Dinner by the water at on of Phuket's best places to eat.
Saturday 20 July 2013
Thursday 20 June 2013
Summer Poems by May and Murray
a couple of quick poems about summer:
the spring was lovely in Sydney
that last spring with my friends
to break and leave Australia
my step-dad still defends
the summer turned to winter
but a winter always hot
we're back and living in Thailand
but that seems to be my lot
here every day is summer
there's never any spring
no autumn leaves will ever fall
no Honeyeaters sing
It is my home i know it
and i love it yes i do
but the summer time in Sydney
well i really love that too
in summertime i think of snow
and ice cream cones too don't you know
and showering waterfalls of ice
in summertime i think that's nice
in fact i think of all things cold
when summer heat has taken hold
but maybe there's a better way
to flee the boiling heat of day
if i could do just what i like
in summertime i'd take a flight
i'd fly to mountains high and free
and down them all i'd board and ski
and in between those chilly runs
i'd nibble chips and burger buns
and sipping chocolate thick and hot
i'd love the summertime a lot
May has recently moved back to Thailand after 5 years in Sydney
Had we been able to get PR we would have stayed
but PR is not so easy for Kiwis
that's life
p
Monday 10 June 2013
Edward Snowden - modern day hero
I'd brush it off if it was not for the fact that i know well the mentality of government employees and contractors - we all would like the security of permanent access to a free-flowing and limitless supply of nutritious blood provided by the nipple of taxation. For such security almost all will turn a blind eye to ethical considerations.
Almost all - but not all - Snowden, Assange, and others, for all their own human foibles, at least they try to show us ourselves at our worst.
i got this from here (with this interesting follow up, and this cool vid)
there are other places this story will play out
it's pretty disturbing but i guess that very very few people actually care
as long as they get to drink on Friday and watch the footie and have that BBQ on Sunday
really who cares?
pop
see also
Salon: Revealed: “Boundless Informant,” NSA’s powerful datamining tool,
Business Insider: It Seems A Bit Early To Call Edward Snowden A ‘Hero’,
Salon: If you know nothing about whistle-blowers, don’t cover them,
Salon: Thomas Drake: The NSA will come after him with everything they’ve got,
Salon: Will China give up Snowden?,
Salon: European leaders express outrage, but are they really OK with letting the NSA “do their dirty work”?,
ABC (Aus): PRISM whistleblower Edward Snowden sacked from Booz Allen; hiding in unknown location,
Reuters: U.S. tech firms push for government transparency on security,
Business Insider: China To Weigh Snowden’s Fate,
Salon: Encrypt your emails, evade the NSA,
Salon: 10 dumbest reactions to the NSA scandal,
Naked Capitalist: Snowden Shows South China Morning Post Details of NSA Hacking in China,
ABC: Hong Kong protesters rally in support of US spy whistleblower Edward Snowden,
Salon: PRISM part of a much larger government surveillance program,
Market Watch: Are Google, Facebook lying about the spying?,
Salon: Privacy versus security: Does the NSA’s surveillance program work?,
Business Insider: PORTRAIT OF THE LEAKER AS A YOUNG MAN: Edward Snowden Has Always Been A Privacy Fanatic,
Business Insider: Facebook And Microsoft Finally Allowed To Disprove ‘Hyperbolic And False’ Initial Spying Reports,
Salon: PRISM software works just like Facebook ads,
Salon: Is Alex Gibney’s WikiLeaks film “state agitprop”?,
Salon: The dangerous ethics behind Google’s transparency claims,
Market Watch: Why Google, Facebook must nip spy tag,
Reuters: FBI says U.S. will hold Snowden responsible for NSA leaks,
Salon: NSA surveillance didn’t lead to capture of deadly terrorist,
Salon: No one understands what treason is,
Naked Capitalist: What Are You Doing to Protect Yourself From NSA? #SafeData,
Reuters: Web companies begin releasing surveillance information after U.S. deal,
Reuters: Microsoft got more than 6,000 U.S. data requests in second half 2012,
News Observer: Web giants get broader surveillance revelations,
ABC: Facebook, Microsoft reveal surveillance request data after US deal,
Reuters: Facebook got 9,000-10,000 government data requests in second half 2012,
Salon: About half the Senate skipped classified NSA briefing,
Market Watch: Officials: NSA surveillance blocked terror plots,
Salon: Dick Cheney praises NSA surveillance program,
Think Progress: Intelligence Officials Claim That NSA Surveillance Foiled Terrorist Plots In Over 20 Nations,
Economic Policy Institute: Why I Am Not Impressed with the Edward Snowden NSA Leaks, So Far,
Think Progress: Dick Cheney Laughs Off Privacy Concerns Over Government Surveillance,
CCG: One lesson from the NSA scandal: Find out where your cloud provider's data centers are located,
Reuters: Apple got up to 5,000 data requests in six months,
Economic Populist: This Big Business of Big Brother,
News Observer: How Britain spies on friends and rivals alike,
Market Watch: Snowden: Facebook, Google can resist NSA,
Think Progress: How Edward Snowden’s New Leaks Are Distracting From The Conversation He Wanted,
ABC: US whistleblower Edward Snowden says more leaks to come as father pleads with him to stay quiet,
Salon: Five major takeaways from Edward Snowden Q&A,
OilPrice.com: Why the US government Spies on its own Citizens,
Reuters: Yahoo says it had as many as 13,000 data requests,
Market Watch: Facebook seen most vulnerable in spy scandal,
News Observer: Yahoo discloses number of US govt data requests,
Ritholz: The Private-Intelligence Boom, by the Numbers,
Salon: House hearing in celebration of NSA spying,
Market Watch: Google cites 1st Amendment in transparency push,
Salon: NSA spying kills my faith in America,
Wired: The NSA Hearing, by the Numbers,
Wired: NSA Disruption of Stock Exchange Bomb Plot Disputed
Wired: Justice Department Fought to Conceal NSA’s Role in Terror Case From Defense Lawyers
Wired: Google Challenges FISA Gag Orders on Free Speech Grounds
Wired: Brand Damage Through Information Access
Economonitor: What Bothers me About NSA Data Collection: A Reply to Thomas Friedman
Salon: Does Obama know what “transparent” means?
Salon: Why Metadata really is the message
Reuters: Obama defends intelligence tactics in wary Berlin
Salon: Snowden’s real crime: Humiliating the state
Salon: What everybody gets wrong about Orwell
Salon: WikiLeaks helping Snowden seek asylum
Guardian: NSA chief claims 'focused' surveillance disrupted more than 50 terror plots
Washington's Blog: No, NSA Spying Did NOT Prevent a Terror Attack on Wall Street
Empty Wheel: Section 215 Dragnet: Again with the Passive Voice Oversight
FDL Action: Partisans are only Concerned about Government Surveillance When the Other Side is in Charge
Wired: Phew, NSA Is Just Collecting Metadata. (You Should Still Worry)
Salon: The secret history of the Bill of Rights
ABC: Government refuses to be drawn on whether MPs' emails are spied on
Salon: How Snowden empowers China
Wired: 5 Fun Facts From the Latest NSA Leak
Salon: More on NSA spying
Reuters: British spy agency taps cables, shares with NSA: Guardian
Stuff: Kim Dotcom rails against spy agency powers
Physics of Finance: The War on Reality
Opinionator: The Real War on Reality
Scientific American: How Are the NSA and Others Collecting and Using our Data?
Market Watch: NSA leaker Snowden charged with espionage: report
Reuters: British spy agency taps cables, shares with NSA: Guardian
Salon: Reports: Edward Snowden charged with espionage
Stuff: US requests Snowden detained
ABC: US surveillance leaker Edward Snowden charged with espionage
Engadget: EFF looks at rules controlling NSA surveillance, sees big risks for Americans
Engadget: US government files criminal charges against Edward Snowden over PRISM leaks
Bloomberg: Booz Allen, the World's Most Profitable Spy Organization
Bloomberg: NSA Surveillance Leaks Startle Privacy Board Back to Life
Investors: OK To Spy On Americans, But Don't Monitor A Mosque
Stuff: US requests Snowden detained
Reuters: German minister seeks answers from UK over spying 'catastrophe'
Business Insider: LEAKER UPDATE: Snowden’s Just Hanging Out In Hong Kong Giving More U.S. Intelligence Secrets To The Chinese
Salon: Edward Snowden “in a safe place” in Hong Kong
ABC: Snowden in 'safe place' as US seeks extradition and new leaks emerge
Salon: Obama’s aversion to leaks channels Reagan
South China Morn Post: EXCLUSIVE: US hacked Pacnet, Asia Pacific fibre-optic network operator, in 2009
Wired: In WikiLeaks Probe, Feds Used a Secret Search Warrant to Get Volunteer’s Gmail
Wired: U.K. Spy Agency Secretly Taps Over 200 Fiber-Optic Cables, Shares Data With the NSA
Wikileaks: Statement by Julian Assange after One Year in Ecuadorian Embassy
ZeroHedge: Meet The Man In Charge Of America's Secret Cyber Army (In Which "Bonesaw" Makes A Mockery Of PRISM)
ABC: China labels US as world's biggest spying 'villain' as Edward Snowden raises new snooping claims
Economic Populist: Do You Think the NSA Whistleblower Should Be Prosecuted?
NY Times: Where Did Our ‘Inalienable Rights’ Go?
Reuters: Hong Kong lets Snowden leave in move bound to infuriate U.S.
ABC: US spy whistleblower Edward Snowden leaves Hong Kong, reportedly en route to Moscow
Economic Policy Journal: BREAKING: Snowden on Flight to Moscow
ABC: US spy whistleblower Edward Snowden leaves Hong Kong, reportedly en route to Moscow
Stuff: Whistleblower Snowden allowed to leave Hong Kong
Reuters: Hong Kong lets Snowden leave, with Cuba among possible destinations
Salon: Edward Snowden departs Hong Kong on flight to Moscow
Market Watch: Snowden flees Hong Kong, lands in Moscow
Salon: U.S. revokes Snowden’s passport, sources say
Mises: The NSA’s Spying and Why it Matters
Salon: Snowden seeking asylum in Ecuador, says WikiLeaks
Reuters: Fugitive Snowden seeks asylum in Ecuador: foreign minister
Stuff: Snowden 'seeks asylum in Ecuador'
ABC: Edward Snowden helped by WikiLeaks to leave Hong Kong and seek asylum in Ecuador
Reuters: U.S. warns countries against Snowden travel
ABC: WikiLeaks helps Edward Snowden leave Hong Kong and seek asylum in Ecuador
Reuters: U.S. warns countries against Snowden travel
Reuters: White House expects Russia to look at all options to expel Snowden back to U.S.
Reuters: Snowden expected to fly to Cuba, U.S. urges his detention
Naked Capitalism: Quo Vadis, Edward Snowden?
Wired: Where in the World Is Edward Snowden?
Wired: Keeping Your Data Private Denies You Access to the Latest Tech
Scientific America: WikiLeaks Defends NSA Whistleblower, Condemns PRISM Digital Surveillance
Salon: Snowden won’t find a beacon of civil rights in Ecuador
Reuters: U.S. presses Russia as mystery over Snowden deepens
Reuters: White House presses Russia to expel Snowden; sharp words for China
Stuff: Dunne pressured over controversial spy bill
Reuters: Behind Snowden's Hong Kong exit: fear and persuasion
Reuters: U.S. warns countries against Snowden travel
Cloud Times: Which Effect Does PRISM Have on the Cloud?
Engadget: Edward Snowden tells South China Morning Post he took Booz Allen job to collect NSA information
Engadget: Australia takes the hint, postpones plans for PRISM-style snooping
ABC: US presses Russia to deliver NSA leaker Edward Snowden, slams China for letting him leave Hong Kong
Wired: NSA Surveillance Leaks Prompt Legislation
Reuters: No sign of Snowden as Aeroflot plane lands in Havana
more...
and more....
http://au.businessinsider.com/
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/25/us-usa-security-flight-idUSBRE95M02H20130625
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-06-26/putin-confirms-nsa-whistleblower-snowden-still-at-moscow-airport/4780468
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/25/us-usa-security-snowden-russia-idUSBRE95O1DG20130625
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/25/us-usa-security-australia-idUSBRE95O1IV20130625
http://theconversation.com/edward-snowdens-flight-shows-the-limits-of-us-power-15514
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/26/us-usa-security-flight-idUSBRE95M02H20130626
welcome to 1984
p
Sunday 19 May 2013
rescuing people and causes
i've come to the realization that i've become like many people i used to feel critical of
i don't want to rescue anyone anymore
i really feel like it's such a huge expense of spirit
over and over it is overwhelmed by simpler human needs: avarice, desperation, fear
legion
oh well, maybe my energy will rekindle
i'll find the next in need
Quixote?
p
Wednesday 15 May 2013
Christchurch Airport and Fairy Down sleeping bag
Seems that Christchurch Airport has either some financial problems or maybe they are freakin out about their insurance
mind you there was a rumor that an MP had reacted to the sight of so many backpacking young people sleeping in the arrival lounge prior to very early morning departures
anyway we were all told we would be kicked out at midnight
check-in to my flight was supposed to start at 3:45am
as soon as i heard it i left and found the best shelter i could find outside
happened to be one of two the "designated smoking areas"
i moved the ash-trays outside, set my pack as a pillow and climbed into my aging Fairy Down minus 15 degree sleeping bag which is little more than a down cocoon hardly big enough for you to cross your arms on your chest
but it actually can be stuffed into a pocket - it's pretty useful
by midnight it had got down to about zero - i don't know how well i might have fared had the temperature dropped another five degrees
but i was comfortable and slept until after 4 - still time enough to check in
i did wake at about 2am
there were two young men from Holland sitting and freezing to death and later i heard from one of the airport staff that some had also tried to escape the cold in outside stairwells
well done Christchurch Airport you dolts
these tourists will forget all the great stuff they experienced in NZ and will instead report the terrible treatment at the airport
me, i'm used to both the cold and to idiotic Kiwi shortsightedness
but those poor tourists really suffered
pop
some refs:
No Sleeping Overnight at Christchurch International Airport
Travellers kicked out of Christchurch Airport overnight
Travellers kicked out of Christchurch Airport overnight
Tourists land to rude Kiwi awakening
Early flyers can kip at airport
Definition of Bureaucracy
Bureaucracy
"promoted beyond your good points"
politics?
"promoted despite your bad points"
Corporate?
"who gives a shit if you own it"
Economics
Pick a direction that the powerful really wants to go and prove mathematically that that is the bestest direction
pop
Thursday 2 May 2013
Jeffrey Sachs on the banking system
via JESSE'S CAFÉ AMÉRICAIN
pop
we’re predators i must admit
it’s human nature too
to seek a better living for
our wives and children too
but animals we’re not you see
it not just fine detail
we keep the law, control ourselves
and the bankers go to jail
it’s human nature too
to seek a better living for
our wives and children too
but animals we’re not you see
it not just fine detail
we keep the law, control ourselves
and the bankers go to jail
p
Monday 29 April 2013
Population pressure and model aircraft
When i was about 9 years old i developed a keen interest in aircraft. I guess i was no different to many boys. I wanted to grow up to be a pilot - i guess that's because growing up to be an astronaut was away in the future.
I would devour anything i could find about aircraft and i could rattle off all the specifications of any aircraft from the earliest days of flight right through to the early 50's.
I loved airplanes.
In those days you could buy model airplanes - Airfix, Revelle and the like. But i was not rich and the models were not cheap.
I needed an income that would allow me the freedom to buy and build whatever i wanted.
My mum and dad were animal freaks - we had every animal you could imagine to be had in Australia in the 60's - Birds of every species, dogs, cats, rats, mice, fish, kangaroos...
One day i was in a pet shop and i saw that they were selling mice and after inquiring about them i decided i would breed mice.
My dad got me a tea chest (a plywood box about half a cubic meter used to transport tea from India - these being the days long before tea-bags etc).
I set it up with a wire door and filled it full of shredded newspaper and food and water
and mice.
Pretty soon i had a lot of mice.
I was getting 20 cents for each mouse from the pet shops in Liverpool (Sydney). That money was enough for me to buy my model aircraft and the paints and glues i needed to construct what ended up being a really cool set of planes.
There was not much work to it - all i had to do was, every day or so, clean out all the filth and replace it with clean shredded newspaper and keep them fed and watered.
Money for nothing.
The thing was that i was breeding piebald and grey mice because those were the ones that the pet shop said they wanted.
One day i turned up at the pet shop with my box of mice and they told me "sorry son but we only want white mice now".
Bummer. That was a really big let-down i can tell you because i had already, as usual planned exactly which model i was going to buy.
No sale, no money, no model.
I took my mice home and released them back into the tea chest.
Now, you have to understand that my parents were animal nuts - they had a big thing about kindness to animals and the idea of cruelty to animals in any way was abhorrent.
I grew up with that so i had no concept whatsoever of cruelty other than it was something that you just did not do.
I had spent my whole life with dogs and cats sleeping in my bed and animals gathering around me whenever i was in the back yard.
Here was i with a tea-chest full of continuously breeding mice and no way to deal with it.
Now, i can tell you i knew mice pretty well as a 9 year old (or maybe i was ten by then i really can't recall). I knew their behavior because i was looking at them every day. I even named most of them.
So, what happened when i could not remove mice from the tea-chest?
They just kept breeding and breeding and breeding.
And then i began to see things that were really quite disturbing.
Remember - i was like 9 or 10 - i did not really understand "sex" except as i was perceiving it in my mice.
So what did i witness?
Abandonment of baby mice - mothers just leaving them to starve.
Adult mice viciously attacking and devouring or partially devouring baby mice.
Homosexuality - now don't get me wrong - i had seen plenty of male mice attempting to mount other male mice but that had always been infrequent and met with aggression.
Now i was seeing homosexuality in all forms and all responses - as if it had suddenly become normal.
Violence, aberration and death.
That is what i witnessed.
It was many years later that i read studies along similar lines so i had to live with these revelations for a long time before i could come to terms with them.
At the time it freaked me out so much that i talked my dad into helping me take them out to the bush and releasing them into the wild.
Washing my hands of it all.
But i never forgot - ever.
I saw first hand what a population will do when everything is available except one thing.
Space.
Since then i have watched so may discussions about aspects of what i saw.
I have come to understand there are different levels of "illness".
One of them i call "sociological illness" - those expressions of behavior you only see when a population is under stress.
These days we can see every one of these aberrations occur, almost daily, in our world - from men raping and murdering 6 year old girls to women abandoning their children to men buggering men and worse.
These were all the things i saw in those mice when i was 10 years old.
How do we deal with these expressions today?
We either look on with abhorrence or we rationalize towards acceptance.
Wherever we fit in the scheme of things is no real escape form the consequences of our predicament - we are not so different to those mice and peer reviewed experiments have shown that what i witnessed as an innocent child are the real deal.
People get caught up in the right or wrong of how people think about how people behave relative to whatever "norm" is currently acceptable
But i know the truth.
Population pressure leads to every possible expression of behavior - acceptable or otherwise
How we accept it will vary with time and where we sit in it.
The real issue should not be "are sexually 'deviant' people bad".
the real issue should be how do we deal with population?
pop
An Internet voting system based on bitcoin
Internet voting systems have both strong support (from vendors and committed users of e-voting systems) and what appears to be equally strong opposition (from the technical community).
There appears to be two aspects to internet voting:
- Ensuring that only those authorised to vote are the only people who do vote.
- Ensuring that there is no tampering with the votes between point of voting and point of counting.
The first of these will always carry some level of risk and that risk is no different from that with traditional paper based voting systems where the identification of the voter is required. How are we to be absolutely sure that the voter is in fact the voter we have on our list of authorised voters? What is proposed here is that solutions to the problem be allowed to evolve with time and advancing technology. Initially we could start with distribution of a "vote authorisation token" to authorised voters via the postal services. Though this is not perfect it appears to carry fewer risks than what might be achieved currently with electronic distribution. Also, the basis for most voter eligibility is residence. Eligible non-resident voters also have some physical connection that authorises them to vote such as being stationed somewhere or having equity in a property located within the electoral area.
Assuming that the distribution of a "vote authorisation token" is viable the next question then is how might we ensure that a cast vote progresses to the counting process without intervention?
The proposal is that the same principles used by bitcoin can be used to both transmit votes (transactions) and count them (account balances).
We propose that the distribution of "vote authorisation tokens" be nothing other than a bitcoin-like transaction of a vote from an electoral commission to the voter. This exactly parallels the payment of an amount of bitcoin money to a voter. The voter's balance then represents the number of votes he or she is authorised to cast. The voter in casting a vote is in effect making a payment-like transaction from his/her vote "wallet" to the "wallet" designated to be the wallet of the vote counting point for a candidate - in other words the candidate's "account" held on a publicly visible "wallet".
The handling of the vote "transaction" is then exactly the same as that for monetary transactions in bitcoin. The "miners" would then be those organisations and individuals who have the most interest in the outcome of the election or contest. Major political parties would invest the most to ensure their rivals do not have dominance over transaction validation.
Every voter would be able to trace his or her vote through the transaction history giving full transparency.
The results would be available in real time - even where complex distribution of preferences are utilised. In such cases the false "random" nature of distributions would also be eradicated - leaving one and only one path through the distribution.
pop
see also "what is a bitcoin"
i discover i was not the first person to think of this
p
Friday 26 April 2013
What is A BitCoin?
What is "A bitcoin"?
Seems to me to be the biggest confusion i run across when trying to explain bitcoin to people.
Sites in plenty explain what "bitcoin" is but that leaves some people still confused.
Some of the confusion comes from thinking there are "coins".
There aren't any really - there are no "coins" in bitcoin.
I explain it like this
"A bitcoin is (at the time of writing) 1/25th the reward paid for confirming the validity of a block of bitcoin transactions"
Not so long ago it was 1/50th the reward.
In the not too distant future it will be 10/1250th the reward. It will get smaller until there are only rewards from transaction fees.
At any point in time there is also an exchange rate such that you could say:
"1 bitcoin is USD$150"
but there are still no bitcoins so to speak.
The decimal point in a bitcoin balance is in a way quite arbitrary. It set a starting point for an exchange rate.
bitcoin - whoever Satoshi Nakamoto is he/she/them and Adam Black should get a Nobel Prize for something absolutely stunning in it's brilliance - but otherwise i'm sure he/she/they are entitled to The Well Deserved Fortune of Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin creator, Visionary and Genius.
pop
ps
Buy with bitcoin? Sure you can!
Donate to us with Bitcoin
192hsjPnNqHEfiNEaLYaFyoyMxwRgTS6tn
Tuesday 16 April 2013
DropBox - slimy, insidious bastards who own a cool app
So ok i finally gave in and bought a smartphone.
It's not that i gave in really. It's because soon i will have a valid reason to own one - that i will be relocating to another country and i'll not have a job.
It's a South East Asian country and one thing they do have is cellphone coverage.
So anyway a smartphone looks like a sensible investment - GPS, translator, access to my data no matter where i am. Well, that's the theory.
I've been migrating into the cloud for about 3 years. Maybe "migration" isn't the best term - let's think of it more as setting up residence there - i'll pretty much never really trust any of them - so as well as having everything in the cloud i still have multiply backed up originals in 2TB disks located in two countries. If i could mount those safely somewhere it would be even better.
Back to my new smartphone. I detest Apple as a company (even more than i detest Microsoft and way more than i detest google) so i went with a Samsung.
The new Galaxy S4 is about to be released so i figured that S3s would be in that sweet spot of being still very useful but not so expensive - i got one for just over AUD$400.
The only hiccup was that my SIM card was too big but a quick trip to a local chinese phone shop soon trimmed it down to size.
I spent the weekend setting it up and playing with it.
Because i have already established myself in the cloud (google, Microsoft, Amazon, skype, VOIP, yahoo - you name it) and all my contacts, feeds, docs and all my thousands of photos are already on line, i was very quickly up and running with full access to everything i have access to on my desk and lap tops.
You could say that i'm way ahead of most people - in fact i am pretty sure i am (if you allow for the fact that 90% of the crap available as "apps" is games and low-brow "entertainment" and i don't have any of that).
So, pre-installed on my shiny new S3 is DropBox.
I'd tried DropBox on my desktop - sharing between work and home but i was not very impressed - in fact i thought it was rubbish compared to what i have with skydrive and google drive so i'd uninstalled it.
But i thought i'd give it another try on the smartphone. Ah slick - very slick - very well integrated into the phone.
And then i got an email saying i could have 48GB of free storage if i carried out 5 of 7 steps....
Of course no matter how you cut it one of those steps is to rat on a friend by coughing up their email address - a hot lead so to speak.
Of course i just used one of my many email addresses (i literally have an infinite number of them as i made the good investment of a low cost domain presence through goDaddy - as well as all the others - gmail, outlook, yahoo and lots of others all managed through my gmail account)
So now i'm being bombarded by very clever marketing spam from dopbox - both sides.
And get this - that so-called "free"48GB is only free for 24 months.
Talk about an insidious bunch of slimy crooked scum - they lure you into using as much on line space as they can possibly get you to use - and then they'll drop a big rental fee on you - when you're committed.
Well DropBox let me tell you that your business model might work with dumb people who have more money than sense - but anyone with any skill whatsoever (or the right app which will indeed soon appear) - will use the free 2GB as a staging location for their camera managed through their other systems.
I've shared my DropBox with my other more powerful and more generous systems - and now it's just a folder.
DropBox reminds me of Excite - was my absolutely favourite search engine and way better than google at the time but they rushed to monetize it. The rest is history.
If you want to dominate the market you have to have deep pockets and a long term strategy. Only once you have killed off all the real competition should you think about how to make money from things.
DropBox - cool and nicely integrated app owned by a bunch of impatient marketing clowns.
pop
Wednesday 10 April 2013
Thursday 4 April 2013
Honesty about dishonesty
Are you honest?
Really?
I don't think so
watch and see
ps i found this on blogs.psychcentral.com
pop
Tuesday 2 April 2013
Saturday 30 March 2013
This will cause a stir
but isn't it pretty practical advise?
Princeton Alumna To Female Princeton Students:
Find A Husband Before Graduation
...
…For most of you, the cornerstone of your future and happiness will be inextricably linked to the man you marry, and you will never again have this concentration of men who are worthy of you.
...
Wyler, Grace. Princeton Alumna To Female Princeton Students: Find A Husband Before Graduation. http://au.businessinsider.com. 2013-03-30. URL:http://au.businessinsider.com/princeton-women-husbands-princetonian-2013-3. Accessed: 2013-03-30. (Archived by WebCite® at http://www.webcitation.org/6FVE3tCAP)
p
one of your genes might be the human species lifeboat
I guess that's the idea behind "go forth and multiply" (not to be confused by this or with this sort of multiplication)
(extinction threat population rules seem right now no longer to apply)
just think though
one of your genes or one of the genes of one of your offspring
might be the saviour of all the other genes, or at least some
you might just be the human species lifeboat (kinda like these fire ants)
...
"all other priorities rescinded"
perhaps that's the underlying issue with conservatives versus liberals
liberals try at least to associate themselves with the whole of creation (and all of its genes)
conservatives just pretend to, or don't bother
:-)
pop
yes that's 5 prime to 3 prime
5 prime to 3 prime remember
(Okazaki fragments)
more DNA Replication
see also Crucial step in human DNA replication observed for the first time
p
Friday 29 March 2013
Peak Oil is Dead
Wile, Rob. Peak Oil is Dead. http://au.businessinsider.com. 2013-03-29. URL:http://au.businessinsider.com/death-of-peak-oil-2013-3. Accessed: 2013-03-29. (Archived by WebCite® at http://www.webcitation.org/6FTij3hH1)
“peak oil” became the boogeyman of the U.S. economy
i guess he must have been a bit like van Gogh
so anything Peak Oily will be worth something
pop
Ants prove that humans need not be very bright at all
the results show us that people need only expend an ant size part of their neurological system to feeding themselves and their families
the rest we can play with at will :-)
AUTHORNAME. Robot ants successfully mimic real colony behavior. http://www.plos.org/. 2013-03-29. URL:http://www.sciencecodex.com/robot_ants_successfully_mimic_real_colony_behavior-109486. Accessed: 2013-03-29. (Archived by WebCite® at http://www.webcitation.org/6FTNPZ7Qb)
i guess that the ants have a funny chemical switch connected to their direction - once they have filled the switch and closed it they turn around and follow the same strategy
cool
pop
the battle against change
The battle between those who think we can fend off biological inevitability by stamping out its sociological symptoms rages on
which side is right?
the "right" side's belief is bound to societies that only occasionally encountered high population densities and none of them anything like what we have today
those left think that, no matter what our path to the future, all expressions of nature within ourselves are legitimate if the numbers say they are
both are trying to deal with the issue of population* and growth the same way
by ignoring it
Peck, Adam. Newest Darling Of The Republican Party Compares Same-Sex Marriage To NAMBLA, Bestiality. . 2013-03-28. URL:http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2013/03/28/1790741/newest-darling-of-the-republican-party-compares-same-sex-marriage-to-nambla-bestiality/. Accessed: 2013-03-28.(Archived by WebCite® at http://www.webcitation.org/6FSxyii7z)
*see also John B. Calhoun
Thursday 28 March 2013
Tuesday 26 March 2013
Musing on properties in flight paths
it won't really be that long before aircraft will be flown entirely by programs
they'll drop error so far that it will seem like magic to anyone who has lived through flight
suddenly, you'll be able to have planes fly in almost any conditions
and that could be extended to include flying with any prevailing wind direction
so the need to fly over people can be reduced - in some cases, to zero.
then suddenly all the properties in flight paths will go up in value
get em now?
how many years?
pop
Sunday 24 March 2013
Wanda Jackson
She's 75
or something....
she gets up on to a stage of hot and seasoned musicians who've been playing for an hour
there's a few hundred people in the darkness
75.
really, she is amazing
and check out that band (only just met her)
the kid on the right is just 15
his dad on the bass
by the time they all get to Blues Fest 2013 they'll be fantastic
Saturday 5 January 2013
Thursday 3 January 2013
Rum and Moody Blues
Today i discovered Rum.
Well, i guess i'd have to say "rediscovered".
So while i work, it's rum and Moody Blues (to our children's children's children)
god bless them
pop
Well, i guess i'd have to say "rediscovered".
So while i work, it's rum and Moody Blues (to our children's children's children)
god bless them
pop
Wednesday 2 January 2013
Sugar: The Bitter Truth
This is pretty intense stuff - how we are being killed by, believe it or not, Richard Nixon
well kindof - take a look and see for yourself
pop
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