Through a (Google) Glass, Darkly?

by Thomas Knapp
http://c4ss.org/content/19534
Through a (Google) Glass, Darkly?

Let me throw out two predictions so obvious that I shouldn’t even have to commit them to print:

1) Within days, if not hours, of Google Glass‘s release to the general public, hackers will “jailbreak” the hardware, allowing it to run any “Glassware” users desire and can create or find online; and

2) An independent developer community will emerge to create those applications , whether Google wants them to or not.

A Reassuring Message from FaceBook

by Mark Zuckerberg
https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10100828955847631

Note the use here of adjectives and adverbs: “direct,” “blanket,” “carefully,” etc, etc. I take it for granted that every electronic communication I send may be read by some agent of the Secret State. I also take it for granted that Mr Zuckerberg knows which side his bread is buttered. SIG

SpamHaus v. CyberBunker: More Than Meets the Eye

by Thomas Knapp
http://c4ss.org/content/17929
SpamHaus v. CyberBunker: More Than Meets the Eye

Media accounts claim that the latest non-government cyber-Armageddon — a Distributed Denial of Service attack on anti-spam service SpamHaus by unidentified attackers alleged by some to be acting on behalf of “pretty much anything goes” web host CyberBunker — reached such proportions that it may have actually slowed down the Internet in general. As I write this article, the attack on SpamHaus appears to have ended in failure, but CyberBunker itself has been taken down in (direct or indirect, who knows) retribution.

EU regulation: the sledgehammer to miss the nut

by Richard North
http://www.eureferendum.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=83734

Note: There may be something in what Richard says. The car part scam is certainly true. A bulb went in my front light a few weeks ago, and I am facing a bill for hundreds to replace the whole light unit when I finally get the service done. It is almost impossible to buy third party spares for cars or gas boilers; and, once you have paid a fortune for something, you are locked into an increasingly expensive cycle of repairs. However, planned obsolescence claims for appliances as a whole have been around for a long time, and are mostly based on a misunderstanding of market forces and technological progress. Consider:

1. There doesn’t need to be anything like perfect competition for manufacturers to compete on price and quality. If one manufacturer sells products that are designed to die within a year, people will tend to switch to better products. For example, I bought a Toshiba notebook computer in 2004. Just outside the warranty period, something called the fl inverter died, and I had to choose between an expensive repair and replacement. In fact, one of my clients gave me a new Toshiba notebook. Eighteen months later, I had the same problem. Since then, I have avoided anything made by Toshiba. If this was a ploy to increase sales for Toshiba, it didn’t work in my case.

2. In many cases, it is sensible for products not to be made with durability in mind. I bought my first notebook computer in 1992. It had 1Mb of RAM and a 20Mb hard drive, and a 286 processor. Would I really want it still to be in working order? How about the Kodak digital camera I bought in 2001, with its c250Kp resolution? No. Let such products be made to work well until they become useless to do what people want of them. The same is true of the music system I bought in 1988. I might add that things like digital cameras and mobile telephones easily outlast their usable lives. Every year, I give things away that are still in perfect working order, but that I regard as obsolete. Also, many people are highly conscious of fashion. They want to replace appliances for purely aesthetic reasons. When such people comprise enough of the customer base, there is no good reason for those appliances to be made to last forever.

3. Over the past twenty years, the prices of most electrical products have fallen sharply in both real and nominal terms. This is partly due to improvements in manufacturing and distribution technology, and partly to cost cutting. If you want a pair of headphones to last as well as they did in the 1980s, you only need to pay roughly what you did in the 1980s. Mrs Gabb and I spent £1,000 on a Sony widescreen television in 2000. It is still working as well as on the day I took it from the box.

4. When even electronic products are mature, and there is no reason to keep upgrading, durability does seem here to be a standard feature. For example, I bought an HP Laserjet 1100 in 1999. It had a design fault that made it malfunction in 2000. HP sent me a piece of cardboard to shove into the paper feed. That sorted the problem, and the printer is still working today. It still does exactly what I bought it to do, which was to produce high quality black and white text on one side of the paper. Oh, and the toner cartridges have come down in price from £c60 to £c6.

I suppose the summarised case is that, if you want it to last longer than three years, you should consider paying more than £250 for a fridge-freezer. SIG

The Wonders of Technology

Mrs Gabb bought me a Soundlogik USB turntable for my birthday – £22.50 from The Factory Shop. I was prepared to be disappointed. However, it digitises old records as well as I’ve ever heard them play. Indeed, a capture of The Nelson Mass from 1979 sounds about as good as the CD version, allowing, of course, for surface noise. If I fiddle about with changing the needle, it will also do 78rpm records. I think we’ve now reached the point where cheapo stuff is about as good as the more expensive. I will, in due course, upload some of the captures.

Later

Here is a digitisation of Porgi Amor – mono, 1958, Karajan/VPO, Schwartzkopf:

http://www.seangabb.talktalk.net/music/Figaro-Karajan-1958-04-Porgi%20Amor.mp3

And here is a stereo recording from 1960 of Bruno Walter conducting the 3rd Movement of Mahler’s Symphony No 1 in D:

http://www.seangabb.talktalk.net/music/Mahler%20S1%20in%20D%20-%20Walter%20-%20CSO%20-03%20-Feierlich%20und%20gemessen,%20ohne%20zu%20schleppen.mp3

POST APOCALYPSE RECOVERY PROJECT

POST APOCALYPSE RECOVERY PROJECT
James Roger Brown
Sociologist, Intelligence Collection and Analysis Methodologist
Director
P.O. Box 101
Worthington, KY 41183-0101
thesociologist
www.thesociologycenter.com
Last updated 09/22/2011

Check back frequently, I will be adding to and improving this page.

Suggestions for inclusion may be submitted to the above e-mail address. One high priority document has not been located. Between the end of WW II and 1950 Naval Intelligence created a classified archaeology report about prior civilizations on the North American Continent. Talk to your family members who served during WW II and Korea to determine the title and author of the document. I suspect it contains maps that we need.

Introduction

Activating this Post Apocalypse Recovery Project begins an effort which there is no documented evidence has ever been done before in all of human history. The purpose is to manage information, knowledge and resources to minimize the intentional disruption of social stability caused by the engineered collapse of civilization and minimize the recovery time to develop new stable social processes among the survivors. There will be survivors.

Digital Technologies vs. Truth Suppression

http://www.garynorth.com

Digital Technologies vs. Truth Suppression
Gary North
Reality Check (Sept. 21, 2012)

I am going to tell you some stories. To make it interesting, I will begin with one which could make one of my readers the deal of a lifetime. It ends on September 30. He who hesitates is lost.

I begin with the obvious: the falling cost of Internet communications is revolutionizing the spread of knowledge. In doing so, it is undermining every establishment. Every establishment rests much of its power on official views of the past. This is seen in the novel by George Orwell, “Nineteen Eighty-Four.” The tyrant who enforces the totalitarian state says this. “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”

The cost of controlling the past has risen exponentially since 1995: the year that the graphics browser was introduced. Then came Google.

I know Orwell said this, because I just verified it on several websites. That took under one minute. There is some debate over punctuation: period, colon, or semicolon. I think I will not go to the trouble of looking it up in my library, which is in a special room miles away.

Some thoughts on electric cars. “The Leaf in Winter”

Some thoughts on electric cars. “The Leaf in Winter”
by the Rev. Philip Foster

1. Ratio of power to weight for the electric ‘fuel’ compared to petrol is about 1:10. ie the battery weight and volume is ten times that of a tank of fuel for the same mileage.

Wikileaks: better late than never

Wikileaks’ domain name may be shut down, but you can still access it at this  address: http://213.251.145.96/

NOW…that’s what I call an idea

Bioluminescent trees.

David Davis

Bet you 50p you’ll see this at David Thompson soon, on Friday Ephemera….

Some very sad news

David Davis

Here, from the USA. H/t Samizdata.

Hans-Hermann Hoppe: “From the Malthusian Trap to the Industrial Revolution”

Video shot and edited and uploaded by Sean Gabb

PFS 09 Hans-Hermann Hoppe, “From the Malthusian Trap to the Industrial Revolution” from Sean Gabb on Vimeo.

Dustbin ‘o’ Doom.

Fred Bloggs.

In responce to Peter Davis’s weaponised dustbin, i  will post my own WMD ( Weaponized Massive Dustbin).

 

Now just wait till i get hold of that hoover…

Real bread

David Davis

I don’t normally go out of my way to support people who gas on about what we here satirically and ironically call ___“people who really understand their” ___ bread/beans/grain/beef/meat/whatever they are gassing on about in the weekend colour supplements (it just means they are astonishingly expensive and proud of it – a good position to be in) but this just drifted in, and it’s kind of local.

But I shall watch this one as it is up the road, and I’m the Director of Northern Affairs…so I guess there’d better be a few. Some people like bread – I don’t go for it in particular, but (as we also say here) if this was Stalingrad, I would eat it (the bread, I mean, er, not Stalingrad.)

There was an Iragqi woman in the DT Saturday supplement last weekend – she was proferring a _water tap_, at £5,635. We say that  she really understands her taps.

Rewarding Failure

How the internet will be regulated and throttled, at an ISP near you, and soon.

http://www.littlemanwhatnow.com/2009/01/payments-for-failure.html

Mexico coming undone at the seams: why ALL drugs should be legalised absolutely everywhere.

David Davis

We stand aghast, at the possibility of “military intervention by the USA” against – of all places – Mexico. We know that, since “drugs” are grown in Latin America, and since Mexico is in the way of their transfer to “Film Stars” and wannabes in British North America, where these things are officially illegal to have or trade, that therefore mexico will be on the road of transfer.

This is all very well and ought not to matter. Cars and lorries carrying cocaine and other stuff whose names I can’t remember ought to be able to cross Mexico as though it was anywhere. The problem arises because – and only because -  it is locally illegal to have, sell or use these substances, in the points of destination.

This has several effects:-

(1) It makes the substances themselves more desirable in the eyes of certain people. They will want it more because “The State” says they shouldn’t have any at all at all at all, for their own good at all at all at all .   Nsty useless Hollywood delinquents film stars will leak details of their use of it, and because they are pretty and shaggable (and that’s just the men) you will want to do it too, as you are sheeple because the liberals Stalinists have told you to become so.

(2) It makes it risky and unprofitable and demoralising, for legitimate businesses to supply the stuff. If you wozz an off-licence, would YOU want to supply cocaine to any willing buyer, if you got raided every week by the rozzers for doing it, and had your shop smashed up by them (rozzers) and were put in jug?

(3) It makes the risks of supplying it worthwhile, for shysters and hoods, who don’t mind having to shoulder the boring business of killing people including police and soldiers, in the course of securing their hold on the distribution of of their stuff, to you. The £5-a-day habit, if the stuff was legally sold through chemists even including the impost of State Taxation, becomes the £100-a-day habit if you have to buy it through hoods who have to insure themselves – at your cost -  for their own risk against both the State and against other hoods who want to compete, for what is really a rather small niche sector.

(4) it makes jobs for Police rozzers. Rozzers are inherently tormented people, who ought not to have got like that; they need psychiatric help, and quickly.  Just as you ought not to want to be a criminal, also you ought not to want to be a policeman in the 21st century: what does that desire say about you, and your morals, and world-view, as a person?

So the way forward is quite clear. ALL drugs have to be legalised, in all jurisdictions, preferably by yesterday. This will have a number of good effects:-

(1A) The “Police”, currently a pantomime collection of gamma-minus droids unfortunately increasingly supplied with real guns as opposed to things that shoot out a flag which says “bang”, and who are “employed” by their “states”  not in chasing real muggers, robbers, burglars and killers but in harrassing “drug dealers”, “motorists”, “paedophiles”, “racists”, “terrorists”, “non-payers of council tax”, “TV-license-evaders” and “climate-change-deniers”, will find that their workload is decreased alarmingly. We will “need” fewer of them. Good.

The main solution to civilisation’s ills is

fewer Laws,

and more and better people.

There may even be “calls for” “FEWER POLICE ON THE STREETS”. I think that in a civilised society, the police ought to be invisible: see poll below.

(2A) The use of “drugs”, which is to say substances currently classified as drugs”, by all people, will fall dramatically. or it may not: I do not know. But I think it will fall.

(3A) The legalisation of “drugs” will mean that Galxo-Smith-Klein, Schering-Plough, Ciba-Geigy, and all the others, will be abot to compete legally for whatever market they think they can get. Adverttisisng will be allowed. Advertising is the best way to garotte bad stuff fast. The purity and quality of products will thus rise, and the price will fall to the point where the “State” will come in.

(4A) The “State” will take a take. Where GSK wants to sell you your Ecstasy for 50p a go, via the chemist down the road in Shaky-street (PR8  . . . ) , the State will take £4 or so, making it about the price of 20 fags. What’s the point of going and doing crime, if it’s only that much? You can get it from your dosh you that get “on the sick”.

OK so the “State” wins, win-win in the short run. But it’s got to justify how it needs to spend so much less on policing, since there’s so much much less less petty crime going on down.

That in itself will be tremendous fun to watch.

Sean Gabb in German

Sean Gabb

Many thanks to Robert Groezinger for this most able translation:

http://ef-magazin.de/2009/01/11/883-neujahrsausblick-der-westen-kommt-glimpflich-davon

 

Neujahrsausblick: Der Westen kommt glimpflich davon

von Sean Gabb

Wenn ein Abgleiten in den Totalitarismus verhindert werden kann

Es besteht wenig Zweifel daran, dass überall dort, wo Politiker Einfluss haben, 2009 ein schlechtes Jahr sein wird. In England wird möglicherweise vor dem Sommer eine Wahl stattfinden. Wenn dies geschieht, und wenn die Stimmen ordnungsgemäß gezählt werden oder wenn die Polizei beschließt, nicht alle Oppositionsführer festzunehmen, werden Gordon Brown und seine Labour Partei aus dem Amt geschmissen. Im vergangenen Jahrzehnt hat er dazu beigetragen, dieses Land von einem von den Konservativen errichteten Polizeistaat im Anfangsstadium in einen wahrhaften Polizeistaat zu verwandeln, der nur aufgrund des Spotts gemäßigt wird, den wir auf seine Pläneschmiede noch häufen dürfen. Es wäre schön, diese Leute ihrer Ämter verlustig zu sehen – insbesondere, weil sie unmöglich wiedergewählt werden würden, und ein Amt das einzige ist, was sie im Leben jemals wollten. Aber es gibt keinen Grund für die Annahme, dass die Konservativen viel tun werden, um unser endgültiges Abgleiten in den Totalitarismus zu verhindern. Sie haben zu viele eigene niederträchtige Neigungen, um den riesigen Kontrollapparat zu zerschlagen, der von Labour nahezu perfektioniert worden ist. Selbst wenn dem nicht so wäre, sind sie entweder zu dumm oder zu faul um zu wissen, wie man ihn zerschlägt. …[More]

 

GAS: RUSSIA. North Sea. Britain should just turn it off. Do not masturbate in front of Russia while talking about gas.

David Davis

I hear a nasty rumour that “the EU” will take “our” gas. This is because the EUmonsters masturbated with Russia the USSR on screen, and have come unstuck. Do not masturbate with Russia the USSR on your screen. Bad things will come to you. Russia the USSR is not exactly anybody’s friend at present, until we have done régime change there, and it has become liberalised and Putin is out of office.

Press ENTER to liberalise Russia the USSR. This may take some minutes, and you will need a paypal account.

In the meantime, go to http://www.libertarian.co.uk and give us some money. In the long run (very long I fear) this will help us to liberalise Russia the USSR. Then, the gas won’t be turned off by them, just because they think we don’t like them – or because they think we might just slightly like Israel.

Burning women? NO! … Smoke your own foods? YES!

David Davis

Thought you might all like this. In case it ever goes off, I’ve put on the whole thing. Libertarians ought to be concerned about the creeping State campaign to abolish food that tastes of anything whatsoever. Also, as bought food becomes scarcer owning to clampdowns on lilberal capitalism and free sale of goods without rationing, people will need to know how to grow, farm, gather or otherwise get their own food, and then how to make it taste nice and also LAST LONGER (there is likely to be less electricity to run fridges, even those which survive the coming endarkenment and are still working:-

Smoked foods: how to make your own

It may be illegal to light up a cigarette in a pub, but home-smoked foods are a trend that’s being ignited.

By Rose Prince
Last Updated: 4:38PM GMT 06 Jan 2009

Home smoking: Rose Prince with a plate of trout and prawns Photo: Andrew Crowley

My father used to smoke Player’s Perfectos. They were short, plump and fantastically strong. I knew this last bit first hand, having stolen a handful when inadmissibly young, and tried them out in a hollow box hedge in the garden. He stopped keeping his cigarettes in a box after that.

I didn’t really resent the smoking – as far as I knew he had been born with a cigarette in his hand – except in the car. Our family car had no back seat belts and, in addition to the wind up windows, little sail-shaped vents that opened outwards; especially convenient for smokers to flick their ash, but ineffective ventilators. On long car journeys, we four children bounced around on the back seat, gradually kippered.

I miss cigarettes in pubs, or at least those people who like a cigarette with a drink. Most days the tumbleweed blows through our local, even though it sells quite decent food. In September this year, the British Beer and Pub Association reported that between January and June, there were 36 pubs closing each week, five per day. It is impossible to predict, with fuel and beer prices so high, what proportion of the blame falls upon the government’s decision to ban smoking in pubs. But why did the pubs kill themselves by never installing proper ventilation? Most just stank.

The only smoke to be sniffed now in restaurants is a whiff of it wafting off a slice of smoked salmon. Occasionally, however, something more interesting is going on with chefs “home-smoking” their own fish, pork and duck. The latest trend is to hot-smoke food over burning tea. ‘Lapsang smoked’ is the thing, turning up in a number of restaurants as a long-lost Chinese method. Salad of tea smoked venison with parsnip and quince was an inviting item on a recent Claridge’s menu.

It does not work, of course. Most recipes for tea smoking insist you combine the tea leaves with rice and sugar and the food tastes like it was stuffed up the chimney of a waste incinerator. I tried smoking over the leaves alone, only to get a less confused, mildly smoky tang. It all became rather expensive, too. For any real effect you need lots.

Using wood chips might not be innovative, but their vaporising resins genuinely transform something relatively humble, like trout or pheasant, into an elegant delicacy. Buy a cheap stove-top smoker (see below), or sacrifice an old roasting pan and metal rack to the tar, using foil for a lid. It is all very easy. A whole fish can take as little as fifteen minutes and a duck breast about 30-40 minutes.

But which foods work and which do not? With raw prawns, I found only the shells tasted smoky. Far better were foods like whole fish and breast fillets from game and poultry, all of which benefit from gentle cooking, after which they taste delicately of the oils in the smoke and are unusually juicy. Slices of aubergine also taste good, if dressed after smoking with olive oil, ricotta cheese and a few toasted sourdough breadcrumbs.

Remember that the hot smoking method ‘cooks’ the food – you will not end up with transparent slices of fish, as with cold smoked salmon. And, once you start smoking your own food, it is a good idea to keep a record of your successes and their related weights and timings, variety of wood chips and any additional herbs or spices.

If there is anything left to say about this easy cooking method, it is the bleeding obvious: remember to open the window.

• rose.prince@telegraph.co.uk

• www.roseprince.co.uk

SHOPPING BASKET

You can build your own stove-top smoker by placing wood chips in the bottom of a roasting pan, a sheet of foil on top, a wire rack on top of that – for the food – and finally a lid made from foil. I found it better, in the end, to buy a purpose built type.

Stovetop Smoker with Lid costs £43.99 from Nisbets, which can home deliver (0845 1405555; www.nisbets.com This spacious, simple gadget is made from stainless steel that holds the smoke inside without allowing it to escape. It made a good job of my brown trout (see recipe) and duck breasts. As it’s made of steel it warps slightly when hot, which makes the sliding lid a bit sticky, but it is otherwise practical and cleanable. Put the wood chips in the bottom of the pan, lay over a specially designed tray followed by a rack. Oil the rack, put the food on top and then the lid. Place over a medium heat – timings for cooking are provided. Four varieties of wood chip are available: alder, cherry, hickory and white oak – £5.49.

The delicate flavour of brown trout, cooked over alder smoke, turns out to be quite extraordinarily gentle and subtle. Waitrose is the place to go for brown trout from an organic British farm.

Franklins (01767 627644 for prices; www.franklins.co.uk sells duck breasts, quail, game birds and chicken. John Franklin rears, kills and dresses poultry on his Bedfordshire farm. Visit the farm shop or ask for home delivery.

Tungsten light bulbs: buy them now…..

…while you can.

David Davis

Chris Taylor, of Shakespeare Street Southport, tel 01704 544047, still has them, for a bit.

….and Knirirr has something to say about sockets and fittings, and the EU or at least how the EU is projected to people by shops….. (the second one may get you diect to the paragraph.)

HOW TO DISPOSE OF CFL/modern/low energy light bulbs:-

(NOTE: I had in fact typed a carefully-worked out series of instrictions, for how to inconvenience bureaucrats in the course of their “business”, for this slot. But the blog would probably get shut down if I published it.

So, what you should do instead, is (a) smash the bulb, and (b) put the remains in your wheely-bin.)