Politics, Rants, and Technology with Bill O' Pad

Boston Attacked by Lite Brites

2007-01-31T23:00:00.001-05:00

Battlefront.com Discussion Forums: Aqua Teen Force causes panic in Boston!

I am Wilhammer on this board.

Enjoy.

Future News: Environmental Disaster in Korea; German Rabbits wipe out local Flora

2007-01-13T11:21:00.000-05:00

The Glorious Leader of North Korea is set to import uber Rabbits from Germany to feed his starved population.

In his glorious quest to make the world better, an environmental disaster may result.

Monster Bunnies For North Korea

The question to ask is; what will the rabbits eat?

Hence, the environmental disaster, which has precedence;

Dustbowl History at PBS

"1935. After years of drought and dust, the land was now being destroyed by another kind of plague. Hundreds of thousands of starving jack rabbits came down from the hills, devouring everything in their path.

Dust Bowlers were forced to begin an extermination campaign."

Hamsters in the News

2007-01-13T10:28:00.000-05:00

I keep a Gerbil and I have six Cats. I might get hamsters next when the Gerbil passes. Marva, our Gerbil, is nearly 2 years old.

Hamsters are brilliant and amazing; read all about it here;

Making Light

Open Source Revolution for the Mainstream about to happen

2007-01-13T08:41:00.000-05:00

Could this be the year that Open Source begins to go mainstream?

Arguments are that;

Windows Vista is the last OS M$ will make.

MACs have gone Unix based, and it appears Apple will not focus on Computers; perhaps they will just make stylish iBooks and iPCs with flavors of Unix and bootstrap on them.

And, the expense of productivity apps is getting ridiculous, and the ThumbDrive is getting huge.

Combine the emergence of reliable and easy to use Open Source and Freeware apps, and you can get off the commercial entrapment band wagon.

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Personal Experience;

I have all but abandoned commercial software installed on PCs and gone totally to a USB based application server, starting with 'PortableApps' suite, adding a lot more out there (Google for portable applications), and using the open PStart software to manage my little 4GB app server (and test platform webserver, and web development platform).

Forget U3; it is commercial, proprietary, and depends on writing to the registry. It is not portable if it uses the registry.

I am finally going Linux - getting off the Windows as much as possible (I still need it for Gaming).

Fedora Core is free, but if you don't want to go hard core, get Ubuntu.

Don't want to abandon Windows, but want to be productive? Go open source with the apps!

Checkout these handy compilations to get started;

Software for Starving Students

OpenCD4.0

And, learn to torrent!

Jimmy Carter is an Ignorant Fool

2007-01-13T08:16:00.001-05:00

His book seems so ignorant of history - one can successfully argue that it is the Jew that suffers from ‘Apartheid’. Israel is the core of the problem only if you realize that the Arab states make it so, in their bids for power. Enemy of our enemy, and all that entails.

This holds true to the Palestinian organizations.

The PLO spawned Hamas; the PLO, of which Fatah is the largest faction, is the political arm of Palestinian nationhood, and its first focus for power was to take over Jordan. Hamas is the fanatic religous arm of the party, split from it. Think of it as the Islamic Crusaders out to convert the world to Islam through Jihad.

Hezzbollah is a mix of the two, and is mostly known for hijacking the State of Lebanon, and is supported by Iran and Syria. It is a proxy group being used for the designs of Iran.

Israel is stuck in this mess.

The Koreans have an ancient proverb; ‘In the Battle of the Whales, it is the shrimp that suffer’

Jimmy Carters shrimpy brain is overpowered by his whalish ego, contributing to more blood letting over there..bad move, Mr. Carter.

It is time to up and leave

2007-01-13T07:46:00.000-05:00

What would happen if we did just up and leave?

A very real possibility of a brighter future for all involved, especially for The United States.

Short Term; we look silly for giving up, and sectarian violence of an epic scale.

Medium Term - the US looks wise for 'dropping the rifle'; not too many nations at war do that. 'Picking up the rifle' is intoxicating.
That region will then goe on a self defeating violent rampage that contributes further to their own anarchy and demise, further strengthening the US.

An economic hiccup will occur with a surge in oil prices, but would be tempered by the observant going after big oil for excessive profiteering and a demand to divert petro subsidies to alternative energy policy.

Long Term - That region bleeds itself hard, and and a proper and more modern series of states arises - I need not remind anyone here that European nations and their progeny did not get decent until they first played with self and mutual destruction.

Intervention in the internal and/or regional activities of States is fundamentally and historically WRONG. This simply arrests the natural progression of a Nation or Nations. Intervention only works when it is far more than intervention; it works only when those with the will to intervene are on a goal to crush and dominate the region they have entered; they must be willing to kill and destroy everyone and everything to do it. We are not.

The region will self destruct and focus on its internal divisions and hatred, and will not care one bit about taking on the US.

AQ is/was correct in one thing; it only takes on the US because we are in their sandbox first, trying to make their region in our image.

Who the hell do we think we are? What gives us the right to intervene in history; to make the world in our image?

Indeed; our commitment to focus on them (al-Queda and friends)only empowers and emboldens them.

If we had just shrugged them off, withdrawn in concurrence with an anti-oil foreign policy, and embarked on the 'get off the oil' Manhattan project, we would of spent far less money, lost a lot less lives, and made a whole lot more friends, and created a new technology with a huge new capital stream.

Another fine example of Industrialist driven domestic and foreign relations ruining our nation; our history has many such sad chapters.

...how to get started

2006-09-14T20:50:00.000-04:00

The first thing I want my next President to do is to announce and fund with the strongest will a national mobilization to produce an oil free alternative to private transportation.

When States depend too much on foreign trade, especially of strategic materials of primal nature to the economy, one must either own access to that source, or to find another way.

War is the usual result.

No doubt this mighty, industrious, motivated, and skilled Nation can build a new energy harnessing technology, and abandon the need to depend on Oil or any other limited, yet strategic resource.

...and further more

2006-09-14T20:46:00.000-04:00

To add to my further prediction of the rise in American Nationalism; the irresponsibility of the Free Market.

It is market, err, profit driven, and does not very good care about equality or human rights.

We need to get off of the growth oriented market driven 'equality by ambition' bandwagon, and strive to be a Social Democracy and less of a Free Market only one.

To that end, we very well may see the kind of protectionism we had in the past - for we wield a power that is truly frightful - the ability to re-order the global economy by becoming less global centric and bringing protectionism back on.

We have two real choices in this increasingly anti-American era - become ever more imperialistic and more hated, while losing jobs and wealth to unfair free markets (like China), or closing off the world just a bit by taxing or even blocking trade with much of it.

We are way too easy with our trade policy and our global defence force for others, and created a bunch of spolied, whiney petty Allies, a bunch of Allies, by the way, whose heritage and past we somehow bear the mantle for, and are thus the target of the Allies' traditional enemies.

The Middle East was made a friggin mess by the Europeans, and we are left cleaning up that mess.

Do we really want to help Europe?

We should give them their Spines back by withdrawing the loan of ours.

What is NATO for?

2006-09-14T19:32:00.000-04:00

On my favorite discussion board, the General Discussion Board of www.battlefront.com, we had a poster offer this reason:

"Guarantees if any of the European States get uppity again, the rest will dogpile it."

Actually, no.

This is why NATO was made; to correct the ongoing European Civil War condition. a perpetual state for hundreds of years. These folks truly relish killing each other.

The real reason;

To keep the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down...I don't recall who said it.

But, indeed, what is it for now?

It proved to be a serious joke in the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s. I mean, why did we/they build all those Holocaust Museums? So they could never forget, but turn a blind eye to genocide, anyway?

It serves mainly as an excuse for the European nations to not fund their own militaries and to keep the US armed to protect themselves from each other and the boogie man.

We even had to put up with waging war with their boogie men; the Russians for nearly fifty years in an expensive and dangerous Cold War, always on the hair trigger of nuclear wupp each others ass into plutonic existence mode, and the Arabs, whose countries they decimated, especially during 'The Game' phase as they worked to rip apart the Ottoman Empire, and all the Asians they conquered, massacred, and drugged.

Though Europeans seem to have some nice military units (of small size), they lack significant logistical means to use them. That is of course because they are riding OUR bus!

NATO has served, apparently, to disarm European ability to have militarily backed up foreign policies. And they seem all too happy to stay that way. Why not? Get a free ride from those American blokes; they are so willing to help, let them help, and we can save all that money on a military and spend it on political campaigns to form an imperfect Union, based mainly on kicking Americans around and pandering to all the other nations they abused.

Blair's recent commentary on European anti-Americanism is spot on - don't be surprised that the next political wave in power in the US doesn't demand withdrawal from European engagement and become more Nationalistic and less international in behavior.

I so look forward to it.

ConvergeSouth 2006 at NCA&T

2006-09-14T09:52:00.000-04:00

ConvergeSouth is an annual online creativity conference held at NC A&T State University and organized and paid for by Greensboro's online community. The conference is free, open to all A&T students, and will provide you with opportunities to meet some of the country's leading creative online pioneers. Featured discussion leaders for 2006 include Elizabeth Edwards, Robert Scoble and John Robinson. A special A&T student session on Facebook and social networking is on the schedule.

Register now for ConvergeSouth.

Facebook Immigration Policy

2006-09-14T09:24:00.000-04:00

Facebook is changing, well, it's Face.

Emigration from Facebbook due to privacy concerns has been a bit steady, and ever more forceful since the 'Gossip Stream' incident.

Now, we see a new immigration policy; one that invites anyone to use Facebook.

Today's email to users 'Honestly, it shouldn't change much for you'.

NAFTA made the same promise; the flood across our borders of the USA by illegal immigrants is legion and scary. The movement of production and resource value added services is challengin traditional world States.

Implied in Facebook's new immigration policy is amnesty for the illegals - fakers of the original constituency.

Facebook is moving to be a myspace, and is loosing the hearts and minds of the core e-nation it governs.

Perhaps what they need is some kind of representative Republican style participation - the method of direct democracy being used now (instead of the heavy handed past of do it without warning). Right now its directed to the mob, and mobs are rarely non-radical.

Change-nation without Representation!

Selling Lectures

2006-09-14T07:53:00.000-04:00

Check this out at NCSU;

Selling Lectures

Interesting concept; except for this is in seeming violation of the spirit of what a publicly funded University is supposed to do.

Then again, teachers have worked with publishers to sell many a book and many and audio book, so this uses technology quite well to shorten the supply line and produce a reasonable cost.

One wonders how far this will catch on.

Facebook as Government

2006-09-13T19:48:00.000-04:00

Social Networking.
Globilization.
The most powerful socio/economic/political force that drives nations and people is the need to share life, acquire wealth, and feel important. To be heard, to reap success, to play on the world stage.
Social Networking is nothing new, except for its incredibly wide spread and fast means of communication using the Web.
We share, we seek, we find, we have a good time.
However, we wish to be private, yet noticed; free, yet secure.
This is about what you use and expect from Globalized Social Networking, and to explore the risks of being on a stage that every billions can see you on, at once, live, and without you knowing it.
Facebook certainly has been in the news, and unwittingly, over three days, they showed the pitfalls, the power, and the passion of Social Networking.
First, Facebook decides to make the publicly available information available as live ‘web casts’ for all too see, and many other private/public Global broadcasts.
Instead of the viewer tuning to the broadcast, the broadcast had tuned to the watcher!
Embarrassement as old as time. Gossip spread, this friend uncovered to that friend, dirty laundry hung on the line.
A hew and Cry from the masses; the Internet is now “stalking” me! It is then telling everyone all my online interpersonal secrets!
The masses revolted to this Social Network become Social Broadband Gossip-casting!
Protect my privacy! Give me options! Stop this!
And they heard; the masses had erected the guillotine; it’s blade of sharp whit and anger, shiny and new.
With incredible speed, and a mind to not loose the entire subscriber base, the company listened.
The power of Democracy.
In all of human political activity, this was one of Democracy’s finest moments. And it was Capitalistic as well.
The economy of subscribers being reduced to nothing was unacceptable, and the creators of Facebook found out that they no longer OWNED facebook, but GOVERNED it.
The people own it.
The Purist of Revolts had been done.
Hats off to the Facebook community!
Social Networking has become Social Science.

That Day, recapped

2005-10-13T10:19:00.000-04:00

ConvergeSouth 2005 was held at NC A&T this past weekend, beginning on Friday.
We have a very tight security schema on our network, including Cisco EAP WLAN.

This is no hot spot, and to get on, one needs to update drivers nearly all the time and an account with strong passwords must be provided to the end user.

For those who expereince a mass influx of guests in tight environments, you can appreciate the neccesary inconvenience involved.

David Winer was one of many anonymous users requesting our WLAN service, and he sat down with one of our lady techs.

His rant begins with his strongly stated opinion that all WLANS should be wide open, a statement ignorant of the facts and dangers of security.

Our lady tech was severely upset with his belligerence - he was ranting at her. I told her too move on. He couldn't wait, and another tech assisted him, who he then ranted at. She asked me about why his machine was rebooting. Essentially, this was due to new Intel WLAN driver installs, but David was convinced, seemingly, of incompetence on the part of the tech, and then he started venting in my direction.

My response; 'Sir, do you keep your machine clean and up to date?'.

He detonated - "Do You Know Who I Am!".

Absolutely not.

And he kept ranting, and yelling, and just being decidely unco-operative.

Feeling my own anger rise, I left the scene.

Amazingly, I had several people who were there who have known him for awhile come to me to let me know who he was, and to further let me know that it was typical angry Dave acting out against someone who does not bow to him.

Ed Cone recommended me to search google for 'Wired Winder', and all my answers to who he was and is was found.

Later that day, I did make the effort to apologize for losing my cool, and he was unwilling to admit he was a dance partner in this issue. He did graciously accept my apology, and later I hade a couple of short conversations with him, and attended one of his conferences.

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1. As opposites attract, likes repel. We are very similarly viewed in issues of free speech and the Electronic Frontier.

2. People meet in various ways, including starting with conflict.

3. I prefer bridge building over busting, and I practiced that with Mr. Winer.

He is a very smart guy; no doubt. However, high intellect almost always partners with arrogant abuse of those the intelligent feel to be inferior. Read 'A Short History of Nearly Everything' to see how abusive and mean-spirited inovators can be.

And, that completes the 'Day I Met Dave Winer'.

The Day I met Dave Winer

2005-10-08T14:12:00.000-04:00

"Do you know who I am?"

ConvergeSouth 2005, my first direct contact with the Blogging elite was not the best day. A difficult customer, I must say.

The encounter was based on Winer's need to get on AggieLAWN, the North Carolina A&T Cisco LEAP enabled network, and his stubborn reluctance to allow anyone to help him.

More later on the encounter with Winer Hell, but it was a good experience in the end. Great encouragement was found to proceed into my first blog publishing, and these words are my first in the 'blogsphere' or whatever the the buzzowrd is for online self-agrandizement journalism, spiced with bashing and hugging.