Posts by Gray

No possible foundation of trust

In a climate of lies, there is no foundation of trust. The very air one breathes in Washington, DC reeks of dishonesty, deception, and hypocrisy. There is no foundation of trust remaining in that cesspit of corruption and dissolution. What a pathetic end for us.

Double yer pleasure, double yer pain

The author asserts: "It would also help governments cope with populations that are both ageing and living longer, by keeping people in the workforce – and therefore in the taxpayer population – for longer."

Ummm ... maybe for the gov't employees, but I doubt it. At least from a US view, the point ain't to keep people in the workforce. It's to get rid of 'em ... as many and as soon as possible. And the only way US corporates are gonna pay full-time wages for three days work is if each workday is 15 hours long! But that ain't happen' nor will it happen.

Took a drive away from our tiny island today to the mainland shoppin' burg. Saw lots of "Help Wanted" signs posted about. No, Frieda ... it ain't that the US economy is pickin' up and the corporates are hirin' again ... it's the result of the latest employment practice. Nobody gets more than 12 workin' hours per week, paid at minimum wage rates. So each full-time "job slot" takes three people to fill it. Yes, that means three times more people are workin' than before, but three times more are slowly starvin' than before. Nobody's making a livin' wage under the new paradigm.

So, Mister Lottabux sez we kin look forward to workin' a three-day week! That's perfect for the US economy, cuz it means we kin work two jobs, and still have one day off to mow the boss's lawn, take his laundry to the cleaners, ferry his kids to their activities, and still have time to wax his limo.

Progress, ain't it grand!

Wet, cold, and blind.

Honestly ... a CEO tossing around terms like his product ties together the "artifacts" of people's lives; the cloud becomes a "backplane" of identity management and security; the place we will truly shine will be around "insights”; and we want to "stimulate the entire ecosystem.”

Really? This is the shining future of America's largest software house? The cutting edge of computing brilliance? This ... this deluge of drivel? This bullshit?

Ever been inside a cloud? At ground level we call it fog!

Perhaps this mentality is the reason MS has insisted that Windows 8 truly does offer an enhanced user experience. They cannot perceive reality in the fog.

Seattle TV news last evening noted that as many as ten percent of the Microsofties could face layoffs, and the region is bracing for the impact. A video clip featured an MS executive promising the great opportunity facing the displaced workers: he assured the TV audience that the region will see a new wave of entrepreneurs, new business startups, new developers, and a whole new upsurge in individual opportunity and enterprise.

Fog. Wet and cold. Blind.

Silly twats!

Yer just don't get it, do yers ... as the Chairman of a once mighty US auto builder once said (back in a day when his hubris was soundy criticized as being a touch too arrogant):

"What's good for [insert name of corporation] is good for [insert name of nation]!"

Shirley all that goodness can't be wrong, right?

Turning blue in the face ...

... holding my breath waiting for that to happen.

"Thankfully, US President Obama recently suggested that the TPP's text will be released to the public in November."

Only corporations and governments allowed ...

If there is no resolution of the "post here, violate the law there" problem ... then as the world grows increasingly contentious it will be too dangerous for the average citizen to express themselves freely on the 'net, in text or image. In one extreme example, a fictional online story involving sexual activity between two consenting persons under the age of 18 is legal in the US, but illegal in parts of Australia. The author could be charged and prosecuted. Or an unflattering depiction of Mohammed in relation to fanatical believers could result in a fatwa of death.

Only governments and corporations could defend against such responses. An average bloke? Not a chance.

Perhaps this was the intended result all along ... the 'net is entirely too dangerous to leave in the hands of the citizens,

Too numb to care any longer ...

"... we are SO screwed."

Yes. But at the same time the American public is so enervated by endless revelations of privacy abuses that our screwing seems to be little more than a fait accompli.

Take it seriously?

Of course the report finds the government program to be useful and without fault. The State is not concerned with the security of the people. The State is concerned with the security of the State.

It is what it is.

It is what it is ...

Leopards with stripes? Zebras with spots? Panthers in pink tights? Scorpions with sugar tits?

C'mon, people! It's in the accepted gaming realm of political lies, party platforms, and a job waiting to be filled for every citizen who wishes to crawl out of the shelter, stand up, and make something of themselves ... right? These are deceptions and baldfaced lies and anybody who expects promises made in an advertising sales pitch to actually be honored is seriously maladjusted. Seriously. Next thing you know, you'll demand that Verizon apologize for delivering less than promised connection speeds and offer to refund a portion of the monthly fee ... about the time scorpions grow sugar tits in place of their stingers ... or there's a shortage of lawyers to sympathize over yer rights bein' bent.

Putting a caution on the NSA secret budget

It makes about as much sense as putting a dog collar on the pig to keep it from rooting around in the potato patch.

(Maybe it makes sense to the swineherders ... ?)

Perhaps some sound signals as it came down ...

Thinking back on the nostalgic days of dialup modems and the lovely cacaphony of squeals, buzzs, snarls, pops, growls, hisses and whinging connection sounds ... those same sounds emitted from a loudspeaker as the cluster-pod plummeted to earth would be an appropriate signal that ... while all may not be well, it is not a life-threatening event ... unless you're standing under it, looking up ... waiting for a connection, maybe ??

Entirely too simple?

"We have tightened the rules. Our agencies respect the new rules. Trust US."

Ayup. Trust regained. As simple as that.

Not gonna happen

"Both the British and American governments should do much more to protect whistleblowing..."

Ayup, they should. They won't.

After all this time ...

... if they cannot fix that malware swamp called Windows OS (how many years do these security gaps exist before patches arrive?) then rational thought might demand that they back away from Windows 8/8.1 ... fall back to restore Windows 7 ... and concentrate on FIXING what they inflicted on their paying market! Perhaps after another few years, Redmond could focus on something for the fondle-slab market.

No public trial; no public evidence

As Snowden himself pointed out in the NBC interview Wednesday evening on US television, he would be tried under the terms of the espionage act, which would essentially be a secret trial. The prosecution evidence, the testimony, everything in the trial would be classified and concealed from public view. The transcripts and proceedings would be sealed and never declassified. Only the inevitable fact of his conviction would be announced. Also, given the sensitive nature of his situation, it would be reasonable to expect he'd be held in solitary confinement, isolated in an undisclosed location with no hope of parole or judicial review for life.

Secretary Kerry's assertion that Snowden return to face a fair trial is a brazen propaganda deception. He fully understands the implication and application of the espionage act provisions.

A reminder of relative powers

Arguing for reform, or for change to patent terms/limits, or for US elected officials to honor the nation and its citizens ... is totally ineffective. It is wishful, delusional thinking at best.

The ability to sway elections and field armies of lobbyists is a function of ca$h ... rivers of it.

Regard: two brothers inherit an oil business and mushroom it into a $150 Billion oil and industrial empire. Consider that each brother has $5 Billion in personal, liquid capital at hand. Let's break that down to something we peasants can relate to: $5,000 in pocket.

One brother donates $23 to a national public broadcasting network. When a film producer arrives with an unflattering documentary film about one of the brothers, the network decides not to air the film, ostensibly to avoid offending a major contributor. The brother still has $4,977 in pocket.

Both brothers are upset at political trends in the nation, and decide to create and fund a counter-balancing movement, donating $150 each. One brother still has $4,827 in pocket; the other, $4,850. The wrong political party is still functioning, so the two brothers pull out all stops and each agrees to up the ante. They pony up $250 each, for a $500 massive nation-wide media and lobbying campaign. This still leaves each brother with more than $4,500 in pocket.

A long-time political consultant to the brothers convinces them that a more effective way of realizing their political objective is to focus on the states, and their legislative bodies. This might even require a commitment of as much as $500 from each brother, bringing their cash in pocket down to $4,000 each ... 80% of their original "walking around" money.

See where this is going? We peasants simply cannot fathom what a Billion dollars really is, but if you break it down to mentally-recognizable numbers, it starts to illustrate the ability of the truly wealthy among us ... the Oligarchs ... to use their wealth as a weapon against us. And given the massive, literally inexhaustible bulk of that wealth, we will lose our democracy long, long before they run out of pocket money.

Thus, we are shocked! Simply SHOCKED when a US politician finds a coward's way of doing his Master's bidding ... and we are simply pissing into the wind as we wish something different could happen other than having it blow back in our face.

For the Chinese, MS offers Win7?

Phffffft!

oorah!! for the Job Creators!!

"... data processing for such information has been outsourced to US firm General Dynamics, which signed an eight-year, $51m contract with the NSA for the job."

There is hope yet for the lackluster recovery of the U.S. economy ... there's hundreds of new jobs there, and think of all the new construction jobs in the Utah desert when NSA finds themselves obliged to increase the size of their new mammoth data storage site. Yes, dear, we'll need those new jobs to pay the taxes to pay for those ginormous new data-harvesting contracts ... but that's not the point, is it?

No such agency

"There is no such agency that would be engaged in no such activity involving no such product for no such surveillance program in no such authorized fashion if any such authorization in fact had been contemplated, possible, or authorized ... "

Letter stamped "Return to Sender: Addressee Unknown"

Do not touch the switch ...

Adobe said: "We have identified the root cause of this failure and are putting standards in place to prevent this from happening again."

Umm.Hmmm. Taped a note over the switch on the panel: "Do NOT touch this switch (again)!"

There ... that fixed it.

Not just "dissidents," but religious minorities ...

Iran has an on-going, savage campaign of religious suppression, denying civil rights and judicial protections to their citizens who hold religious beliefs outside the state-sanctioned variant of Islam. Most egregious suppression, including seizure of property, exclusion from education, prohibitions against employment, denial of burial in any cemetery, imprisonment, mob-incited beatings, lynchings, and state-ordered death sentences, have accelerated in recent years against the fragmented Iranian Baha'i community. It is not surprising, then, that state-sponsored internet hacking would be conducted both within and without Iran as a campaign against that regime's perceived enemies.

A great fear of any repressive regime is the ability of the suppressed to find support and succor through the cracks of their prison walls.

An obvious embarrassment

From this tiny corner of the world, the weekend sales flyers from the big box stores no longer show the gaudy tiles of Windows 8/8.1 on the screens of featured computers. One has to get out the Sherlock Holmes magnifying lens to even find "Windows 8.1" in the advert text! Visits to the local office supply outlet, or to WalMart's electronic section reveals the display computers gathering dust.

The graph shows that XP still has 2.15X the share of Win8/8.1 combined! ... 12.24 for the 8's, versus 26.29 for XP. That's gotta be a helluva an embarrassment for MS, after all the time they've been pimping Win8, and threatening XP users with apocalyptic disaster.

It also shows that the percentage of Win7 dropped in Jan-Feb, but has surged back, from a former high of 47.52 percent, and now shooting for 50 percent at 49.27, and still climbing. This is despite the fact that MS stopped all sales of Win7 dead in the water ... so it's supposed to be a bragging point that Win8/8.1 is creeping up on Win7?

One other observation: a local hole-in-the-wall computer shop is flying a huge banner across his storefront: "Windows 7 Here!"

Sorry to spoil the fun, but ...

the stodgy old FCC has no sense of humo[u]r about certain things.

First, unlicensed use of the radio spectrum brings fines that run $10,000 and up, on a per-day basis at their discretion. If the violations become sufficiently public/egregious, they will take enforcement action.

Second, any form of encrypted communications over the amateur bands (ham radio) is absolutely forbidden by long-standing regulation. FCC has even less sense of humo[u]r about this violation. In fact, any private _business or commercial_ communication is forbidden on the amateur frequencies. Grab a handbook and read the rules.

It's pretty certain this article's suggested techniques will get an extremely negative reaction in FCC-land. (And yes, they DO have triangulation equipment, and a great volunteer amateur radio group that will hunt and locate violators purely for the sport of it.)

Gray ==> licensed Ham since 1962