Pagan Vigil "Because LIBERTY demands more than just black or white"

Mon - February 8, 2010

So who do you believe?

You don't have to look any farther than the headline to realize that someone is playing with the numbers.

U.S. jobless rate hits 5-month low but payrolls fall

Wait for the "revised" numbers.

Posted Mon - February 8, 2010 at 12:53 PM in

Permalink ◊ ◊ ◊

The bills are coming due.

A report from the Congressional Budget Office shows that for the first time in 25 years, Social Security is taking in less in taxes than it is spending on benefits.

Instead of helping to finance the rest of the government, as it has done for decades, our nation's biggest social program needs help from the Treasury to keep benefit checks from bouncing -- in other words, a taxpayer bailout.

This is one of those shady fiscal maneuvers that the politicos never mention when they say things like "a balanced budget in 2000."

Social Security could have been "saved" years ago if the money had been invested instead of put in the general fund of the Treasury. It wouldn't have taken much thought, just an even split between various bonds and the top seven of the Dow Jones 40.

Instead, the money went to cover current operating costs.

If a company had done that with it's pension fund, it would have been illegal and the company officers would have been arrested and tried.

Shouldn't we do that for Congress and every living President?

Posted at 12:50 PM in

Permalink ◊ ◊ ◊

It will be abused

Hey, you know what? It's time to play Compare the Quotes again!

Here's the first quote.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Here's the second quote.

But cybercrime investigators are frustrated by the speed of traditional methods of faxing, mailing, or e-mailing companies these documents. They're pushing for the creation of a national Web interface linking police computers with those of Internet and e-mail providers so requests can be sent and received electronically.

Now we know as recently as last week, once the provisions for such power exists, it will be abused.

It's also fairly easy to see that it's unconstitutional.

The "authorities" won't be satisfied until they can watch every single person in real time. Then they'll get serious.

After all, what do you have to fear if you're not guilty?

Welcome to the future, Citizen.

I've told you before that the internet is the last, best hope for human freedom. That's only true if law enforcement is kept tightly leashed and intelligence is kept away.

They are AFRAID of ideas. Monitoring the internet is not the goal. Control is.

Posted at 12:37 PM in

Permalink ◊ ◊ ◊

Wed - February 3, 2010

Four of the most dangerous words in the English language

"For your own good."

Now it's possible that those words in that phrase do not immediately threaten your liberty, but you need to ask yourself one question.

Do you have a choice?

Without your choice, authority is about to be backed up with force.

You still have a choice of a sort.

You can submit.

You can run.

You can make a stand.

But they're still calling you out.

Posted Wed - February 3, 2010 at 06:59 AM in

Permalink ◊ ◊ ◊

Tue - February 2, 2010

Habitually Viewing - January 25 to January 31

These "Habitually Viewing" entries are cross posted between Technopagan Yearnings and Pagan Vigil. Film is one of my passions and I'm very eclectic in my tastes.

Torchwood is a spin-off (and anagram) of the rebooted Doctor Who series on the BBC. It's more adult in it's focus, less of the "gee whiz" science, a bit darker and riskier, with a smattering of sex and adult relationships. Characters die, even if they are good guy heros saving the Earth. Series three had one story for the whole season, Children of the Earth.

A bit of backstory. Torchwood was created by Queen Victoria to defend the British Empire from extra-terrestrial threats. It doesn't answer to anyone except itself and perhaps the Crown. Needless to say, it has rocky relationships with the Government, with UNIT (sort of a combined UN military arm) and assorted visitors from "out there."

Captain Jack Harkness is an immortal from the future stranded in the present day. He's already lived the equivalent of several lifetimes.

The plot wasn't original. Alien threat wants Earth's children and can control them from a distance.

No, what made this story interesting is that it took a decidedly anti-government turn. The Prime Minister ordered the destruction of Torchwood to keep it from interfering. Oh, not directly of course. Nothing documented that would lead to the cabinet. And with human civilization on the edge of collapse, all the Government can worry about is how to "spin it." That's a direct quote.

It's worth it just to see what happens to the government machinations and who really is a good man. Long though, it's clocks in at six hours on two DVDs.

And then there was Silent Running. This is "the" environmental SF movie before environmentalism became such a big movement. It has a couple of other firsts too. Cute non-human robots and banged-up tech didn't originate with Star Wars, it started with this film. One of these days I'll tell about the movie that may have inspired Darth Vader, but that is for another entry.

I'd seen this one before, but it's still fun to watch. And aside from the homicidal impulses, Bruce Dern may have captured the perfect essence of a technopagan.

Right down to swimming under a waterfall and wearing a loose robe…

In the story, plant life is extinct on earth. It exists only in dome farms attached to huge space freighters. Dern's character is the botanist aboard one of the ships. The order comes to eject and destroy the farms so the freighters can return to the inner Solar System and be reassigned to other jobs.

This is one of maybe six films prior to Star Wars that influenced the feel of "realistic space films" for almost every film that followed.

A couple of interesting things. Silent Running was a budget film, the company saved a bunch of money but shooting most of the interiors on a decommissioned aircraft carrier. The exteriors were done on a shoestring and still look very impressive by today's standards. And the robots are played by double amputees.

Posted Tue - February 2, 2010 at 07:37 AM in

Permalink ◊ ◊ ◊

Human computing

"The bulk of humanity doesn’t want a computing experience it can tinker with; it wants a computing experience that works."
— Jefrey Zeldman, Flash, iPad, Standards

That's it exactly, the computer as an appliance.

Posted at 06:59 AM in

Permalink ◊ ◊ ◊

Mon - February 1, 2010

The best answer to the Westboro Baptist Church I've ever seen

Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant! Only in San Francisco.

Click on the picture for the rest.

Long live the Emperor Norton!

Posted Mon - February 1, 2010 at 02:56 PM in

Permalink ◊ ◊ ◊

Amazon blinks

Of course, I can't cover the iPad without mentioning the Amazon-Macmillion dustup.

Now I'll admit my bias upfront. Amazon has been messing with the publishers, especially the small niche publishers, for years. But at the same time, Amazon is a godsend to someone like me in a rural area without a decent bookstore.

Still, it's been fun to watch.

Charles Stross has one of the better writeups.

From the point of view of the public, to whom they sell, Amazon is a bookstore.

From the point of view of the publishers, from whom they buy, Amazon is a wholesaler.

From the point of view of Jeff Bezos' bank account, Amazon is the entire supply chain and should take that share of the cake that formerly went to both wholesalers and booksellers. They do this by buying wholesale and selling retail, taking up to a 70% discount from the publishers and selling for whatever they can get. Their stalking horse for this is the Kindle publishing platform; they're trying to in-source the publisher by asserting contractual terms that mean the publisher isn't merely selling them books wholesale, but is sublicencing the works to be republished via the Kindle publishing platform. Publishers sublicensing rights is SOP in the industry, but not normally handled this way -- and it allows Amazon to grab another chunk of the supply chain if they get away with it, turning the traditional publishers into vestigial editing/marketing appendages.

The agency model Apple proposed -- and that publishers like Macmillan enthusiastically endorse -- collapses the supply chain in a different direction, so it looks like: author -> publisher -> fixed-price distributor -> reader. In this model Amazon is shoved back into the box labelled 'fixed-price distributor' and get to take the retail cut only. Meanwhile: fewer supply chain links mean lower overheads and, ultimately, cheaper books without cutting into the authors or publishers profits.

Go, read, it makes sense.

And of course we know what happened next.

It wouldn't have happened if Apple didn't offer an alternative. Gotta love that competition thing.

Posted at 02:50 PM in

Permalink ◊ ◊ ◊

Thinking about the iPad

iPad thoughts from here and there.

Frasier Speirs - Future Shock
Secretly, I suspect, we technologists quite liked the idea that Normals would be dependent on us for our technological shamanism. Those incantations that only we can perform to heal their computers, those oracular proclamations that we make over the future and the blessings we bestow on purchasing choices.

<snip>

The tech industry will be in paroxysms of future shock for some time to come. Many will cling to their January-26th notions of what it takes to get "real work" done; cling to the idea that the computer-based part of it is the "real work".

It's not. The Real Work is not formatting the margins, installing the printer driver, uploading the document, finishing the PowerPoint slides, running the software update or reinstalling the OS.

The Real Work is teaching the child, healing the patient, selling the house, logging the road defects, fixing the car at the roadside, capturing the table's order, designing the house and organising the party.

Andy Ihnatko - Hands-on with the Apple iPad - it does make sense
It’s the Morning After. I’ve had a good night’s sleep, finally, and have also had the chance to wash the stink of a full day’s worth of coverage off of my battered body as well as the glitter and stardust that Apple sprinkles over the folks who attend its product announcements.

I’ve also been able to read some of the Internet’s first impressions of the iPad.

Let me address one thing straight away: anyone who declares the iPad a “fail” because the browser lacks support of Flash needs to elaborate their position beyond one word of a single syllable. Frankly, I think some people elevate flash-based Web content to the level of a fetish. Which isn’t far off the mark, given the kind of content that its fans stream from various video sites.

It’s true that there’s a lot of Flash content out there. But Flash – see Adobe's reaction to the lack of Flash support on iPad here – is in no way part of the true language of the Internet. It’s Scottish-accented English. Sometimes it makes the language more colorful and entertaining, and sometimes it just renders it into unintelligible mush.

Lifehacker - The Problem with the Apple iPad
So why is it a problem if the iPad is better than its competition, or, more importantly, fills a niche that hasn't been addressed well enough to this point? Yesterday Gizmodo rounded up 8 things that suck about the iPad, focusing primarily on hardware issues like its lack of camera, an ugly bezel, and lack of even a single USB port (sans adapters); we could likewise complain about how the iPad's graphical design seems like a complete afterthought. But much more important, at least from the perspective of a blog that's pretty serious about the free use and control of computers:

The iPad, much like the iPhone, is completely locked down. The user has no control over what she installs on the hardware, short of accepting exactly what Apple has approved for it. From past experience, we know what happens when a completely legitimate application—from a huge company that's actually partnered with Apple—doesn't gel with Apple's business plan. They reject it, and you can't use it. And what recourse does the power user have?

Jailbreaking! And certainly the iPad will see plenty of hacking, but only because Apple requires you to hack the device if you actually want control over it yourself. Apple's gotten into the habit of acting like you're renting hardware. They've become the all-powerful, over-restrictive, ambivalent IT person in the sky, restricting what users can and can't install on their hardware.

stevenf - I need to talk to you about computers
When the iPhone came out, I was immediately in love, but frustrated by the lack of an SDK. When an SDK came out, I was overjoyed, but frustrated by Apple’s process. As some high-profile problems began to pile up, I infamously railed against the whole idea right here on this very blog. I announced I was beginning a boycott of iPhone-based devices until changes were made, and I certainly, certainly was not going to buy any future iPhone-based products. I switched to various other devices that were a bit more friendly to Old Worlders.

It lasted all of a month.

For as frustrated as I was with the restrictions, those exact same restrictions made the New World device a high-performance, high-reliability, absolute workhorse of a machine that got out of my way and just let me get things accomplished.

Nothing is simply black or white.

Jim Stogdill - The iPad is the iPrius: Your Computer Consumerized
It's been a long time since most of us have used our computers to do anything approaching "computing," but the iPad explicitly leaves the baggage behind, leaps the conceptual gulf, and becomes something else entirely. Something consumery, media'ish, and not in the least bit intimidating.

The automobile went through a similar evolution. From eminently hackable to hood essentially sealed shut. When the automobile was new, you HAD to be a mechanic to own one. Later, being a mechanic gave you the option of tinkering and adapting it to your specific interests. In fact, that's how most people up until about 1985 learned to be mechanics. The big changes came with the catalytic converter and electronic ignition (and warranty language to match). Now the automobile has reached the point in its development where you don't even have to know whether it has a motor or an engine to use it, but to tinker at all requires highly specialized skills.

So, in some ways this evolution of the computer to the iPrius seems completely natural. I don't care all that much if the iPad is hermetically sealed, but I wonder uncomfortably if in a few years the MacBook and the PC will be too. Or, more likely, we'll just wake up one day to a world without MacBooks or PC's. As we continue our shift en mass to the mobile device ecosystem and the laptop as we know it goes the way of the desktop, banished to special purpose niches.

I just want to add one thing. If my grandmother were still alive, I'd say wait a few months and get an iPad instead of a computer.

Posted at 02:40 PM in

Permalink ◊ ◊ ◊

Freedom of the press applies to blogs

There was a great piece in the Arizona Republic.

Though disputed by many, it is a valuable lens through which to examine the kinds of press and speech that were present when the First Amendment was ratified as part of the Bill of Rights. What did the framers intend to protect?

In late-18th-century America, no more than 100 newspapers existed, many of which would barely qualify as newspapers today. Though the roots of American journalism can be traced to this period, there was little that we'd recognize as "journalism" by today's standards. Many were small, contained anything but recent news, and were often little more than publications of commentary.

Examples of journalism or not, however, they merited First Amendment protection.

Besides newspapers, pamphlets were at least as common during the years surrounding the American Revolution. By and large, pamphleteers were not journalists to the extent that objectivity was a prerequisite. Consider, for example, "Common Sense" author Thomas Paine - hardly a champion of dispassionate neutrality.

This was the press of the day - the institution that was granted constitutional protection by the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech or of the press. . . . " Within this context, whether they were journalists was a moot point. Value was placed in the expression of ideas, information and opinions.

Flashback - check out the comments of this post from October of 2005. Since it is me, I still get the Technopagan Green, but since it's comments, I'm going to go with Courier for the quote.

My point is that I should not need government permission. It is not the government's job to determine if I am legitimate press or not, they are specifically forbidden from doing so, If I had bought a laser printer instead of the domain names and produced a newsletter with exactly the same content, no one would question that was freedom of the press. And no one would ask if I had press credentials or if I had paid my license fee to speak.

But since it is the internet, some think it can be controlled.

Ah, but we're not done yet. See, the various agencies of the Federal government don't like that pesky freedom of speech thing. Neither do certain Senators who should be tried for treason because they sponsored a law designed to prevent dissent.

Who would dare write of these things if freedom of the press only applied to "legitimate" reporting?

Posted at 02:11 PM in

Permalink ◊ ◊ ◊

FBI broke the law to spy on YOU

More and more I'm finding that the stuff in the headlines is stuff I've written about years ago. I'm seriously considering creating a kind of flashback entry. Let me show you what I mean.

Here's the current story and I quote from it like so:

E-mails obtained by The Washington Post detail how counterterrorism officials inside FBI headquarters did not follow their own procedures that were put in place to protect civil liberties. The stream of urgent requests for phone records also overwhelmed the FBI communications analysis unit with work that ultimately was not connected to imminent threats.

A Justice Department inspector general's report due out this month is expected to conclude that the FBI frequently violated the law with its emergency requests, bureau officials confirmed.

Flashback - Here's what I wrote on a closely related topic in May of 2005.

It's easy to see how this can be abused, look no further than the War on Drugs and the tactics used there. At one point, the DEA was going after garden supply stores because the stores weren't providing sales records on people who bought growlights and supplies for indoor gardening. Of course, that old canard about "why worry if you have nothing to hide" was trotted out.

Once the system exists, it can be perverted to any use. If you have done anything questionable, or even if a policeman or agent has a beef with you or something you have done, your records will be flagged and your freedom will be curtailed. It doesn't matter if it is a mistake or if you prove you are innocent. As anyone who has had tangles with the IRS can tell you, it's almost impossible to "clear your name." If you manage to get your record cleared one place, it can trigger "inquires" elsewhere. Just as mistakes with the DEA, INS, and FDA have triggered IRS investigations. Once in the "system," it assumes you are guilty without overwhelming and uncontested proof that you are innocent.

Now either I am crazy or the system is. The same things keep happening again and again. There are only so many ways I can write about them.

Flashbacks it is.

Posted at 01:53 PM in

Permalink ◊ ◊ ◊

Tired of the TSA? Here's a possible loophole

On the one hand, I am adamantly opposed to submitting to government authority.

On the other hand, this prevents things in your luggage from disappearing. For the price of a starter pistol and a little extra effort, your bags are loaded directly on the plane.

And it uses the TSA's own regulations against it.

HT Lifehacker.

Posted at 07:08 AM in

Permalink ◊ ◊ ◊

Social eugenics?

A couple of quickies before I grab breakfast and head out. More later today.

But let's stir the pot to start with.

I'm not sure what to think of this one.

IF this is true, at the very least it means that a heterosexual woman's taste in men depends on their internal chemistry. Which may mean is that social conditions determine which male gets to mate successfully.

It certainly isn't politically correct, is it?

But neither was this.

I stand by what I said then.

I'm still thinking about the first link.

Posted at 07:06 AM in

Permalink ◊ ◊ ◊

Nine words of advice

Apple's iPad

NASA doesn't know the meaning of the word "privatize"

Habitually Viewing - January 3 to January 24 - updated

Remember that the only justification for a law is to protect freedom and liberty

Shattering "reform"

Those mysterious glaciers

Weathered

Pat Robertson is a carbetbagging charlatan trading on tradgedy in the name of religion

Official Thinukum