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 13 Nov 2007 @ 16:55, by jhs. Technology
Important Security Update for Girapoli Available
November 13, 2007. The International Girapoli Foundation releases an important security update for Girapoli. All users should upgrade to the latest version of the Girapoli Preview Release. A patch is available for current Preview Release users.
Getting the Update:
* Girapoli Preview Release (Girapoli 0.10) users: To update Girapoli, open your Polar Dynamics 1 book and go to the Advanced section. Add this security bulletin together with a printout of the Girapoli procedures on this website. You will need to restart Girapoli after installing the patch.
* For users of versions prior to Prevew Release, study Polar Dynamics and the Girapoli procedures on this website BEFORE attempting to start up Girapoli.
Questions & Answers:
How does this security vulnerability expose the user? More >
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 12 Nov 2007 @ 13:08, by magical_melody. Extraterrestrials
Relationship Report for November 2007:
The Key Phrase for this month: RECONNECT and RE-MEMBER!
Hello Everyone,
We have lots to share with you in this issue. Just a quick acknowledgement because it was always a favourite holiday of Alana's. In North America, Thanksgiving is soon to be celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November on the 22nd. There are historical stories tied to this holiday which are based on lies; however many create their own personal meaning for this holiday as they continue to celebrate by sharing a specially prepared banquet as a way of acknowledging what each is most grateful for in their lives. Happy Thanksgiving to all of you who celebrate the holiday, (Canadians celebrated Thanksgiving in October), and to those who don't, its a wonderful celebration ritual one can choose to create anytime of the year.
We invite you to read about the upcoming Mayan Prophecy Elders meeting
and the Fifth Hoop by Larry Merculieff.
You may like to view these 2 presentations Awaken and Side with Travis. Turn your speakers up and ENJOY!
Photo Details:
Witnessed in Waterbury, CT, USA
May 26, 1987
Report Summary:
Randy Etting, a resident of Newtown, was taking a walk outside his home. A commercial airline pilot with over 30 years experience, he always looked at the sky, He saw a number of orange and red lights approaching from the west. He got his binoculars and called his neighbors to come outside. The object by this time was a great deal closer and seemed to be over I-84, just east of Etting's home. The lights were shimmering like distortion from engine heat, but he could hear no sound.
As the UFO passed over I-84, cars in both the east and west bound lanes began pulling over and stopping. The UFO displayed a semi-circular pattern of very bright multicolored lights. Five motorists reported that, as the object became visible, a number of cars lost power and had to pull off the highway. A State Police officer [who wishes to remain anonymous] sent to investigate photographed the object.
Dr. Bruce Maccabee... [analysed the photo]. His findings indicate the object was huge, perhaps over a thousand feet across, and that the lights showed a definite pattern. He also indicated the lights seemed to have been flashing very quickly in some sort of sequence, giving the impression that some were out of focus while others were sharp. Photo from UFO Evidence Site More >
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 12 Nov 2007 @ 11:23, by jazzolog. Violence, War
Does one really have to fret about enlightenment? No matter what road I travel, I'm going home.
---Shinso
To find the universal elements enough; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter...to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird's nest or a wildflower in spring---these are some of the rewards of the simple life.
---John Burroughs
I know there is no good in my trying to explain to you why I am away from home—war doesn’t make sense even when you are grown up.
---(Lt.) Henry Fonda to his children during World War II
In the photo, former President George H.W. Bush makes his entrance to his presidential museum during a rededication ceremony with Army Sgt. 1st Class Mike Elliott with the Golden Knights parachute team in College Station, Texas, on Saturday, Nov. 10, 2007. (AP Photo/College Station Eagle, Gabriel Chmielewski)
From: "Annie Warmke"
To: "Richard Carlson"
Sent: Sunday, November 11, 2007 10:05 AM
Subject: happy veteran's day
> Happy Veteran's Day!
> This morning the local NPR station played their favorite tunes for "Happy
> Veteran's Day" and each year after about 15 minutes I have to turn the radio
> off.
>
> The songs are full of one message - pain. Some sing about the pain of going
> to war. Others tell the story of losing a limb, or losing children. They
> all tell a story that leads me to the same conclusion each year. War is
> hell and it is not the solution.
>
> So today I've turned off the radio earlier than usual and begun to wonder if
> that's not what America is doing each morning when the radio offers the
> morning "war report" as I call it. I'm wondering how much longer we'll turn
> off or tune out the news of death and destruction that is happening in our
> names.
>
> The elections this last week remind me that nothing so far has changed. We're
> still up to our eyeballs in corruption in the government. The Democrats
> refuse to take a stand that actually changes anything on any issue - you
> pick one and you'll see what I mean.
>
> As I look out the window at the colorful leaves on the trees - the trees
> that ought to be naked - I am reminded that we're at war in many places on
> this earth, and it seems we're losing them all.
>
> Annie Warmke is an activist, writer and farmer who lives at Blue Rock
> Station with her family of humans, llamas, chickens, goats, cats and her
> French-speaking dog, Rosie.
Dear Annie,
I haven't been to a Veterans Day parade in Athens in a couple years. I guess they've been on weekends, but when kids are in class a bunch of schools march and show up or something. Usually people on the staff put the pressure on or the principal is gung ho, and whole elementary schools turn out. The last couple have been particularly patriotic in the cloying way that makes me uncomfortable. That was before there was more of a general mood of We Support The Soldiers But Not This War. Of course in the military-trained mind---and for the kind of people who run parades like this---there's no such thing as not supporting a war, because your commander has issued an order.
As a kid, it still was Armistice Day. I knew it was about the end of World War I, at 11:00 on 11/11 in some long ago year (1918) but I didn't know what any of that was about. Few others did either, and there certainly weren't a lot of festivities. I wonder if anybody today knows what World War I was about. We sent 2 million soldiers to France, and 100,000 didn't come back. I read in the New York Times this morning, only one veteran from that war remains alive in the States. Garrison Keillor said Saturday World War II was just World War I continued...and I do remember some history classes in college supported that notion. I have a friend who claims the continuous war of the Twentieth Century was about only one thing: oil.
Armistice Day became Veterans Day as Decoration Day became Memorial Day and we added "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance all in the mid-1950s. A general for our president, the McCarthy Era, and the Cold War geared us up to be tough guys. Now we rattle our sabers anytime we feel like it, no one tells us what to do, and we say anything we want to the other nations. The other day Bush told the Pakistani prime minister to take off his uniform because you can't be a military commander and the president at the same time. Huh?
I hear in Baghdad they're claiming the suicide bombings have lessened considerably. That's a good thing...and I suppose we should credit the "surge." But are the inSURGEnts all dead now...or running away into the desert? Or have they been redirected? Are they massing somewhere else? If so, I wonder where that could be? Let's see, what staunch ally of the United States has nuclear weapons but is teetering into instability? Where is there Emergency Control for the next 2 months until more great democratic elections will be held to celebrate freedom? Where are suicide bombings increasing? And where is Osama Bin Laden, dead or alive? The answers to these and other questions will be revealed in forthcoming exciting episodes---or maybe later today. More >
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 10 Nov 2007 @ 04:55, by judih. Ideas, Creativity
There are bombs, there are victims of brainwash, there are mourners, wounded, there are sounds that do not cease More >
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 8 Nov 2007 @ 01:49, by ming. Communities
Fine Article at World Changing by Jon Lebkowsky about social networks and the value of connections. I'll excerpt a good explanation of some of the basics for discussing that:The conversation about social network value starts with a couple of assertions, or "laws," that have influenced the evolution of both technical and social networks:
Metcalfe's Law: The value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of endpoints.
Reed's Law: The utility of large networks, particularly social networks, can scale exponentially with the size of the network.
The first law, authored by Ethernet creator Bob Metcalfe, describes how the value of a communications network grows with the square of the number of people or devices it connects. Forgetting the math behind this assertion, what he's really saying is that the value grows faster than the number of access points.
Metcalfe coined another term, network effect, to describe the increase in value of a good or service as it's adopted by more and more people. This makes sense: If only one guy has a telephone, it's not valuable at all, but as more and more people acquire phones, value increases because the potential for connection increases. When I first got an email account in the 1980's, its value was practically zero because there were so few email users and nobody I knew had it. From a personal perspective, as more people used email, and especially as more people I knew got accounts, the more valuable it became. From a global perspective, email has significant value now because so many people have accounts. Even the homeless guy sleeping in the park is liable to have a free email account that he can access at the library.
(Increased value can also have a down side. Because the network is so valuable, it creates a negative, in that it creates value for the spammers who make my life, and probably yours, miserable.)
Metcalfe was influential early on, but David Reed went a step further, and a lot of us who've been co-creating the "Web 2.0" world had an "aha moment" when we read his piece about the "sneaky exponential" and the real power of community building... I think it is important to stress that we're talking about the potential value of a network. Just because you can call everybody in the world on the phone doesn't mean that you will or that much will come out of it. There's lot more potential there than if you didn't have phones, of course. But even in a vast network where one can form groups and collaborate, the actual value is a small fraction of the potential value. I'm a member of a lot of groups in places like Facebook, a bunch of which sound great, are along the lines of things I'm very interested in, and that are populated by people I like. And yet I rarely visit them, and not much comes out of it.
There are a lot of bottlenecks that limit network value. Bandwidth issues, and lack of ways of organizing stuff. I have no great way of processing huge amounts of information because I don't have time to figure out what to do with it, and even though there is too much, there is also too little, so I don't necessarily perceive my connection with it, or the relevance for me.
There's of course Dunbar's Number, which says that one can only maintain a meaningful social relationship with 150 people at the same time. There's that we can only keep our conscious attention on 5-7 things at the same time. And there's that computers don't help us much in overcoming such attention limits, even though they potentially could. Software does help us keep track of more things at the same time, and more things that are dispersed around the world in different places and different fields. And software does help me pay attention. But it just as much scatters my attention.
There's a lot of software that hasn't been invented yet, which usually appears in science fiction, where one has some kind of symbiotic relationship with a computer and network, which makes us smarter, staying conscious of more stuff. But it doesn't really have to be in the form of a metaphysical merging with some big Singularity AI thing. Somebody has to write the software, and they could potentially do so now.
We could get closer to the potential value of a network if I could see more of it. Even though the phone network is a relatively "simple" to understand network, I can't see it, I can't perceive it. I can see it like I can see the world through a keyhole. I can call one number at a time, or maybe two if I have call waiting, or a few dozen in a conference call. But nothing close to the few billion numbers there really are. I can get a list of people to call from a phonebook, a big stack of paper, sorted alphabetically, covering only a small geographical region. I can get much more online, but I can still only see it a limited number of ways, and organized by place, name and business. I can't really see the potential.
I can see much more in online social networks, like people's pictures, their interests, their activities, where they go, what they do, who they know. At least to a certain extent. If I already know them well, it might be enough to stay connected in a useful way. If I don't, it might still be like the difference between a travel brochure and the actual journey. The brochure might have feeds and videos, but I'm still not there. My computer screen is still like a keyhole.
In some kind of idealized future cyberspace everything will be connected and all information will be cross-indexed and we'll have access to in a computer-assisted way. Hopefully, when we figure out how. We can demonstrate some of it on a relatively small scale, and it is available if we put our mind to it. If I've read a book, and I no longer need it, I might be happy to give it away or exchange it with somebody else for another book which I might like to read, and which that person no longer needs. There are websites that will let you do exactly such an exchange. But you have to really decide that it is important, and to join it, sign up, type in the books you have available, mail them, etc. I'd of course want it to be more automatic, and thoroughly optimized. It would be easier if it were a person a couple of streets away who wanted my book, and easier if I didn't have to first join a website and type in the information about it.
The potentially exponential value of a network comes about only if all information is linked up. If I can always find the very best information available, and the exact best people to work with, and the exact right time to do stuff, everything changes, of course. The Internet didn't yet magically make that happen, even if we suspected that maybe it would.
So, how can we connect more, with more people? How can we use social software to get us beyond more of the limitations we're still taking with us from the non-wired world. I.e. how many things or how many people we can keep track of at one time. Connections will become more valuable if they can produce value even when I'm not paying attention to them. Paying attention, even when I'm not paying attention. Staying connected even when I don't connect. More >
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 7 Nov 2007 @ 21:08, by jazzolog. Globalization
A cricket chirps and is silent.
The guttering lamp sinks and flairs up again.
Outside the window evening rain is heard.
It is the banana plant that speaks of it first.
---Po Chu-I
Only in solitude do we find ourselves.
---Miguel De Unamuno
It is our mind, and that alone, that chains us or sets us free.
---Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
In the photo another American dignitary (in this case Paul Bremer) enjoys real freedom out in the world.
I had thought the Blackwater story would just fade away like all the others. There didn't seem to be anything different about it than countless other news items about the degradation of the American soul in these years of Bush administration. The private security firm, with rightwing and evangelical roots and bucks, did just what the Rove textbook tells the Bushies to do when under scrutiny: loom bigger than they are! If Congress or the press wants to talk to you, blow them off fast with how important the work is you're doing for the American people...and you just don't have time for this nonsense. Out came the announcements that Blackwater not only provides a private army for your convenience...but a private CIA too. Total Intelligence Solutions---and we do mean TOTAL. [link] What more can a good boy with an inherited fortune do? He's done it by the Book---both Rove's and Jesus'.
But type "Blackwater" in Google News Search right now, and see what comes up. Well over a month later the story lives on. Finally something has brought the press alive. This no-bid contract has captured it all. It's at the black heart of how things are done now. And Americans are ashamed and outraged...and the media knows it...and it's about time! Will anything actually get done? The status quo tumbles over itself to keep things humming along as if normal. Kucinich introduces impeachment of Cheney on the House floor yesterday, and it took the administrators an hour to quiet things down and shuffle the motion off to committee---where they hope it will disappear. [link] But it wasn't easy. People wanted to debate. People wanted to talk. No no, was the answer, Congress is too busy with really important business to become bogged down in this petty political maneuvering. But everyone knows now such remarks from the administrators are laughable and desperate. No one can keep the lid on the corruption forever.
I write and post stuff at 4 different sites on the Net...and sometimes more, and when I sent out and put up Part 1 about Blackwater, back in September, comments started to show up at 2 of the locations. And they haven't stopped. At Blogspot the people now are launched into discussion about "pure" democracy, and what a republic is, town meetings and whether the Internet can save or advance Freedom of Speech. When this happens at a blog it can be very difficult to join in. At really big ones you can find hundreds of comments, often involving give and take among a few participants that goes on for days. It's hard for a newcomer to sort out...and usually such threads just die because there's too much scrolling, you can't find that comment you wanted to reference, and nothing's ever going to get done about it anyway. But it's wonderful to me when people let loose and express themselves somewhere! So I decided this time to start a Part 2 about Blackwater...and all the topic involves. That includes torture and waterboarding, which Mukasey says he can't discuss because he hasn't been "briefed," and the President backs him up. That includes secrecy and looting the treasury. It includes everything.
If you're looking for the energy to get started on a comment or a reply, you can't do better than Keith Olbermann's talk Monday night about viewing the Presidency as Criminal Conspiracy. Not since Tom Paine, folks! More >
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7 Nov 2007 @ 00:51, by ming. Entrepreneurs, Money Making
Metafilter: James Wilson's article in Commentary magazine talks about Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam's essay recently published in Scandinavian Political Studies. In the essay, Putnam publicizes the findings of his research, conducted in rural districts, towns, and cities, whose conclusion establishes that diverse neighborhoods show less "social capital" because ethnically diverse residents seem to distrust each other.
Putnam has discovered that friendship, carpooling, participating in local projects is much lower in ethnically heterogeneous communities than in homogeneous ones. His research reveals that the exception to the tendency of diversity to inhibit "social trust" occurs in ethnically diverse military or religious settings as well as in social circles with intermarried couples. Wilson adds sports teams to the list of these exceptional places where ethnically different people click well. Duh. One doesn't create community just by putting people next to each other. But if that's what one does, yes, it is more likely that the people who're most similar will develop relationships and social trust. Everything else being equal, the white middleclass working family with kids is likely to relate to their neighbors who also are white middleclass working families with kids, and they can babysit for each other, and come to each other's barbecues, and meet when they're picking the kids up from school in their minivans. And maybe they're less clear on how to relate to the unemployed black guy across the street who's sitting in front of his house all day.
Diverse groups of people are more likely to become bonded together, not just by proximity, but by either a common purpose or a shared history. If you were in the army together, or you work in the same company, the diversity is not so likely to get in the way.
And if social capital is a kind of capital, it would be reasonable to expect that differences generate potential value, and bigger differences can create more value. Meaning, we're worth more to each other, notbecause we're the same, but because something we do is complementary to what the others do. Even if you're similar people, a lot of the value in the social relation come from the areas where there's a difference. If nothing else, that your neighbors are home on a day when you want to go out, so they can babysit. But bigger differences can produce more value. If one of your neighbors is a auto mechanic, and you're a klutz, there's obviously some value in getting along well with him, even if he has a different "profile" from you, as he can repair your car. And if there's something else you can do that he can't, great.
So, the diversity IS the social capital to a large degree. Except for that it doesn't get activated unless the parties somehow get close enough together to form some links between them. Which is a little bit of a puzzle, of course. More >
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6 Nov 2007 @ 10:41, by swanny. Neighborhood
A Modern Parable
It was on around 1963. I was around 7 years old walking with a similar aged neighbour to the mall of the day. As we approached the drugstore,
I happened to look down and to the left on the ground lay a twenty dollar bill, sitting still in the windless day. With great excitement,
I exclaimed my find out loud, where upon the neighbour looked down, strode forward, picked the bill up and confidently put it in his pocket.
The story or lesson would have ended there perhaps but later in the day I, feeling somewhat cheated or confused sought to approach an authority
on the matter, so went to the neighbours house and explained the situation to the acquaintances parents. I was calmly shown the
door and told something to the effect of "Get a Life".
Alrighty then so what does such a lesson or what could such a lesson teach. "Every human for themselves" perhaps or "Possession 10/10ths of the Law"
or "We're all in this alone". Yes perhaps but I suppose I found such lessons somewhat counterintuitive and zero sum gameish and despite the
rude awakening still maintain perhaps a some what modified Golden Rule approach. I suppose I realized that my acquaintance was not particularly
fair quality company and perhaps refrained from acquaintancing simply because why hang around those who are unbent to sharing, as perhaps
I suppose I stubbornly still insisted that we have a duty somewhat to share despite the fact that our fellows are somewhat ingratious and undeserving.
To share in the bounties and lessons and yes misfortunes perhaps of this world as I share this with you now.
Now I realize I may be alone in this philosophy or in its actual practice as many espose such but fail to act and by sharing thus mark myself as a fool perhaps
but well I put it out there as it were to see what the court of the spirit will do with it. And I suppose it is the court of the spirit that has the final say.
Is there any mutual profit in this tale for the benefit of the perhaps the future? Perhaps and perhaps not. We take our chances I suppose with the winds of fortune.
A. G. Jonas
Canada
(c) 2007
Nov. 6, 2007 More >
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5 Nov 2007 @ 21:37, by vaxen. Preparedness, Self-Reliance
THIS IS MY PLACE OF "LIVE FREE OR DIE."
Damn, Jeff, sorry - but I've just got to re-publish this. Can't wait for your permission, though I've asked you, but I know it'll be OK with you and Lew cause we are of one mind where the subject matter is concerned.
To say that my heart hurts for my people is an understatement. Thanks a million for your delineation of that which we are facing unarmed and naked in the 'shades of night' that have befallen us. Thanks, man...
===
'Thought Crimes,' HR 1955 Passed With 404 Votes
Submit, Ye Citizens, Silently to State Murder
by Jeff Knaebel
INTRODUCTION
The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed HR 1955, titled the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007. It was passed with 404 votes in favor.
A close reading within an historical context – keeping especially in mind the Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act of 2006 and Presidential Executive Orders, pursuant to which the government has engaged in massive surveillance of its own citizens, as well as detentions, extraordinary renditions, assassinations, and torture – leads me to the following conclusions:
This is a "Thought Crime" bill of the type so often discussed in an Orwellian context.
It specifically targets the civilian population of the United States.
It defines "Violent Radicalization" as promoting any belief system that the government considers to be extremist.
"Homegrown Terrorism" and "Violent Radicalization" are defined as thought crimes.
Since the bill does not provide a specific definition of extremist belief system, it will be whatever the government at any given time deems it to be.
A few extracts of the Bill are presented below to show you its tone or "flavor."
"(2) VIOLENT RADICALIZATION- The term `violent radicalization’ means the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system… to advance political, religious, or social change."
SECTION 899B. FINDINGS.
"(3) The Internet has aided in facilitating violent radicalization, ideologically based violence, and the homegrown terrorism process in the United States by providing access to broad and constant streams of terrorist-related propaganda to United States citizens."
"(6) The potential rise of self radicalized, unaffiliated terrorists domestically cannot be easily prevented through traditional Federal intelligence or law enforcement efforts, and requires the incorporation of State and local solutions."
Section 899D of the bill establishes a Center for the Study of Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism in the United States. This will be an institution affiliated with the Department of Homeland Security. It will study and determine how to detain thought criminals. More >
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  5 Nov 2007 @ 01:05, by magical_melody. Environment, Ecology
THE MAYAN PROPHECY PILGRIMAGE - (Also see Mayan Calendar)
Mayan Prophecy - Elders Gathering 26-27 November, 2007 More >
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<< Newer entries Page: 1 ... 42 43 44 45 46 ... 279 Older entries >> |
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