Thursday, January 30, 2003

Slam the Spam! (PC Magazine) Sounds vaguely naughty, but alas, no. This PC Magazine article will tell you more than you deserve to know about spam, spam, spamity spam, followed by reviews of personal and corporate tools to help you control your spam. (Spam, spam, spamity spam) 6:41:36 PM    comment [] MindGuard Are you concerned about the CIA or aliens taking control of your mind via psychotronic devices? Do you use Linux? If you answered yes to both of these questions, then Mindguard is for you! And here is a key point, from the website: MindGuard is a program for Amiga and Linux computers that protects your mind by actively jamming and/or scrambling psychotronic mind-control signals and removing harmful engrammic pollutants from your brain. It also has the ability to scan for and decipher into English specific signals so you can see exactly Who wants to control you and what They are trying to make you think. So not only will Mindguard protect you, it will educate you to the nature of the threat against your purity of essence, your god-given right to be free. The website contains information about the Black Helicopters, and the construction and usage of the Aluminum Foil Deflector Beanie, the cheapest and possibly most effective weapon in the war against mind control. (A tip of the aluminum foil beanie to memepool for the pointer) 5:55:08 PM    comment [] Kurt Vonnegut at 80 (In These Times) My feeling from talking to readers and friends is that many people are beginning to despair. Do you think that we've lost reason to hope? I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers. Sometimes I wish it had been. What has happened, though, is that it has been taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup d'etat imaginable. And those now in charge of the federal government are upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka "Christians," and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, or "PPs." To say somebody is a PP is to make a perfectly respectable medical diagnosis, like saying he or she has appendicitis or athlete's foot. The classic medical text on PPs is The Mask of Sanity by Dr. Hervey Cleckley. Read it! PPs are presentable, they know full well the suffering their actions may cause others, but they do not care. They cannot care because they are nuts. They have a screw loose! And what syndrome better describes so many executives at Enron and WorldCom and on and on, who have enriched themselves while ruining their employees and investors and country, and who still feel as pure as the driven snow, no matter what anybody may say to or about them? And so many of these heartless PPs now hold big jobs in our federal government, as though they were leaders instead of sick. What has allowed so many PPs to rise so high in corporations, and now in government, is that they are so decisive. Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reason that they cannot care what happens next. Simply can't. Do this! Do that! Mobilize the reserves! Privatize the public schools! Attack Iraq! Cut health care! Tap everybody's telephone! Cut taxes on the rich! Build a trillion-dollar missile shield! Fuck habeas corpus and the Sierra Club and In These Times, and kiss my ass! How have you gotten involved in the anti-war movement? And how would you compare the movement against a war in Iraq with the anti-war movement of the Vietnam era? When it became obvious what a dumb and cruel and spiritually and financially and militarily ruinous mistake our war in Vietnam was, every artist worth a damn in this country, every serious writer, painter, stand-up comedian, musician, actor and actress, you name it, came out against the thing. We formed what might be described as a laser beam of protest, with everybody aimed in the same direction, focused and intense. This weapon proved to have the power of a banana-cream pie three feet in diameter when dropped from a stepladder five-feet high. And so it is with anti-war protests in the present day. Then as now, TV did not like anti-war protesters, nor any other sort of protesters, unless they rioted. Now, as then, on account of TV, the right of citizens to peaceably assemble, and petition their government for a redress of grievances, "ain't worth a pitcher of warm spit," as the saying goes. ("Kurt Vonnegut vs. the !&#*!@", By Joel Bleifuss, In These Times. Thanks to blogcritics.org for the pointer) 5:29:28 PM    comment [] Total Information Act Loses Funding WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Saying they feared government snooping against ordinary Americans, U.S. senators voted on Thursday to block funding for a Pentagon computer project that would scour databases for terrorist threats. By a voice vote, the Senate voted to ban funding for the Total Information Awareness program, under former national security adviser John Poindexter, until the Pentagon explains the program and assesses its impact on civil liberties. As someone on the interesting-people list pointed out, this does not mean it is dead. But the momentum has been slowed. 3:54:18 PM    comment [] Bit Torrent BitTorrent is an ad-hoc p2p networking application. It works just like any other 'helper-app' your browser can fire up to handle files. Like winamp does when you click on an mp3 link. When you click on a bitTorrent file, the BT program opens and starts downloading your file. At the same time, you start uploading pieces of the same file to other users downloading that file. The more downloaders, the better results you get when joining the party. Like other p2p systems, you are downloading the file from multiple locations, combing their individual upload bandwidth, but this is only for one particular file, making the leech factor a non issue. Once you have your file, you can close the BT file to leave the network, or be a good neighbor and leave it open, enabling others to use your resources. Eventually a BT file will die off, unless at least one person leaves his file open. (Adam Curry's Weblog) They seem to be trading mainly TV shows. Let's see how long they are allowed to continue. I am almost afraid to get involved, as I am down to a meager 4 and a half hours of TV per week. But what the heck, I've got some bandwidth, and I'm not afraid to share it! 3:25:48 PM    comment [] The Library of Congress Archival Projects -- Audio "There's President Theodore Roosevelt denouncing corporate swindles. Robert Frost reading his poetry. Buffalo Bill Cody urging war with Spain over Cuba. They are joined by 2.5 million other voices - some famous, some not - and sounds - the huffing and puffing of a steam locomotive is one - preserved at the Library of Congress On Monday, Librarian of Congress James Billington was announcing the first 50 sounds to be entered in a National Recording Registry. It seeks to ensure even greater protection for some of the most notable songs, speeches and other utterances. The library is not the only government repository for sounds. The National Archives and Records Administration has tens of thousands of hours of Capitol Hill speeches, committee hearings and various other gatherings." (Thanks to The Resource Shelf) List of the First Entries Into the National Recording Registry (via LC) Direct to LC's SONIC Database 2:43:49 PM    comment [] POP CULTURE: SUPERBOWL ADS ONLINE Yipee! The best part of this years stuporbowl -- the ads -- are all here online, for your FREE viewing pleasure. The rest of the iFilm site looks cool too! Thanks to The Resource Shelf for the pointer. 2:34:58 PM    comment []

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