Saturday, February 26, 2005

ps: If you're in London I am playing some records later at DumbFunk.
posted by alex_tea , 7:20 PM Þ 

Alun, try looking at the MacFixIt Forums and the Apple Support Forums, you might find something there. Also try the MacOSX Hints Forums
posted by alex_tea , 7:15 PM Þ 

This is part of the Samaritans new campaign, obviously not wise to ECHELON
posted by meau meau , 6:40 PM Þ 

But you probably did that part right?

Yup. Latest 10.3.8 hasn't helped. Everything backed up.
Hmmm.

This is when I'm reminded I have no idea what's going on under the bonnet.
posted by Alun , 5:34 PM Þ 

But you probably did that part right?

Yup. Latest 10.3.8 hasn't helped. Everything backed up.
Hmmm.

This is when I'm reminded I have no idea what's going on under the bonnet.
posted by Alun , 5:34 PM Þ 
posted by Irdial , 2:36 PM Þ 

First of all, back up everything immediately.
Then run software update. But you probably did that part right?
posted by Irdial , 1:56 PM Þ 

My mac has gone very slow at startup, after login. Sometimes up to a minute.
And no switch-on "bAAAH!" pronouncement anymore, either.
Any ideas what I should be looking at first?

Ta very much.
posted by Alun , 12:34 PM Þ 

Hmmm... looks like there are a few more smart folk budding up:

"We appeal to every citizen and to the world community in general to aid in stopping the war in Iraq. There exist a number of legal ways of expressing our disapproval and indignation - e.g. meetings, parades, open letters, probably going as far as boycotting American goods. Though the effect they produce is close to insignificant. Just recall USA's onslaught on Yugoslavia: we had diplomatic notes of protest, strikes and what not. The outcome? NONE. It only pays to talk to the US government on their own level, that is on the level of force. Apparently no other language can be understood in the White House and the Pentagon - alas!

Now, what can an ordinary law-abiding citizen like you and me come up with, where all the united efforts of world community have failed? Undoubtedly a way out exists, and it is not that sophisticated. Sell your dollar savings. Yes, it is to you that we are addressing - to the person reading these words. Take your green banknotes sporting the portraits of US presidents, go out as far as the nearest exchange office and exchange them for your local currency (if you are a patriot) or for euros (for example). It is not only saving your money from the looming dollar devaluation (for the last year the dollar droped 23% compared to the euro) that you will achieve performing the said exchange, but - which is more - you will contribute to the efforts aimed at stopping the war in Iraq. What makes us so confident about it, you are likely to wonder. The answer is "by probing into the way American economy operates"."

Sell Dollars, via Anomalog
posted by Barrie , 7:29 AM Þ 
Friday, February 25, 2005

Get the kids started early, so that they don't question it when they are older and collared with their RFID's!!!!

RFID's used in US School.

"When students walked into class, an RFID scanner mounted above the door recorded it, pumped out the roll on a teacher's wireless Palm Pilot and stored the attendance figures on a central computer."
posted by telle goode , 3:07 PM Þ 


As you drive into Maine, USA.. gas tanks with lobster graphics greet you,
posted by telle goode , 4:15 AM Þ 
Thursday, February 24, 2005

Milk, milk, lemonade
Round the corner chocolate's made
posted by Alun , 2:17 PM Þ 

Now:



This is Six Degrees of Separation, spread out in front of your eyes!
posted by Irdial , 12:32 PM Þ 

My flickr name is:
meau meau
posted by meau meau , 11:23 AM Þ 

And now:

http://www.marumushi.com/apps/flickrgraph/

you can see the threads passing through us.
posted by Irdial , 11:15 AM Þ 

I'm flickrd

Here
posted by captain davros , 12:05 AM Þ 
Wednesday, February 23, 2005
posted by meau meau , 5:14 PM Þ 

Am I missing something or isn't this what SubEthaEdit does?

Not quite. I think what Akin was referring to is limited to IM applications. Basically when the other party is typing their reply to you, the incomplete message, or an indication of such is shown so you know what the lag is for.

In iChat you get an ellipsis (…) (on Rendezvous you have the option to see text as it is typed), MSN Messenger shows you an icon with the text "Other user is currently typing" or something similar.

In broader terms, it is exactly what SubEthaEdit does.
posted by alex_tea , 5:08 PM Þ 

American soldiers traumatised by fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan are to be offered the drug ecstasy to help free them of flashbacks and recurring nightmares.

The US food and drug administration has given the go-ahead for the soldiers to be included in an experiment to see if MDMA, the active ingredient in ecstasy, can treat post-traumatic stress disorder.

http://society.guardian.co.uk/drugsandalcohol/story/0,8150,1416150,00.html
posted by chriszanf , 2:28 PM Þ 

An interesting short documentary about sampling and copyright. [40Mb quicktime]

Shortest job I had was installing some network cabling in some council offices. We checked the route and found it had to be done out of hours. I was there about 45 minutes, after which I went home.

Shortest one I quit from was another contract where the job was a complete mess and the guy running it was an over-stressed moron. I walked after 3 hours.

I just walked from a contract today funnily enough. I had been there 3 weeks but the guy running the job had allowed supplies to run out and so we were all standing around for 2 hours yesterday, awaiting a non-appearing delivery. Went in this morning and the delivery hadn't arrived after 2 hours. Then found out that the guy had ordered only 20 boxes of cable and 20 panels yet there was another 2 floors to install with about 1500 lines on each.
posted by chriszanf , 1:35 PM Þ 

Brian Barder's Blog Boasts Bravado, Bravo Brian Barder, Blogger:

Here's what I have sent to the MPs, etc.:

>>This is from Brian Barder, a former member of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission who resigned early last year because of my objection to the extension of SIAC's remit to include appeals against detention without trial, a system that I was denouncing as abhorrent long before the law lords finally condemned it. I have been campaigning against the home secretary's even more objectionable house arrest proposals in articles in the Guardian, in letters to the Guardian, the Times and the Independent, and in numerous television and radio interviews.[...]


Although it's a shame that the government only listens to advice it likes no matter the source
posted by meau meau , 12:16 PM Þ 

Did you know that Skype does not have the 'other person is typing' in the IM part of the package

Am I missing something or isn't this what SubEthaEdit does?
Insane.
posted by meau meau , 9:28 AM Þ 

What's the shortest amount of time anyone here has held down a job for?

About six hours, in a clothes shop on Carnaby Street which is no longer there. I didn't want the job, hated the clothes and was a moody 18 year old. A few weeks later I started working at FatCat.
posted by alex_tea , 9:10 AM Þ 

Security

by Hunter S. Thompson (1955).


Security ... what does this word mean in relation to life as we know it today? For the most part, it means safety and freedom from worry. It is said to be the end that all men strive for; but is security a utopian goal or is it another word for rut?

Let us visualize the secure man; and by this term, I mean a man who has settled for financial arid personal security for his goal in life. In general, he is a man who has pushed ambition and initiative aside and settled down, so to speak, in a boring, but safe and comfortable rut for the rest of his life. His future is but an extension of his present, and he accepts it as such with a complacent shrug of his shoulders. His ideas and ideals are those of society in general and he is accepted as a respectable, but average and prosaic man. But is he a man? has he any self-respect or pride in himself? How could he, when he has risked nothing and gained nothing? What does he think when he sees his youthful dreams of adventure, accomplishment, travel and romance buried under the cloak of conformity? How does he feel when he realizes that be has barely tasted the meal of life; when he sees the prison he has made for himself in pursuit of the almighty dollar? If he thinks this is all well and good, fine, but think of the tragedy of a man who has sacrificed his freedom on the altar of security, and wishes he could turn back the hands of time. A man is to be pitied who lacked the courage to accept the challenge of freedom and depart from the cushion of security and see life as it is instead of living it second-band. Life his by-passed this man and he has watched from a secure place, afraid to seek anything better What has he done except to sit and wait for the tomorrow which never comes?

Turn back the pages of history and see the men who have shaped the destiny of the world. Security was never theirs, but they lived rather than existed. Where would the world he if all men had sought security and not taken risks or gambled with their lives on the chance that, if they won, life would be different and richer? It is from the bystanders (who are in the vast majority) that we receive the propaganda that life is not worth living, that life is drudgery, that the ambitions of youth must he laid aside for a life which is but a painful wait for death. These are the ones who squeeze what excitement they can from life out of the imaginations and experiences of others through books and movies. These are the insignificant and forgotten men who preach conformity because it is all they know. These are the men who dream at night of what could have been, but who wake at dawn to take their places at the now- familiar rut and to merely exist through another day. For them, the romance of life is long dead and they are forced to go through the years on a treadmill, cursing their existence, yet afraid to die because of the unknown which faces them after death. They lacked the only true courage: the kind which enables men to face the unknown regardless of the consequences.

As an afterthought, it seems hardly proper to write of life without once mentioning happiness; so we shall let the reader answer this question for himself: who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?

[...]

Thanks to Ram for this one: http://www.ram.org/contrib/security.html

posted by Irdial , 1:21 AM Þ 

What's the shortest amount of time anyone here has held down a job for?
posted by captain davros , 12:06 AM Þ 
Tuesday, February 22, 2005

In case you missed this one:

Either Microsoft is getting rather desparate in their search for
intellectual property, or they have now switched to actively subverting
the whole notion of software patents by filing truly ridiculous
applications:

http://appft1.uspto.gov/

United States Patent Application 20040230959
Vick, Paul A. JR. ; et al.

A system, method and computer-readable medium support the use of a
single operator that allows a comparison of two variables to determine
if the two variables point to the same location in memory.

What is claimed:

1. A system for determining if two operands point to different locations
in memory, the system comprising: a compiler for receiving source code
and generating executable code from the source code, the source code
comprising an expression comprising an operator associated with a first
operand and a second operand, the expression evaluating to true when the
first operand and the second operand point to different memory
locations.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the compiler is a BASIC-derived
programming language compiler.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the operator is IsNot.

...

Yes, they are talking about the <> (Pascal), != (C, C++, C#, Perl, ...)
or /= (Ada) operator applied to pointer variables.

[...]

http://www.fipr.org/
Thats why you need to develop your software in the free world, ie, Europe. Why should everyone need to constanly fight this sort of garbage? Its a pointless waste of energy.

Did you know that Skype does not have the 'other person is typing' in the IM part of the package because M$ owns the patent on that feature?

I'm not making this up; a company in Estonia will not give the users of its software a feature because of a US patent.
posted by Irdial , 7:20 PM Þ 
posted by Claus Eggers , 5:18 PM Þ 

LONDON, England -- The British government has unveiled a new anti-terror bill that include powers of house arrest, but it says there is no immediate need to detain anyone [...]
CNN

Today was the first reading, tomorrow the second, next monday the third for the Bill. Before the Lords knock it back (one hopes). Disgraceful. Repent at leisure.

Any way really interesting thing in the first sentence is that "there is no immediate need to detain anyone" does this mean that those in Belmarsh will be freed if the act is passed? If so why can they not be freed right away? Why are the whole population's rights being stolen in this way if there is no need for the proposed powers to be used?

-

This photo of Clunk makes him look much like a big thumb don't you think? Citizens under the thumb, I see a cartoon!
posted by meau meau , 3:11 PM Þ 
Monday, February 21, 2005

http://www.freeantennas.com/projects/template/

Drool not from the prospect of eating so much salt, but from all the free broadband!
posted by Irdial , 5:16 PM Þ 

posted by chriszanf , 8:56 AM Þ 
Sunday, February 20, 2005

posted by meau meau , 8:04 PM Þ 

Aboard Air CIA

The agency ran a secret charter service, shuttling detainees to interrogation facilities worldwide. Was it legal? What's next? A NEWSWEEK investigation.

By Michael Hirsh, Mark Hosenball and John Barry
Newsweek

Feb. 28 issue - Like many detainees with tales of abuse, Khaled el-Masri had a hard time getting people to believe him. Even his wife didn't know what to make of his abrupt, five-month disappearance last year. Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent, says he was taken off a bus in Macedonia in south-central Europe while on holiday on Dec. 31, 2003, then whisked in handcuffs to a motel outside the capital city of Skopje. Three weeks later, on the evening of Jan. 23, 2004, he was brought blindfolded aboard a jet with engines noisily revving, according to his lawyer, Manfred Gnjidic. Masri says he climbed high stairs "like onto a regular passenger airplane" and was chained to clamps on the bare metal floor and wall of the jet.


Masri says he was then flown to Afghanistan, where at a U.S. prison facility he was shackled, repeatedly punched and questioned about extremists at his mosque in Ulm, Germany. Finally released months later, the still-mystified Masri was deposited on a deserted road leading into Macedonia, where he brokenly tried to describe his nightmarish odyssey to a border guard. "The man was laughing at me," Masri told The New York Times, which disclosed his story last month. "He said: 'Don't tell that story to anyone because no one will believe it. Everyone will laugh.' "

No one's laughing these days, least of all the CIA. NEWSWEEK has obtained previously unpublished flight plans indicating the agency has been operating a Boeing 737 as part of a top-secret global charter servicing clandestine interrogation facilities used in the war on terror. And the Boeing's flight information, detailed to the day, seems to confirm Masri's tale of abduction. Gnjidic, Masri's lawyer, called the information "very, very important" to his case, which is being investigated as a kidnapping by a Munich prosecutor. In what could prove embarrassing to President Bush, Gnjidic added that a German TV station was planning to feature Masri's tale ahead of Bush's much-touted trip to Germany this week. German Interior Minister Otto Schily recently visited CIA Director Porter Goss to discuss the case, and German sources tell NEWSWEEK that Schily was seeking an apology. CIA officials declined to comment on that meeting or any aspect of Masri's story.

The evidence backing up Masri's account of being "snatched" by American operatives is only the latest blow to the CIA in the ongoing detention-abuse scandal. Together with previously disclosed flight plans of a smaller Gulfstream V jet, the Boeing 737's travels are further evidence that a global "ghost" prison system, where terror suspects are secretly interrogated, is being operated by the CIA. Several of the Gulfstream flights allegedly correlate with other "renditions," the controversial practice of secretly spiriting suspects to other countries without due process. "The more evidence that comes out, the clearer it is that there's been a stunning failure of accountability," says lawyer John Sifton of Human Rights Watch.

[...]

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6999272/site/newsweek/

The Stalinization of planet Earth.

What this does show however, is that they have not made the final conversion; normally when people are dissapeared, they just kill them and thats the end of it; people dissapear every day, and nothing is done or said about it. They might have let this guy go to find out who he is connected to...who knows...and who knows how many they have murdered and then ground up into dog meat.

Remember; this is what they want you to know; MSNBC doesnt print news of outrageous scandals in real time; normally you have to wait twenty years for them to get a hold of something, and even then, they might not run with it.

posted by Irdial , 12:58 PM Þ 
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