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3526

Living Room / Re: Peer Review and the Scientific Process

« Last post by IainB on October 20, 2013, 05:05 PM »

^^ Nice find, but watch that space. In the US it will almost inevitably be used/abused to attempt to irrationally load one's argument in favour of the proponents of this or that religio-political ideology, and ad hom the proponents of contradictory religio-political ideologies.

In any event, there's little new about it. Edward De Bono had already identified the problem years ago in his book "Teaching Thinking" - he called it "intellectual deadlock", and pointed out how it effectively disables one from developing/using thinking skills.

He also pointed out in that and/or a later book that the practice of "taking positions" in debate was likely to be one of the single greatest inhibiting factors to our development, leading to wars and holding back man's evolution. You can substitute "adopting a religio-political ideology" for "taking positions". It sets one's paradigms rock solid so that - regardless of verifiable observational evidence - you can't see or think with any other so-called "truth" (belief/dogma) except that which your paradigm allows you to see.

Now try and prove that peer review can actually add any objective truth to or objectively validate any part of the scientific process.
I predict it is likely to be impossible.
If we are interested in Truth, and if we wish to be something more than unthinking parrots reciting some moronic dogma of a religio-political ideology (system of belief) for most of our lives (which I would argue is realising at best only a sub-human potential), then it seems that one has to fall back on "Nullius in verba/verbo." Motto of the Royal Society, London. Literally, "Take nobody's word for it; see for yourself".
If you need an example of what I mean, watch this depressing piece of video footage of an interview, and weep: (I only came across this by accident yesterday)
Edit 2018-06-12 - original YouTube link no longer available, so inserted link from Wayback.
Original link:   <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvufOvneJMk>
Wayback link: <http://web.archive.org/web/20100329013133/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvufOvneJMk>

Though it is from 2010, it is just as significant today as it was then.
The interviewer, who is evidently well-informed, just stands there politely asking simple, very factual questions based on independently verifiable data (no trick questions), and the interviewee - who should be well-informed - answers them to the best of her ability.
I felt acutely embarrassed for her.

3527

Living Room / Re: Knight to queen's bishop 3 - Snowden charged with espionage.

« Last post by IainB on October 19, 2013, 05:13 AM »

^^ Heh. Very droll.

How about this?
(Copied below sans embedded hyperlinks/images.)

Government Program to Control Religious Thought?
Ben Swann   Infowars.com   Oct. 16, 2013

Is the U.S. Government working on a program to…well…program the way you view religion?

A whistleblower who has worked on that program says yes and he wants you to know exactly what has been going on.

The first towards truth is to be informed.

If I told you that the Defense Department was using taxpayer dollars to learn how to influence people with religious beliefs in order to control those beliefs, would it really surprise you?

Would you think that I am a tin foil hat wearing conspiracy theorist?

Would you care if I told you that the program was aimed at controlling fundamentalist Muslims?

How about fundamentalist Christians?

Here’s the backstory. In 2012, Arizona State Universityʼs Center for Strategic Communication or CSC was awarded a $6.1 million dollar research grant by DARPA or the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

The goal of the project according to ASUʼs website is to “study the neurobiology of narrative comprehension, validate narrative theories and explore the connection between narrative and persuasion.”

A lot of technical talk there, so lets dig into the details.

The CSC program is actually about creating narratives. Using effective communication, largely video, to control the thought process of groups of people. And ultimately to be able to trigger narratives through magnetic stimulation. At its core, the program is focused on how to win the narrative against Muslim extremism. It’s a fairly interesting concept.

According to documents leaked to us, this project integrates insights from three mutually-informing theoretical terrains.
In short, the goal of the program is to combat and change religious narratives because of their role in “extremist behavior.” The whistleblower who revealed this program to us, worked for several years on the program. They asked not to be identified.

Ben: What were you told about the proposal as you began working through it?

Whistleblower: Yeah, I thought that it was benign. They told me it was about trying to figure outwhat parts of the brain are affected by narrative persuasion. Just to figure it out just for academic reasons. So we looked at narrative transportation which is basically how an individual is transported into a narrative, how they understand it…kind of like when you read a good book you get really enthralled with it.

At its core, the program attempts to map the brain to determine which portions of the brain allow you to accept a narrative presented to you. It’s called narrative theory.

Mapping this network will lead to a fuller understanding of the influence narrative has on memory, emotion, theory of mind, identity and persuasion, which in turn influence the decision to engage in political violence or join violent groups or support groups ideologically or financially.

You see, the project is focused on the belief that the reason Muslims in the Middle East are swayed to religious violence is not because of the reality of what is going on around them per se, but because they are believing a local or a regional narrative.

Ben: The local and regional narrative then is that the brain automatically assumes things because of a narrative we’ve been taught since our childhood, is that it?

Whistleblower: Right yeah that’s true. We call those master narratives. So in America we have this “rags to riches” master narrative where if you work really hard you can become successful and make a ton of money. So in the Middle East, they always use the example of the Pharaoh. That’s the master narrative that’s in the Qur’an, where there’s this corrupt leader that, you know, is really bad for society. And they use the example of Sadat who was assassinated. When
the assassin killed him, he said, “I have killed the Pharaoh, I have killed the Pharaoh.” So they assume that he was relying upon this Islamic master narrative to fuel his actions.

So how does the program change this? Again a lot of technical speak here so stay with me. But it’s broken into three phases.

Phase I is to map the Narrative Comprehension Network using a set of stimuli designed from the point of view of two different religious cultures.

Phase II will test hypotheses generated in Phase I, adding two additional manipulations of narrative validity and narrative transportation.

Phase III, it investigates possibilities for literally disrupting the activity of the NCN through Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation.

Ben: Phase III is fairly interesting. I noticed in the documentation it says lets not talk too much about this because who knows if we’ll ever get there. But when you do read what Phase III is it is a little surprising, it’s called Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation. This is not something that’s science fiction, it’s not something they’ve cooked up. This is a real technique that’s already been used in the past, correct?

Whistleblower: Yes, it started out in the psychiatry field when people were depressed and when you’re depressed certain parts of your brain are not functioning correctly. So they created this technology, which is basically a big magnet, and you put it on their brain and it turns off that part of the brain that’s bad or wrong and it would help them with their depression for several weeks to a month and they’d go back and do it again. So this technology has been around for ten
or fifteen years.

Ben: So it’s very high tech propaganda, what we’re talking about.

Whistleblower: High tech and validated propaganda, yes. So if they’re able to turn off a part of the brain and get rid of that master narrative that will make you not believe in a particular statement, they would have validated this propaganda. So if they turn off portion X, they know that the propaganda is going to work and the individual is going to believe whatever is being told to them.

So why do all this? Because the project is based on the idea that despite the good work of the U.S. in the Middle East, the message of the work is not being received.

“The frequent rejection of US messaging by local populations in the Middle East, despite US insistence on the objective truth of the US message, illustrates the narrative paradigm at work. The well documented ‘say-do gap’ between US messages and US actions is seen by some as contributing to a lack of narrative validity in stories produced by the US. Similarly, stories of US aid do not ring true in a culture wherein Christian foreigners, since the 11th Century, have been invaders and sought to destroy and rule.”

So how to fix this?

Ben: How do you move someone from simply watching a video or seeing a video all the way down that line to behavior? It’s a pretty powerful tool if you’re able to do that.

Whistleblower: Right, so they think that maybe an extremist statements or a video like Al Qaeda puts out will lead to some individuals doing a suicide bombing, for example. So they’re trying to look at this video or the statements and take away a part of your brain that will think that it fits in with your culture or master narrative and that will hopefully lead you to not do these extremist, violent acts.

So what you need to know is that this program boils down to one central idea. If people aren’t reaching the conclusions the U.S. government would like them to reach, there must be a way to force them to accept these narratives.

Remember that the claim is that the U.S. despite giving aid is viewed in the Middle East as invaders. That, according to the program research is the product of embedded narrative, not a result of action.

So the view of the U.S. as invaders in countries where we have standing armies, dozens of military bases, the U.S. paying off drug lords in Afghanistan or regional warlords in Iraq or where we consistently bomb via drone strike in Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia or where we fund dictators until those dictators are overthrown and then attempt to fund the rebels, who end up becoming dictators.

All of that has nothing to do with the U.S. view of Muslims in the Middle East because clearly they are missing the fact that the U.S. gives aid.

The next step, control the narrative and if necessary, use magnetic stimulation to force people to accept the view of the U.S. that we desire them to have.

After all, aren’t extremist Muslims dangerous? Extremist Christians? See the problem with the question is who gets to define extremist? Who decides if religious beliefs are inherently dangerous?

And if we believe that government should have the power to control how the extremist thinks… wouldn’t they have the authority to decide how and what we all think?

Sources:
We cannot post the leaked documents from the program here because ASU has claimed intellectual
property infringement.

This article first appeared at benswann.com.

Food for thought? (Heh. Weak pun.)

3528

Living Room / Re: Internet freedoms restrained - SOPA/PIPA/OPEN/ACTA/CETA/PrECISE-related updates

« Last post by IainB on October 18, 2013, 10:03 AM »

OIC, I think.
I wonder whether all this focus on the short-term potential gains of SOPA/PIP/etc. by lobbies/interested parties hasn't blinded some of them to the risks of losing the long game.
We shall see.
I am seriously concerned that US pressures are likely to screw up the Internet for everyone else and that it could become just another tool for US economic hegemony/colonisation.

3529

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by IainB on October 18, 2013, 06:27 AM »

LOCKED OUT
Finding a woman sobbing that she had locked her keys in her car, a passing soldier assures her that he can help.
 
She looks on amazed as he removes his trousers, rolls them into a tight ball and rubs them against the car door.
 
Magically it opens.
 
"That's so clever," the woman gasps. "How did you do it?"
 
"Easy," replies the man. "These are my khakis!".

3530

Living Room / Re: Knight to queen's bishop 3 - Snowden charged with espionage.

« Last post by IainB on October 18, 2013, 06:25 AM »

Well, good luck anyway.
If I hear a loud BANG!, I won't expect to hear any more from you.     

3531

Living Room / Re: Internet freedoms restrained - SOPA/PIPA/OPEN/ACTA/CETA/PrECISE-related updates

« Last post by IainB on October 18, 2013, 06:19 AM »

^^ I don't really understand what you wrote there @TaoPhoenix, but you mention Republicans - which presumably is political - and US politics are a complete mystery to me.
By the way, what I said above about "Pass the ruddy bill" was rather tongue-in-cheek.   

3532

Living Room / Re: Peer Review and the Scientific Process

« Last post by IainB on October 18, 2013, 02:58 AM »

I had thought that zoology (the scientific study of the behaviour, structure, physiology, classification, and distribution of animals of a particular region or geological period) used well-established, tried-and-tested scientific processes to arrive at its conclusions. Well, that may be so, but it apparently doesn't stop the BBC broadcasting staggeringly misleading content in a "documentary" on the subject: Mythical Attenborough Fail

I always reckoned that David Attenborough's work was the absolute last word in factual natural history documentaries, but this is the second instance I have read about/seen where one of his proggies was seriously "off" in the science department.
Look at the complaint:

Complaint Summary: ‘Tree of Life’ false, misleading and non-scientific
Full Complaint: The programme makes extensive use of a ‘Tree of Life’ pictorial device depicting species as branches on a tree, with the vertical dimension showing time. All thousands of branches are continuous and ultimately end up together in the present time. This is false, because we all know most species died out long ago (so the vast majority of branches shouldn’t reach the present). It is also misleading, as the viewer will think the present time is much richer in species than the past. It is finally non-scientific, using an antiquated metaphor long ago disproven by the likes of Stephen Jay Gould. Please insert a correction/disclaimer at the beginning of future broadcasts and for the rest of the first showing of the series.
__________________________

Maybe the BBC is in the vanguard of the Post-Modern Science movement (aka "made up Science") that I posted about here: Re: Peer Review and the Scientific Process (in Post-Modern Science ).

3533

Living Room / Re: Internet freedoms restrained - SOPA/PIPA/OPEN/ACTA/CETA/PrECISE-related updates

« Last post by IainB on October 17, 2013, 10:22 PM »

...I only see one reasonable solution to put this to rest.

-Renegade (October 16, 2013, 10:00 AM)

Yeah. Pass the ruddy bill.

3534

Living Room / Re: Knight to queen's bishop 3 - Snowden charged with espionage.

« Last post by IainB on October 17, 2013, 10:20 PM »

This video tries to sum it all up: Tell Congress and President Obama: "Knock it off and stop the NSA surveillance programs

...Notably, the government is also arguing that no one other than the company that provided the information — including the defendant in this case — has the right to challenge this disclosure in court." This goes far beyond the third party doctrine, effectively prosecuting someone and depriving them of the ability to defend themselves by declaring that they have no standing to refute the evidence used against them.

-TaoPhoenix (October 15, 2013, 04:09 PM)

The US government police/SS agencies probably didn't see that they had much option but to do what they have done. In order to fulfil their duty to "protect and serve", or whatever, they have had to override the constitution. It has probably by now been irrevocably broken, and there's not much likelihood of going back to the former status.

3535

Living Room / Re: Peer Review and the Scientific Process

« Last post by IainB on October 17, 2013, 09:28 PM »

...Though it is very hard for a lot of people to go back to learning. ...

-Renegade (October 16, 2013, 09:27 PM)

If one operated on the basis that one did all one's schoolin' an' learnin' when one was young, and that's over now, then that might implicitly assume that one will not learn anything new from that point onwards.
That looks like a false premise to me. The human mind is an adaptable learning machine. Sure, if one unconsciously "turned it off" at (say) age 25 or so, then it might feel a bit rusty to make the effort now, but it doesn't necessarily preclude one's learning something new. I reckon that intellectual laziness probably enters into it as well.
I've always been an information junkie and what shocks me is how ignorant I still am and how much more there is to learn/understand/experience. A single lifetime won't have been long enough.

3536

Living Room / Re: Peer Review and the Scientific Process

« Last post by IainB on October 16, 2013, 09:13 PM »

Here's a fun site:
http://lesswrong.com/

About Less Wrong
Interested in improving your reasoning and decision-making skills? Then you've come to the right place.
Less Wrong is a large, active website for people who try to think rationally. To get a quick idea of why rationality is important and how to develop it, try reading Your Intuitions Are Not Magic, The Cognitive Science of Rationality, or What I've Learned From Less Wrong.
___________________

It's kind of off-topic, but still relevant to the general topic of reasoning and logic.

-Renegade (October 16, 2013, 11:15 AM)

I would suggest, given our natural human irrationality, that it is not off-topic at all.
We have to learn to use rational-critical thinking. It's not something we are born with, but a skill that we have to learn - like riding a bike. That's why they started teaching it as an "O" (Ordinary) Level syllabus in UK secondary schools some years back (better late than never). They found - perhaps unsurprisingly - that it was definitely a transferable skill and that it helped students to not only improve their grades in other "O" Level subjects, but also to be able to better cope with university 101 material.

I gathered from my reading that the idea for introducing it to secondary schools was partly because the results of tests on student intake to universities showed that they lacked (amongst other things) rational-critical thinking skills - so, to work around the problem, universities started teaching it as part of entrance foundation courses at university and then later addressed the problem directly by shifting the rational-critical thinking training to secondary level. That way, all children could thus benefit, whether they went on to university or not, and, as I noted above, they found that it was a transferable skill that benefited secondary student grades on other "O" Level subjects.

You arguably could not have a rational discussion about Peer Review and the Scientific Process if you were not employing critical thinking - i.e., reasoning and logic.
I have used that site you point to (http://lesswrong.com/) quite a bit, to check/help improve my own reasoning skills, and have pointed other people (including my then 11 y/o daughter) to it as well. It's rather useful.

To understand a deeper potential significance of this, consider The Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30; Luke 19:12-28). In this case, the Intellect is one of our servants.
Why would we deliberately continue to squander, cripple or imprison our intellects in ignorance, shuttering it up, uneducated, in a dark box, throughout the duration of our lives, when once we can understand this simple truth: that everything of ourselves has been given to us - a gift of Life - and that it is up to us to make the fullest use of our gifts, and that it is never too late to start?

As I wrote above:

"However, the depressing reality seems too often to be that many people are so unable to think rationally for themselves that they seem gullible to this kind of barrage of logical fallacy. One's head would be full of a confusing and probably conflicting mass of invalid premises, with ergo no real knowledge or understanding of truth."

This is a very old idea and the stuff of wisdom. Fiat lux - literally, "Let there be light".

From the third verse of the Book of Genesis. In the King James Bible, it reads, in context:

• 1:1 - In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
• 1:2 - And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
• 1:3 - And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
• 1:4 - And God saw the light, and it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness.

I would prefer to exist in the light, and am still working on it.

3537

Living Room / Re: Internet freedoms restrained - SOPA/PIPA/OPEN/ACTA/CETA/PrECISE-related updates

« Last post by IainB on October 16, 2013, 09:33 AM »

Email from DemandProgress:
(Copied below sans embedded hyperlinks/images.)

CISPA is back. Again.
Don’t worry, you’re not losing it. You didn’t just dream the past year and half. It all happened: We did kill CISPA in 2012. And we killed it earlier this year. Hundreds of thousands of you signed petitions. We forced Obama to issue TWO separate veto threats. The bill died in the Senate. Twice.

And when the Snowden leaks hit, everyone, even the New York Times, agreed there was no way a bill granting more invasive power to the NSA would ever pass Congress.

We weren't sleeping. But they must have been.

Because we learned this week that a group of Senators are pushing a new version of CISPA. Tell your Senators: the NSA has enough power, oppose CISPA!

Senators Diane Feinstein and Saxby Chambliss, the Senate intelligence Committee leaders who’re behind the new CISPA, are also staunch defenders of the NSA’s mass surveillance programs.

Which makes sense: CISPA would make it easier for the NSA to see your private data, and provide legal protection for corporations that violate your rights, their user agreements, and existing law to cooperate with the NSA.

We have to act now. CISPA's supporters are already soliciting help from defense industry lobbyists to get this thing passed. Click here to send a message to your Senator.

Again and again the anti-privacy goons in Congress have circled the wagons to try and pass CISPA. And again and again, we have completely shut them down.

We’ve done it before. We will do it again. Click here to fight back.

Please urge your friends to take action by forwarding this email or using these links:
[fb]    If you're already on Facebook, click here to share with your friends.
[fb]    If you're already on Twitter, click here to tweet about the campaign: Tweet

Thanks,

Demand Progress Team
Paid for by Demand Progress (DemandProgress.org) and not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee. Contributions are not deductible as charitable contributions for federal income tax purposes.

3538

Living Room / Re: Core Internet Institutions Abandon US Government

« Last post by IainB on October 15, 2013, 08:03 AM »

^^ Wot U said about the ITU. Yes, 100% agree.

3539

Living Room / Re: Core Internet Institutions Abandon US Government

« Last post by IainB on October 15, 2013, 06:06 AM »

Tech Dirt weighs in on the topic:
http://www.techdirt....vernance-model.shtml
Always worth reading Tech Dirt, so no point in posting a quote.

-Renegade (October 15, 2013, 02:40 AM)

Very interesting. Thanks for pointing it out. I had not got around to skimming the 186 posts in the TechDirt feed. I might have missed it anyway.

3540

Living Room / Re: Core Internet Institutions Abandon US Government

« Last post by IainB on October 14, 2013, 09:48 PM »

a new, trustworthy and international custodianship...

-IainB (October 13, 2013, 08:08 PM)

... and of course we've never seen a trustworthy custodianship usurped...

-x16wda (October 14, 2013, 09:33 AM)

...and pigs might grow wings!

3541

Living Room / Re: Peer Review and the Scientific Process

« Last post by IainB on October 14, 2013, 08:09 PM »

If that part of the scientific process called "peer review" is per se not crucial, as it cannot and does not certainly establish truth (QED), then of what use is it?
From personal experience of having worked in a consulting environment where all one's technical reports had to undergo collegial peer review and standards review prior to going out to the client, my view is that peer review can be an extremely helpful process for giving one's output a final, rigorous sanity check. One is provided by a brief review report from each reviewer, which highlights any errors or omissions of fact or approach, which enables you to correct the report. We all make mistakes, so this was a useful checkpoint.
It was also just good risk-avoidance. As consultants, we were being billed out at a rate of (typically) $1,000 to $1,500 per day. A client might often make significant expenditure based on the recommendations/advice in our reports at the end of an assignment. If we gave duff advice, then we could have been liable for the consequences, so everything had to be rational, factual, substantiated and the potential errors/risks had to be stated. We had insurance to cover us for professional negligence or mistake, but if we ever had to claim against it, then the subsequent premiums would have skyrocketed and could have driven us out of business.

In science, the (non-crucial) peer review part of the process would seem to have not only a potential (desirable) governing effect, but also could have an enabling effect on the (undesirable) propensity for inherent bias/error/fraud - and the latter might not become apparent unless you checked the science for falsifiability - which is crucial (QED).
This necessarily forces you back to the Royal Society's motto: "Nullius in verba/verbo." Literally, "Take nobody's word for it; see for yourself".
The signs of bad/bogus science are only likely to be revealed if you follow the Royal Society's motto - and remember, the rule is: science must be falsifiable.

Interestingly, this discussion thread mentions some evidence (as "bad science") to show that for a great number of years, parts of the scientific community may have been only too well aware of the potential of and propensity for inherent bias/error/fraud in peer review (above), and of how to use it to promote lobbying for preferred religio-political or other biased conclusions in their "science".

Checking the science for falsifiability would seem to be about the only real test that we have at our disposal, and where scientists seem determined to avoid the risk of research being exposed to that test (e.g., refusing to reveal methods, or refusing/obfuscating FOI requests), one can presume that something professionally unethical is probably going on.
_____________________________

"The rule of thumb is that, if a business process can not stand the hard light of scrutiny, then there is probably something unethical about it". - Sir Adrian Cadbury (Chairman of the then Quaker family-owned Cadbury's) in his prize-winning article on Business Ethics for Harvard Business Review circa 1984.

3542

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: Cannot delete single clips

« Last post by IainB on October 14, 2013, 01:16 AM »

That's interesting.
I use PresetViews quite a lot and have experimented with them.
I just used Everything and discovered that there are unused PresetViews in the folder
C:\Users\{UserID}\Documents\DonationCoder\Clipboard Help+Spell\PresetViews
- which contains the files: (showing Created  Date, then Modified Date)

Code: Text [Select]

1. ColumnCustomizer.preset           32    2011-01-11 01:46        2005-08-11 20:52
2. ColumnCustomizer.preset.dock     892    2011-01-11 01:46        2005-08-11 20:52
3. ColumnCustomizer.preset.grid    2911    2011-01-11 01:46        2005-08-11 20:52
4. Last.preset                       32    2011-01-11 01:46        2013-01-25 00:08
5. Last.preset.dock                 915    2011-01-11 01:46        2013-01-25 00:08
6. Last.preset.grid                5086    2011-01-11 01:46        2013-01-25 00:08
7. NewClips.preset                   32    2011-01-11 01:46        2005-08-11 20:52
8. NewClips.preset.dock             892    2011-01-11 01:46        2005-08-11 20:52
9. NewClips.preset.grid            2913    2011-01-11 01:46        2005-08-11 20:52
10. NewClips.preset.groupnodes        15    2011-01-11 01:46        2005-08-11 20:52
11. Standard.preset                   32    2011-01-11 01:46        2005-08-11 20:50
12. Standard.preset.dock             892    2011-01-11 01:46        2005-08-11 20:50
13. Standard.preset.grid            2908    2011-01-11 01:46        2005-08-11 20:50

The ones I use are not user-dependent and are in the folder
C:\UTIL\Windows utilities\FindAndRunRobot\Plugins\Clipboard Help+Spell\PresetViews
- which contains the files: (showing Created  Date, then Modified Date)

Code: Text [Select]

1. .InfoSelect style.preset.dock            915    2012-01-24 15:06        2012-01-24 15:06
2. .InfoSelect style.preset.grid           4677    2012-01-24 15:06        2012-01-24 15:06
3. .InfoSelect style.preset.groupnodes       46    2012-01-24 15:06        2012-01-24 15:06
4. CHS Original example.preset               32    2012-02-03 10:12        2012-02-03 10:12
5. CHS Original example.preset.dock         915    2012-02-03 10:12        2012-02-03 10:12
6. CHS Original example.preset.grid        4677    2012-02-03 10:12        2012-02-03 10:12
7. CHS Original example.preset.groupnodes    38    2012-02-03 10:12        2012-02-03 10:12
8. ColumnCustomizer.preset                   32    2005-08-11 20:52        2012-01-24 15:07
9. ColumnCustomizer.preset.dock             915    2005-08-11 20:52        2012-01-24 15:07
10. ColumnCustomizer.preset.grid            4677    2005-08-11 20:52        2012-01-24 15:07
11. ColumnCustomizer.preset.groupnodes        46    2012-01-24 15:07        2012-01-24 15:07
12. IB 3-pane hide.preset                     32    2012-01-31 20:22        2012-01-31 20:22
13. IB 3-pane hide.preset.dock               766    2012-01-31 20:22        2012-01-31 20:22
14. IB 3-pane hide.preset.grid              4692    2012-01-31 20:22        2012-01-31 20:22
15. IB 3-pane hide.preset.groupnodes          37    2012-01-31 20:22        2012-01-31 20:22
16. IB 3-pane.preset                          32    2012-01-26 03:18        2012-01-26 14:51
17. IB 3-pane.preset.dock                    762    2012-01-26 03:18        2012-01-26 14:51
18. IB 3-pane.preset.grid                   4692    2012-01-26 03:18        2012-01-26 14:51
19. IB 3-pane.preset.groupnodes               37    2012-01-26 03:18        2012-01-26 14:51
20. IB 3-panel.preset.dock                   762    2012-01-26 03:23        2012-01-26 03:23
21. IB 3-panel.preset.grid                  4691    2012-01-26 03:23        2012-01-26 03:23
22. IB 3-panel.preset.groupnodes              45    2012-01-26 03:23        2012-01-26 03:23
23. IB01.preset.dock                         915    2011-08-25 15:09        2011-08-25 15:09
24. IB01.preset.grid                        4509    2011-08-25 15:09        2011-08-25 15:09
25. IB01.preset.groupnodes                    53    2011-08-25 15:09        2011-08-25 15:09
26. IBall.preset.dock                        915    2011-08-29 18:41        2011-11-20 12:56
27. IBall.preset.grid                       4685    2011-08-29 18:41        2011-11-20 12:56
28. IBall.preset.groupnodes                   29    2011-11-20 12:53        2011-11-20 12:56
29. IBimages.preset                           32    2011-08-25 15:09        2012-01-31 10:27
30. IBimages.preset.dock                     915    2011-08-29 18:42        2012-01-31 10:27
31. IBimages.preset.grid                    4680    2011-08-29 18:42        2012-01-31 10:27
32. IBimages.preset.groupnodes                46    2012-01-31 10:27        2012-01-31 10:27
33. IBold.preset                              32    2011-11-20 12:50        2011-11-20 12:50
34. IBold.preset.dock                        915    2011-11-20 12:50        2011-11-20 12:50
35. IBold.preset.grid                       4685    2011-11-20 12:50        2011-11-20 12:50
36. IBold.preset.groupnodes                   18    2011-11-20 12:50        2011-11-20 12:50
37. InfoSelect style.preset                   32    2012-01-24 15:06        2012-01-24 15:07
38. InfoSelect style.preset.dock             915    2012-01-24 15:07        2012-01-24 15:07
39. InfoSelect style.preset.grid            4677    2012-01-24 15:07        2012-01-24 15:07
40. InfoSelect style.preset.groupnodes        46    2012-01-24 15:07        2012-01-24 15:07
41. Last.preset                               32    2010-12-16 23:06        2013-10-14 18:47
42. Last.preset.dock                         915    2010-12-16 23:06        2013-10-14 18:47
43. Last.preset.grid                        4849    2010-12-16 23:06        2013-10-14 18:47
44. Last.reset.grid                         4860    2013-05-24 13:48        2012-10-26 18:04
45. NewClips.preset                           32    2005-08-11 20:52        2011-11-20 12:52
46. NewClips.preset.dock                     915    2005-08-11 20:52        2011-11-20 12:52
47. NewClips.preset.grid                    4685    2005-08-11 20:52        2011-11-20 12:52
48. NewClips.preset.groupnodes                18    2005-08-11 20:52        2011-11-20 12:52
49. OB deatil 3-pane hide.preset              32    2012-05-08 18:32        2012-05-08 18:32
50. OB deatil 3-pane hide.preset.dock        766    2012-05-08 18:32        2012-05-08 18:32
51. OB deatil 3-pane hide.preset.grid       4692    2012-05-08 18:32        2012-05-08 18:32
52. OldClips.preset                           32    2011-11-20 12:52        2011-11-20 12:52
53. OldClips.preset.dock                     915    2011-11-20 12:52        2011-11-20 12:52
54. OldClips.preset.grid                    4685    2011-11-20 12:52        2011-11-20 12:52
55. OldClips.preset.groupnodes                18    2011-11-20 12:52        2011-11-20 12:52
56. Standard.preset                           32    2005-08-11 20:50        2011-11-20 16:17
57. Standard.preset.dock                     915    2005-08-11 20:50        2011-11-20 16:17
58. Standard.preset.grid                    4677    2005-08-11 20:50        2011-11-20 16:17
59. Standard.preset.groupnodes                45    2011-11-20 12:56        2011-11-20 16:17

I know that when you save a PresetView, it saves certain settings corresponding to that view, but I have not figured out how you can save a PresetView which blocks (greys out) the option to delete clips.
However, if Jesper Hertel's PresetViews have somehow been set to do this, then I wonder whether this could be an undocumented feature in CHS that we don't know about or have forgotten, or maybe the functionality to effect it has been removed in later versions of CHS.

3543

Living Room / MaskMe extension - PMI (Plus, Minus, Interesting)

« Last post by IainB on October 13, 2013, 08:53 PM »

I am very interested in the ideas put forward in The Online Privacy Blog re: How Adobe’s 2.9 million hacked users could have beaten the data breach
- and what they propose doing with the Firefox extension MaskMe:

A Password Manager That Protects Your Privacy
Create and manage secure passwords, and mask your email, phone, and credit card as you browse and shop on the web.

I would be interested in what he DCF members/brainstrust might make of this Firefox extension.

I'll start by suggesting that it seems like you would only have to trust this ONE thing to manage the others - a bit like "One ring to rule them all".
But is that one thing secure?
Is there anything else like this on the market (I haven't come across anything)?

3544

Living Room / Re: Core Internet Institutions Abandon US Government

« Last post by IainB on October 13, 2013, 08:08 PM »

^^ Yes. What @40hz said. Spot-on.      (Not bad for a turtle!)

The country which is presently the de facto guardian and custodian of the web infrastructure standards would seem to have demonstrated - for whatever reason - a gross inability/incompetence to perform the role with trust, and with responsible, detached, objective, rational, and ethical policies.
The change to a new, trustworthy and international custodianship can't happen quickly enough for my liking, though I would suggest that the thing will probably still be at potential risk of being hijacked or skewed by self-interested parties in (say) the US economic/commercial hegemony, or a totalitarian new world order, or other religio-political ideology - for example, as in those other international bodies, the World Bank, the World Trade Organisation, the UN, the IPCC, or the EU.

If you need evidence to support this suggested potential risk you could probably spot the usual suspects as being behind the issues discussed in the other DCF thread Internet freedoms restrained - SOPA/PIPA/OPEN/ACTA/CETA/PrECISE-related updates

Whether the end result of all this will be a better form of freedom and security on the Internet than at present is probably a moot question.

3545

Living Room / Google's Storage Problem

« Last post by IainB on October 11, 2013, 11:10 PM »

There are a lot of discussion threads referring to the pros/cons/comparisons of different Cloud storage services of one form or another, and I wasn't sure which one to post this to, so here it is on its own. I thought it was potentially quite useful in making the points that it does:
(Copied below sans embedded hyperlinks/images.)

Google's Storage Problem
A lot of people wonder what happens when you stop paying for additional Google storage. Google doesn't delete your files, but you're forced to delete some of them because you can't upload new files until you use less than 15GB of storage (your quota may be different).

A downside of Google's shared storage system is that it affects both Gmail and Google+ Photos, not just Google Drive. Gmail used to offer 10GB of free storage, Picasa Web/Google+ Photos only 1GB and Google Drive - 5GB. Small photos (< 2048x2048) and short videos (less than 15 minutes) uploaded using Google+ Photos, as well as the documents, spreadsheets and presentations created using Google's Drive apps don't count towards your storage limit.

"If you exceed your quota limit, you'll receive warnings in each product and you'll need to correct the issue as soon as you can. Otherwise, you'll be unable to upload additional items to your Drive or photos to Google+, and, after a period of time, incoming messages to your Gmail account will be returned to the sender and you won't be able to send new messages," explains Google.

Now that Yahoo Mail offers 1TB of free storage and Outlook.com "includes email storage that expands to provide you with as much storage space as you need", Gmail's 15GB limit doesn't look that impressive. Maybe Google wants to encourage people to use Google Drive for uploading files, instead of using Gmail attachments.

Yahoo's Flickr service offers 1TB of free photo storage. "No limited pixels, no cramped formats, no memories that fall flat." Suddenly, Google's photo offering is less impressive: you get unlimited photo storage, but only if you resize the photos.

It looks like Google no longer has the edge when it comes to free storage. Gmail offered 1GB of free storage when its main competitors only included a few megabytes of storage. Now roles are reversed.

Posted by Alex Chitu at 10/10/2013 01:41:00 PM

3546

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by IainB on October 10, 2013, 07:01 PM »

I thought it was rather accurate. The top row keeps churning forward...and the bottom row keeps praying they don't blow up the planet in the process.

-Stoic Joker (October 10, 2013, 06:42 PM)

Ah, I see! I had not put that interpretation on it.

3547

Living Room / Re: TrueCrypt Audit

« Last post by IainB on October 10, 2013, 06:20 PM »

From the discussion of this that I've seen, there isn't really any reason to suspect that there's a problem. It's just that people want to *prove* that TC is secure, and hasn't been compromised.

-CWuestefeld (October 10, 2013, 12:31 PM)

On the other hand, it could be the old IBM trick of deliberate spreading of FUD - fear, uncertainty, doubt - on a safe and uncrackable decryption system, by...hmm (I have no idea)...which might cause people to consider it "unsafe".

I'm not sure why anyone would want to do that, of course...

Yes, an audit could help to "prove" things, but then you'd need to audit the other crypto-g schemes (MS, Norton/Symantec, etc.), as a basis of comparison, to establish a level playing field.
Of course, you'd be able to trust the results as no-one would rig the results of such an audit. That would be like suggesting that some government agency spies on our every communication on the Internet and wants to continue doing so, unhindered. A laughable idea.

3548

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by IainB on October 10, 2013, 05:59 PM »

THE POWER OUTAGE
We had a power outage last week.
My computer, television and game console immediately shut down.
It was raining so I couldn’t play golf.
All I could do was talk to my wife for a few hours.
 
She seems like a nice person.

3549

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by IainB on October 10, 2013, 05:48 PM »

+1 Nice one, @wraith808. Very droll.

^^ @Giampy: That is unnecessarily unkind.   
Mind you, some of the scientists seem to be praying for worse weather, nowadays...

3550

General Software Discussion / Re: Office 2013 drops cleartype, fonts a disaster. Any way to fix it?

« Last post by IainB on October 09, 2013, 02:00 AM »

Btw, if you spend any time on linux (ubuntu), you may have realized the freetype rendering is superior to cleartype anyway. Fortunately there's a way to get freetype on windows:
mactype
I use it and it improves chrome's rendering quite a bit.
_________________________________

-urlwolf (April 25, 2013, 10:57 AM)

I only this week got around to trying MacType out. Results below.
I tried it 4 ways: (System is HP ENVY 14 laptop with Win7-64 Home Premium.)
   1. Appearance: Ordinary system (ClearType ON):
   2. Appearance: Ordinary system (ClearType OFF):
   3. Appearance: MacType (ClearType ON) Default setting:
   4. Appearance: MacType (ClearType OFF) Default setting:

See samples below:
  1 and 3 look the same. ClearType ON in both cases seems best for the eyes.
  2 and 4 look the same.

I tried some of the other settings in MacType, but they didn't make for any improvement over the Default setting with ClearType ON.
Interestingly, OneNote gets different errors with its OCR (AltText). I have put the AltText below the image of each of the 4 samples (see below), so you can see the errors/omissions yourself.
MacType didn't seem to play very nicely with some of my proggies and they kept crashing.
I think I'll stick with the ordinary Windows system + ClearType ON, and just put up with the glary "flat" design of the MS Office and OneNote GUIs.
(Click image to expand it.)