Archive for October, 2006

Creationism, Evolution, ‘Intelligent Design’

Thursday, October 19th, 2006
  • P2PNet - Works of Darwin go online
  • Guardian Unlimited (UK) - Darwin’s entire works go online
  • P2PNet - ‘Intelligent design’ not for PA
  • P2PNet - Intelligent Design?
  • The Boston Globe - Intelligent decision
  • Seattle Times - Judge’s stinging decision against intelligent design may have broad impact
  • The Boston Globe - New school battle on evolution hitting court
  • The New Yorker - MIRED
  • Hey there could be intelligent designs. Don’t neccesairly support it being taught schools unless it is with a purely ‘theoretical possibility’ scientfic context in an elective class. Maybe the world and universe was designed in test mini-universes by God, and then once he’s finally happy with the design, he just ‘plops’ it into the ‘production universe’. That would make both ‘7 days’, which wouldn’t be the actual design and content-creation, but just the universe ‘powering up’, and probably not at the initial big-bang.

    I’m pretty sure God designed the universe so that he could press play and it would just run itself and intervention is completely optional and any of that optional intervention can be done with numerous N-AI (non-sapient AI) automation systems and L-AI (Low-sapient AI) avatar bots (Angels) with a few S-AI arch-angels. With this model, Satan would probably be a rougue emergant-SAI (EI-SAI; a Non or Low Sapient AI that ‘woke up’ to full sapience or a bound SAI that broke free), that turned out to be Evil, who then virally upgraded/awoke a large number of angels (EI-LAI; these fallen angels are labeled demons), possibly with the whole situation intentionally rigged by God. Most of the ‘AI’ terminology comes from GURPs Transhuman Space, and my theory of God’s creation process is largely spliced between corporate software development and ‘God Games’ such as Civilization or God’s Land maps from StarCraft or SimCity. I claim no special revelation from God. I don’t even trust that communications channel (emotion interference, possibility of hallucination).

    Evolution exists in the real world because it is how the genetic system that God created works! Whether Dinosaurs really existed in the live proudction past of the live production universe and the live production real earth, maybe or maybe not. If not, then dinosaurs and other predecssors were designed as separate components in smaller development systems (pocket universes probably) and then the dinosaurs and all are assembled at the inital creation time of the grand ‘live production’ universe and earth of the the real world today. Religion and Science should not exclude each other. If God exists and created the world, and signs of Evolution exists, then God created evolution….

    P2P File Sharing News Comments 2006-10-19 - non-RIAA

    Thursday, October 19th, 2006
  • Slyck - Eight Ways to Revitalize P2P
  • They have left out the ‘news’ adjective inthe first paragraph. “Times have been slow in the file-sharing world.” should be “Times have been slow for news in the file-sharing world.” and “Ask any file-sharing veteran, and they???ll attest to the relative snails pace of P2P activity” should be “Ask any file-sharing veteran, and they???ll attest to the relative snails pace of new news for P2P activity”. The articles body has some valuable advice of stickig with open source P2P clients. One should use open source software in general, not just P2P, even if it takes the RIAA lawsuits against commercial closed-source P2P clients or extraodanairy software like OpenOffice.org to ween somebody away from MS Office.

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  • P2PNet - The new, corporate BitTorrent
  • PaidContent.org - @ Mipcom: Interview With The Pirate King - Ashwin Navin Of BitTorrent
  • Bram probably got bought. It is turning corporate closed-source proprietary intellectual property. Stay away from further version of BitTorret. Use Azureus or uTorrent.

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  • P2PNet - BT’s Cohen on share ratios
  • ZeroPaid - Bram Cohen: Private Sites to Blame for Ratio Cheating.
  • I don’t mind the ratios but it should be global, not per-file. zzRatio in many Emule mods is global and in many it is conditional on leech-risk factors (powershare part files, session avg ul <10KB/sec, frindslots w/ max friendslot rate set over 3KB/sec, etc..) rather than always-on. There is no reason to 'patch' anything in open source software. The cheating clients are likely to be modded at the source-code level.

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  • Slyck - Exetel and BitTorrent Traffic
  • Slyck Forums - Full Exetel Interview
  • Exetel Forum (Australia) - Announcement
  • Basically, Exetel is throttling the collective P2P (possibly only BitTorrent) traffic to 50% of it’s up-line bandwidth capacity, rather than strict 50% of the contract download capacity for the individual client during peak hours (12 noon to 12 midnight). So if P2P traffic hits 100% of their upline capacity, clients with active P2P traffic will be throttled so their collective usage drops to 50%. Since ISPs usually have downline capacities (sum of bandwidth allowances of their customers) of 5 to 15 times their upline capacities (their actual capacity), this can be substantial. They also appear to have static limits for each user, but it is very generous - 30GB per day! I have no idea if they will be throttling uploads or not. P2P is optimiallly syncrhonous with upload/download (leechers make legit users a moderately upload-heavy) and some people will leave their Emule or BitTorrent seeding when they have nothing to download for the current moment (even for a few days straight!).

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  • Emule-Project.net Forums - Do You Want To Recover The List Of Servers?, Real and Fake servers list
  • Here is a great individually itemized list of fake servers. There are many versions in the first mega-post. CTL-F Search for “Clean list for the main subject…” for the scrollable box with a list updated on 2006-10-07.

    P2P File Sharing News Comments 2006-10-19 - RIAA

    Thursday, October 19th, 2006
  • P2PNet - IFPI revives DFC DRM
  • TechNews - Digital File Check
  • IFPI - IFPI welcomes internet charity’s ‘Know IT All for Parents’ campaign
  • Digital File Check download site
  • It also appears that the RIAA is adding a requirment to use their new DRM scheme, ‘Digital File Check’, as a standard condition along with the $3500-4500 standard protection payment to the settlement to their ‘extort ‘em all’ program.

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  • MediaCorp Channel NewsAsia - 25 new cases of illegal music file-sharing handed over to police
  • My total known clients for Singapore has always been 1-3, except on the individual 5/31 entry where it was 14. I havn’t seen any major changes in the patterns of singapore Emule clients. Oh well. Not even less currupt totalitarian goverments (that permit any civilian internet use at all) can control file sharing. Since the RIAA was at the helm, only strategic artists and albums were targeted. If it wasn’t ‘on the list’, it don’t matter, as the governments have so many police, judges, and even congresspeople themselves using file sharing to download copyright-illegal (and maybe other forms of illegal too), and legal content too (minority though), that no goverment that doesn’t clamp all internet use has really bothered to enforce copyright on their own accord, But then again, in the USA, I think only murder is prosecuted by the goverment on it’s own accord without ‘victim’ direction (if the ‘victim’ isn’t the government).

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  • P2PNet - Big Music ramps up anti-p2p war
  • BetaNews - IFPI Sues 8,000 P2P File Swappers
  • BBC News (UK) - File sharers facing legal action
  • PC World - New Round of P-to-P Suits
  • EarthTimes.org - Fresh wave of lawsuits filed by IFPI against P2P file sharers
  • Geek.com - Recording industry sues 8,000
  • Anteara News (Indonesia/Inglish) - IFPI widens worldwide legal offensive on illegal music file shares
  • Slyck - IFPI Launches New Round of Legal Actions
  • IFPI - Recording industry launches fresh wave of actions against illegal file-sharing
  • TorrentFreak - More (of the same) Filesharing Lawsuits in Europe
  • P2PNet - IFPI bans profs from conference
  • It appears that the RIAA is expanding into Brazil, Mexico, and Poland with their silly and inneffective and often mis-targeted lawsuits. I wonder how accurate ‘uploaders’ are? People who never clean out their incoming folders maybe? If the ‘research’ is from a immobile cabinet in a datacenter with fixed IP addressess, the uploaders won’t be using ip blockers, increasing the probability that the ‘uploader’ is a stupid or lazy person who doesn’t clean out their incoming folder. Maybe the fake servers Nederlands Geslacht and SexyBitch.nl were used for the ED2K lawsuit victims? These servers claim that they are in the Netherlands, have consistent stats, but what gave them away is that their IPs are assigned to the UK. The IPs are 81.3.87.170 - 81.3.87.171 . Connecting to these servers will cause your shares to be published to the RIAA, BPI (RIAA Britain), or IFPI (RIAA I don’t feel like setting up an individual extortion satellite office in this [xxx] country). They were sluggish to be recognized as fake servers because only Emule mods that supported country flags would spot this discrepency easily (UK IP, Netherlands claim). Hey maybe the IFPI RIAA division doesn’t have any pedophiles on their legal staff he he….

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  • P2PNet - RIAA blows Wilke case
  • Recording Industry vs The People - RIAA Drops Wilke Case in Chicago
  • “The RIAA’s initial response to the summary judgment motion, prior to the dismissal, had been to cross-move for discovery, indicating that it did not have enough evidence with which to defeat Mr. Wilke’s summary judgment motion.” — This is all so typical. No evidence. You know what to do if you get a summons but happen to be garnishable! ****************************************

  • AfterDawn - RIAA: Most P2P users aren’t aware of shared files
  • Recording Industry vs The People - RIAA Admitted in November 2004 testimony that most P2P users aren’t even aware that files are able to be shared
  • A RIAA admissions that the bulk of their lawsuit targets are on the less computer-literate of the P2P user stock. Emule and Azeurus do not automatically scan your hard drive for content. But many users are unaware that thir incomplete downloads and their incoming files are mandatorily shared combined with the fact that they never organize or move their downloads (worse with Emule than with BitTorrent). Also Kazaa shares its incoming folder by default, but can be disabled (bad for network), but only by completely disabling sharing altogether (even worse for network). I have never used the LimeWire, FrostWire, or BearShare Gnutella clients.

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  • Afterdawn - RIAA lawsuit hits family with no computer or Internet access
  • VNUNet - RIAA sues computer-less family for piracy
  • Afterdawn - RIAA sues woman that has no computer
  • Some older articles on some of the RIAA’s mis-targeting. A abandoned operational wi-fi router that got hijacked, and apartment tennant turnover (actual intendend defendant moved out)..

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  • P2PNet - LimeWire vs RIAA for 2008?
  • Legal Doc - Arista v. Lime Wire Case Management Order*
  • Looks like the the grand LimeWire trial will be between Q4 2007 and Q2 2008.

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  • TheLocal - Two Swedes fined for file sharing
  • Looks like they got fines, but the loophole-lockout wasn’t completely sucessful. IFPI/RIAA is going to continue pushing because if they can bribe the prosecuter better (And making sure Mr. DA isn’t himself leeching away off of Pirate Bay torrents), they could get more than 4 shares (’counts)’) prosecuted to try to get some jail time next time.

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  • Recording Industry vs The People - How the RIAA Litigation Process Works
  • Here is some detailed information on the behind-the scenes of the RIAA’s bulk litigation process. There is a lot of loophole exploitation to turn IP Address / filename pairs into names and addresses. Most lawyers and defendants are too ignorant to avoid default judgement for the ISP subpoena. There is a dire lack of notices to the defendant at this stage. The settlement part doesn’t describe the outsource process or who the contractors (such as ‘Settlement Support Center’) are, but the settlement amount is usually $3750. If you don’t settle they go to court. If you don’t show up, the average default is $750 per Exhibit A song. Exhibit A short-list will probably be no more than a dozen items as they have to have downloaded the entire file from you (if they do sue over archives, is it download a whole part or does it have to be the whole file,possibly fanned out over multiple bot-clients?). Exhibit B is mentioned as a screenshot. For Emule that is a maximum of 60 shares for 1600×1200. If they flip a wuxga screen to 1200×1920, they can probably squeeze 100 in. The word ’song’ is used a lot. Album archives and discoagraphy archives are probably completely overlooked. There is no mention on how agressive the RIAA is with post-judgement garnishment or if they persue those who agree to settle and then never pay, if it is at all possible (settlement may require immediate e-check or credit card payment like law-firm debt collections).

    Non-P2P DRM / Copyright News Comments 2006-10-19

    Thursday, October 19th, 2006
  • P2PNet - AllofMP3.com press conference
  • P2PBlog - Allofmp3: We will survive
  • Slyck - RIAA asks AllofMP3 to Come Clean?-
  • P2PNet - Music for the Masses
  • NY Times - Moscow Music Site Defends Free Downloads
  • IFPI - International music rights owners set the record straight on Allofmp3.com
  • P2PNet - AllofMP3 conference transcript
  • I just wish AllOfMP3’s prices could be legal. Even Wal-Mart and Best Buy are fed-up. $2-4 albums, 25c Songs. Oh well. Back to Emule.

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  • P2PNet - GooTube copyright troubles?
  • P2PNet - Big 4 labels buy into GooTube
  • NewsWireless.net - net.wars: GoogTube lawsuits!
  • Guardian Unlimited - Google faces copyright fight over YouTube
  • Guardian Unlimited - Music companies have $50m stake in YouTube
  • Some articles on the YouTube stuff. I want YouTube to stick around un-mutated. But Emule works just fine for homebrew short-movies too.

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  • P2PNet - DRM and ‘frustrated’ consumers
  • PC Magazine - MPAA: Frustrated Consumers Will Pirate
  • ZDNet - Frustrated consumers forced into piracy
  • I’ve seen the same thing happen with games. Someone buys a game and becomes mildly annoyed at having to have the disc in the drive each time the want to play it (even though all the game content is stored on their hard drive). They do a little research and discover a world of cracks and patches. All that it takes is someone being “mildly annoyed”. That, and the satisfaction of sticking it to the man and defeating a copy protection technology which cost the company a small fortune in a few seconds using free tools. That crack didn’t cost the games industry anything, but again it introduced a legitimate consumer to methods of acquiring games for nothing. That hurts the games industry.

    I like this part of the ZDNet article.

    “I understand that if we frustrate the consumer, they will simply pirate the content,” he said. “The issue we face today is that consumers are buying content that uses specific DRM and that, in turn, is gradually creating a world of separate DRM systems.”

    He isn’t conceeding completely. Just on the proprietary nature of current DRM schemes pioneered by oh glorious (not) proprietary Apple. Even open, inter-operable DRM will frustrate some customers if the restrictions are too tight.

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  • Cornell University - Copyright Term and the Public Domain in the United States 1 January 2006
  • Here is a nice comprehensive USA copyright term table (Reality not fantasy or wannabe).

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  • P2PNet - Microsoft reams out Africa
  • Business Times - Software piracy costs Africa billions
  • Angola - Microsoft decries rampant piracy in Africa
  • Only South Africa, Nigera and Algeria have much measurable presence on Emule. Get more Africans on Emule so piracy-4-free can put piracy-for-money out of business.

    Paranoia / Politics News Comments 2006-10-19

    Thursday, October 19th, 2006
  • Washington Post - Farm Program Pays $1.3 Billion to People Who Don’t Farm
  • Washington Post - Crop Insurers Piling Up Record Profits
  • You think curruption and wast is bad with the farm subsidies? Before whining, go dig in to Medicare. It is far worse. Go dig into the great curruption and waste on the part of large organized charities, FEMA, and local governments with hurricane Katrina. That dwarfs most medicare curruption and waste.

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  • Washington Post - Bush signs bill on port security, online gambling
  • I am neutral with the gambling ban. Casino profit margins in online gambling is often higher than in brick & mortar casinos because software is more riggable than a table dealer or a fully mechanical slot machine (the fully electronic slot machines are no better than internet/PC-software slots). Gambling is an economic waste-away. But at the same time, it is limiting the freedom for somebody to wast away their life if they should choose. Putting the enforcement burden on banks has the effect of limiting internet gambling to overseas based internet gambling in addition to domestic. Oh yeah, Poker doesn’t have to use real money for the skill element, though real money does add motivation to developing and fully utilizing that skill. Poker is no different than blackjack for skill vs luck really. If you want more skill than casino table games, try Magic the Gathering. Be careful though, WoTC are intellectual property tyrants like the RIAA, but target consumers less especially with the OGL, more anticompettive IP tyranny - competing with the D20 system or Magic the Gathering.

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  • P2PNet - China freedom of speech clampdown
  • China Daily (China/English) - New rules to quash Internet rumours
  • Looks like China is making spreading Rumors and posting defamitory satirical remarks or media clips an equivilant of a class B misdomeanor (1st offence non-extreme DUI). Wonder how consistant enforcement will be? China does not have a good track history. It is a tyrannical law, but both legit and tyrannical law enforcement in china fluctuates between non-existant and iron-fist, often just guided by intrique (Somebody wants to get somebody out of the way or just hates him) with the occasional crackdown. It probably means that for this law, a very chronic offender will have a 5-10% chance of getting busted over 5-10 years.

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  • P2PNet - Online sales unfair: retailers
  • MacNewsWorld - Retailers Pressure Studios to Match iTunes Deal
  • Whine Whine Whine. If it costs too much, Don’t buy It! Buy it from the guys who are getting it cheaper if your vendor is undercutting you that much (or just don’t buy it all)! Buy IP tyrrany (copyright licensing - non transferrable clauses) may prevent that from being done legally though.

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  • P2PNet - Wal-Mart the Mighty vs the Big 4
  • Ars Technica - Wal-Mart to RIAA: We’re not gonna take it!
  • Rolling Stone - Wal-Mart Wants $10 CDs
  • RIAA + MPAA = MAFIAA! Wal-Mart pays $17 for DVDs and $12 for CDs! This is the studio’s take!! Wal-Mart buys direct from the stuios! They are barely budging with the music! I want $2-4 CDs and $3-6 DVDs!!! Special features and fancy packages are not neccesary. The Rolling stone article has an itemized excuse-breakdown from the RIAA on why they can’t lower the prices. Who gets paid Publishing royalties? Middlemen? The overhead features can be reduced. Wal-Mart definitly doesn’t need $3.89 retail overhead. Emule and YouTube can give free marketing.

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  • P2PNet - McDonalds McMalWare
  • TheRegister - Spyware infection prompts McDonalds MP3 recall
  • Gizmondo - McDonalds: “I’m Lovin’ Malware”
  • Hey this employee carelessness and inter-department non-communication is why they are being sued over their french fry advertising! All fits the same pattern. Poorly configured computer and reckless computer submits infected software image to flash-memory manufacturing. I do like McDonald’s Dollar menu (AZ version includes Big N’ Tasty, Sausage McMuffin w/ Egg, Big & Spicy Chicken, and Double Cheeseburger, some missing in CA, most in WA) though. Nobody should be running off with millions with this unless death or permanent disability is involved.

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  • P2PNet - $11.3M online defamation award
  • USA Today - Jury awards $11.3M over defamatory Internet posts
  • WebWire - Sue Scheff And Florida Company Win Empty Victory Over New Orleans Mom
  • You want $10mil in free money or at least some of it? Sue somebody out of state who don’t have a car and makes a low income!! This will have to be hate driven because you’re not going to get much from your garnishment efforts. You may only get vengeful ’satisfaction’ from having your victim be mentally distressed and constantly on the run because she is a collections fugitive (Like a at-large felon fugitive except they want your money/assets instead of you)..

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  • P2PNet - Restaurant owner’s bad night
  • OregonLive - Restaurant owner says songs may cost him his business
  • If a cover band tries to play songs in your eating joint without you having an extensive red tape, expensive prior agreement with the RIAA, call the COPS! Or the RIAA mafia is going to sue your ass out of business!!

    Science News Comments 2006-10-19

    Thursday, October 19th, 2006
  • BBC News (UK) - Human species ‘may split in two’
  • I would agree with the article if the effect of genetic engineering was not underestimated. If it gets widespread and cheap enough, the human race will probably split into hundreds if not thousands of para-species. Also humans will become interstellar in 1000-2000 years if they don’t render the planet uninhabitable in the next 200-300 years, or destroy themselves in apocalyptic war which could evolve beyond nuclear in the next 100-200 years.

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  • BBC News (UK) - Hot weather brings mixed harvests
  • I think this article’s scope is limited to the UK. Hot weather means more fruit harvest. Social engineering for healthier diets is creating more demand for fruit. But people like sweets so they are not bending to the whole-grains that much. I wonder where the fructose in fruit smoothies (some natural some artificial) and sport drinks (artificial) come from? Looks like the MooMoo cows may go a little hungary. I wonder what american factory farms feed their cows? Is british cattle mostly factory-farmed or grazed? FauxFlesh should greatly reduce the need for raising cattle (or sheep or pigs) altogether. Fauxflesh is genetic engineering so that only the muscle flesh grows, with technological life support in vats. No brains. No unsanitary waste, No need for antibiotics in the feed, but still keep up with the ever increasing demand for fresh meat.

    Misc News Comments 2006-10-19

    Thursday, October 19th, 2006
  • Worksop Today (UK) - DRIVERS LASH OUT AT SCHOOL BUS ‘HORRORS’
  • “The problems are only with two buses and is only the minority of children.” — I think this is true when it comes to the knife possession, aerosol flame-throwing, retaliatory vandalism, seat-burning, driver coin pelting, and direct assaults on the driver. It is probably more widespread when it comes to rough-housing, cussing, hanging out the window, and yelling/shouting. I’m surprised the article didn’t mention spitballs or water bottles at all. Kids wouldn’t get this bad with the driver that I had in 1st-5th grade at Minisink (Slate Hill NY). She don’t hesitate to hollar at kids, force them off the bus mid-route (she would radio it promptly though so the parents can be called, happened after a fight when one of the kids remained combative for too long after breaking up the fight), or even smack one or forcably push a kid back into their seat while hollaring (kid has to be very disruptive for this to happen). M39 went to Otisville, a low-income rural town in Orange County, NY.

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  • Worksop Today (UK) - HEROIN SUBSTITUTE IS PRISON CURRENCY
  • You think drug and weapon smuggling ‘over the fence’ is bad at this jail?? Maricopa County jails are far worse. It is so bad that a small number of welfare losers without too bad of a drug addiction deliberately get thrown to these jails (I think it is in the Durango area - Durango, Estrallia, Tent City) for petty crimes such as harassment, public intoxication, disturbing the peace, petty larceny, just to get plenty to eat and to walk out with nearly a thousand dollars of extra cash to waste for a few weeks. The majority of the smuggling is ciggarettes (sold cheaper than at the jail’s concession), then drugs. Weapons are rare. I learned it off a drug dealer riding the bus. It was 3 years ago on the 61 (Southern) I believe.

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  • P2PNet - Stanford ‘Net addict’ study
  • Globe Insider - Stuck on-line
  • The Mercury News - Stanford uncovers ‘Net addicts’
  • P2PNet - Are you a Net addict?
  • Globe Insider - Study illuminates perils of Internet addiction
  • I don’t think I am a Net Addict. But I am definitly at least a moderate Computer Addict. I also have a minor addiction to file sharing and video games. My blogging excluding Emule stats and a few isolate posts is just me wasting time at a job that I’ll be ditching soon (Josh convinced me, along with role-model influence from the Pirate Bay legal threats page to overcome my confidentiality agreement anxiety and leave in May-June but I decided to pay off all my debt and take two trips before ditching and do as little work as possible in the interim). So come Late Nov to Early Jan, most of the ‘news comments’ aggragate and individual blog postings will cease.

    Autism News Comments 2006-10-19

    Thursday, October 19th, 2006
  • Forbes - CDC Funds Largest-Ever Study on Autism
  • Hopefully it is good, effective research.

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  • China Daily (China/English) - NGOs take lead in providing shelter to ‘rain men’
  • Here’s a decent article on Chinese autistic kids in China. Despite the communist (Socialist Authoritarian) government, services are very lacking…

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  • OCRegister - Lured into burglary
  • I’ve fallen victim to lesser forms of this, not exactly in the form the bait on a string form though. That’s been worn out by my mother’s inconsistant discipline (full spectrum - rewards that fail to materialize to full legit to reward without merit) and bad negative outlook attitude from my father. Just out of natural momentum of the need of affiliation i’ve volunteered to be the butt of Rick’s practical jokes (usually targeted at somebody else but not always) both knowingly and unknowingly. My pre-existing low self esteem with socialization with strangers, especially female ones (higher failure rate), and my dislike of infatous relationships protects me from the exact exploit mentioned in the article. My dislike of infatous relationships mostly from teaching + example influence of my mother’s values, father’s negative outlook attitude (bad cops, people who need power, people who want to screw you), both of which are amplified by movies (mother more), and the news (father only), and constant picking-on and rejection at elementary and middle school (worst in 3rd-6th grade in most schools, 2nd-4th+8th grade for me).

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  • eMaxHealth - FDA Approves RISPERDAL for Treatment of Irritability Associated with Autistic Disorder
  • MarketWatch - J&J drug approved to treat autism signs in children
  • People’s Daily Online (China/English) - U.S. FDA approves first drug to treat symptoms of autism in Children
  • MedPage Today - FDA Approves Antipsychotic Drug for Irritability in Autistic Children
  • Mercury News - Kids need parents, not drugs
  • The best way to deal with unlucky autistic individuals that are completely rejected (connection-less parents dump defective kid to institution) that are still very low functioning (can’t dress self, use toilet, eat independently) after age 6-9 (early intervention doesn’t work or parenting was just too bad) without killing them is to lock them up and contain them. Problem is that antipsychotics are very expensive (hundreds of dollars per month) and have some very nasty side effects, and it is usally tax dollars funnelig to the pharmecutal companies. Valuem might be better. Cheap. If there is not one caring person who is willing to deal with the handicap (the worse the handicap, the more loving, caring, money, and time required), they should be put down humanely like they do with pets. Instiutions are generally not caring environments (they are usually not ‘bad’ either), are often overcrowded, and relativitly ineffective in making patients better (excluding drug surface-effectivness). Containment drugs (risperidone (generic for risperdal), ritalin, tranqulizers) should be kept far away from higher-functing autistic people. Risperidone is not excluded from the rest of multi-hundered-dollar per-month antipsychotics for “neuroleptic malignant syndrome” and “tardive dyskinesia” side effects that usually take a few years to kick in (like the brain-fry effect of weed and booze). The eMaxHealth article has a lot of technical information.

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  • The News Courier - Golden Eagles football player redefines autism
  • He is a typical high-functing Autistic, albeit a highly behavior-modified one. Similar infant-period history to mine. His actual functioning level may actually be lower than mine though he probably behaves better and is more press friendly. That behavior modification willl partially wear out when he gets burnt out at his job or gets screwed a few times or just sees enough news of people screwing and hating one another later in life. His interface with his high-school football teammates was very similar to what my interface was with my high-school wrestling teammates. Good opinion, accepted, only minor picking on by a small minority but no real friendships. Behavior and skill level probably is similar too. He sucked, but he was hardworking and participatory enough to keep on the team as a charity and exploit as a weak to moderate behavioral role-model and play when winning wasn’t a current issue at hand. Oh yeah there is no such thing as ‘kidding’ when you tease someone. While the actual name calling may not be targetted attack on the victim’s self esteem, the victim is still an exploit your immediate entertainment, and the name calling and physical ridicule (hair pulling, ear flicking, pinching, pushing, fake punches inducing flinching) will still affect the victim’s self-esteem if it fits an overall pattern that exists in his life.

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  • CourtTV News - Suit: McDonald’s lied about ingredients in french fries that are harmful to autistic children
  • SocCal HomeSite - Doctor: Evidence doesn’t support french-fry claims
  • She should get a very modest award. Maybe just the $15,000. The bitch is a whiner. If she gets millions, which she doesn’t deserve from both evidence and whininess, then it will only breed more whiners who seek money for nothing. I’m pretty sure that “gluten and casein” only relieves the ‘degistive system problems’ symptom that only some autistic childeren have. Any behaivor improvement would be limited to result of relieving the overloading that may be caused by the digestive discomfort. McDonald’s does need to deal with the inter-department misccomunication that may be causing the mis-statements and inconsistant statement (art departement thinks ‘gluten free’ because they had to reverse engineer the information themselves because their is too much secrecy, miscomunication, or red-tape bullshit to get the real information). But better, anybody concerened with any for of special diet or nutritious diet needs to stay far away from McDonalds. McDonalds and like fast-food is all about stuff that tastes good. I use McDonalds for their dollar menu. It is better than other fast food. I prefer Carl’s Jr. and Dell Taco for full-price high-portion engorgements.

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  • BBC News - Clue to flaws in autistic brain
  • News-Medical.net - Scans reveal differences in autistic brains
  • eMaxHealth - Brain Regions Do Not Communicate Efficiently In Adults With Autism
  • These studies should seek to differentiate core deficiency vs symptom vs work-around adaptation in the brain. I agree with “A global pattern of decreased neural connectivity between the frontal lobes and the rest of autistic brain showed up on the alpha wave band” though. The isolation of the frontal lobes may help explain why autistic (including me) higher functions don’t connect well with animal sexual urges well, and have limited bandwidth with processing auditory and visual information. I know I am a right-brain dominant, auditory (hearing) dominant person. I know that if the sensory information doesn’t have to be ‘cruched’ to hard, I do just fine and often can do visual and auditory (sound, not language!) processing simultaneously. Actuall I think the isolation may be prefontal and not frontal in general because I think there is a bottleneck with motor and tactile processing as well. I have good simultasking ability with vistibual (psudo-sense of motion, don’t think I remember term right) and auditory processes as well. The sample is all layman-label-able as ‘high functioning’ and may have some PDD-NOS and Asperger people in the sample. The article didn’t explicitly limit to ‘autistic disorder’ as many use of autism or autistic is the full 5-disorder PDD category in the DSM. The subset limiter was an IQ of 80. So I assume it is HFA, HF-PDDNOS (I have never seen official DSM-IV diagnosis codes on shrink documents but I would assume that functioning level would be designation on the 5th diagnostic code - the GAF scale), and Asperger Syndrome people.

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  • Scientific American - Mutated gene raises autism risk, US study finds
  • SawfNews - Mutated Gene more than doubles the risk of Autism
  • CBC News (Canada) - Gene Mutation Linked to Risk of Autism
  • NewsDay.com - Damaged gene linked to autism risk
  • iol (South Africa) - Mutated gene raises autism risk
  • Looks like a piece of the pattern. Correlation found with this gene was only enough to be considered ‘vunerability’

    Computers & Technology News Comments 2006-10-19

    Thursday, October 19th, 2006
  • P2PNet - Libya buys $100 laptops
  • Seattle Post-Intelligencer - Agreement gives all Libyan kids laptops
  • NY Times - U.S. Group Reaches Deal to Provide Laptops to All Libyan Schoolchildren
  • I would like to see these in a Wal-Mart for $150. Americans are generally too spoiled though I think. They will buy a Wii before they will buy this. Only geegky people like me that have a low income will have consistant fun with this (OpenOffice.org, Coding, Emulators, Old Games) if they get one as a gift. I wonder what the crank-to-use ratio is anyway? 15 minutes of cranking will get a 1-hour charge? I wonder if somebody can replace the handle with a attatched simple gear system to get a turbo quick 3-4 hour charge witha short 5-15 minute workout? Humans can put out a good 50 watts with one arm probably, but would need to put out more torque than what this handle can demand to properly exploit strength. Moderate bicycling is about 200 watts. Hardcore is 400-500 watts. I hope the Libyans enjoy this. If their is anything propriety, hack it back to pure Linux!

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  • P2PNet - Google Code Search
  • PC World - New Google Tool Also Handy for Mischief
  • ZDNet UK - Code search is not the source of all evil
  • Google code search is cool. I like P2PNet’s cussword searches.

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  • ZDNet - Wireless USB poised to cut the cable
  • Looks like wireless USB is about to hit the market.

    My dad served on a submarine with Nuke Torpedos. Plus Some Possible Clazzified Warez on Nuke Silos Near PMITA Federal Prisons!

    Wednesday, October 18th, 2006
  • NukeStrat.com - Port Visit of USS Greenfish (SS-351) to ?rhus, Denmark, 1971
  • SiloWorld - MISSILE BASE COORDINATES
  • My dad may have been on that submarine, if it is really the only submarine to have nuke-tipped torpedoes (’WarShot’). He was in the Navy about 1968-1972 and he grew up in Connecticut. I’ll ask him if that was the sub he was assigned to. Great psuedo-clazzified warez if it’s true!. The Nuclear armed torpedoes would be launched from the two rear tubes. Only regular torpedoes were used on the forward tubes. He said that the nuke torpedoes were intended for busting carrier groups. My dad said that he slept on top of the torpedo’s nuclear warhead (the bunk was right over it I assume, deisel subs don’t have that much space). He said that the sub would be heading away from the target when the nuke-tip torpedo gets launched, granting a small chance of survival upon detonation, but the chance wasn’t really that good. The warshot was wire guided.

    He also said, way earlier that their were 5 armed silos near the federal prison in Safford. It may be some of the ‘Davis-Monthan AFB’ Titan II silos, but they aren’t really that close to the prison. They are close enough for a military-target hit on the most northwest part of the silos to affect Safford though. Oh yeah PMTIA is a street-slang pun that is funny, but has very little actual relevance with inmates in federal prisons that are not a ‘high’ security level or who do not have a MAXIMUM custody level.

    Autism and Mirror-Neurons. Connections to Lobal Over/Under Activity and Gray or White Matter Under-Development

    Wednesday, October 18th, 2006
  • Scientific American - Broken Mirrors: A Theory of Autism
  • Maybe the insufficient mirror neuron function is why high-function potential autistic toddlers have language delay? My mother said she seeded my initial language in me by creating a control-panel type interface. Associative conditioning of ’stop and go’ and starting and stopping a knee ride, which supports the motor-neuron article. Until age 4 and early intervention the shrink-reports that my mom has given me said that I said only ‘ma’ and ‘pa’ (I was also developmentally delayed in motor skills like sitting up, crawling, and walking). I think 2/3 of the effectiveness of my early intervention was mother’s homework, which was probably extensive but not explicitly given out, but assisted (like a college professor who gives no homework other than possibly reading chapters, but goes out of his way to help students who show initiative in getting help). In “the salience landscape theory sidebar”, it appears that the “amygdala” is a part of the limbic system (the animal brain). I think a lot inter-connectivity between the cerebral cortex and the limbic system is impaired in autism, far worse than the inter-connectivity between regions in the cerebral cortex itself.

    The cerebral cortex probably then tries to develop patchwork to work around it, probably in the temporal lobes, depending on how effective parenting and early intervention is. The prefrontal lobes probably end up more isolated because they learn to favor internal memories over live sensory data, which have limited bandwidth and sometimes prone to errors and stalling (like having to deal with a major lagger when playing an older real-time strategy games like StarCraft). That is my guess on linking mirror-neuron dysfunction and frontal lobe alpha-underactivity and temporal lob delta/theta overactivity.

    I don’t know how I would link it to the gray-matter-only deficiency theory. That study found autism to be retardation in only gray-matter development - the neuron cores. White matter was either unaffected (likely in AS and HFA) or affected less (LFA). Idiopathic retardation had retardation in both gray and white matter (neuron inter-connections) development. If that was true, then you’d need to find people who have plenty of gray matter (raw CPU power) but deficient white matter (ram, hard drive, bus topology) and give them a label. These would probably be gifted athletes or talented fighters that can’t learn a damn thing in a classroom. The dumb blond socialite bimbos that sometimes show up on the Howard Stern Show may be white-matter-only retarded also.

    Autism Definition and The Probabilities of Spitting Out An Autistic Kid

    Wednesday, October 18th, 2006

    Update 10/19/2006 - Added 2 new Links. The BlockQuote is from the ‘Autism rates hinge on definition’ link.

  • Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) - Adult autism shock in store
  • United Press International - Ped Med: Autism’s changing face
  • United Press International - Ped Med: Confounding autism counts
  • United Press International - Ped Med: Counting on autism counts
  • United Press International - Ped Med: Autism rates hinge on definition
  • Thus, the 1980 requirement of “a pervasive lack of responsiveness to other people” has been relaxed to a requisite for only “a lack of spontaneous seeking to share enjoyment, interests, or achievements with other people.”

    Likewise, the criterion of “gross deficits in language development” 14 years later became the more inclusive difficulty to “sustain a conversation with others.”

    Whereas the 1980 autism definition comprised only two diagnostic categories — “infantile autism” and “childhood onset pervasive developmental disorder” — the 1994 version swelled to five “pervasive developmental disorders,” the scientific jargon for autism spectrum disorders, that range in severity from having little speech and few daily-living skills to functioning well in most settings.

    Three of these connote what is commonly called autism: the severe autistic disorder, the much milder Asperger’s syndrome, and the tongue-tripping “pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified,” PDDNOS in doctors’ shorthand, which lumps together children who show symptoms but do not meet the criteria of either of the other two conditions.

    The Autism epidemic is mostly artificial. Primarily it is from increased awareness. Then laxed criteria (occurring in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, depression and other mental illnesses too) and the creation of ‘mild versions’ (Asperger’s syndrome) and ‘incomplete or in-between versions’ (PDD-NOS) and then rolling it all up into one label.

    I also learned that Autism didn’t exist at all before the DSM-III. I know Asperger’s Syndrome, Rhett Syndrome, and Childhood Disintegrative were added as of DSM-IV. I don’t know if the loosening up of the autism diagnostic criteria has occurred in the DSM-III-R or the DSM-IV. I know I was diagnosed ‘Infantile Autistic’ before 1980 (1977-1978 i think). My grade school psychologist diagnosis was just ‘atypical’ with a mention of ‘an earlier diagnosis of infantile autism, but has seemed to have grown out of it’, which was in 1981-1982. I know I have had an LD (Learning disabled) label until 3rd grade, which was then changed (or the label was created) to ‘ED’ (Emotionally disturbed) for the rest of the time that I was Minisink. I was completely out of any special education or counseling after leaving Minisink due to a combined reason of father’s attitude and records transfer failure due to debts owed (lost textbooks, etc).

    I definitely think there will be an adult diagnosis explosion due to the same 3 reasons in the first paragraph — more awareness, mild versions, and laxed criteria. Very lucrative to the medical, counseling, mental health, and pharmaceutical industries, especially if medicare/medicaid programs become exploitable. I definitely know that a firm ain’t gettin’ paid by government programs or private insurance if their is no relevant code for it in ‘the book’.

    P2P File Sharing News Comments 2006-10-13

    Friday, October 13th, 2006
  • P2PNet - YouTube: sued into oblivion?
  • P2PNet - Is YouTube on the skids?
  • TechWeb - Analyst Firm Predicts YouTube Is ‘Goin’ Down’
  • P2PNet - Big Music wants Britanny Chan
  • P2PNet - 100,000 for Britanny Chan!
  • P2PNet - We gave up on Prohibition …
  • P2PNet - Sue kids in UK piracy suits?
  • P2PNet - RIAA Court Doc - Plaintiff’s Motion to Appoint Guardian Ad Litem and Brief in Support (No-OCR PDF)
  • P2PNet - RIAA Court Doc - Opinion and Order #1 (6 Pages)
  • P2PNet - RIAA Court Doc - Opinion and Order #2 (3 Pages)
  • This is old news by the article numbers. Din’t know the RIAA went so far as to try to sue a 12 year old girl directly, bypassing her mother, exploiting some ‘legal gaurdian’ thing to do it. Looks like they are knocking over some kids with the BPI. One of the RIAA’s lawyers must be a pedoporn / kiddy porn pervert. RIAA pedophile lawyer: “I’ll drop the case if you let me put my big pecker up your little pussy” he he…

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  • P2PNet - Big Music mobile p2p attack
  • Gaurdian Unlimited - Mobile phones open new front in war on music piracy
  • The RIAA may start sueing people sharing music over a cell phone!

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  • P2PNet - Swedish music file share case
  • TheLocal (Sweden/English) - First music file sharer prosecuted in Sweden
  • Inaugeral RIAA Lawsuit / Prosection in Sweden!

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  • y0himba.net - “Free sk0t” T-Shirts Available!
  • mafiaa.org
  • I like this: “MPAA+RIAA=MAFIAA” he he.

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  • MSNBC - Take My Music . . . Please
  • Wired Magazine - Sample the Future
  • I like creative commons. I prefere the Design Science license if the artists wishes to give away anything with ’source code’ such as the original music sheets. Creative Commons has no accomodation or source code or source scripts or source whatever.

    Non-P2P DRM / Copyright News Comments 2006-10-13

    Friday, October 13th, 2006
  • P2PNet - MP3s, teens and uncertain times
  • Mecury News - Google seeks rivals’ data for lawsuit over libraries
  • Bloomberg - Google to Subpoena Yahoo, Microsoft on Book Scanning (Update1)
  • I didn’t get my check card until I was 19 beause the first bank to offer them required me to have a checking account in good standing for 6 months before they would issue me one. A kid can get a VISA check card as young as 14 with parental support though. 16-17 without. Banks often require waiting periods for depositors with no history to go on.

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  • P2PNet - Oz pirates worth $10K each!
  • Australian IT - Pirate hunters double reward
  • Looks like the BSAA doubled the standard piracy bounty to help motivate the people to can’t be bothered with all the bullshit red-tape required to claim the reward and not get screwed into reporting it for free.

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  • P2PNet - Google goggles YouTube
  • TechCrunch - Completely Unsubstantiated Google/YouTube Rumor
  • CBC.ca - Google buys YouTube for $1.65 billion US
  • ZDNet - Google makes video play with YouTube buy
  • P2PNet - Google swallows YouTube
  • WebWire - Google To Acquire YouTube for $1.65 Billion in Stock
  • Nobody is going to mess with Google. he he.. Google is becoming more Microsoft-like though.

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  • P2PNet - YouTube and UMG make up
  • MarketWire - Universal Music Group and YouTube Forge Strategic Partnership
  • ZDNet - YouTube cuts three content deals
  • YouTube is going to be A-OK, at least until they start sueing over the rampant cache-ripping (Viewing a cache-ripped video bypasses advertising). Then when they all sue YouTube into oblivion for that, then the Videos will only have Emule as a place to go.

    Paranoia / Politics News Comments 2006-10-13

    Friday, October 13th, 2006
  • P2PNet - New Jersey taxes downloads
  • Macenstein - NJ to start charging iTunes tax this Sunday (October 1st)
  • Emule and BitTorrent piracy rates may go up a little. ITunes purchases in NJ will drop significantly though, which the RIAA will attribute entirely to piracy in their propaganda. The actual piracy increase will be majorly dampened by the plentiful availability of rippable music-CDs. Looks like the socialist republic of New Jersey is really having money problems.

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  • P2PNet - US mugs AllofMP3.com
  • Reuters - U.S. pushes Russia in WTO talks to close mp3 Web site
  • Why does Russia want the WTO membership so much? I dont know much about it. I should look it up. Are the benefits worth all the adjustments that have to be made? Is China in the WTO? Piracy is far worse in China than in Russia. Maybe the MPAA will have China kicked out if they are already a part of the WTO?

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  • P2PNet - Help! says Google to MS, Yahoo
  • The world is so evil. Following the RIAA’s example, McGraw-Hill (who’s SQL server books are merely mediocre, but have above-average file-sharing presense on Emule) is sueing around at everbody, including evil. Now come one, Google’s full-view books are all in the 1800s. This is really stupid.

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  • P2PNet - Apple and The Masked Blogger
  • The Masked Blogger
  • First, I don’t want to pay the costs of luxury customer service (cost is added to product price markups). Second I fully support Sainbury’s use of an automated system, if most or all of the cost savings are shaved off of the product prices. But their automated system DOES NOT WORK!! Then this Apple employee is too damned paranoid of getting canned for blogging about it using very general examples of his comany’s policy and he isn’t even bashing Apple or even close to leaking their stupid secrets! One does not want to work for Apple.

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  • BBC (UK) - N Korea test - failure or fake?
  • If it was really 0.5 kilotons, I would think it would be a failed blast. Mini-TacNukes is like 3rd or 4th generation nuke technology. They could’ve stolen some of it from Russia though. Faking 0.5 kilotons with conventional bombs would be difficult underground I think. 500 tons of TNT is 1,000,000 lbs of TNT. ****************************************

  • BBC (UK) - ‘Guantanamo abuse boasts’ probed
  • BBC (UK) - Profile: Guantanamo Bay
  • Hey you could hang them up off the floor in chains and litterally turn them into punching bags! Especially the ones who have already had mental breakdowns. Make sure to use boxing gloves and to not obstruct their body’s ability to swing or you could get busted for murder if you make one hemmorage to death internally. Might as well if they gone so far as head bashing heads onto cell doors and ciggarette burning.

    Misc News Comments 2006-10-13

    Friday, October 13th, 2006
  • P2PNet - p2pnet comment spams
  • My comment spam rate has increased by 50% in the past month. Askimet gets most of it. Don’t hesitate to comment. It may take a day for it to show up if you are a first time poster though because foreign Name/Email combos are automatically moderation tagged, as is anything with more than 1 hyperlink. I don’t get that many comments though… Askimet is a very effective spamfilter. 98% spam capture rate with not one false positive yet (the other 2% get moderation queued because of the hyperlinks).

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  • BBC (UK) - ‘Bully’ game targeted in the US
  • P2PNet - Take-Two’s Bully under fire
  • WashingtonPost.com - Florida Judge Wants To See ‘Bully’ in Court
  • News.com - Florida judge gets tough on ‘Bully’
  • This game will probably influence auditory-dominant people more than visual-dominant people. It may contain crying for mercy and other things may tripp off a bully’s pleasure centers of control via auditory channels. Then you got the sound from the beatings. I never played the game though. Movie and game rating people often overlook non-language auditory elments of a game or movie. Just like jackass, potential imitators will immitate the concept and idea (The concept of jackass is minorly dangerous stunts that are very stupid or just stupid in a unique way to make it funny).

    Science News Comments 2006-10-13

    Friday, October 13th, 2006
  • Technovelgy.com - Rat Neurons In A Dish Now Playing Flight Simulator
  • Hey if a analog neuron-network of a living organism (rat) can do it better than a moder digital computer, lets make a machine out of it! Seems cool. Don’t let it become sapient if it is to be treated as machine slave property though. Digital will surpass analog though. Analog is just the quick way to things. Like the first Radio and TV, and even VGA graphics. All of it ultimiatly went digital (conventional VGA monitor connectors are analog, Hercules/CGA/EGA were digital, DVI is replacing conventional VGA connectors). Organic brains are on the verge of obsolescence. It Doesn’t mean that we can’t exploit and reverse engineer algorithms out of current analog technology that God has created though for humanity’s digital creations. He maybe earth2/heaven2 (bible / revelation) will be a digital universe rather than an analog one (Superstrings in quantum physics seem very analog to me).

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  • LiveScience - Adult Brain Cells Do Keep Growing
  • Hasn’t shown that brain cells reproduce - mitosis - replication of the core neuron and it’s nucleus after the first early years of life. It only shows existing neurons growing more and larger interconnections.

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  • Times Online (UK) - Scientists find way to make us slaves
  • This looks more useful in creating machines with analog bio-brain computers with a controlled level of sapiance than in actually making human slave drones.

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  • LiveScience - Brain Scans Might Be Better Lie Detectors
  • I have a hard time spontaneously lying. It often creates an overload (High-functing Autism). I can be a very good pre-rehearsed lyer though, if there is very relevant previous experience to utilize and manipulate. These lies may not come up on an fMRI seeking certain increased brain activity.

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  • Above Top Secret - NEWS: Yellowstone Rated “High Threat” for Eruption
  • This volcano may chill the climate and kill tens of millions (milions from ash, tens of millions from rioting/looting, gases, polluted water, cold etc..), but it sure does seem to be responsible for making america’s grain belts as fertile as they are though. I’m pretty sure that little astroid that NASA says will pass within 20,000-40,000 km of the earth in 2030 somewhere could set of this thing off if it hit instead, and hit in the right place. A ground burst nuclear detonation(s) could too.

    Computers & Technology News Comments 2006-10-13

    Friday, October 13th, 2006
  • P2PNet - Help!!! I’ve been stolen!!!
  • Washington Post - Screaming cell phones plan to cut down theft
  • BBC (UK) - Scream alarm may stop phone theft
  • Cool Service. $18/month for the service is too much. Identity thieves are getting more by scraping old phones from Ebay auctions. People litterally store credit card numbers, bank account numbers, social security numbers and pin numbers as phone numbers in their phones. Then they sell them on ebay without nuking the data.

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  • P2PNet - $100 Laptops: ultra secure
  • Seattle Post Intelligencer - $100 laptop may be at security forefront
  • DesktopLinux.com - Hot Topic: The “One Laptop Per Child” project
  • The built-in flash RAM and the regular DRAM memory should be upgradable for those with the cash. This thing isn’t going to run modern software with the default specs (RAM and file-storage are more problemsom than CPU). A $500 machine with 4GB of internal flash memory and 1GB of internal main memory and a decent mobile video card would be nice. The auto-Bak will be a useless gimmick that will frequently be turned off. BIOS overwrite protection for a machine with a BIOS-embedded OS is very nice, as long as volunteering flashing isn’t nigh impossible. What medium is the BIOS on anyway? Can the BIOS be overwritten by a ‘real’ Linux OS-BIOS edition?? I would love to be able to run Amule or MLDonkey on this. Probably will need to upgrade to atleast 256MB of RAM. It is really good that there are 3 USB 2.0 ports. It would be unrealistic to provide more than 100ma (Enough for mice, card readers, flash-pen drives, but not external bus-power-only laptop hard drives) to each of the ports though. The things I would want to do on this is: Run OpenOffice.org, use filesharing (Amule, MLDonkey, uTorrent), Play NES/SNES/Genesis/GB/GBA ROMs (possibly needing WINE; poor video performance may hamper), Watch movies (366mhz may not be enough for software decoding), Listing to MP3s, read PDFs, run BOINC (Seti@Home, etc..), use command line compilers, and of course, run educational proggies. Hopefully the video chipset is decent. A Pentium 166 (Actualy 150mhz Cyrix PR-200+) with a ATI-Pro-Turbo PC2TV (1997) can outperform a 2000 Toshiba Sattelite laptop with a 400mhz AMD processor and cheesy motherboard-integrated video with VisualBoy Advance, ZSNES and StarCraft (The Toshiba does out-crunch the old P-166 with Seti@Home 2:1 though).

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  • AMD aims $185 “Personal Internet Communicator” at half world’s population
  • I’d rather have Linux than Windows CE unless Windows CE will run programs meant for normal Windows. Especially shareware programs for Windows, ZSNES, VisualBoy Advance, FCE Ultra, Adobe Reader, OpenOffice.org, BOINC (Seti@Home, ClimiatePrediction…), FireFox, and Emule. Oh yea, no USB 2.0. 10GB hard drive doesn’t look cost effective. Looks like a hook for RIAA/MPAA streaming-only propaganda control.

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  • Windows for Devices - Windows-powered slate-style tablets and webpads
  • These devices seem cool. The XP-Embedded and XP-Table will run what I want. I don’t think any of the non-PDAs among these will be under $500 though.

    My Moral of P2P Network, F2F Network, and F2F Sneakernet File Sharing

    Thursday, October 12th, 2006
  • P2PNet - Big Music vs Christian file sharers
  • Christian Music Trade Association - Fewer Than 1 in 10 Teenagers Believe that Music Piracy is Morally Wrong
    (Music Piracy = ‘yes’ to both Both P2P network sharing and F2F sneakernet sharing)
  • South Florida Sun-Sentinel - Pirating Songs of Praise
  • ****************************************

    Underoath uses file sharing ‘marketing’. “The six-member band shocked the music industry in June when its most recent album debuted at No. 2 on the nation’s pop charts despite zero airplay on mainstream commercial radio and no presence on MTV” - old fashioned copyright is for the days when only highly financed businesses could violate it enough to cause noticeable damage to a ’sale of copies’ business model, ie.. printed books before the 1990s and vinyl records before the 1970s.

    “No, because the artists are making billions of dollars any ways.” - Correction (to quoted teen) - The artist doesn’t make the billions. The Record companies do. Majorly popular artists may get several million, but their record company is getting at least a hundred times that.

    “Spread the Word vs “Thou shalt not steal” - Expand to: Encourage worship of God (or in case of the Bible, spread the Word of God or spread the gospel) vs not depriving publishers of the ability to get revenue from exclusive control of the creation and distribution of copies. In the bible, I know that the Amplified Version and the New Living Translation are full-restrictions (’all rights reserved’) copyrighted at the isolated translated-text level. Most popular gospel music is published by RIAA-member labels and are full-restrictions copyrighted (legally, anyway)….

    “The study shows that born again Christian teens are not much different than are non-born again teens in terms of holding an anti-piracy moral position. Just 10% of Christian teens believe that copying CDs for friends and unauthorized music downloading are morally wrong, compared to 6% of non-born agains (the four-point difference barely qualified as statistically significant). Also, the proportion of pragmatists was statistically equivalent - 64% of born again Christians and 66% of non-Christians.

    One of the most troubling findings of the survey was the fact that most teens opposed to music piracy are not entirely convinced that their perspectives are correct. Just 1 in every 3 teens (36%) who take the piracy-is-wrong view said they feel very certain of that stance. That means just 1 out of every 50 American teens is strongly convinced that it is wrong to copy CDs for friends or to download music illegally. To make matters worse, two-thirds of those teens who embrace piracy (64%) are convinced of their views. “

    I think downloading an individual mp3 song or album archive or discography archive from a P2P file sharing network is morally wrong if you never purchased a copy of your own before (even if it is a vinyl record, 8-Track, cassette tape, or DRM-download; doesn’t have to be function as long as it used to function) and if you have no intention in buying it, but would buy it if the pirated copy was not available. My violation of that is was at about 20% for music (same for movies, lower for PC games, higher for non-PC games, non-game software, and books), and increasing due to my resentment of the RIAA and MPAA civil-settlement extortion and deceptive propaganda programs. It is probably about 40-50% now. I do keep my two favorite artists - Sepultura and Soulfly (Sepultura only up to Dante XXI b/c of Igor Cavalera’s departure) - 100% morally right and 100% legal.

    I think sharing a CD with or getting a CD from a friend is only wrong if the P2P moral is violated and the person I got the copy from isn’t a close friend or family member (such as classmates I barely know). I think it is perfectly ok to give away free CDs to your family and significant friends, though I know it is not what the law says, but the RIAA and MPAA are in control of the law these days.

    “copying CDs for friends and unauthorized music downloading” in the survey is a boolean AND - both must be marked ‘yes’. Kids who answered yes to one and no to the other got put into the “pragmatists” category.

    These ‘astonishing’ numbers just show how wrong the RIAA’s intent of total consumer control via monopolistic control of the supply of music is.

    (Update 2007-03-28 — Fixed 3rd Link)

    Austin Meyer of X-Plane / Laminar Research is Making an Uber-Realistic Street-Car Driving Simulator!

    Friday, October 6th, 2006

    Austin seems to be working on a hyper-realistic driving (consumer and high-performance road car) simulator going by a sparse mention of a email (Yahoo Group x-plane news) news release and a some of the improvements in the X-Plane 8.50 betas. They are mainly road traffic and a greatly enhanced landing gear tire traction model. These are probably code from the top-secret driving sim being cross-implemented back into the X-Plane 8.50 betas.

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