
it's profit-driven, and it's target market for gmail is people like me and my friends, as we are the ones they hope will click the linked ads bringing in the revenue and driving up the stock price
that it's a good product and available to poor people is a happy coincidence
posted by Alun , 5:13 PM Þ 

Does anyone remember that African band that made electrified traditional instruments out of scrap?



The band is called Konono N°1. Still amazing, 18 months later.
posted by Josh Carr , 5:07 PM Þ 

My 'review' of the TLS album earlier was, uh, crap. I wonder why I never became a music journalist?

Imagine if Two Lone Swordsmen started a punk band. Or if you take a pioneer of British Acid House and an Electro Revialist and send them back in a time amchine to 1976 with knowledge of whats to come. Kraut Rock, Post Punk, Electro, Acid House, The Fall, etc, etc.

I think it's the best guitar based album I've heard for a while. I like the !!! album too. Two great albums.

Still not got the latest Animal Collective LP but seeing them recently was amazing. I bought some good records not long ago too... The Rip Off Artist - Pet Sounds on Vertical Form and Modern Instrumental Hits - A compilation of Ethiopian Jazz, from the same people (I think) who brought out the Ethiopiques CDs.

Does anyone remember that African band that made electrified traditional instruments out of scrap? There was a video of them playing. It was posted on Blogdial 18 months ago or something.
posted by alex_tea , 4:53 PM Þ 

How could I forget??!!

The Lotus Elise:



IS the Samos 7 from THX1138:



And of course, failure to get your ID in UK will result in 2500 fine which will NOT be collected because they cannot spend the resources to chase down millions of objectors. Pure 1138!

I was in Homebase a few weeks ago, and heard some strange saxophone muzak, which sounded rather like the mall music from TXH. Its everywhere, and UKID will make it even moreso: you will not be able to collect your prescrioption without your ID, neither will you be allowed to by certian non-prescriptoin medicines, as I have said before in on BLOGDIAL.
posted by Irdial , 4:28 PM Þ 

Gpg Tools

A GUI for GPG text / file encoding... If you install it in your Applications folder it adds a Service to the Application menu so you can decrypt/encrypt text in any app! Handy for webmail!!
posted by alex_tea , 4:18 PM Þ 

Hey Davros UBU also has this.

65 minutes of Joseph Beuys saying Ja, Ja, Ja, Nee, Nee, Nee. It's a beaut.

-

ISLAND records

Damn, my cunning plan has been revealed.
posted by meau meau , 4:00 PM Þ 

If ISLAND was used to collect a database of applicants (as already exists with UKPS) would they be ISLAND RECORDS?
posted by alex_tea , 3:55 PM Þ 

The latest Mediageek in Ogg Vorbis, natch,
Tool,
King Crimson,
The music of my ming (yes, ming),
XTC,
Chris J stuff.

Listened to a live tape of Big Chief Fail, the band I did with my brother, in Nottingham in 1990 the other night. We did a song I had completely and utterly forgotten about, which is a strange feeling. It was called "Kinetic Verbal Orgy" and the only words were "Yeah" and "No".
posted by captain davros , 3:53 PM Þ 

George Lucas has allowed the Hollywood machine to make a set of promo reels that are completely unimaginative.


I could have done a better job.


It SHOULD have been "compare and contrast".

"Keep the causeways clear"
Juxtapose
Japanese commters being pushed into trains

"Where did you git this car"
Juxtapose
Any black american sitcom

"The three representative of..."
Juxtapose
Fox News

"They are watching us"
Juxtapose
Any street scene in UK with CCTV

"Criminal Drug Evasion"
Juxtapose
Proxac advert

"Police beating up man on holographic entertainment"
Juxtapose
COPS the television program

and so on.

Too late now.

The new scenes of the robot factory, and the elevators are intrigueing; old George has been up to his scenes out of a box tricks again! Ive got an NTSC laserdisc of the original....cant wait to see it. No sign of a european theatrical release, shamefully. The UK is one of the most TXH like states in the world.
posted by Irdial , 3:46 PM Þ 

posted by Alison , 3:43 PM Þ 

A chinese motorbike for the danish lady!
posted by meau meau , 3:39 PM Þ 

This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification

Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:

g0ldt00th@gmail.com. (yes, with zero's)

Technical details of failure:
PERM_FAILURE: SMTP Error (state 9): 553 Bad or missing RCPT domain (#5.7.1)

To you alex, I give up... Can I have your pop-mail? mail me alison.khan@gmail.com
posted by Alison , 3:35 PM Þ 

The THX 1138 website is quite well designed. I had a blast navigatign through the content. (The trailer, by the by, is enticing.) Anyone have any idea who is responsible?
posted by Josh Carr , 3:34 PM Þ 

what's it like?

Different. I guess you've heard it's not techno. I like it though. A little bit of the Stooges in there, and some post punk. Sounds old, but not retro. But it doesn't sound old as well. I only listened to it once.
posted by alex_tea , 3:31 PM Þ 

Alex, I tried again (it was the right mail though... Hmmm)
Music of today? Sleept over me, to busy to listen to any music, my day has already been with my head under my arm... Damn it! I know I have a Salsoul-combilation in my disc-man travel through the suburbs of copenhagen...And I have not had my first fag yet - it is all wrong... Wrong day...

I have a soft spot for Kerrier District (Luke Vibert goes disco - and he's good at it)...
posted by Alison , 3:28 PM Þ 

Pan Sonic Kesto four hours of Pan Sonic! (not as brilliant as aaltopiiri though)
h^%\3/ 7/!0
Coil Horse Rotorvator
Dec Rants from Ubuweb
-
I thought about picking up the 2LSwordsmen what's it like?
posted by meau meau , 3:16 PM Þ 

So Gmail works well, I haven't used it very much yet, but it seems quite good, perhaps even excellent, but I think I'll carry on with my POP account.

Alison, no sign of your mail. G 0 L D T 0 0 T H (a) gmail.com note the zeros.

Music for today:

New Arovane - Lillies
Old Arovane - Icon Diston, Tides, Atol Scrap.
New Two Lone Swordsmen
New !!!

You?
posted by alex_tea , 3:15 PM Þ 

Whilst checking over the Subsystence site, I noticed a NEW JAMIE HODGE TRACK!!!

Jamie Hodge, in case you didnt know, released to utterly priceless, eternally brilliant, perpetually satisfying 12" records, many years ago.

Back to the pouring over.

http://www.subsystence.net/downloads/hodge/vcIIetude.mp3
posted by Irdial , 1:55 PM Þ 

Can you feel it closing in?

By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles
Independent 25 May 2004

The United States is about to launch a multibillion-dollar computer-tracking system that will throw an electronic spotlight on foreigners deemed suspicious as they try to enter the country. The technology will also allow authorities to keep tabs on those allowed in to make sure they do what they say they are going to do, and leave before their visa runs out.

The idea is to merge 20 US computer databases and add biometric data, criminal histories and financial records, so border police at the 300 points of entry can access to the fullest possible information [...]

The Independent
posted by Irdial , 1:16 PM Þ 

The time to Disobey is coming...

by Simon Moores at Zentelligence

Monday 24 May 2004

"An extraordinary situation." These were the opening words of Simon Davies from Privacy International as he apologised to the audience at The London School of Economics for the absence of David Blunkett at a public meeting to discuss the proposed national identity card.

"In fact, it's quite unprecedented," he went on. "We have no agency, no minister, no official and this meeting is quite unrecognised," even though it had attracted the shadow home secretary, David Davis, MP, David Cameron, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, Liberty, Statewatch, the Law Society, Ross Anderson, the assistant information commissioner, The Muslim Council of Great Britain and many more leading figures in the privacy and identity space.

Never had I seen a pillar of government policy look so demonstrably fragile and flawed. Neatly dissected by the opening arguments of the shadow home secretary and then buried alive by the experts who followed, we were offered little or no reason to believe that an identity card would be proportionate, cost effective or even capable of addressing the problems surrounding terrorism or illegal immigration.

A YouGov opinion poll of 2,000 electors, commissioned last month by Privacy International, has discovered that only 61% of the population support compulsory identity cards and not 80% as suggested by the government.

While this still represents a substantial majority in favour of the measure, 28% of those opposing compulsory cards said they were prepared to take to the streets to participate in demonstrations and 6% indicated that they were prepared to go to prison rather than carry one. Conservative voters were particularly opposed, with 24% polled prepared to participate in a campaign of civil disobedience. [...]

Computer Weekly
posted by Irdial , 12:43 PM Þ 

I havnet used my gmail that much, but I have just written an email to you alex and I love the Chek Spelling

BLOGDIAL: Bloodily, Biological, Blondell, Logical, Bluegill...
posted by Alison , 12:43 PM Þ 
posted by meau meau , 12:41 PM Þ 

blogked

Get proxyed up.

Or will you get collared for accesing a proxy service?
posted by Irdial , 11:44 AM Þ 

I'd try Gmail, but it's blocked here along with all the other web based email services. Back home I'm cool with my regular ISP pop mail. I'm sure it's fab however.
posted by captain davros , 11:26 AM Þ 

Seems a bit like the thrill of the new, when for a competent computer user it's (to me) more like a backward step away from personalized email with local and web access built in (Apple mail and work's Groupwise in my case)

Gmail is not for you. The majority of people do not have personal computers, and certainly not Apples. They can have access to email, via webmail services. Or should they not have access to email simply because they are poor?

If they are going to have access to email, should it not have the same features that we all take for granted, like being able to keep your messages forever? Or is only crippled and feature poor email "good enough for the peasants"?

Once again, its important to be able to epathise with people who are not able to use their own computers. Personally, I dont see why anyone should not have access to email if they want it, and with the features that we all take advantage of. Other services charge money for a puny amount of storage. The amount of money these services charge is, in some places, is the same as a living wage, and of course, you have to pay for it by credit card, effectively meaning that millions of people are stuck with the wretched and evil Hotmail. Gmail offers a staggering amount of storage for freem forever. That can only be a good thing.

to a profiteering advert-oriented cheap, high profile gimmick which just happens to coincide with google's attempts to raise billions and billions from investors.

So Google should not make a profit by engineering and releasing Gmail? Thats absurd. And how is providing people with a good service "a gimmick"?

By auction, what's more!

They are using the Dutch Auction specifically to cut out the evil of system of normal IPOs, making it fairer for everyone. That is A Very Good Thing®.

Do you have stock already?

No one has stock yet.

Believe that as well?

Do you in all sincerity believe that Google are comprable to Micro$oft?

really one of the big problems facing the world? Are you drukn?

In their SEC filing, Google say that they want to use their power to address the big problems that face the world. I didnt say that "1Gb email is one of the big problems facing the world", and neither has google. You should read the SEC filing; Google are not an ordinary business by any stretch of the imagination. They are huge however, and because the amounts of money involved in this IPO are staggering, all the sour grapes brigade leap on them simply because they are going to be a rich company with a very rich staff. Personally, I judge people by what they do, not by what they have. Google deserve the money that they make and are going to make because they have created something, from nothing, that is the best at what it does. They will make many millions more from Gmail, because it solves a very particular problem - how to overhaul and improve webmail so that people who are not rich can have feature rich email - in an elegant and generous way. When you do good things, you deserve to reap the benefits. Period. And in the case of Google, they are using their money, expertise and time to solve problems in a good natured and generous way.

The Class War brigade are right about some things, but the energy that drives them is sourced from pure negativity. The fact of the matter is that collectively people on this planet are far more powerful than any rich company or man could ever become. This fact cannot be taken advantage for the good of the world of while the people with language skills and positions of priveledge are distracted by the astronomical wealth of a very few individual companies and people. These elites spend their days publishing newspapers targeting the symbols of the problems whilst deliberatly refusing to do the hard work; convincing the uneducated that indeed, they are more powerful than any government or corporation.

Certainly, if the disenfranchised get email, they will be able to organise, like the Spanish did with their cellular phones, toppling the corrupt puppy dog Anzar. The Spanish troops are now out of Iraq, and there will be no outrages there. People power works. But you know this.

Would a Blogdial applicant with a Gmail, rather than e.g. Hotmail, address pass the Irdial criteria for inclusion?

Absolutely. Gmail accounts are less likely to be throwaway accounts because if you n00k yours, you will loose thousands of messages and attachments. Gmail accounts will be valuable to their users for this very reason. Gmail changes everything in the webmail space.
posted by Irdial , 10:57 AM Þ 

shiat! :
This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification

Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:

    goldt00th@gmail.com

  ----- Original message -----

Received: by 10.11.119.28 with SMTP id r28mr187384cwc;
       Tue, 25 May 2004 02:51:57 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: 
Date: Tue, 25 May 2004 10:51:57 +0100
From: Irdial Discs 
To: goldt00th@gmail.com
Subject: Rock!
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Ah yes, Gmail!

You will need to beef up with some messages to see how it all works so
very cool-ly.

I dont like:

You cant rewrap the messages in your inbox; if someone sends you a
mail with hard returns and you are viewing at 800, it breaks the
message.

Reply has no button!

  ----- Message truncated -----
posted by Irdial , 10:55 AM Þ 

Alright, I conceded. It looks and works great, as I had expected. No mails yet, so hit me up.... g0ldt00th@gmail.com.

My first problem is that there's no POP3 account checker, this is the sole reason I have used webmail accounts in the past, to check my mail when I am away from home.

edit: I spelt my address wrong. Fixed.
posted by alex_tea , 10:34 AM Þ 

Of course, Google/Gmail is American.

Hello again.

Similar to Alex, I refused the offer of a Gmail account. I have no reason to use one. Seems a bit like the thrill of the new, when for a competent computer user it's (to me) more like a backward step away from personalized email with local and web access built in (Apple mail and work's Groupwise in my case)to a profiteering advert-oriented cheap, high profile gimmick which just happens to coincide with google's attempts to raise billions and billions from investors. By auction, what's more!

And there's nothing wrong with that per se.

But, as Alex, I haven't identified any major deficiencies in the mail apps I use that Gmail would address.

Gmail, and Google are great because the people behind them are geeks that can empathise with the masses of people out there; no one could create a system like this unless they really wanted to solve a problem for millions of people, unless they really cared. Thats why its possible to believe that they are genuine when they say (in their SEC declaraion) that they want to solve the big problems facing the world.

Do you have stock already?

Microsoft's mission: To enable people and businesses throughout the world to realize their full potential.

Believe that as well?

Gmail, and Google are great because the people behind them are now businessmen that can cash in on the masses of people out there using rival products; no one could create a system like this unless they really wanted to garner more publicity value than soft/hardware outlay, unless they really understood their market. Thats why its possible to believe that they are genuine when they say that they want to raise 2.7BILLION DOLLARS in an INITIAL public offering, and you can guarantee that it's not to solve the big problems facing the world

Is lack of "free" 1Gb email really one of the big problems facing the world? Are you drukn?





Afterthought: Would a Blogdial applicant with a Gmail, rather than e.g. Hotmail, address pass the Irdial criteria for inclusion?
posted by Alun , 10:14 AM Þ 

The first and best thing is you get the full subject header without any truncation, which one of my 'list' addresses does.
B. It will be a serious pain for hotmail, and that is a very good thing
C. The only ads so far are text ads and no banner ads
D. It works
E. I have a MM specific email without having to fuss my ISP
F. I like having more email accounts than you can shake a stick at.
7. If it rots I will stop using it.
posted by meau meau , 10:09 AM Þ 

The conversations feature is just threading, right?

You keep asking about it!!!! TRY IT!!!

I get my POP account for free, so I am lucky. I have a large hard-drive and hence unlimited space (well, almost). I can also back up my mails to CD / DVD / whatever.

Think. Hundreds of milions of people use webmail. Until Gmail, none of the existing services allowed you to keep all of your mail forever. Even the ones that are now Gmail wannabes are charging for space. Nothing out there works like Gmail. You have to see it in action to understand how different it is. Its brilliantly done. The conversations are more than threads. You have to see it in action, and you will be in awe at how it all works, and how they got it all to work in a browser.

If I used Gmail or any other webmail service I would have to keep two separate address books.
...
If I don't like Gmail's UI I am stuffed.

Gmail is not for you, its designed for the masses who use webmail. We all know there are other ways to get mail; what is interesting about Gmail is how it was done, the thinking behind it, and how it will single handedly destroy Hotmail and all other webmail services, replacing them all with a service that is superior by orders of magnititude.

Does Gmail let you see the full headers?

Try it and SEE!!!! (yes)

FOR FUCK'S SAKE, IT'S EMAIL. Nothing that special really.

Well. What can I say to this?

Gmail is awesome. Technically. Conceptually. Design wise. Strategically. Entreprenurially.

I love good ideas. I like seeing them in action. I like seeing the way other people think, especially when its offering something different, breaking the mold and challenging the status quo. That is what Gmail does. It is not "just email". That sort of thinking leaves Hotmail intact. It leaves the hundreds of millions of webmail users with no history of their email, with accounts that have to be reactivated if they are not used, with accounts that must be payed for to store a feeble amount of email, with accounts on a system that is slow and hopelessly broken. Gmail is interesting, nay, exiting because it fixes all of that, gives potentially hundreds of millions of people without skills or money access to the kind of email that we take for granted with a huff and a puff.

Gmail, and Google are great because the people behind them are geeks that can empathise with the masses of people out there; no one could create a system like this unless they really wanted to solve a problem for millions of people, unless they really cared. Thats why its possible to believe that they are genuine when they say (in their SEC declaraion) that they want to solve the big problems facing the world.

Of course, Google/Gmail is American. Gmail is an example of the TRUE spirit of America and Americans; they have none of this "wotsitmattah itsallthesaiminnnaaaaaat" attitude that gets nothing done, accepts the status quo - "The British Disease" - that leaves Hotmail as the number one provider of crap webmail, and millions of people cheated out of a service that they deserve and that is completely doable and profitable.

Enhancing the lives of millions of people is certainly not "nothing". Doing it with panache and brilliance is a rare stroke. Embrace it, test it, learn from it, love it!
posted by Irdial , 7:03 AM Þ 

Did you just say that? Are you drukn?!

Yes. No.

I just see it as a lot of fuss and bother over nothing really. Woo. Webmail. There hasn't been a feature which has really made me want to try it out. I can search my mails quite easily. If I am really stuck I use grep on my mboxes. If I was clever enough I could work out how to get it to decipher subjects, addresses, etc. Or I could use mutt or something and have grep support anyway.

The conversations feature is just threading, right? I don't like threading anyway (probably because it never works, but I also like to see how my mail has arrived chronologically).

The advertising/searching bothers me. Having said that, they could implement that feature without collecting any information on your mail. If it's just skimming for words there's no reason to save that data.

Also the major downfall of webmail is you have to be online to read your mail, unless you save the mails as text files to your computer for offline use, which is an added pain.

I get my POP account for free, so I am lucky. I have a large hard-drive and hence unlimited space (well, almost). I can also back up my mails to CD / DVD / whatever.

My MUA (Apple mail) is fully integrated with my address book and iChat and Safari and the rest of OS X. I like it. If I used Gmail or any other webmail service I would have to keep two separate address books. If I don't like the UI or the way my MUA works, I can change to another. In fact, I can use more than one at once, although that's a bit odd. If I don't like Gmail's UI I am stuffed.

My address is portable as I own the domain. If I change ISP's or my ISP goes bust I don't lose my address. Not that Google is about to go bust any time soon, but who knows. They have you under their thumb.

Does Gmail let you see the full headers?

I don't like centralized, hosted services (Gmail, Yahoo, Livejournal, Blogger, etc, etc). I can see how they are useful and helpful and great, but they're not really for me.

I have nothing against Gmail, but I don't feel the need to rush out and jump on the bandwagon of bloggers, geeks and wannabes wetting themselves over email. FOR FUCK'S SAKE, IT'S EMAIL. Nothing that special really. Email is great. But so is bread. Or paper. Or wood. Actually, bread, paper and wood are much better than fucking email.

Sorry, it's late.
posted by alex_tea , 1:37 AM Þ 

Blog Software Breakdown

Probably best to download the Excel file and print it out as this hasn't been formated for screen at all well.

Also misses out Drupal which is something I've been looking at for a couple of websites.
posted by alex_tea , 1:18 AM Þ 
Monday, May 24, 2004

?!?!

Thats polite language for "Duh, like I didnt know that"! :]

Dunno. Don't want or need one. What would I use it for?

Did you just say that? Are you drukn?!
posted by Irdial , 11:00 PM Þ 

You need to educate the filter.

Bayesian filters work (AFAIK) by having a set of 'good' and 'bad' mails. You have to 'train' the filter by feeding it good and bad mails from which it devises a set of rules for filtering spam.

The answer is 'Yes'; that spam was for a motorcycle firm, and all the ads (all 5) were motorcycle related!

Obviously. So that's annoying.

Think about it; if you advertise with Gmail, and someone spams in your iindustry, they will waste MILLIONS of your page impressions, costing you $$!!

Never thought of it like that, I was seeing it as more of a hindrance to the end-user.

Alex, why do you not have a Gmail account d00d???!!!!

Dunno. Don't want or need one. What would I use it for?
posted by alex_tea , 10:28 PM Þ 

You need to educate the filter.

?!?!

In other words, do you get double spammed?

The answer is "Yes"; that spam was for a motorcycle firm, and all the ads (all 5) were motorcycle related!

Think about it; if you advertise with Gmail, and someone spams in your iindustry, they will waste MILLIONS of your page impressions, costing you $$!!

eek!!

Alex, why do you not have a Gmail account d00d???!!!!
posted by Irdial , 10:05 PM Þ 

which was not filtered btw

Is Gmail's Bayesian filter decided on a per-user basis or is it Gmail global? If it's the former then no wonder it wasn't filtered as it's the first spam you have, on an empty dictionary. You need to educate the filter.

Not a lot of information on their spam filtering in the FAQ, but it seems as if it is global.

A side note, if the ads are targeted does that mean if you get Viagra spam, you get Viagra ads? In other words, do you get double spammed?
posted by alex_tea , 8:28 PM Þ 

[...]
We await your favorable reply at your very earliest .
Best regards from China !!!
Mr. Wang
Export Manager
China Chongqing Yinggang Motorcycle Group
Tel : 86-23-67635008
Fax :86-23-67635036
E-mail : yang_technical@163.com
http://www.motorcycle-business.com


and there you have it; the last few lines of our first ever Gmail spam. Only a few days after posting our Gmail address on this blog, a spam from China hits our Gmail, which was not filtered btw.
posted by Irdial , 6:59 PM Þ 

Senior clerics of Najaf respond to Hassan Nasrallah  

Muqtada's followers intimidate civilians and their movement is illegal

(Najaf - Azzaman)

The Marji'iyah (senior Shia clerics) of the Najaf Hawza gave a joint
response to what Hassan Nasrallah, the General Secretary of Lebanese Hezbollah, had said in his Friday sermon with regard to the situation in Najaf and Karbala. The statement was signed with the collective name of Ulemma of the Hawza Al-Ilmiyyah of Najaf and Karbala and excerpts from it were given to Azzaman (Translation courtesy of Michael Subotin):

1. It is the movement of Sayyid Muqtada Al-Sadr that is losing legitimacy in the strictest sense, and not the one led by Grand Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Al-Sistani, the overall, most learned and assidious Marji' of Iraq and not the rest of the Marji's, not even Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Kadhum Al-Ha'eri, nor other people of fortitude and experience in the field of politics who are seared by the fire of the Iraqi crisis and its complications wrought by Muslim brethren from well-known Islamic political movements and organizations, nor others besides them, people of judgement, experience and education, engaged in political affairs.

2. It is the movement of Sayyid Muqtada that has encouraged the occupiers to cross the red lines. And as aside from that, the American occupiers while storming into Iraq and marching towards Baghdad through Najaf and Karbala did not commit the stupidities and insolence with regard to the sanctities in the two holy cities they have committed now.

3. And it is clear that the organization of Sayyid Muqtada - and whoever follows the Sadrist movement - were the first to violate the sanctity of the yard of Haydari Shareef (Imam Ali's shrine in Najaf) when they fired shots inside it at Sayyid Abdul Majeed Al-Kho'ei and killed Sayyid Yasiri within it and wounded Sayyid Majeed and killed Sayyid Hayder Al-Kelidar afterwards. And they are the very same who ignited the fuse of the bloody fight, whose victims among gathered believers were sacrificed over control of the shrine of Imam Hussein (peace be upon him), and it is possible for our lord [Nasrallah] to verify the former by asking his Excellence the Marji' Ayatollah Sheikh Ishaq Al-Fayyadh and from the sons of his Excellence the Marji' Ayatollah Sayyid Muhammad Sa'eed Al-Hakim and the latter with the help of his Excellence Sheikh 'Abdul Mahdi Al-Karbala'i, the representative of the Marji'iyah in Karbala and from his Excellence Sayyid Muhammad Ridha Al-Sistani [the son of Grand Ayatollah Sistani] in
person.

4. The organization of Sayyid Muqtada is now carrying out intimidation of the general public and arrests of citizens, not only those whom they call collaborators with the occupation, the police, owners of stores selling foodstuffs to occupiers and others, but also students of religious sciences opposed to them and some of the members of the Badr organization [SCIRI], in addition to raiding offices of the Da'wa party in Kufa, and you can verify the former by asking his Excellence Sheikh Muhammad Mahdi
Al-Asifi, his Excellence Sheikh Muhammad Hadi Al Radhi, and his Excellence Sheikh Muhammad Al-Yaqubi, and the latter by asking his Excellence Sayyid Omar Al-Hakim and Dr. Ibrahim Al-Ja'fari [GC member].

5. The firing of shots at the great dome of the shrine of Imam Ali (peace be upon him) [in Najaf], according to some specialists was most likely from the weapons of Sayyid Muqtada's followers and not from the weapons of others, inasmuch as the time of shooting was the day fighting flared up in the Valley of Peace cemetery, and there wasn't any fighting from the side of Alnabi street, whereas you claimed in your important sermon that the direction of the shooting was from the side of the Qibla gate [to the shrine], which is the side of Alnabi street.

6. The strike on the home and office of his Excellence Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani happened within the security perimeter whose every span was controlled by the organization of Sayyid Muqtada, and the office of Marji' Ali [Sistani] was in the immediate proximity to the center of the security perimeter of Sayyid Muqtada's organization [office], well guarded, and especially so in the vicinity of both of their offices, and so how can it be conceived - and you being an expert in these matters - that this stringent security perimeter was breached by an unknown organization, which carried out a protracted strike on the home of the Sayyid Marji' [Sistani] and then retreated without the cognizance of the organization of Sayyid Muqtada.
posted by Ken , 6:01 PM Þ 

Cold Turkey
By Kurt Vonnegut

"Many years ago, I was so innocent I still considered it possible that we could become the humane and reasonable America so many members of my generation used to dream of. We dreamed of such an America during the Great Depression, when there were no jobs. And then we fought and often died for that dream during the Second World War, when there was no peace.

But I know now that there is not a chance in hell of America?s becoming humane and reasonable. Because power corrupts us, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power. By saying that our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East? Their morale, like so many bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas." [...]

Cold Turkey -- In These Times
posted by Ken , 5:13 PM Þ 

Des Brown, a Home Office minister said: "Cutting-edge technology will link unique data to a secure database."
Peter Wilson, a spokesman for the Home Office, said: "It is essential we assess customer perceptions and reactions and estimate costs."

Scottish ID 'trial' is rolled out in glasgow
posted by meau meau , 2:33 PM Þ 

1 entry found for sarabande.
sar·a·band also sar·a·bande Audio pronunciation of "sarabande" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (sr-bnd)
n.
1. A fast, erotic dance of the 16th century of Mexico and Spain.
2. A stately court dance of the 17th and 18th centuries, in slow triple time.
3. The music for this dance.

[French sarabande, from Spanish zarabanda.]
posted by Irdial , 12:23 PM Þ 

GLOBAL MISINFORMATION CAMPAIGN WAS USED TO BUILD CASE FOR WAR

By Jonathan S. Landay and Tish Wells

Knight Ridder

WASHINGTON - The former Iraqi exile group that gave the Bush administration exaggerated and fabricated intelligence on Iraq also fed much of the same information to newspapers, news agencies and magazines in the United States, Britain and Australia.

A June 26, 2002, letter from the Iraqi National Congress to the Senate Appropriations Committee listed 108 articles based on information provided by the Iraqi National Congress's Information Collection Program, a U.S.-funded effort to collect intelligence in Iraq.

The Information Collection Program was financed out of the at least $18 million that the U.S. Congress approved for the Iraqi National Congress, led by Ahmed Chalabi, now a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, from 1999 to 2003. The group remains on the Pentagon's payroll.

The assertions in the articles reinforced President Bush's claims that Saddam Hussein should be ousted because he was in league with Osama bin Laden, was developing nuclear weapons and was hiding biological and chemical weapons.

Feeding the information to the news media, as well as to selected administration officials and members of Congress, helped foster an impression that there were multiple sources of intelligence on Iraq's illicit weapons programs and links to bin Laden.

In fact, many of the allegations came from the same half-dozen defectors, were not confirmed by other intelligence and were hotly disputed by intelligence professionals at the CIA, the Defense Department and the State Department.

Nevertheless, U.S. officials and others who supported a pre-emptive invasion quoted the allegations in statements and interviews without running afoul of restrictions on classified information or doubts about the defectors' reliability.

Other Iraqi groups made similar allegations about Iraq's links to terrorism and hidden weapons that also found their way into official administration statements and into news reports, including several by Knight Ridder. [...]

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/world/8197503.htm?1c

So. A handful of "dissidents" concoct some hogwash, everyone buys it and Saddam "The Lion of the Desert" Husayn gets ousted, so that those same dissidents can take power. Astonishing. But this sounds like another defelection away from the oil boys, to make it look like it wasnt all their idea, that they are not soley culpable. It does say that they were on and are still on the US payroll, but the smear is out; they are disinformation artists, and the colonization took place on the back of those lies that were repeated.

As messy as an oil slick!
posted by Irdial , 12:14 PM Þ 

Titles are a useful thing when you are using RSS to view a blogs output. BLOGDIAL posts never had titles because it is run on Blogger. Now that Blogger provides titles, it might be cool to use them, even if they dont appear in the blog itself.

As you probalbly (yes, probalbly) can see, this is a test post, to see if the Atom RSS spits out titles with each post. I would guss that the answer is "yes".

It works! So now, you can put a title on every post that you make on BLOGDIAL, making RSS output much neater! Also, If we ever move to Wordpress or some other non hosted solution, each post will have a title associated with it.

But what about the other 11k+ legacy posts? I hear you ask....
posted by Irdial , 12:00 PM Þ 

warchalking

No, because it doesnt work with iStumbler; I need a tool that will collect access points from me, and BTW, report other access points that I might be near, in my client AND on a website.

If warchalking.org worked like it needed to, I would be able to put in the postcode where I am and then be spat a list of all non-WEP access points, or WEP access points with hacked passwords. But instead, we get porno-like stories of the kind they used to print in Easyrider magazine:
just the other day, I take out my Portege 7010CT, and start NetStumbler. Me and my dad start driving down our neighborhood, and of course, here's what pops up... Linksys Linksys Linksys Default Default Default Default Default Default Default ALL ON CHANNEL SIX (ok, a little much...) I live in a very rich town with a bunch of not-so-bright peeps... But THEN I see the HUMOR! G Money's Connection ThreeStooges Goaway(and it wasn't encrypted...) and MINE! .public )( So, total there was 158 in less than 20 minutes...PRETTY DAMN GOOD!
I really am NOT interested in warchalking; it reveals an activity that should be covert. Imagine if people really warchalked to a great degree. Everyone that came home to find that they had been "chalked" would tell someone, and by 6 degrees of separation, would find out what it meant, and BANG another access point goes WEP (dark). Warckalking is a practice that destroys the very thing that it tries to co-ordinate. Not very smart.

By keeping everything in the iStumbler client (via plugins, which the new version can allow a developer to do), wardriving would become much more efficient and most importantly, stealthy.

Warchalking is doomed to die. Canada already has laws either tabled or on the books against "theft of communication" explicitly outlawing using other peoples wireless connections without permission. If all over london chalk starts appearing on the streets, can you IMAGINE what the reaction would be, especially with the $terrorist_threat wild hysteria in everyones teacups.

No.

Warchalking is a Bad Thing®. Keep everything in networked clients, nice and quiet, efficient and invisible.

Also, save getting your fingers and pockets chalky.
posted by Irdial , 11:30 AM Þ 

Although, there could be a use for reencryptable keys in a single secure location with multiple transactions, Bloomberg would probably like it.
posted by meau meau , 11:29 AM Þ 

a website for collection and presentation / search.

Warchalking.org perhaps? Or even better Consume.net.

The plugin could automagically create the relevant warchalking sign and display that on your screen, it could then cross reference Consume.net and if the access point isn't there, then it could add it as a speculative node and perhaps flag it as added by iStumbler.

Thing is, I think consume.net is for London only, or if not then UK only, not sure if there are any world-wide resources.
posted by alex_tea , 11:15 AM Þ 

Rumsfeld bans camera phones in Iraq

Mobile phones fitted with digital cameras have been banned in US army installations in Iraq on orders from Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Britain's The Business newspaper reported yeterday.

Quoting a Pentagon source, the paper said the US Defence Department believes that some of the damning photos of US soldiers abusing Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad were taken with camera phones.

"Digital cameras, camcorders and cellphones with cameras have been prohibited in military compounds in Iraq," it said, adding that a "total ban throughout the US military" is in the works.

Disturbing new photos of Iraqi prisoner abuse, which the US government had reportedly tried to keep hidden, were published in Friday's Washington Post newspaper.

The photos emerged along with details of testimony from inmates at Abu Ghraib who said they were sexually molested by female soldiers, beaten, sodomised and forced to eat food from toilets. [...]

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/05/23/1085250873479.html
posted by Irdial , 11:04 AM Þ 

Plugins I want for Istumbler:

iSnatcher: a plugin that prompts you to enter the physical address of good access points you find, the results being sent to a website for collection and presentation / search.
posted by Irdial , 9:18 AM Þ 
posted by Irdial , 7:34 AM Þ 
Sunday, May 23, 2004

iRiver
"Supports Ogg Vorbis files"
"Ogg Vorbis files!@#"

Why would you get an iPod?
posted by Barrie , 9:27 PM Þ 

So you could have disposable signatures recoded at either a passport office or airport, collecting them would be futile.

can you give a scenario where this will be used? interesting!

Actually I've decided this is not so good. But I imagined if you've been abroad and you have a pretty good suspicion your passport data has been copied you go to a passport office or in an emergency an embassy and they generate a newly encrypted version of your data.
In the airport situation, suppose you are on a world trip and there's no british embassy around, there'd be a space on the chip where eg. a turing image could be randomly generated - how you'd verify this I'm not sure - so the question. Central verification implies tracking capabilities and we don't want that.

My thinking was once your passport has a verifiable secure signature it could be used to grant access to a 'safe' system which can generate new random encryptions.

Anyhow it needs an actively 'intelligent' system and going by government IT procurement 'dumb' is best, when it works.

And we wouldn't want to push the cost to, oh, £3bn.
posted by meau meau , 6:53 PM Þ 

Gunkanjima reminds me of the bathhouse complex in Spirited Away, I want to imagine that it leaps alive with gods and ghosts.

posted by mary13 , 5:32 PM Þ 
posted by Irdial , 4:28 PM Þ 

Iraqis lose right to sue troops over war crimes

Military win immunity pledge in deal on UN vote

Kamal Ahmed, political editor
Sunday May 23, 2004
The Observer

British and American troops are to be granted immunity from prosecution in Iraq after the crucial 30 June handover, undermining claims that the new Iraqi government will have 'full sovereignty' over the state. [...]

The Guardian
posted by Irdial , 11:02 AM Þ 

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Like I said, Christened!!!!!!
posted by Irdial , 10:51 AM Þ 

Could a chip could allow dynamic reencryption of (part of) the signature?

The chips that we are talking about, PICs and RFID normally, are not processors, but storage devices. They can store any data you like, but they cannot run programmes.

So you could have disposable signatures recoded at either a passport office or airport, collecting them would be futile.

can you give a scenario where this will be used? interesting!
posted by Irdial , 10:37 AM Þ 
posted by meau meau , 10:34 AM Þ 



I had always wanted to visit "Gunkanjima" (The Battle Ship Island) ever since I found out about it on encyclopedia which my father bought me when I was twelve.

I was obsessed by photography while I was studing at the design department of art school. At that time I found out that the coal mine of Gunkan-jima was closing and that people are leaving the island. I decided to visit the island immediately. That was in 1974, I was at the age of 23.

A shock ran through my body when I encountered the atmosphere of the island, which was beyond my imagination. I stayed at the island and shot photos for three months wntil it was completely vacant.

Since then, I spent a lot of time on the island and oberved the changes. The island has been slowly ruined by weathering. The traces of life had long been lost. The quietness, loneliness and dreadfulness had not been changed. It is especially fearful at night, but it is something not exchangeable to the freedom of been completely alone. At night, I would sleep under the starry sky and idle through my wisionary trip.

The queer atmosphere detached from daily life is concealed in this island which had been completely isolated from the rest of the world, in the deep darkness between this world and the other.
posted by chriszanf , 10:18 AM Þ 

Christened

Dubbed

-

Chips and barcodes:

Could a chip could allow dynamic reencryption of (part of) the signature?
So you could have disposable signatures recoded at either a passport office or airport, collecting them would be futile.

Would that be a strength or a weakness (would it need a relay back to a database to confirm the new signature?)
posted by meau meau , 10:15 AM Þ 
posted by Irdial , 10:07 AM Þ 
Home
 
People
 
Services
 
Articles
 
News
 
About


Subscribe to “Irdial-List” Our Mailing List.
The Blarchives are here.
The Blogs on irdial.com are powered by WordPress.
Here is the Blogdial Atom XML feed.
Here is the Blogdial Feedburner XML feed.
Open Content 1995-2005 Irdialani Limited. All Rights Relinquished where applicable.
Links: STAND FIPR PI PF NUFORC M2M SB FTT FFF RMS A-SCROB ONGAKU Blogroll BLOGDIAL WOE CHEZ MANNING