The Chains That Bind

I really am trying to like AT&T. The oldest telephonics company in the world,(survived by its many incarnations... The original AT&T doesn't exist anymore) they have such a rich history, that really defined the shape of our country. I have an unusual interest in the telecom industry. (look for my future blog post on the History of Telecom) Anyway AT&T is really rubbing me the wrong way lately, and this is just another nail in the coffin. ( or maybe I should say just another jack in the wall?? Phone humor!) If there's one thing I abhor is a collar and leash. Especially on my internet, but that is exactly what AT&T is planning. Starting May 2nd 2011, AT&T will have a 'cap' on how much it's DSL subscribers can download and stream per month. 150 gigs is what you get if your a DSL line holder, and a 250 gig cap for their high speed users. While this of course may very well be enough for people, myself included, I don't like that feeling of a ceiling above me. And more righteously, I don't like the idea of people being penalized for sharing information. Rationing out data just seems wrong, and unfortunately, AT&T may not be alone. Something this big is almost guaranteed for other competitors to follow suit.




And another problem I for see with this, is that most companies, have two tiers of Broadband, a regular DSL line and a higher speed version that usually involves fiber optic cables. Ex: Verizon Fios, AT&T Uverse etc.. With these type of caps, the higher speed services, look less attractive, because whats the point, you'll just download yourself to the limit anyway? There's no need to get a faster service, because you'll just reach the cap faster for your month.
I'm not liking the looks of this and hope this isn't a trend to come.
As always comments welcome

http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/13/atandt-will-cap-dsl-u-verse-internet-and-impose-overage-fees/#dsq-comments

Bejing Citizens Being Tracked Through Their Cell Phones

I'm not sure how accurate this is, but according to a few reports the citizens of Beijing, China can now be tracked by government officials, as to where they are. Even most mundane cell phones have some sort of GPS technology installed in them, and this is giving China, an incentive to use this advantage. Now, the director of their science and technology commission, stated that this move is to ease up congested road ways, and streets. He claims that know where people are gathered and congested, can help route traffic, to other areas. Now we all know China is pretty populated, no surprise there about the heavy traffic.. but tracking on cell phones? The matter just sounds sketchy to me. What others have suggested, and I agree with this, is that this initiative lets Government officials see where large masses of people are gathering and given the social unrest over the last two months in Africa, it probably has the upper echelons worried about the fire spreading. So this whole program can keep a big brother style eye over the herd and especially because of the reports that the social unrest in Egypt began over Facebook. This would allow anyone sending any messages inciting unrest, to be found and punished quickly and accurately. While I doubt the US government would never pull such a brash, and clumsy maneuver, you think something like this is possible? Even without our knowledge? Lets hear from you guys.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/04/china-tracking-beijing-citizens-mobiles

Mk Ultra

Ah, weird, behind closed door experiments? check. Mind altering drugs? check.
Set in the 1950's cold war era? check check..

Started in the 1950's and early 1970's, Mk-Ultra was the government's way of playing with LSD and other illegal substances. What was the MK-ULTRA program?
It was a covert operation by the US government to explore the effects of mind altering drugs on soldiers. Remember, in the late 1950's, and early 60's drugs were beginning to take hold of the youthful culture, it was a drug world. LSD one of the main centerfolds of the revolution had some serious effects on the human body and the nervous system. It's reputation carries with it, effects of altered thinking, psychodelic 'tripping', and cognitive shifts. That being the case, the CIA used LSD to experiment with humans, often CIA agents, and prisoners, and studied their effects. They put together mass group dosages, and watched for any interactions in the mental state.
The point behind all this testing, and experimentation, was to see if substances combined with LSD or psilocybin, ketamine, or marajuana, and other drugs could produce a person of higher mental thought, even producing effects of telekensis, brain washing, shared dreaming, or hypnosis.

Mind control, and brain washing were the two big idea's behind the MkUltra program. Producing this, the government in effect could create an ideal killer, or assassin, or even president. (one would argue, that the government already controls the presidents) The MkUltra program even went so far as Hypnosis, in which lots of experimentation was done with hypnotizing patients, and having them remember complex written words or strings of text.There were also a few "mini mkultra" programs that spawned from the idea of mind control.

MkSearch was established to find a perfect 'truth serum' drug. Using this at the height of the cold war would have been invaluable. Remember that during this time, the United States would have loved to found out about what was going on in Russia at the time.

Project Artichoke was a similar mind control idea that used the addiction of morphine and its withdrawl effects on people, to induce vulnerable states in people. Apparently Project Artichoke is where all the action happened, and that mkultra was a lesser offensive. But all the evidence of Artichoke was destroyed, leaving the public to chew over the mkultra program.

MKOften was another spawn, in which, the CIA investigated and played with more tribal, ritualistic methods of human thought. It even reports that mystics, clairvoyants, and psychics where used and experimented on.


Unfortunately, in the early 1970's, the files for MkUltra were vastly destroyed, so what truely went on in those hallowed halls, will never be known. The New York Times reported that there had been illegal experiments going on, which prompted an investigation into the matter, that resulted in something called the Rockafeller Commission, which was a commission to look into what the CIA did domestically. Sure enough, evidence of biological, and psychological experimentation was indeed found.
You can literally read tons one this topic, so I'll stop here with just the basic overview and I'll let you continue your research if you find this stuff interesting. The likes of Timothy Leary and John C.Lilly proved that the inner laberynths of the mind are corridors that can be explored and visted through the effects of drugs like LSD, and the CIA pouched on that opporunity. I'll be doing an article on Timothy Leary soon, he's a figure that fascinates me to no end!

I leave you with this link, its from a video, years back, called "Sunset". While the music is pretty, really pay attention to whats happening in the video..its very VERY much related to today blog post.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kmz_48HChj8

Also on a more comical spin of this topic, I'd point you to the recent movie "The Men Who Stare At Goats" While this is a humorous take on a similar project, it still deals with the main concepts.

Web 1.0, 2.0 and to come, 3.0

Suffice it to say that the early renditions of the Internet should probably be referred to as Web 0.5, but in those earlier days, I'll say 1994-2003, the web was very static. Hyperlinks were fairly dumb links, and there wasn't much interaction. A person would create a webpage, and create links. You then would click around reading and absorbing information. Not much give and take. Back then, everything ran at a much slower pace (remember the newest technological feat was 26, and 56k/s modems), so graphics were more stagnant and there wasn't a whole lot going on. Flash media, didn't exist, and embedding movies into web pages would have gotten you some laughable stares.
Web 1.0 relied heavily on the creation of personal web pages. People would set up a page about themselves, or about a topic that interested them, and have to go through coding it, and designing it with little help. Most Personal Web Pages were pretty elementary in design. Unless you knew HTML, it left you with little to work with. Web pages looked like this:

Not alot of interactivity, links pointed in one direction, and everything was very static

There's not a definite point when web 1.0 left and web 2.0 picked up, but personally, I accredit the transition to the creation and rise of Youtube. Other sites will say otherwise, but Youtube, is in my opinion the turning point that really gave control to the users. You could actually view and comment in real time to video's, embedded right into the page. Soon interactive media such as this began its revolution. Networking really took off as well. A site by the name of Friendster began the social media craze, soon followed by Myspace, flickr, and Facebook. All these sites rely heavily on the features that web 2.0 provides, which is a more participatory web. Running these sites like facebook and youtube on a 56k dialup modem is a chore in itself. So broadband definitely plays a big role in what defines Web 2.0

Such new programming such as Ajax gives live updates to pages without reloading. So when someone on Facebook messages you, you see it update without having to click 'reload'. This may seem small, but it allows you to be live in real time with things happening. Now, many new languages such as Perl, and Python, give users the ability to create and customize private pages with ease, rather than having to learn code such as HTML.

Also web 2.0 has an unprecedented amount of applications that can serve as tools. Things like RSS feeds, that is news reports straight to your desktop, improve upon web sites, giving a more dynamic and personal touch. This is "Service oriented architecture" or SOA, anything that improves and enriches online media.


Some examples of web "2.0ie" sites:


Probably the greatest feat in all of the web, is a site that Paul Otlet (see previous post) would have been proud of. Wikipedia, has become the worlds largest, most concise, and favorable encyclopedia. This user edited tome of world knowledge allows anyone to share, edit and contribute to its information. It is the epitome of Web 2.0, and in reality, it realizes the dream Paul Otlet had. While the information may be questionable, I refer you back to Marshall McCluhan's idea of "The medium is the message".

Some Web 1.0 Sites


As opposed to web 2.0



So that leaves us with Web 3.0? Where is it? When will it arrive? What's it going to look like? Some believe that web 3.0 is a 'cradle to grave' Internet. Meaning we'll always be plugged into the wired world. A sort of "metaverse" that is an open 3d world in which people can move around in that's separate from the reality we live in. While I think this is definitely getting ahead of ourselves, web 3.0 will look and feel different. More customization, more interactivity, and more Google...god damnit more Google...

A Look Back: Paul Otlet's Mundaneum

I think that with computers, technology, and information structure, we tend to have a 'tunnel vision' view of things. That is, we seem to look forward and only forward to see what the newest, shiniest gadgets will be. While the future prospects is indeed important, I to believe that it's fundamental to take a step back sometimes, and look at where the roots of our current technology came from. That being said, I'd like to introduce you to a man named Paul Otlet, who was an early information scientist (fancy word for librarian). Many may not have heard of his name, but you could easily say that he had an idea that resembled the web as we know it today. Otlet had many new idea's about classification and ways of storing information. It was very analog, and manual, but he had a vision of using information as a way to create 'trails'. In Brussels, Belgium in the 1930's, Paul Otlet has this huge office/warehouse built which he called The Mundaneum. This construct was an open warehouse building filled from the floor to the ceiling with filing cabinets, and drawers. He housed a staff of people there to literally read through books, and write down their information on index cards, and have them stored away. His main goal was to have a sort of 'bottom up' structure, where people could could take out an index card they could see what other people looked at as well. If someone took out 2 index cards, a third party could see the 'link' between the two. Its something that we lack in our library's today. If you take out a book and read through it, but you need more information on someone who was mentioned in the book, you have to go out and search it. In Otlet's Utopian view, you'd have access to what other books link to that document. He had this very idealistic view of information sciences. He was creating and thinking about all this as the League of Nations was forming, so he possessed this lofty goal of having a sort of "Global Library", in which information would be shared by all. His Mundaneum, actually took off, and it reached a max of nearly 15 million index cards, but unfortunately fate took the reins. We all know what catastrophic event took place in the early 1940's, especially in Belgium. The Nazi party stormed into Belgium, and his baby, the Mundanuem was destroyed, all the documents burned, and it was turned into a tour house for 3rd Reich artwork. After this Otlet, who's country was invaded and occupied, his life's work destroyed before his eyes, died as a nobody. Unfortunately people had more on their minds other than global information systems. He was generally forgotten and still remains as a figure that really doesn't get much recognition. Paul Otlet, who really had the basic frame work of hyperlinks, search engines, and the World Wide Web itself.

Meeting Your Doppelganger

This blog won't delve into the occult, superstition, or anything like that all too often, but this topic interests me to no end! Besides i look at this topic as more paradoxical in nature being that a person can't be in two places at once.

Picture this if you can, your walking down a busy street in a populated city trying to get to work. As you cross the street, masses of people are walking in the opposite direction, pushing and trying to get where they have to be. As your pushing your way through the mob of people, you take notice of who shoves and bumps into you while keeping the coffee in your hands from spilling... A business exec on his cell phone, a hipster girl holding a sketchbook, a musician holding a guitar, you holding a cup of coffee.. Wait what? You do a double take and sure enough your staring into the eyes of yourself.
You've just encountered your doppelganger, or "double walker" in German. The doppelganger has its root in mythology and was once said to be searching for you its whole life. Your doppelganger would spend its entire life trying to hunt you down and kill you while you go about your life completely unaware.
Also, the term doppelganger refers to seeing oneself in your peripheral vision. You be sitting in your apartment alone and suddenly see yourself sitting next to you. Either way seeing or meeting your doppelganger has generally been a very bad omen. Usually fore shadowing death.
They say that two types of doppelgangers exist. One is the ghostly apparition of a living person that basically exists as a harbinger of ill fortune. The second is a fully living person who is your exact double who is coming to find you as you read this. Of course there have been many reports of peaceful encounters with their double.

One of my favorite stories about this is of a school teacher in 1845 named Emilie Sagée. She was an Excellent teacher, loved by students and staff but she apparently have a doppelganger that shadowed her and was visible to many. One day as she was writing on the black board, a shadowy image of her appeared next to emilee, following her exact movements as she wrote. Thirteen students saw this happen. Another time, Emilee was eating dinner and from behind her, her double appeared mirroring the exact movements of her eating. One of the strangest events was when the school teacher was outside touring the gardens. The class room inside was being instructed by another teacher. 42 students were in the room and had a clear view of Emilee. The instructor inside the room noticed Emilee outside and left the room to go speak with her. The 42 students saw the double of emilee appear in the front of the room. The original emilee was still there talking though she looked tired. The new doppelganger emilee just sat motionless in the front of the room and stared into space soon vanishing. Emilie Sagée reported never to have seen her doppelganger but said that whenever someone reported it, she had felt tired and drained during the period it was seen.

This one I love:
In a case that suggests that doppelgangers might have something to do with time or dimensional shifts, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the 18th century German poet, confronted his doppelganger while riding on the road to Drusenheim. Riding toward him was his exact double, but wearing a gray suit trimmed in gold. Eight years later, von Goethe was again traveling on the same road, but in the opposite direction. He then realized he was wearing the very gray suit trimmed in gold that he had seen on his double eight years earlier! Had von Goethe seen his future self?

Has anyone encountered themselves? Their Nega? Or their doppelganger? Was it a peaceful meeting or did it result in an epic battle for your life? The thought that there's another me walking around makes me pretty uncomfortable, I'll admit. Share all stories in the comments section!

Rotten Core to this Apple?

I was thrilled when I saw this article. About a month ago, I wrote a diatribe on here, about Staples and their deplorable business practices, and now out in the real news is an anonymous Apple employee doing the same. If you've ever been to a large mall in your area you may have seen the big white Apple stores. These medical looking stores look very sterile, clean, and quite frankly, pretty freaky. Minimilism is obviously what they're going for. You can touch, play and fondle all the available apple products. I really really despise going into these stores, the staff is always dressed down in tee shirts, trying to be "everyday" looking. I actually do own apple products, and find nothing wrong with their merchandise, but even I must admit, their marketing, and is so obnoxious. Apple started out as a small company that really strove to be different for the sake of change. Now because Apple is so mainstream, they just like being "different" for the sake of keeping up their facade. Anyway, this anonymous Apple employee, whom we'll call...'Aaron', gave us an inside look at an Apple retail store. What strikes me as the most glaring, is that Apple employees can actually lie to their customers about jail breaking, or switching carriers. All to make a buck. This is exactly what bothered me about Staples. Taking advantage of someone who doesn't know just so you can turn a profit. Like Staples, Apple employee's sales numbers are tracked and posted for other employee's to see. Which makes competition amongst employee's stiff, causing employee's to push the envelope further and further into getting better sales.
Has anyone here ever been lied to by an Apple employee? Has anyone had a good or bad experience at one of their stores?

Read the summary article for yourself, or pick up the full article in Popular Mechanics this month.
http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/confessions-of-an-apple-store-employee-we-lie-to-customers-all-the-time-535959.html

Vending Machine Hack?

Has anyone ever tried this? I'm curious to see if it actually works. Well as you know, for whatever reason, Soda Machines and I suppose Vending machines in general, are getting more elaborate. You should see the ones in my school, once you make a selection, this loud, overally dramatic sound hums out and this big mechanical arm reaches up, takes your selection from the shelf and gingerly drops it in the receptacle. All these flashy doo-dads and crap require some sort of programming, meaning they, with the right amount of knowledge can be hacked. Let me preface this by saying, following this will lead to theft, it should be tried with just the advantage of knowledge and pure fun.

What you'll need:
Time
A Machine not out in the open
A bit of luck


Well like I said, I'm not sure if this will even work, it requires that the vending machine still be set on "default" mode. So I'm thinking that any high traffic area won't work. Like a vending machine inside a mall, or movie theater, or anything like that, probably will be changed out regularly, and the default setting probably taken off. So your probably better off trying this on a machine that's not visited so frequently. Once you locate a machine that seems to be out of the way of traffic, look at its number pad, or selection pad. Usually the numbers appear as they do on your keyboard's numpad. But in some cases of new machines, there are no numbers, but just big buttons with the drink on them. So instead of pressing F2 for a coke, you just press the big Coke button. These buttons are technically numbered as well, but its harder to tell how the numbers are ordered. Now according to this hack, if you press the buttons in a sequential order, a navigation menu will appear on one of the LCD screens. The number order is 4,2,3,1. Meaning you'd press those buttons in that order and you'd be taken to a menu screen. Like I said newer machines have those big square buttons but those too are assigned numbers, you just have to find out what number corresponds to what button. Usually the screens are pretty small, allowing only one line of text to appear at a time, so its good if you have no one in back of you waiting to use the machine. You have to scroll through all the options one by one. You'll see options for price changing, finding out how much money is in the machine currently, the version of the machines firmware, and some errors that the machine can run into (jammed, selection switched etc..) So yea this according to a few people can allow you to enter into any vending machine. Now as I said this won't work if the default password of 4,2,3,1 has bee changed. In which, you'll have to guess what password the machine is set too, which would be waaay to many combinations to just randomly guess. If your going to try this make sure no one's waiting in back of you, cause it'll probably take some time, and make sure the owner isn't around, or you'll have some explaining to do. And finally like I said, this may not even work! If anyone is willing to try it let me know, I'll try it on Friday when I'm at school. And I'll let you guys know how it turns out. If you've ever tried this, or heard about it, leave a comment to your findings!

The Mind-Body Problem

A topic of great interest to me, is the problem that Rene Descartes and many other philosopher's faced. So much so, that the debate really still goes on to this day, and that topic of contention is the mind-body problem. Or the duality of the being. What I mean by this is, You have in one corner, your brain, your body, your fingernails, your hair, and all the physical attributes that you can feel and interpret pain, touch and feeling. So you can run your finger across a cold surface and it causes certain nerves to fire telling your brain that the surface is cold. All very basic. So where does your mind come into play? Its generally accepted that the mind is different than your brain. You're brain is the physical structure in your head, and most people (I, included) are satisfied with just saying that the mind is swimming somewhere in your brain. Rene Descartes, a French philosopher really questioned this, and came up with the theory of Duality. This proposed that the Mind and Body are independent of each other, and that they could technically survive without the other.

"Body is by nature always divisible, and the mind is entirely indivisible."

Descartes believed that the Mind or the "I" of a person was something immaterial, and that it couldn't be destroyed, and lived on after the body died and whithered.
But where is this? One thought experiment that's pretty fun to think about, is if you had a very long time, and the proper technology, someone could remove your brain, atom by atom, and replace it with identical atoms. You could remove one carbon atom from your brain, and replace it with an identical carbon atom. Do this several billion, billion times, and you could replace your brain. But would this 'new identical brain' still be you? If you reconnected all the neurons to as they were, would you still wake up with the same personality? According to Descartes, you would, because the mind is something inside the brain but doesn't interact with any physical matter.

Now here's how Descartes theory isn't completely sound. In my mind, I wanted to write this blog article. I woke up today with my decision in mind to write this, and so I sat down and wrote it. That right there dispels Descartes idea, he made it clear that the Mind and the Brain are separate. That the Mind is immaterial and because its not anything physical, it can never 'touch' anything in the brain. So by all rights, the mind should have no influence over the body.
A man by the name of Gilbert Ryle saw this fault and said that there had to be some sort of bridge to connect the two. That there couldn't be a "Ghost in the Machine" controlling its actions.


I suggest you find a book called "The Mind's I" by Douglass Hofstadter. The first introduction describes and interesting scenario, in which a astronaut is marooned on the planet Mars. She'll be met with certain death under the alien sky, and the only thing that can save her is the transporter on board her ship. She can be quickly broken down atom by atom, and "rebuilt" back on Earth. She decides that this is the only option to see her kids again. So she steps into the booth and blacks out, only to be "awoken" back on Earth. Every atom in her body is shredded and copied verbatim, and then put together on earth. So what happened here? Did her mind fly from Mars to Earth and insert itself in the newly constructed body? Or did her mind re materialize along with her body?

My last thought on the matter ( I can go on and on with this topic) is that of Artificial Intelligence. We can and have created robots, to talk, listen, understand, and do work. If you look at your computer in front of you, or your ipad, or notebook, one would say, that the computer is a vastly superior in its ability to solve equations, and do tasks. So humans can create a brain. Albeit, a very limited brain that can only operate when given instructions.. but it technically is a brain nonetheless. But can we ever create a Mind? According to writers like H.G Wells, and Issac Asimov, the mind of an A.I brain will emerge on its own. Meaning that one day your home computer will have a 'spark' and be able to refer to itself. Because we have no hard wiring in our brains that give us the ability to self reference, the same would be for A.I, they would soon just know and be able to think about themselves.

So I ask you guys, whats your opinion? Is there really such a thing that makes me, Me? Or is it just a random placement of neurons and memory? If it is just the placement of neurons, then we can re-create anyone by duplicating the arrangement of these nuerons in a new body.

I.P Addresses and Tracing Them

For us telephony and communications geeks out there, I really think this is my favorite tools and abilities of routing. Of course I'm still pretty new to networking, and this is a pretty simple and probably well known feature. But lets say you take any website, to avoid angering anyone, lets use this very site. (Blogger is hosted by google, so I suppose it will anger google lol.) But you ever wonder where these sites are hosted from? I mean seriously of all the millions and millions of websites it really is interesting to see where they come from. And also, the path that your computer or router takes to get to them. Well for those who don't know, you can. Click your start button, or the window icon for you vista and 7 users. Click the run function. A little dialog box will innocently appear and you type in CMD. The MSDos command prompt will appear. You type in this as follows:
tracert www.loopinginfinities.blogspot.com
Make sure you put the single space after the tracert command. You can do this for just about any website. Press enter and a series of names and numbers will begin to be listed. This is my favorite feature of the command. It actually shows you the path that the information is sent from. When I run this command to this very site, it's first step is my router, then some sort of origin gateway, then it says Newark Core RT2, meaning the big city near me is called Newark, so it probably passes through a routing station there. After a few more of these it hits New York, then some sort of Google server, and then finally down into the routers there and finally to a single machine. (or more accurately a router for the single machine) Anyway I love seeing the pathway that all this information takes from my humble computer out onto the massive servers and routers and switches of the internet at large... Anyway, now that you have the websites final I.P address (the last number in the list), you can go to a site like: http://www.ip-adress.com/what_is_my_ip/ , and put the numbers into the small text box at the top. From there it will show you the location of there that I.P address is being served at. Generally though, these numbers are probably router numbers and not the true address of the computer its on.. Routers have that built in fire wall that lets them protect the computer that they're in front of. Anyway, hope you enjoy this stuff as much as I do.
For fun put in to the command screen: tracert 127.0.0.1 and see what comes up. A loop! 127.0.0.1 is the way of saying I want to talk to my own router. So the router sends a signal to itself. One of my favorite ways to cause a piece of machinery to self reference. Until next time!

Exploration or Exploitation?

Does anyone here hack? I mean it in the literal sense, do you find yourself hacking websites, phones, or other communication technology? I find the whole idea of hacking, and phreaking (phone line hacking) very stimulating. I mean to me the term hacker and hacking refers to the ability to use the inner workings of programs and technology to create hidden door ways and paths around the rigid rules of programming. Specifically today though I want to get into the world of phreaking. I don't hear this term used much anymore.. actually I never really heard it used. I'm 23, so the days of phreaking were generally dying as I was being born. Anyway brief history lesson in telecommunication hacking:

In the mid 70's AT&T ruled the telecommunications world. They were the one and only top dogs, and could charge exuberant prices that no one could contest. Obviously people didn't find this price gorging to be fair. Well neither did the US government. AT&T was eventually broken up in the early 80's into small subsidiary companies called the Bell companies.. Bell Alantic..Bell South etc.. Anyway it was too late people, mainly hackers, began experimenting with ways around the phone companies, stiff charges. Free phones calls, and information were but a few tricks away! People soon got creative outside pay phones became victims of what has been deemed "Boxing" Were you can literally trick the phone into believing you inserted money by recording the sound previously.
One of the great methods you can try out if you have an older land line near you is to pick up the handset, and click the receiver down a few times per second. then stop for a second, then click a few more times then again, take a second pause.. Do this 7 times, and you've just dialed a number! You can get good at this, because how many times you click the receiver, the phone translates that number of clicks into a 1-9 number. So you can literally tap out a phone number if you know the proper number. Morris code for the phone!

There's a bunch of other phone hacks that you can research and look into, I suppose with the dying of payphones, these hacks really just aren't viable anymore, but I love the idea..
Some people say, why go through all that trouble just to save a few cents? To me, and I honestly can't speak for everyone else, its really about the fun, and interest in seeing how things work and play out. Phone lines, computers and cable lines have always fascinated me, so being able to play and tinker with this stuff is really my version of playing video games. Pure fun. In fact.. I've been thinking..would the boxing trick work on parking meters? I plan to find out later this week! I'll report back to you my news! Anyway, keep exploring guys.


PS: The photo is just a reminder of what pay phone's have become in the last 10 years...

Channelsurfing.net

A Quiet take down. Channelsurfing.net was a streaming video site that streamed out mostly sporting events. Hockey, Baseball, Basketball, Soccer, even some TV shows. This domain was a pretty popular site maybe even more so than, Surfthechannel. It offered completely free streams of live events, that were intermittedly interuppted by ads. Giving the websites its income. According to the article below, it was among 10 other sites that were seized and promptely shut down, including firstrow.net. Did anyone here use this site? I can't imagine it will be down long though before another site comes and takes its place.. The Napster effect I say..

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/feb/03/business/la-fi-superbowl-stream-shutdown-20110203

Douglas Ruskoff "...The Internet is Entirely Controlled By Central Authorities"

If you haven't heard of Douglas Rushkoff, I suggest you check out his philosophy, writings, and lectures. His book "Cyberia: Life in the trenches of Hyperspace" is what turned me onto Computer Science, philosophy, media theory, and human interaction with technology. Rushkoff has raised a very interesting and very valid point about the internet as we know it. I mentioned this in my earlier post about the Egyptian revolution. Rushkoff, says that while we think our bottom up internet is free now, due to expressive sites like Youtube, Twitter, and Facebook, in reality, we are still under the careful eye of any ISP and in turn, the government. We can have all the freedom to post anything on Youtube, but if someone picks up the phone and tells Verizon to bring the internet down with a click of a button, then yea, we're not really so free.
I mean I don't think we'd ever see such a mass shut down on the scale of Egypt's..but even when the Wikileaks site was shut off, here in the US, I'm sure it wasn't the first time, a site has been shut down, but it was the first one that recieved public attention


"Isn't it good to have a circuit breaker somewhere? A trusted authority in charge who can prevent people from saying the wrong things to each other? Perhaps.
But if we believe our society is capable of engaging in the democratic process, we must trust its people to share their thoughts and ideas -- their words -- directly with one another, no matter how threatening to those currently in power."

At the end of the article, Ruskoff mentions a new type of networking called Mesh Networking, which would tye wireless connections to each other. So I can broadcast my wifi signal and someone else can connect directly to it, rather than through an ISP.

Whoops, forgot to post this originally..check out the full CNN report:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/02/05/rushkoff.egypt.internet/index.html

The ipad Newspaper Vs. Print Media

Three updates in one day? This deals with what I believe just another nail in the coffin of print journalism. The ipad is going to be host for an exclusive and experimental newspapers called "The Daly". While a digital newspaper isn't new anymore, this one is designed to be used with the ipad interface in mind. Streaming videos, and 360 degree photo's, will accompany the articles. The magazine will be pretty cheap, only 14 cents per issue, because the paper will really have no major expenses such as printing and delivery. I'm pretty excited about this, I think we'll be witnessing the final death knells of large newspaper printing within the next 5 years. My local newspaper, The Star Ledger, has been getting smaller and smaller throughout the years. So what do you guys think? Will online journalism, be as prevalent and accepted as the formidable printed journals? I had the pleasure of going to New York City, early one morning, a few weeks ago, and A lot of people on the train, seem to be making use of ipads, on their morning commute rather than reading the 'ol grey and black newsprint.

Groundhogs Day

Happy Groundhogs Day everyone! And in celebration of one of the most looping movies ever, I make this post. The film Groundhogs Day, with Bill Murray, while a comedy, at its core has a pretty meaningful message. If you don't know, Bill Murray, is a news reporter, and you get the feeling that he's kind of a jerk. Ok..he's a big jerk. He gets caught up in the time loop that causes him to repeat the same day, groundhogs day, for weeks. He soon comes to enjoy his fate, but quickly realizes that his life won't move on... He tries to commit suicide multiple times, but to no effect, he just wakes up to the same loop. One of my favorite scenes, is that he befriends an elderly homeless man, and he takes him in, buys him hot soup, keeps him warm for the night, but he ends up dying anyway. So the next night, he goes back to the same homeless man (who's alive again, cause the days repeat) and tries to help him again, but he still ends up dying. The nurse who takes in the man's body, tells Bill Murray, "it was just his time to go." Anyway, if you haven't seen it, check for it on Tv today, I'm sure one of the stations will be running it. Its not the most thought provoking movie, but its nature with time, and repetition, almost required me to put up a post...

And the picture is another droste effect! Remember guys you can send in your own submissions for articles, pictures, and designs of your own artwork of loopy paradoxical structures and images! Damnthemachine09@aol.com

The Global Village

Is the Medium still the message Marshall? For those of you who haven't heard of Marshall Mcluhan, look him up, he's a really futurist, and really was the first to say, publiclly atleast, that we were heading toward becoming a 'global village'. In the 60's Mcluhan was a literary writer, and philosopher, and a communication theorist. He grew up when radio was first taking hold, and saw the invention of the TV, and even saw the beginings of the computer revolution. He really had a first hand look at these new devices for communication, shape and reorganize the way we talk, share, and store information.
What Mcluhan predicted would come about to change the landscape of the way we communicate forever. First, he really went out of his way to make the point that the new form of communication itself has a greater effect on us, than what the device actually provides.. For example, the effect the telephone has on us, is more important than messages passed back and forth through the wires. He means this to say that, the phone, makes communication quicker, and easier, and that's whats important, not that Jane say John flirting with Jessica at the park. This can still be applied today, in form of communication networks, like facebook and twitter. Because Facebook provides such an all inclusive way to know what you're friends are doing, this has many effects on our social lives, and the same with twitter. Its not an understatement, to say that these social devices can change the way we live. Instead of calling up Jane now, and planning to meet at Starbucks, we can talk to her in cyberspace, via Facebook. That, Mculhan feels, is whats important, in the invention of these communication tools.

Another idea that Mcluhan brought to light was the idea of something called the Global Village. And this idea is easy enough to understand. Marshall grew up in a time when the world was getting smaller. The telephone had recently come into play, then the radio, then Tv, then the computer. With each milestone, the world shrunk a little. People had to travel less to talk, and communicate. And what was even more intriguing, is that the effect of all this mass communication would lead to what his felt was a "tribal collective". Instead of the individual man, learning things for himself, and having knowledge for his own needs, people would be sharing information. It would be universal knowledge, literally. Once upon a time, things like computer repair work would have to be done by a professional. If something went wrong with your computer, unless you were a technician, you would take it to be fixed. Now with the internet and this mass availability of knowledge, there are many people who can find tutorials, and information to to the work themselves. Soon everyone will have knowledge on how to fix computers, or change your oil, or how to play piano, or network a system of computers. Mcluhan feels that this mass shared knowledge is turning the world from a group of individual thinkers, to a collected conciousness. It bringing the world together not so much in peace, but in shared information, such a small village... We would all be aware of what are neighbors are up to. While Marshall never really says rather he thinks this is a good idea or not, he believed that it was unimportant and that the evolution of technology would continue like a butterfly flapping its wings. Unavoidable.

Mcluhan who died in 1980, fell just shy of seeing the birth of the World Wide Web, which he predicted way back in 1962:
"The next medium, whatever it is - it may be the extension of consciousness - will include television as its content, not as its environment, and will transform television into an art form. A computer as a research and communication instrument could enhance retrieval, obsolesce mass library organization, retrieve the individual's encyclopedic function and flip into a private line to speedily tailored data of a saleable kind"

I think that says it all, he really foresaw what was coming down the tubes, and remember, its not what the internet gives us in knowledge, but rather what effect the web has on our social and everyday lives. Just as Gutenbergs, printing machine changed the way people receieved knowledge in the 1400's, Mcluhan knew that an interface such as the web would change how we research, development and communicate with information.

Check out this vid of Marshall Mculhan:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeDnPP6ntic&feature=related

Lights Out in Egypt

Or should it read internets out? In a mass silencing, the Eyptian government pull the proverbial plug on the entire country two days ago. In what seems to me as the biggest silencing in history. The pulling of the plug was a result of days of rioting and protesting about the current "president". Even cellphone service was sliced. The ISP's in Egypt all seemed to be strong armed by the government, into a mass denial of service act, of its public, in hopes to quell the resistance.
As I'm writing this Sunday morning, I'm unsure if their lines are back up, but the point is, something like this is pretty scary. While I can't see this happening here in the states, the recent, Wikileaks attack comes to mind. In which, the site Wikileaks has been removed from existence, because it said something out of line. Likewise, the country of Egypt shutting down their entire internet is an unfair move against its own people, and they have a right to be damn angry. As I said, I don't think the government would be foolish enough to attempt to bring down the entire internet. Too much rides on that data, the stock market would collapse like never before. Half the trading would be ended. That being said, there's nothing stopping them from blocking specific sites, as was the case with Wikileaks. I just don't think that such power should be used for sites and things that pose no harm. Obviously if we're talking about a site that deals with child pornography or something, yea to hell with it, but in this case I don't think its justified. I mean yes, no countries government wants its people up in arms but I think cutting off communication isn't the right way to get it done. It just seems like such a juvenile way of getting what you want.. If you won't do daddy says, I'm taking away your toys...

And today's picture is more of an optical illusion, but I like it just the same. Stare at it!!

No Angry Hang Ups

I was recently involved in a car accident ( my life is just going downhill this year). The front of my lancer is completely smashed in...I have to wait like 2 weeks for its repairs to be done.. And I have absolutely zero money to do this with... Anyway, I was on the phone with my insurance company and I was getting pretty worked up. It was mainly due to frustration, I was on my cell phone and at the apex of the argument, I was looking for the nice satisfying slam of the phone on the receiver. Its such a good feeling, getting into an shouting match with someone and you yell the last taunt, and slam the phone down, hanging up on them! A nice sense of accomplishment! You told them... they'll know in their minds that they were angrily hung up on. In the middle of the night they'll wake up with the sound of the audible click of the receiver, haunting them.. Anyway there I was on my cell, about to initiate the last word, when I realized there was no base for me to slam the phone down upon. An awkward second passed and I unceremoniously pressed the "end" button on my phone. Definitely anti climatic. No harsh slamming sound, no crunching of the receiver... It serves me right I suppose I was looking forward to that disconnect a little too much. I wanted make sure they knew I had hung up on them, that I had the last word and was punctuating it with my terminating of the call! Icing on the cake was them calling me back a few moments later saying, "I'm sorry sir, it looks like we lost connection...you were saying?"

Oh and in case your wondering, my computer gave me this cool screen when I tried to install a new graphics card. It takes more power to push the card, so my computer goes into this weird scramble mode when I run tasks with it installed, resulting in this blue screen. 'til next time guys.

The Looping, Cyclical Universe

My girlfriend, loves random tee shirts, with cool, hipsterish, designs, and she pointed me to this site called www.threadless.com which has art from anyone who wishes to submit it. So you can find a lot of cool, clever artwork here. Upon scanning the different prints I can to these loopy pictures that I really liked. I love the universe one, really metaphoric! Check out the site, they have some good stuff. I'm not much of a tee shirt wearer, but they have really nice stuff. Again, I didn't draw these, all respect to the original artists. What I like about this site though, is if you do find a picture you really like, you can buy a print of it to hang up. Anyway, I haven't posted up any looping and paradoxical structures in a while. So there!

Corporate Greed

Alright, so here's the thing. I've recently gotten a job at Staples, as I've made clear in my last few posts. I work as a part of the 'easy tech' crew. Meaning I help out with computer problems, tech advice, selling computers etc. The EasyTech group is basically Staple's version of Best Buy's "Geek Squad". I've worked here now for about 3 weeks, and I this is what I've learned. This is one greedy organization. Because I do believe in the freedom of information, I'll let you in on some of the polices of "Stjavascript:void(0)aples Customer Service". Honestly, 3 weeks, and I've seen the same pure greed, and dishonesty as I would at any wall street company. I'd like you all to be advised when going into stores like Staples, best buy, and other stores were they have commission sales. Don't let them fool you, there's a quota we have to make and if we don't make it, or if we're behind we're supposed to do everything possible to get customers to purchase stuff. So lets say, a woman comes in, looking for a laptop, we have to pick apart her words to give her 'suggestions' to buy things with her laptop. Basically her buying a 600-1200 dollar laptop isn't enough for these corporations, if you don't sell anything with it, they're not happy. This scene happened to me on Saturday night. A woman did come into the store and just wanted a laptop computer. I was the first to start helping her. I asked her a few questions to get a feel of what she wanted. We spent about 15 minutes shooting back and forth half joking, half talking seriously. But by the end of my time with her, she was in a good mood, and had settled on an HP Pavillion, with an AMD Atholon II Dual Core Not a bad computer, but nothing too fancy. Now that's when I would have mentioned some programs and a warranty, but if she didn't want it, I'd let it go and just keep her happy and send her on her way. My bosses weren't having that. They came up to me, pulled me aside, and starting ramming all this shit down her throat. Microsoft Office, Photoshop, Norton 360 Antivirus, In store service work, a laptop case, a mouse, screen protectors, usb flash drives, and external hard drive, and a warranty. All this shit they just barraged her with, her mood went from chipper to bored, and frustrated. They kept making up these fake scenario's into scaring people into buying stuff, and I hate it, it's really pathetic. When I'm talking with someone and they don't want these fake ass warranties that Staples dishes out, then I'm not going to keep pressuring them. As the poor woman was being harrassed by one of my co workers, my boss was chewing me out, telling me that you MUST sell attachments with computers. I looked at him and told him, that she didn't need any of it. I said, the most she'd need is an antivirus, she just wants the computer for light work use and internet usage. What he said next really cemented the deal that this company and its members are just uncaring greedy salesmen. No better than some sleazy cars salesmen. He told me that customers don't know what they want, and its my job to use that to make Staples and myself, money. Basically, take advantage of people who don't know computers, and use their money to line my and staples pockets. I refuse, and I'll be quiting asap. Another great example of this was when this older gentleman also wanted to purchase a computer. He too wanted just the desktop computer, and like the woman, was ready to walk out the door with it by itself. Like I said, that's frowned upon in this store. So my co workers actually had a group huddle, in the back room to see what we could toss at him, and get him to buy. In my mind I was praying he'd just tell them to shut up, and leave him alone. Be warned my dear readers, they don't care for you or your computer needs, all they want is a high quota cause that means we get a bonus at the end of the week on a paychecks.

A week without the internet

No, I'm not doing this to prove some sort of point, like Ghandi starved himself, or anything like that. For whatever reason, my phone lines have been brought to their knee's, and the "customer service focused" Verizon, told me that I won't see a technician anywhere near my phone lines in six days. Before I even get to the point about the long wait time, I have a bone to pick with these phone services. I'm not even talking about ISP's I mean literally, when I call Verizon, they don't have real people anymore. This goes back to my whole animosity for self check outs. Usually when you're stuck with one of these robotic phone agents, if you press random buttons, they'll get the hint, and send you to talk to a live representative. Not this time, my phone system down, I had to call from my cell phone, and I had to listen to her robo-voice guide me through the menu's. Her robotic hand, guiding me around. Hated it! Anyway, I couldn't even voice my displeasure about having to wait 6 days for technician!

Myself: "I can't believe its going to take 6 days to send a person out here, to do 15 minutes of work!"

Robot Phone Operator: "I'm sorry, I didn't understand your selection, can you repeat that?"

Anyway, I'm not too happy with Verizon anyway, this isn't the early 90's anymore, where having the internet was a luxuary, and you could live without it for a few days. In 2011, the internet, I hate to admit it, runs so deep in us that you feel lost without it. I guess that pissed me off even more, knowing that my life was so embedded in the use of the internet, and phone lines. Anyway only a few days longer and I'll be back connected to the wired world. I sit here in Barnes and Noble, leetching off their wi fi.

I want to devise a virus

Another new year, reason to celebrate for some, lamentation for others. I sit here in Barnes and Noble, using up their free wifi, thinking of something to write. First post of 2011 and I'm seemingly stumped. I've recently been employed at Staples (the office supply store). Unfortunately this isn't exactly where I'd want to be in life. I'm 23 years old, and I feel I'm too old for petty retail jobs like that anymore. I've done my time working retail, and I want out. Its a rotation of crabby, greedy customers all day. And that's not even the worst, we have a heavy quota that we must meet. I've been hired as "EasyTech". Its Staples version of Best Buy's "Geeksquad". While this is right up my alley of interest, its just a glorified salesman job. The last few days I've been locked in a small room in the back office, taking tests, trying to get certified on selling camera's, processors, printers etc.. Again I'd have no problem with this, but its the heavy sales figures that I have to meet that has me worried.
I've never been one for cosmic karma, but I suppose I've had this coming. Over the last two years, I've been very successful racking in money through the internet, through sort of nefarious means. I'm not going into any detail, but lets just say my rather large income was internet based and not exactly ethical. Needless to say I've been found out, and my monetary empire has all but collapsed. Humbled, and pretty much broke, I now must pick up with what scraps I have left and rebuild my life. If this would have happened 2 or 3 years ago, I could bounce back no problem, but I'm not entering my mid twenties with this over my head. Anyone else use the computer for not so squeaky clean desires? Let me preface this by saying, while I do consider myself a hacker, I'm not that profiecient at code, but the hacker mentality is alive and well with me. Exploration of computer systems, and the mind is really what I'm about, that being said, any of you use your computer to get information that your not normally privy to? Or to get around the normally strict rules set by someone? One of my favorite Foxtrot comics, using code to get around the rules!

This song really sums up my mood right now..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6j_3KetcQs&feature=related

The F.C.C vs. Internet Service Providers

So what does it take to get Republicans and Democrats to nearly universally agree on something? Apparently, wanting to control the purse strings of the internet. A branch of government, called the FCC (The Federal Communication Commission), has a strange desire to regulate Broadband and internet service fee's. Now the FCC is notorious for being buzz kills. Effectively, their idea would be to tell Comcast, or Verizon, or who ever your ISP is, how much, they can charge you and their rules and regulations. So it'd be the governments way, or the high way. My first knee jerk reaction to this was one of anger, just another way the government is trying to control everything. While this is true, they are indeed dipping their hand a bit deep in the cookie jar, the results may not be too bad. There was a meeting today (December 21st) that ended in approval of their regulations. At least for now, the FCC is trying to make large Broadband companies more transparent to its consumers. Three basic rules have been implemented:

1. No More Blocking Legal Content
No ISP can block competitors web sites, or any material that is deemed lawful. I believe it was Verizon who tried to put a ban on P2P sharing, by disabling certain websites. The FCC, put a stop to practices like that.

2. Transparency between the Company and Its Consumers
So if anyone calls up their ISP, they must disclose managament practices, and commericial terms, in order to let the consumer make a fair and balanced decision to the use of their service.


3. No discrimination that would be deemed "unreasonable"
This is a cool one, I like this rule. Lets say Company X wants Company Y's website to appear slow, unresponsive compared to their own site. They could pay whatever ISP money to bring down the speed of the site. This rule makes such practices illegal.


The most basic and fundamental part of this is that they want a person, who doesn't have much money and the richest person in the world, to able to use the same internet. One shouldn't have a faster connection or better content than the other. This socialization of the wired world may sound good for us, but is more begrudgingly accepted by ISP's. Comcast who, sued the FCC for trying to stop them from banning P2P sharing, left the department worried that they didn't have enough control over the way of the internet. Comcast won the suit and deemed that the FCC didn't have the power to tell the company how to run its business. Well now, today, December 21st, that changed. The FCC granted itself more power in order to handle situations like that. Meaning the FCC is going to be the watch dog of the ISP world.

What I'm not liking is the impending what if's. If a branch of the government has control over regulations for ISP's, that means they could themselves make up their own restrictions. While I appreciate them trying to level the playing field, between ISP and consumer, in due time, what happens when the FCC wants something taken down? Demand Verizon, or Comcast, that it should be removed? They're be no stopping what they could and couldn't censor. It just seems like we're trading one bad hand for another. Now as I had time to digest this, I'm not sure if this is really such a bad thing. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of big government, stepping into out business, especially something as free as the internet. But them regulating ISP providers and keeping them in line really doesn't hurt us, in fact it makes sure that they're staying clean. One rule that I'm really liking is that the pricing (for now) has to be constant. You can't charge someone more because he downloads more. I think distributing the money to all subscribers is better than piling it on the few people who use up more bandwidth than others. What do you guys think? Chime in


Read up about this:

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/12/fcc-order/comment-page-1/

http://techdailydose.nationaljournal.com/fcc/

The Validity of The Self CheckOut

I was in Ikea the other night, looking for new trappings, and neat compact furniture, and other novel ideas for an apartment that I may own some day. After I had collected my wares from the trip, I went to pay, and was met with a pretty disturbing scene. The There was no one at the check outs. All the check out lanes were darkened, and abandoned. The only stream of light came from the glowing self check out lane. This double wide lane featured two banks of self check out machines. A lone attendant stood at her podium, over looking operations. There was a long line so I had some time to observe and contemplate. Every so often, some one would slip up press a wrong button, and the attendant would come down from her podium, press a few buttons and return. I'd see the oversee'r pressing some buttons from her podium, which bypassed any errors that the customers may have made. Pretty efficient. Of course something like this had me ready to write. And this isn't the first time I've had my run in with these machine check outs. At the grocery stores, they're slowing pushing their way up from the last lane that no one goes to, all the way up to the middle lanes. Obviously the proficiency and money saved from these machines is invaluable to companies. Six machines, replaces six employee's. Its not hard to imagine how or why these are so popular. That's great for the company, but what about the shopper? Does the self check out really help the customer at all? Whats really the point? I'm torn between these techno-checkers. While I do like the idea of empowering the people, and letting them do their own dirty work, there seems something way to cold and remote about coming to a checkout area and finding no one there, except a row of "robots". (I say robots because the first self check out machine, which was introduced in 1992 by Dr. Howard Schnieder, were classified and coined by the Dr himself, as Service Robots. Which he hoped would be the first in a long list of other robot tech to "assist human living".)
Its not as if I eagerly await to see cashiers or anything, but I'm not to green on the idea of having no one there and the customers are herded to these vestibules and electronically guided through the check out process. I don't know maybe its just me. I just feel its very cold. As I was guided through the animated user interface of the self check out at Ikea, I really felt like taking a hammer to it. Not because the interface was confusing but because looking these quiet, and smooth running machines, I knew that atleast 5 people didn't have jobs. IT just really makes me wonder what other human jobs are going to be completely obsolete in a few years time? If you've guys have seen the movie Total Recall, the Johnny Cab are a perfect example. Programmed machine which know the traffic routes may be a few years off (a lot of years off) but still, that type of idea means that we'll be so limited to actually talking with another person when we step out our front door... What do you guys think? chime in

Johnny Cab from Blade Runner:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsuOfieIG0Q

Saving Your "i" For A Rainy Day

I'm making a prediction folks, get out your notepads cause you can quote me on this. I believe that in the future, maybe sooner than we think, we as humans are going to be able to store memories, thoughts, mental images and other processes of the brain, onto computer chips. Now before you raise and eyebrow, just think about, if we can transmit data from computer to computer, and user to computer, then the next stage would be directly from the brain. Now technically we all can store our memories on USB drives, by just writing down a journal on Word and press 'save as'. But I'm talking about memories that include the visual as well. What if we could download the memory of someone who died recently in your life. You could 'plug in' the chip and experience the memories again, without fear of the memory fading in your own mortal brain. Instead of photo albums you could have a Rolodex of chips from past vacatons, old lovers, your college years etc.. All saved in a compressed file.
Some of you may be familiar with the work and writings of a man named Hans Moravec. He was the one who really got me thinking about this idea of uploading your own memories. But Han Moravec's idea is a step beyond my conclusion. He says that we will be able to upload our entire being, our conciousness itself. That we could literally merge with computer chips, and become bodiless. Mr. Moravec believes that its the next step in evolution, and should be embraced. No longer bound by time, we can live on entirely, in a network, where space and need for movement is completely unessasary. What a bizarre experience it would be. To have no body, no movement, but free roaming thought. Pressumably a nework of these "Memory banks" would be set up to allow the upload 'humans' to live on, without anyone to supervise their operation.

Of course there is the argument that "uploading" yourself into a computer chip merely creates a copy of you. That the true I is planted and deeply rooted in your body somewhere. I don't know how I feel about this. While I can see the connection of a face and body would make someone say that my thoughts and memories aren't all that make up me, I'm just as inclined to say that my body has very little to do with my true I.
Rene Descartes the philospher made it a point to seperate both the Mind and Body, a "dualistic" nature. He felt that the material plane we exist on, houses the body. While off on another plane somewhere, the Mind is dominant.

Anyway thats my idea. I'm not sure if we'll ever achieve what Han Moravec says, that we will eventually come to upload ourselves and live on computer memory, but I can definitely see years down the road, the ability up upload certain memories, dreams, and mental images to flash drives etc... Am I alone in thinking this??

For more on this check out the writings of Hans Moravec, especially his book "Robot"

http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.10/moravec.html

More Wikileaks News and..C++

The hole is dug deeper for Julian Assange, unfortunately he was indeed arrested and will probably be tried in Sweden. What I'm curious to see is if Sweden nulls the rape charges and sends him back to the United States. I think that would be pretty telling if these 'horrid rape charges' are just forgotten, and the real reason why they wanted him comes to the fore front. In case your missing something, Julian was allegedly accused of rape in Sweden, but it just so random and makeshift, it seems like they just needed a reason to bring him in. And evvvveryone is so sensitive to a rape charge. I'm not defending Assange, but it just seems like he's taking the brute of the retribution. If this story was broken to NY times, there's no way in hell that the Editor in Chief of the NY Times would be arrested and made into a public enemy. As I stated in my previous post, I truely understand that some secrets and information are meant to be kept private. But I think this was blown way way out of proportion. Admittly I don't know everything that was released, or 'leaked'... so there could be some pretty damning information in there that would warrant Assange to be reprimanded. But I still think that this should fall on the shoulders of Bradley Manning, if he did indeed leak it. While I wish Mr. Manning no ill will, Julian should have absolutely nothing to do with this.

What I really love is that this hacker group, "Anonymous" (whom I sometimes parlay with on 4chan), tried to really stick it to the companies that gave in, and tried to silence Wikileaks. It came out as a failed hacker assault, and I don't think such a brash attack was necessary or even warranted, but they're heart was in the right place... My favorite auther Douglas Rushkoff comments on the failed hacker attempt:
http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/12/10/rushkoff.hacking.wikileaks/index.html

Anyway back to some more regular topics. I was driving and my girlfriend happened to glance at my speedometer and noticed my "Round trip" meter (which I find utterly useless), spelled out the term "Leet" or in Leet spelling, "1337" 1337 or Leet is a term coined from the phrase "elite speak" which is a slang really generally used in the gaming community, or sometimes in chatrooms. It deals with using numbers to look like letters. Its definitely a slang that has died out, it was big in the late 90's. Any who I grabbed a pic of it for blogging purposes. Oh and I started my road to learning computer programming. It was high time I sat down and really put some time into it. So I took myself over to Youtube, grabbed a book from Barnes and Noble, and began learning C++. So far so good, nothing so out of left field. After I get C++ down I'll probably try for SQL or Java. If you all out there in computer land have any suggestions on sites to help learning programming, I'm all ears!

After a Hiatus...Wiki Leaks??

Hey everyone, a lot of stuff went down in my life, for the worst. I've gotten myself into some trouble, and haven't had time or urge to post... But I'm trying to get over it. Any who...Over the past few days, I've been trying to distract myself by keeping up on one HELL of an interesting story. Julian Assange and the Wikileaks has been a topic on controversy over the past few months, but only during the last week has it really exploded. Apparently many countries haven't been so forthcoming with they're true feeling. Like a teacher reading notes being passed around during class, aloud, Wikileaks has released many documents that give us an inside peek into gossip relating to countries and how they really feel about their surrounding neighbors. So was Julian right about releasing these documents? Do we have a right to know? How far should we take this thirst for knowledge? While I do support freedom of speech, and the right for the public to know what's being said by its own government, I can't help but feel some things are kept secret for a reason. While this case may not be the deciding factor that will cause years and years of calamity and pain, the next time someone may release documents or information that really is sensitive. Like I said, I think this series of Wikileaks is pretty harmless, at most some strained relations between countries, I don't think Assange should have been arrested, nor the wikileaks site taken down, atleast in regards to the leaks, the other allegations about sex crimes, are fair game, and should indeed be followed up. But as for the primary allegations of the information being released, I just dont' see it being all that threatening. What I think is happening, is that countries, and governments are seeing that information can be spread and leaked at lightening speed, and that very little is actually able to be kept secret. This, I believe is why everyone's so up in arms. That being said, freedom of information does have a point where I'd draw the line, and say, just because you can release documents, doesn't mean that you should. What do you guys think? What I was thinking about earlier was that, do you think this would have happened if the internet wasn't around? Obviously the site wikileaks wouldn't exist, but would a newspaper have been willing to publish these messages, if this was back say, in the 1970's? Chime in, let me know what you think, and I'll try to get updates back on track, at a more regular pace. Bare with me though!

Here's a surprisingly subtle defense of Julian Assange, from Ron Paul... I didn't expect that..

"In a free society we're supposed to know the truth,” Paul insisted. “In a society where truth becomes treason, then we're in big trouble. And now, people who are revealing the truth are getting into trouble for it."
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/12/ron-paul-what-wikileaks/

That being said, what of, Bradley Manning? Months ago, he released (maybe?) to Wikileaks a video of a gunship killing Iraqi civilians. This sparked massive outrage and really painted a target on Wikileak's back. Does Manning deserve pain of death, or should we be praising him as a provider of truth? My opinion on this is split almost 50/50...