a better translation:

There are two fundamental questions in the life of the human soul towards which everything to be discussed in this book is directed. One is: Is it possible to find a view of the essential nature of man such as will give us a foundation for everything else that comes to meet us — whether through life experience or through science — which we feel is otherwise not self-supporting and therefore liable to be driven by doubt and criticism into the realm of uncertainty? The other question is this: Is man entitled to claim for himself freedom of will, or is freedom a mere illusion begotten of his inability to recognize the threads of necessity on which his will, like any natural event, depends?

regarded by c.s. lewis as his 'master' — contemporaries with lewis carrol — one of the most brilliant fantasy writers ever — george macdonald, 'phantastes' and 'lillith':

http://web.archive.org/web/20131017224627/http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=MacPhan.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=1&division=div1

probably one of the most important books in western philosophy since kant's critique of pure reason — rudolf steiner's 'philosophy of freedom':

EVERYTHING DISCUSSED in this book centers around two problems which are fundamental to the human soul-life. One of these problems concerns the possibility of attaining such insight into human nature that knowledge of man can become the foundation of all human knowledge and experience of life. We often feel that our experiences and the results of scientific investigations are not self-supporting; further experiences or discoveries may shake our certitude. The other problem is Has man any right to ascribe freedom to his will, or is freedom of will an illusion arising out of his inability to recognize the threads of necessity on which his will depends, just like a process in nature? (Rudolf Steiner, The Philosophy of Freedom)

http://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA004/English/RSPI1963/GA004_preface1.html

aka how to remotely exploit everything that was never previously exploitable — and how your toaster now spies on you.

back in the day — with TRS80 300 baud cassette loading — we thought 300 bps was pretty SSSSLLLOOOWWW..

they managed the blazing speed 20bps (bits per second) at 3 meters using 18khz carrier frequency — and that had a faint clicking sound.

20 bps is slower than most people type — you're not going to be transmitting any high-res jpeg images this way..

good enough to capture and transmit a password though, or to do command-control type actions.

heh heh — transmitting a spy app between nodes as a payload could take weeks..

when they made it quieter so you couldnt hear the slight clicking sound — the range was http://www.jocm.us/uploadfile/2013/1125/20131125103803901.pdf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzrZukr3mbU

he'd be arrested.. tomorrow. :-p

when it crashes my machine — it is done.

who needs to torrent anymore when its already all there..?

OSX mavericks is free — as in beer; but not free as in speech.

linux is free (as in speech), but may not be free as in beer (since open source companies typically charge for services and not software).

OSX is free (as in beer). but only employs 'free as in speech' to parts of the whole system — they lockdown the engine, and use & contribute to open source — significantly, the darwin kernel is actually open source, and they use open protocols (xml).

either of these is still better than windows 8.1 (which still uses closed NT filesystem, no open source kernel — and windows hood, and document formats are all bolted shut).

ya — iOS was designed for power management from the get-go, whereas windows is just DOS with a GUI bolted on, and then internet/network bolted on, and then windows NT grafted in, and then surface and mobile bolted on, and legacy background CPU processes and general bloat and cruftiness just cant keep down the CPU usage to match power dedicated hardware — and with the latest iOS 7 — time coalescing of tasks and threads so the power doesnt havent to run as continuously — windows 7 wont match that feature for years — take a look at your task manager, and look at all those crufty old DLLs and processes — you cant get rid of them, so you just need more battery juice — if you're running java — that's just extra processor juice over running native code, so things like that take a hit on battery life too. also — the typical CISC processors used by windows are more complex, and inherently require more power than processors like the ARM which were designed with power management in mind. you would have to recompile all your apps to work well with processor features and methods.

or as they say — never mistake motion for action. :-^

since we cant know the decision making process for an agent external to ourselves, we devise a turing test — which says nothing more than if it quacks like a duck, it IS a duck (and never mind that we decieve ourselves with decoys and clever ploys).

however, for our own agency, we can raise the exceptional condition and follow the path through introspection — which is fraught with subjective bias.. if we attain some objectivity in our own comiserations — we do find that almost everything we do is actually conditioned through habit and dispositions — if we just tested 90% of what we do, we would see that most of it actually is Not Free — but there's these times when occasions arise, when we have the ability to attain intuitive insight into our situation, and then we have the opportunity to add something new to the world — a decision based on a consciously based action — and we push that little pebble of freedom forward one more notch. like the dot on the 'i' — it may be a smallest part — barely a breath, but sometimes — for those who attain to it — it can make all the difference..

2cents from toronto island,
john penner

got a brain - but got no heart..

upon the mental sheet of the mind — in dreams we cast stories all day — the emotional content of what occured to you.
the brain is the source of all those stories we clothe in a given medium.. its all an adventure that happens to you — story is ephemeral, mediums decompose, idea lives on..