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5026

Living Room / Re: DOTCOM saga - updates

« Last post by IainB on June 30, 2012, 05:04 PM »

@TaoPhoenix:
^ +1   Very droll. Loved it.   

5027

Living Room / Re: DOTCOM saga - updates

« Last post by IainB on June 30, 2012, 05:25 AM »

...who would be expected to pay damages if awarded?

-tomos (June 30, 2012, 04:25 AM)

Well, as it has already been formally adjudged by the High Court judicary to be an illegal action, then I would presume the NZ government should offer to pay reparations, rather than that they have to be taken to court to oblige them to part with monies under some kind of civil action for committing what could be a criminal offence - i.e., illegal breaking and entering, false imprisonment, destruction and taking of property and business assets, with weapons and major intimidation thrown in for good measure - which crimes at least in part could go under the definition of "Home invasion" under NZ law.
There's probably more, but that could do for starters.

Criminal charges would otherwise usually be laid by the police against third parties, and not against themselves as a group.

So such reparation would come out of government coffers, which would really mean the taxpayers had just obligingly funded the police to have what in hindsight was apparently a real-live but totally over-the-top, uncalled-for and unnecessary kickass SWAT-fest exercise against apparently innocent taxpayers. Kinda kinky really.
The Americans seem to have this down to a fine art. We in NZ are probably really only rank amateurs by comparison, and are only just beginning to catch up.
For example, I suppose it's a bit like this:
EXCLUSIVE VIDEO: SWAT Raids Home Investigating Threats Made To EPD Officers & Families
Some of the comments by the police and the readers are priceless.
For example:

Police officer: "We're not going to let these types of people take over and have us scared in our own homes."
Commenter: "No, instead you're going to have innocent citizens that you're sworn to serve and to protect be scared in their own homes."

No wonder there are 70% "Furious" readers on the thermometer in the screenshot below:
You'd probably have seen something similar in NZ if they had put a thermometer up re the Dotcom raid.

5028

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Hard Disk Sentinel PRO - Mini-Review (as at 2012-06-02)

« Last post by IainB on June 30, 2012, 03:43 AM »

...Also the above identifies a bug - what's the response from the authors?

-peterlonz (June 30, 2012, 02:00 AM)

Oops, I don't think we had identified a bug in HDS.
There were only two things I can think of that you might be referring to:

• Case studies: The developer (Janos) at Hard Disk Sentinel sent me a link to some cases of problems discovered using HDS (that means examples/logs of hard drive problems which HDS has discovered on users' computers):
  They are under Support -> Knowledge base -> Hard disk cases, here: http://www.hdsentine.../hard_disk_cases.php
• Real-time performance monitoring: Registry settings necessary to enable this are not set by HDS, the user has to set them. When I set them, they were not sticking, so real-time performance monitoring in HDS was not enabled, or kept being disabled. I gave a quick ad hoc registry fix for it - documented in the opening post. Something - and I don't see how it could be HDS - is occasionally clearing the registry settings that enable this - they are not "sticky" at any rate. I suspect (but have no proof) that it might be CCleaner as that also seems to be responsible for occasionally knocking out the registry settings affecting xplorer² on my laptop. (I have a quick ad hoc registry fix for that too.)

5029

Circle Dock / Re: When I click an item it just becomes less visible. HELP!

« Last post by IainB on June 30, 2012, 02:03 AM »

That sounds rather odd.
Just a thought, but maybe you have some kind of hijack virus/trojan.
If you click a non-.exe file, what happens?
For example, if you double-click a .JPG (image) file, does it load into the correct image viewer, or what?

5030

Living Room / Re: DOTCOM saga - updates

« Last post by IainB on June 30, 2012, 12:37 AM »

This isn't the sort of publicity or rep that NZ really needs right now..if at any time.
From Sydney Morning Herald: NZ's piracy ruling 'embarrasses' FBI
NZ are USA FBI stooges? Maybe not.
Never mind, I'm sure Obama would describe NZ as "...the US' best/closest allies, and punch above their weight."
(Cringe.)

Insincerity BS: US smaller allies are the US' "best/closest allies, and punch above their weight".

-IainB (April 25, 2012, 10:34 AM)

5031

Living Room / Re: DOTCOM saga - updates

« Last post by IainB on June 30, 2012, 12:07 AM »

...
...My little rant wasn't really directed at the US criminals. Everyone knows the US is a terrorist police state. My rant was directed at the NZ officials that were responsible for cooperating with the US terrorists, which they are -- just ask any upload site owner that shut down if they were left in terror after MegaUpload was summarily executed. And yes - it was a summary execution. There was no trial and MegaUpload was completely destroyed in a day.
So what does this say about the NZ willingness to cooperate with terrorists? They went along with it all...
...
...It's shameful. And they must be held to account for what they did for there to be justice. The "law" cannot be above the law.
...

-Renegade (June 29, 2012, 08:48 PM)

Yes, I understand those were the points you were making.
And I am optimistic, yes, but admittedly I do usually expect the best of human nature.
I don't know whether the authorities that executed the Dotcom raid could actually have criminal charges laid against them in an NZ court, though a UN court might be able to do that. However, any illegal actions of the people involved could presumably be a different matter.

Liability for illegal acts by a government's authorities generally rests with that government. It can't (wouldn't) take itself to court. One of the press reports suggested that the NZ government was going to have to foot the bill for restoration of justice to Dotcom+ Etc., and I feel sure that is now being considered anyway.
I wouldn't jump too quickly to the conclusion that because the NZ authorities responded with apparent alacrity to the pressure for action from the US authorities, that the NZ party is by definition inherently corrupt/illegal. The Dotcom raid seems to have been a stupid thing to do - or at least to do in an illegal fashion. Some BIG mistakes seem to have been made. You yourself have said that if it looks like collaboration or stupidity, you'd guess it was the latter every time (OWTTE). Same principle could apply here.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if the investigation (which would presumably now be taking place) doesn't lead to some people being privately severely admonished and then quietly but rapidly retired, or promoted sideways into admin. positions, where they can't then screw anything else up ever again. This sort of thing must be excruciatingly embarrassing to the government, because it does rather demonstrate that someone (the government - and by association, the Prime Minister) might well have been guilty of collaborating in what was an illegal act - or at least negligent or asleep at the helm. Not a good look, and the voters are not so unsophisticated that they wouldn't notice this and remember, come the next election. So the government would probably want to be seen rectifying this shambolic mess in a legal, professional and ethical fashion.

The whole Dotcom thing seems to have been an illegal/criminal act instigated by the US government/SS. The NZ government/SS may have been forced/duped (I hope) into complying/collaborating.
The last NZ incident that I know of, where a criminal act sponsored by a foreign government (state terrorism) was committed in NZ was the case of the Sinking of the MV Rainbow Warrior.

As it says in Wikipedia: (see the actual link for embedded hyperlinks in Wikipedia)

Spoiler

http://en.wikipedia....ow_Warrior#Aftermath

After the bombing, the New Zealand Police started one of the country's largest police investigations. Most of the agents escaped New Zealand but two, Captain Dominique Prieur and Commander Alain Mafart – posing as married couple 'Sophie and Alain Turenge' and having Swiss passports – were identified as possible suspects with the help of a Neighborhood Watch group, and were arrested. Both were questioned and investigated, and their true identities were uncovered, along with the French government's responsibility. Both agents pleaded guilty to manslaughter and were sentenced to 10 years imprisonment on November 22, 1985.

France threatened an economic embargo of New Zealand's exports to the European Economic Community if the pair was not released.[3] Such an action would have crippled the New Zealand economy, which was dependent on agricultural exports to Britain.
Hao atoll

In June 1986, in a political deal with Prime Minister of New Zealand David Lange and presided over by United Nations Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, France agreed to pay NZ$13 million (USD$6.5 million) to New Zealand and apologise, in return for which Alain Mafart and Dominique Prieur would be detained at the French military base on Hao Atoll for three years. However, the two agents had both returned to France by May 1988, after less than two years on the atoll.

Some years ago, I was listening to a TVNZ interview with the then-retired ex-PM David Lange, where he was discussing this incident and its aftermath. I recall that he said he had no option but to comply with the French government's insistence to send Prieur and Mafart from NZ prison to the French military base on Hao Atoll, and that their early release was no surprise. He indicated that it went entirely against the grain for him and his ethics. It was wrong, and NZ were paid money to breach their own laws for the punishment sentence of these two French murderers, who committed their crime at the French government's direction. (OWTTE)
He explained that NZ was this insignificant little wart on the backside of the planet (the southern hemisphere), with a tiny population (then about 3.5million), and with a tiny and fragile economy which lived entirely by its ability to trade competitively with world markets, especially in pastoral produce (meat and dairy products).
"The big guys can twist your arm, and you have to give in to the bully." I think he said (OWTTE).
He reckoned that if he had refused to comply with the French "request", then the markets for NZ produce could mysteriously be closed to NZ. NZ would have been boycotted/blocked - especially in the EU, which had historically been favourably inclined towards NZ products - not least because of the NZ commitment to the Allies in WW2 and it being the "food basket" for Britain during that war.

I could be wrong, of course, but my take on this Dotcom thing is that it could well be that NZ may have already been having its arm twisted big time by an even bigger bully than France, to do the Dotcom raid. And they (NZ government) could have been in such panicky haste to comply before their arm was broken that they stuffed up the legal paperwork by mistake. So now it's all going to have to be PR damage control, and possibly some more unexplained judicial changes of judgement, as in the case of Prieur and Mafart.
Who knows?
We may one day be told the entire truth by our PM John Keys, when he is being interviewed in his retirement.

One thing that the Prieur and Mafart case showed to us all was that, if necessary for the government, then the judiciary are clearly going to do exactly what they are told, and from that time henceforth they must always be regarded as being unable to exist in a proper and independent way. So you can't expect too much of them.
Unfortunately for NZ, the NZ judiciary have been pushing for a long time to run their own highest court of appeal, and thus come out from under the Court of Privy Council (UK). They have succeeded in this, with apparently nary a peep from civil rights proponents, or the public, or the media.
The Supreme Court of New Zealand is now the highest court and the court of last resort in New Zealand, having formally come into existence on 1 January 2004. It was necessary to erect an approx. NZ$80 million building to house the court in Wellington, the capital.
NZ thus has lost access to what has been described as the finest independent collection of legal brains on the planet (The Privy Council), and gained a narrowed and partisan judiciary which acts under government directive (QED).
However, I would say that the published ruling of New Zealand High Court judge Helen Winkelmann in the Dotcom case at least does give me some cause for hope.

5032

Living Room / Re: DOTCOM saga - updates

« Last post by IainB on June 29, 2012, 08:12 PM »

They completely destroyed Megaupload. It's gone. It will NEVER recover. Other sites have been shutting down in mass numbers because they're all scared to shit of the same thing happening to them. Megaupload was the first summary execution.

-Renegade (June 28, 2012, 11:01 AM)

Agreed. They never gave a damn if the charges would "stick" ... They just wanted to sit back and watch the Shock and Awe ripple effect. The Italians did the same type of thing in Chicago back in the 40s. But the Feds thought that was criminal.

-Stoic Joker (June 28, 2012, 11:48 AM)

You may well both be right - and if you are, then it is a sad indictment of the state of the US nation. I know next to nothing about the US legal/judicial system, or Kim Dotcom or MegaUpload to be able to make informed comment about them. If you recall, I commented about the NZ TV coverage of the Dotcom raid in NZ (see the post copied below). That comment was made by me as a Kiwi (an NZ citizen) who had great faith in the integrity of the police and NZ Defence Force personnel - I felt sure that the justification for the raid would become apparent as events unfolded:

I missed seeing the NZ TV3 programme when it aired, so watched it tonight on replay video:
Kim Dotcom's head of security, Wayne Tempero, walks John Campbell through the events on January 20 in a global TV exclusive.
Campbell Live enters Kim Dotcom's Coatesville mansion - Video
Campbell Live talks to Assistant Police Commissioner Malcolm Burgess, who signed off on the Dotcom police operation:
Police defend actions during Dotcom raid - Video
It doesn't make sense. I have the highest regard for the integrity of the NZ Defence and police people that I have had the opportunity to work with over the years. I feel sure there must be a lot more behind the charges against Mr Dotcom and possibly others, for the police to have acted in the way they did. For all we know, the police may be prohibited from telling us what it is.
"There were 70-odd officers distributed across a number of properties, executing up to 10 search warrants during the course of the day...
...There were 20 or 30 [officers] initially [at Dotcom's property] to seize the place..."

-IainB (February 08, 2012, 03:38 AM)

However, the published ruling of New Zealand High Court judge Helen Winkelmann:

"...who today ripped the "invalid" warrant and the subsequent search and seizure in a 56-page decision." per arstechnica - here.

- would apparently confirm that, as the arstechnica post put it, the raid:

"...was also totally illegal."

To summarise: (as I understand it at this stage)

• The raid was carried out illegally by NZ police/military/SS officers (where "SS" means some kind of Special Services/Secret Services);
• This illegal (QED) act was carried out at the apparently documented behest of the police/SS agencies of a foreign power (USA);
• - which documentation is also apparently suspect and may be unlawful (per overseas media);
• The result is almost certainly likely to have entailed the collapse of the huge MegaUpload service/business, and the serious discombobulation and/or significant consequential financial loss for Dotcom's business, family, business associates, and legitimate customers of MegaUpload.

My view (FWIW):

• Presumably, speedy apology and reparation/restitution to the above parties (Dotcom's business, family, business associates, and legitimate customers of MegaUpload) would be in order.
• We could probably expect something like this (apology and reparation/restitution) being proposed at some stage by the objective New Zealand judiciary (whether the High Court judge, Helen Winkelmann or her judicial colleagues) - which reasonable expectation would seem to be supported by the pretty incisive judgement above.
• It would be reasonable to suppose that if an illegal action of such violence and severity can be executed against one NZ citizen (assuming Dotcom is a citizen) by the NZ officers of the law and/or NZ Defence personnel, then it could be executed against any citizen.
• If it could be carried out without the penalty of legally-enforced reparation/restitution, then that would be a nightmare.

Any citizen (myself included) would probably find such prospect to be a frightening thought. For example, if it became a reality, then it would mean that NZ had become quite literally little different to a Fascist Banana Republic.
I do not for a moment believe that to be the case - quite the opposite. NZ has usually shown itself - by its actions - to be a great little country to live in and with a strong backbone - worth having on your side.
For this reason, I reckon the above penalty - in the form of legally-enforced reparation/restitution - should be punitive as opposed to being based on replacement cost-of-consequential-loss. This would send a clear signal outwards. Damages are usually awarded by courts on one basis or the other - punitive or replacement - but not both. You would tend to see punitive damages being awarded to set an example and discourage recurrence of similar illegal behaviours/actions.

5033

General Software Discussion / Re: Explode a portion of a video in multiples images

« Last post by IainB on June 29, 2012, 04:48 AM »

You can use VLC to step through a video at any point, one frame at a time, and take snapshots of the still frames.
I use it quite a bit. It works fine.

5034

Living Room / Re: Facebook Changed Everyone’s Email to @Facebook.com; Here’s How to Fix It

« Last post by IainB on June 28, 2012, 10:38 PM »

Was buzz "social networking"-related? I'm not sure
I tried using buzz - and wave for that matter - but still have no real idea what either was supposed to achieve.

5035

Living Room / Re: Facebook Changed Everyone’s Email to @Facebook.com; Here’s How to Fix It

« Last post by IainB on June 28, 2012, 08:39 PM »

From Gervase Markham's story:

The email instead goes to my Facebook inbox, and I don't get a notification email to say it's there.

So this is why Facebook introduced it: They want you to go to their site to check for email. They don't want to send the messages to your email and have you interact there, they don't want you to use a search engine to find content, and they don't want you to use forums and instant messages to talk to people. They don't want you ever to get the idea to leave the site.

-justice (June 28, 2012, 03:49 AM)

Yup... that's what I meant/said earlier.

-wraith808 (June 28, 2012, 11:26 AM)

Indeed, so you did, and I suspected you were probably likely to be proven correct.
I reckon this could have all been a mistake or a miscalculated risk on Facebook's part.
The Law of Unintended Consequences, etc. - big potential for a backlash from those members who wake up to the implications/ramifications of what has been done. Somewhere in there, trust could get wiped out.
Even if this supposition turns out not to be true:

They don't want you ever to get the idea to leave the site.

- it must leave a lot of people wondering.

Fair do's to Google. At least when they introduced g+, though they seemed clearly to be aligning themselves as a Facebook competitor, they didn't make it (g+) compulsory - though they seemed to come pretty close to doing that.

5036

Living Room / Re: Post Your Funny Videos Here [NSFW]

« Last post by IainB on June 28, 2012, 08:19 PM »

Job interview, with an infallible lie-detector:

5037

Living Room / Re: Cute jokes' thread

« Last post by IainB on June 28, 2012, 09:27 AM »

I hadn't seen this image of these birds used for this before.
EU economic trickle-down effect



_____________________________________
"Semper in excremento, solo profundo variat"

5038

Living Room / Re: Facebook Changed Everyone’s Email to @Facebook.com; Here’s How to Fix It

« Last post by IainB on June 28, 2012, 09:17 AM »

Finally someone explained to me wtf this whole thing was actually about, thank you.
Since it's such a short explanation let's just recap it here:
...

-mouser (June 28, 2012, 06:52 AM)

I could be wrong, of course, but I'm not so sure it's that simple.
For example: Changing your email address on Facebook isn’t going to help: why you’re screwed anyway

5039

Living Room / Re: DOTCOM saga - updates

« Last post by IainB on June 28, 2012, 07:11 AM »

There is also a fairly detailed post by NZ Herald: Dotcom searches illegal: Judge
- which has a useful link to a Listener article: Kim Dotcom and Megaupload: a 2012 timeline

5040

Living Room / DOTCOM saga - updates

« Last post by IainB on June 28, 2012, 06:52 AM »

And, following the seemingly excessively violent and over-the-top Dotcom New Zealand police raid at the behest of the US authorities, and the US apparently potentially illegal(?) takedown of the Dotcom business, there's this:
Kim Dotcom - John Banks Song
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=8CvRSZxqk_I[youtube]
Apparently, John Banks (who is head of the NZ ACT political party) seems to have "forgotten all about" (amongst other things) having asked for Dotcom to split his donation to the party into 2 x $25,000 "anonymous" cheques, so as to avoid having to declare them as a $50,000 donation from a defined benefactor during the elections, or something. Wouldn't pass muster as being legit in an audit. Probably would have broken some elections laws there, if it were true.
This is a good rap song! - valid political comment using the contemporary musical idiom.    
According to Ars technica in their post Kim Dotcom lampoons New Zealand MP in his new rap song, the rap was made using the Black Eyed Peas' Printz Board.
from Ars technica:

Last Friday, Prime Minister John Key denied any knowledge of Dotcom "until the day before the raids even though his senior ministers, a string of senior civil servants, and his own electorate staff were involved in matters relating to him. It has emerged that staff in the Prime Minister's own department were aware of Dotcom and his bid through the Overseas Investment Office to buy the mansion in which he lived with his family."

-IainB (May 07, 2012, 10:30 PM)

It seems that the NZ justice system has, albeit slowly, arrived at a conclusion to its deliberations on this case, so far. This would now seem to have become a very serious issue for the NZ judiciary to address.
Scoop.co.nz reports on 2012-06-28: Kim Dotcom wins court challenge that police action unlawful

Spoiler

Thursday, 28 June 2012, 6:20 pm
Article: Businesswire

Kim Dotcom wins court challenge that police action unlawful
June 28 (BusinessDesk) - Kim Dotcom, founder of the Megaupload website being pursued by US authorities for multiple copyright breaches, has won a challenge to the legality of police searches in New Zealand.
Judge Helen Winkelmann ruled that the warrants used were too broad and thus invalid and the search and seizure illegal. Also unlawful was the release to the Federal Bureau of Investigation of ‘clones’ of harddrives that were seized.
He would hear from counsel before deciding on relief for the plaintiffs – Dotcom, Finn Batato, Mathias Ortmann and Bram van der Kolk – who sought return of hard-drives among their demands.
Dotcom is accused by US authorities of some US$500 million of copyright breaches. The US has sought to extradite Dotcom, who has been allowed by New Zealand authorities to return to his mansion north of Auckland.
(BusinessDesk)

The Judgement has been posted by courtsofnz.govt.nz in a pdf document here.


It is discussed in an arstechnicha post of 2012-06-28: Mega-victory: Kim Dotcom search warrants "invalid," mansion raid "illegal" - A New Zealand judge savages the process used to target Megaupload's Kim Dotcom.
(You can read the post at the link above. It looks like quite a decent review of the judgement and the issues.)

5041

Living Room / Re: Post Your Funny Videos Here [NSFW]

« Last post by IainB on June 27, 2012, 01:17 PM »

Funny, and spot-on too.
Thanks.

5042

Living Room / Re: Facebook Changed Everyone’s Email to @Facebook.com; Here’s How to Fix It

« Last post by IainB on June 27, 2012, 12:38 PM »

Lifehacker got it from Forbes, and Forbes got it from Gervase Markham.
http://blog.gerv.net...facebook-email-mitm/

-TaoPhoenix (June 27, 2012, 06:52 AM)

Yes, both provide interesting links/discussions. Well worth a read.

5043

Living Room / Re: Facebook Changed Everyone’s Email to @Facebook.com; Here’s How to Fix It

« Last post by IainB on June 27, 2012, 01:38 AM »

They're just trying to cull out the last of the few people there left with an ounce of common sense so the rest can be quietly volunteeded (via EULA update) to participate in testing of their new Soylent Green line of products.

-Stoic Joker (June 26, 2012, 11:26 AM)

Har-de-har-har. Very droll.

5044

Living Room / Re: Post Your Funny Videos Here [NSFW]

« Last post by IainB on June 27, 2012, 01:33 AM »

Unintentionally funny video.
Go to: http://theresonanceproject.org/
Wait for or scroll to the video clip "French delegate program", which should appear in the first vid/sales window (which initially shows "Black hole DVD" advert).

Priceless moments:          

Girl #1: [With rapturous face and words, rolling her eyes in joy]
There's massive quantities of highly technical information [translation: "I don't understand a word of it"]..it's still highly enjoyable...because of his pacing [eyes go madly wide for a few moments - could it be love?] ...and phrasing and the analogies...". (Yep, now it all makes sense.)

Girl #2: [With rapturous face and words, rolling her eyes in joy]
"There's this absolute connection^ between spirit and science [waves her hand vaguely about in the air to demonstrate] ...and they were all the same thing!.. and...to have someone give me the words...to explain that...[rolls eyes upwards in wonderment] is just...amazing!"[/b] (Yep, this all makes sense too.)[/i]

By the way, I put the little "^" in after connection because it's said in a rising tone. Reminded me of Family Guy show: Whistle While Your Wife Works:
Series 5  - episode 5/18 :
Peter badly injures his hand while Brian gets a dumb blonde girlfriend and Stewie urges him to dump her.
From <http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006mh4j/episodes/guide>

Stewie: All right, Brian, you can do this. You can dump her, because once it's done, never again will you have to listen to her talk like this? You know, where everything has a question mark at the end of it? With an upward inflection? At the end of every sentence?

Brian: Yeah, I don't know what I was thinking? Oh, dammit, now I'm doing it too!

-IainB (June 27, 2012, 01:08 AM)

5045

Living Room / Re: Post Your Funny Videos Here [NSFW]

« Last post by IainB on June 26, 2012, 05:55 PM »

Looks like the Congressional budget cuts of $1.5 trillion have been figured out.

Now that didn't seem too hard, did it?

5046

Living Room / Re: Error 451: The Government Has Censored This Content

« Last post by IainB on June 26, 2012, 05:32 PM »

...He wrote what he wrote, and meant what he meant...

-wraith808 (June 26, 2012, 01:06 PM)

Hear, hear.
This is a digression, but an interesting one (for me).

Spoiler

Some historians engage in historicism (a sort of search for laws of historical evolution that are taken to explain or even predict historical phenomena) that can sometimes end up in reconstructing and re-construing the meaning and perception of the history itself - as if you could! ("It was what it was.")
This is sometimes used by Totalitarian regimes to deny responsibility for something - a historical act - that was usually a horror and morally reprehensible and as such is politically incorrect and which must therefore be denied under the prevailing regime's ideology or official position. For example, the Turkish objection to the US declaring the Turkish oppression and massacre in Armenia as being "genocide". The same applies for the Japanese "Rape of Nanking", or the Japanese "Comfort Women".
The rule for such atrocities is thus:

You must not name a horrific crime against humanity for what it was.

This sort of wish to rewrite history is a deliberate bending of historical knowledge to fit a current paradigm - you could call it a form of crime against knowledge per se - and it is generally reprehensible. But across the planet in schools, colleges and in our own minds, we seem to daily do a similar sort of thing to our knowledge of literature with nary a qualm, with the sort of phrase. "I think that what the author really meant when he wrote this was [insert your opinion here]."
That is presumably what annoyed Ray Bradbury, per the quotes above.

We do this to fictional writing and factual writing. I have watched an academic read Deming's 14-point philosophy and then declare of points 10 and 11, "I think that what Deming probably meant by these was [insert opinion here]."
However, the language for the 14 points is clear, simple, unequivocal and unambiguous, though difficult for many (myself included) to understand and accept because it runs contrary to our training and beliefs about management theory.
(Points 10 and 11 kill two sacred cows of Western management thinking - targets/quotas, and MBO.)
To educate and grow ourselves, we need "habits of mind" that enable us to make the intellectual effort to understand what has been written in its own context, rather than forcing it to fit our paradigms.

5047

Living Room / Re: Post Your Funny Videos Here [NSFW]

« Last post by IainB on June 26, 2012, 09:52 AM »

Kickstarter Highlight: The Onion's revealing documentary - https://mashable.com...6/onion-tech-trends/

5048

Living Room / Re: Post Your Funny Videos Here [NSFW]

« Last post by IainB on June 26, 2012, 09:03 AM »

An Apple Fanboy post being made on DC (realtime reaction):
http://www.liveleak....iew?i=a94_1340566754

-nosh (June 25, 2012, 05:22 AM)

Interesting. That's a LiveLeaks vid: That's what happens if a box of garbage falls into a volcano lake
Couldn't we dispose of all our garbage like this?

-IainB (June 25, 2012, 09:54 AM)

There was a company some time back that Inc. Magazine wrote up that was going to introduce a new type of incinerator. It used a superheated molten metal core. It supposedly incinerated just about anything put into it with virtually no residue or pollution since the burn was so complete. Wonder whatever happened to it...

-40hz (June 26, 2012, 06:15 AM)

Interested, I had to spend a bit of time googling this. Hard info seems scarce for some reason. I came up lots of info on Uganda, but only general feel-good stuff like this direct reference:
Uganda's Makerere University technologists invent papyrus-based sanitary protection

Summary:
Moses Kizza Musaazi (+others?) of Uganda's Makerere University invented a method to produce papyrus-based sanitary protection pads.
The cost and mess associated with menstruation was apparently a signal factor in holding back Ugandan girls from attending school in some areas.
Musaazi's production process led to very cheap sanitary pads being able to be made from freely available local flax, and his design of a "3-chamber incinerator" enabled the convenient incineration of the used pads, "and other materials".
So Musaazi had evidently looked at issues affecting all aspects - from need, to production and safe/hygenic disposal - of the life-cycle for sanitary pads.

I could not find a description of the incinerator design, but it would presumably need to be a low-cost low-energy affair, otherwise it would probably not be economically viable in Uganda - which seems to be energy-poor and economically impoverished.
The World Bank data shows it is climbing back from being a major economic basket-case, is in a growth phase, and has repaid a lot of loans, following disastrous rule under Idi AMin and then civil war.
It is riven with corruption. The incumbent president is Yoweri Museveni, Commander of the National Resistance Army, who has been president since 26 January 1986. Oh yes, it's a democracy too... Yeah, right.

From Wikipedia:

The country has largely untapped reserves of both crude oil and natural gas.

There would presumably be a reason for a poverty-ridden country keeping all that potentially realisable fossil fuel-energy wealth stuck under the ground, but one can only speculate what that might be.

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Living Room / Re: Facebook Changed Everyone’s Email to @Facebook.com; Here’s How to Fix It

« Last post by IainB on June 26, 2012, 07:22 AM »

This is going to be a disaster for Facebook with a lot of people closing their accounts and going elsewhere. Just a matter of time, now.

-app103 (June 26, 2012, 01:51 AM)

Yes, you could well be proven right.
This sort of apparently ad hoc unilateral controlling action wouldn't bode well for anyone, I reckon.
Given their past performance, how could you take anything but a dim view of this?
It would seem to be pretty desperate to risk shooting yourself in the foot like this.

5050

Living Room / Re: Facebook Changed Everyone’s Email to @Facebook.com; Here’s How to Fix It

« Last post by IainB on June 26, 2012, 12:33 AM »

I made my email addresses private - "Only me" and "Hidden from timeline".