Repeatedly I've read of bias in Israel/Palistine reporting..

This Guardian Article gives me greater reason to include places like the independent media center in my scanning-the-world awareness, yet I find political-motivation so loathesome that I seldom bother ( gave away my TV years ago, maybe a decade ago, no radio, no newspapers... )

Unfortunately, I know that the indymedia.org news is as untrustworthy as is any other news-source... -sigh-
Still, approximate-balance ( the two major special-interest-groups, rather than only the dominant one... ) gives one better chance at sensing the way the world actually is...

'Liberal' push/slant, 'Conservative' push/slant, how come no-one values correct awareness or correct underlying systems, or correct testing-of-what-is, or testing-of-what-works-livingly?

Whatever, try Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting for attacks against the North-American 'sanitization' and pre-digestion of information among our broadcast/mass media...
They're quite definitely LWI ( left-wing-intellectual ), so I don't know if they ignore faults among the left, but they do cut heavy-handed abuse among the 'information' provided by our world's .. ?lords?...

Try, also, ProjectCensored.org ( censored news, you generally won't discover in your TV-news or newspapers ), EU's StateWatch.org ( protecting humans against the state-corporation's laws in Europe ), REAL homeland security ( as-in one's own home-land, not some state-corporate special-interest-group's 'home' ) at CrypTome.org, the, ah, civilly illuminating disinformation.com site, the politically alternative ( whatever that means ) AlterNet.org, and...

"The Nation will not be the organ of any party, sect, or body. It will, on the contrary, make an earnest effort to bring to the discussion of political and social questions a really critical spirit, and to wage war upon the vices of violence, exaggeration, and misrepresentation by which so much of the political writing of the day is marred.
-- from The Nation's founding prospectus, 1865"

Who knew they had the 'net waayyyy back then? : P

Or, how about PsychicSpy.com ( concerned with espionage's disinforming of humanity for its own sake ), or OpenSecrets.org
"The Center for Responsive Politics is a non-partisan, non-profit research group based in Washington, D.C. that tracks money in politics, and its effect on elections and public policy."

Or how about Always Causing Legal Unrest, in their battle for human worth, instead-of corrosion of god-given worth for money..., or AmericasSecondHarvest.org which is committed to correcting the malnutrition among the poorer ( 25% of those in soup-kitchen/food-assist benefits are kids, and, speaking-from-experience, I'd say that malnutrition-induced-braindamage isn't something that contributes to a strong economy and braindamage isn't something that one can just cause to go away by entrepreneurial commitment, either
) :

The Legal Rights of Women .. this is the TOC of a book, which seems to be necessary for women who exist in our civilization ( because the system is stacked to disadvantage women, from infancy/education/resources/everyting, EVEN I can see that... ), and amazon.com ( et al. ) lists other books, one or two of which I'll eventually link to, from here...

Probably the single trustworthiest link ( news-type ) here in this entry, is The Guardian.co.uk, and, of course, this, item, at The Brains Trust.co.uk, where dictators protest the removal of Hussein, because of how it'd adversely affect their lot... hmm...

Here's a link to a place where CorporateBrands -to- MoveGovernmentOurWayGroup mapping is done, showing the underlying groups-that-move-government in relation to the brand-name companies ( and showing how some are really committed to making world obey their special-interest/lobby-groups' Law or NewWorldOrder...
http://www.transnationale.org/anglais/

( that one originally in a separate Jan 10th, 7:33pm post )

Finally, something that I care about doing MUCH more than politics ( leave that to others, but BE AWARE of how political-motivation deforms our world, and how organized deformity-of-knowing is profoundly more affective and effective than human-worth is ) is
ikebana ( Japanese Flower Arranging .. which the famous Miyamoto Musashi recommended, and .. and I do too...
: )

Please remember this -- you probably use a wordprocessor more than anything, but your system's software reliability/availability-to-you is dependent on 3 things:
Immune-system ( Anti-Virus software )
Blocking Trojans + undermining + attack ( Firewall software )
Preventing spyware/stealware from undermining your system ( spyware-detecting software )
Without these basics, you don't have any right to rely-on your system, because it isn't born with built-in self-protection ( unlike organisms ).
Try Shields-Up to discover how open your system probably is ( mine's Linux/IPTables firewalled, so it's locked-down rather well, according to this -- stealthed everything. ). Backups are necessary too, to protect against loss, however induced ( virus, worm, trojan, screwup, flaky-hardware, brownout/blackout/spike/glitch... ), as is a good surge-suppressor or UPS
( UPS-sizing hint: if your machine eats 350w, and your monitor eats 130w, then sum those values, 480w in this case, and double that number to get the VA rating of the UPS you need for your machine, 960VA-rating needed in this case. Why double it? Because the power-supply in your machine is .7 efficiency, and converting from watts to volt-amps is .7-factor, and .7*.7 == .49, so 960VA*.49 == about 480w, see... ).

Hardware RAM-testing: this doesn't need an operating-system at all, because it is the 'OS' ( for the tests it is made-of ).
MemTest86 for testing the trustworthyness of one's system RAM ( I had to reseat the DIMMs in my A7V motherboard 3 times to get 'em to connect cleanly, and pass that test -- please don't assume all flakyness is due to failed components when the connection-between 'em is very oft the problem ).
AND .. I just discovered this cpu-testing regime for Linuxers ( windows tends to hide problems, so I don't know how one'd discover if one's machine didn't work right in it, sorry ).

Organizer of Information -- Linux: TuxCards ( it's supposed to be an equiv to CueCards for Windows, but CueCards is German-only so I can't know if it truly is, or not )
Dug around, and discovered NoteKeeper, which seems to be the free equiv to TuxCards, and it may well be superior in development right now...

Text Editor -- Windows:
Edit Pad Lite. Linux's crawling with Text Editors, from Kate to Emacs, e3 ( fave of mine ) to vi ( shudder ), but Edit Pad Lite is the best free text-editor for Windows I know of. One of the first things I do on a Windows-system I'm working on is replace Notepad with Edit Pad Lite, then I'm not obstructed with Notepad's braindeadness anymore : )

Wordprocessor -- Linux and MS-Windows:
AbiWord Light + Quick Wordprocessor -- you wouldn't believe how quick this is compared with normal wordprocessors, and it's totally free.

Anti-Virus -- Windows:
Grisoft's Anti-Virus - AVG is free-for-personal-use, and you need an immune-system for yourself, and your system ( immune-deficiency is bad: infections are frequent and more-fatal without an immune-system ).
Anti-Virus -- Linux: F-Prot.

Anti-Spyware -- Windows:
Lavasoft's Ad-aware Anti-Spyware program is crucial a component of privacy-protecting ( what privacy's permitted by the Microsoft EULAs, anyways ).
Right, hit that link, and get a message about some spam-sleazeball pretending to be Lavasoft.de, and referring to 'em.
-sigh-
So. The New Link to 'em, and the link from there you want is the Download Our Software link ( which I'm not linking directly to, because I want you to see what it is you're considering/installing ).

Firewalls:
In Windows, use ZoneAlarm ( rather than the for-money ZoneAlarm Pro ), to firewall your system from the 'net.
In Linux, use GuardDog or, for an extremely basic setup of the Linux kernel's IPTables, try Levy.

Safe and Friendly Web-Browser -- both Linux and Windows:
replace brain-damaged browsers that seem nice but aggressively undo the privacy and security of your system, both, with Mozilla ( this is a great concern with Windows, not Linux, really ).

Compression-utility -- Windows:
The 7-Zip program integrates with Windows Explorer so when you click/open an archive a new Explorer-window opens, with the contents of the archive in it. This is FREE, no spy-ware, no steal-ware, no ad-ware, no pay, no hassles. It works.

Sound-Editing -- Windows:
Audacity .. 'is a free audio editor. You can record sounds, play sounds, import and export WAV, AIFF, and MP3 files, and more. Use it to edit your sounds using Cut, Copy and Paste (with unlimited Undo), mix tracks together, or apply effects to your recordings.' ( they said it better than I coulda, see ). I believe it requires wxWindows library ( I don't live in Windows, so I don't worry about these things, sorry... )

FTP client program -- Windows:
FileZilla is a totally free replacement for WS-FTP, so if you want to be uploading web-pages and understanding what's going on, or downloading mega-stuff from some ftp-server, in Windows, this is the one you want/need.

Computer Aided Design ( drafting ) program -- Linux and Windows:
'Welcome to the official QCad homepage. QCad is a free open-source 2D CAD system for Linux, various Unices and Windows. The developers main goals are to build a stable, fast and easy to use CAD for everyone. One doesn't need any knowledge of a CAD program to start working with QCad.'

Gnu Win II :
where I discovered many of the Windows-programs listed here... ( they've many more... ), and Windows SW recommendations that are sharp...

Two office-suites ( one Windows-only ), Software602 PC Suite, and the current version ( as of this writing ) of OpenOffice.org v1.0.1 ( which is slow on my system: hence the recommendation of Software602's suite ).
Living in Linux, I've also got Gnumeric spreadsheet, KOffice, the rest of the apps in GNOME's suite, and one hell of a lot of other stuff, too. Try GnuCash sometime, to see what Microsoft Money should have been...

Disk ARchive -- Linux:
.. is the best linux-backup program I currently know of...
Why? Because it backs up significant amounts of stuff to 'slices', which in my system's case are 700MB CD-Rs, and because it can do differential backups, and
because it can verify backups, and
because it can not-compress files of one's choosing ( like rpm's, zip's, tgz's, wav's, etc. ).
It is GPL.

The GIMP, or Gnu Image Manipulation Program MS Windows edition here is a FREE replacement for Photoshop. It works.

Human Rights Watch

ChildAdvocate.org

AdolescentHealth.org / Society for Adolescent Medicine ( no I can't comment on their worth, I noticed 'em, and was once adolescent, so I'm giving you the link: you decide their worth or non-worth )

the Secular Web
'... is an online community of nonbelievers dedicated to the persuit of knowledge, understanding, and tolerance.
Our goal is to defend and promote Metaphysical Naturalism, the view that our natural world is all there is, a closed system in no need of explanation and sufficient unto itself.
We want to uphold the dignity of humanity and to encourage the avid pursuit of philosophy and the scientific enterprise. To disbelieve in the gods, as Emma Goldman wrote, is at the same time to affirm life, purpose, and beauty.'
-- notice that they're wrong ( Godel's theory of incompleteness proves that Universe isn't closed, their logic's a bit soft since there-being an origin-of-living doesn't negate the validity of living, etc. ), but considering such thought-schemes as these is necessary to gain true understanding ( buddhism, soul-Awake-becoming, is scientific, and doesn't assume that mind cannot really be, as reductionism/scientism does. The whole hypocrisy of 'knowing that knowing cannot be' I've ranted, at before...

Close Up Foundation is committed to engaged democracy in the US, which seems like a good thing ( even though I'm Canuck... hmmm.. ).

'truth 101 org' is a perhaps-simplistic, probably Christian view that asks a few basic questions and discovers that a very great deal of our determination is unconscious assumption.

I'm buddhist, so No Bloody Kidding[tm] -- buddhism knows that there are three minds, call 'em ego/unconscious/soul, for simplicity, and that ego-mind is so transient that whenever we're non-conscious it doesn't exist, so it cannot be relied on,
unconscious-mind is less transient, but is dependent on our body, so when our body dies it disintegrates, so it cannot be relied on,
and our soul, which can remain non-conscious/ignorant indefinitely ( hence the endless-wheel-of-reincarnation-and-deaths dependent on soul-ignorance that buddhism is determined to gain liberation-from ).
Notice that the Toltecs also discovered these three minds ( read Carlos Castanada for that stuff -- everything down to the luminous-fibers-structure of our subtle-energy-body is described in buddhist texts too, though the Toltecs and buddhism hadn't any mixing in the 2.5 thousand years until Carlos himself )

Notice that I've no tolerance for make-believing, whether in scientism's style or in buddhism's style, or in christianity's style, or any other style: if truth can't stand true perception, then it's bogus-and-phony 'truth'. Period.
The only difference between scientific-method and scientism is scientific-method isn't assumption-itself ( it's technique ), whereas scientism is.
Seeing the 'skeptical inquirer' crowd use straw-man arguments to 'prove' that other belief ( than their beloved belief ) is ludicrous, isn't scientific-method ( I'm thinking of a bogus 'proof' argument they had years ago on their web-site against re-incarnation ).
Another example? A number of years ago a few hundred 'scientists' signed a document ordering humanity to obediently ignore astrology, this group including a number of Nobel laureates. Two attacked this 'ignorance-is-obligated' move, Feyerabend questioning that they were appealing-to-their-own-authority to make others obediently not-question, and Sagan questioning if any of 'em had scientifically tested astrology ( they had not ). Well if they don't need scientific-method, because their Scientific Established Authority[tm] is so great-and-vast that their important declaration is self-sufficient, then .. they're a church-establishment... and no more. Their action spoke that.

Note ( re scientific-method ) that buddhism requires doubt and questioning as fundamental methods of discovering valid ( immoveable/trustworthy ) knowing, and differentiates between right-doubt and wrong-doubt ( wrong-doubt is unconsciously motivated by wanting to protect established ignorance, whereas right-doubt is motivated by wanting to clarify and gain valid understanding ), and belief versus conventional-knowing versus valid-knowing ( knowing that is so embedded in one that body-death cannot move it from one ) versus faith ( relying on living infinity, origin of souls/living: once one becomes profoundly convinced that one's soul/living is real, relying on origin-of-living becomes sane ).

International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights.

Never Hit A Child org has insightful writings.

Working to Halt Online Abuse - WHOA they refer-to cyberstalking...

Quit Abuse Society ( all kinds of it ).

As for why I'm putting all kinds of undo-abuse links here?
Reading the Feminism FAQ, years ago, I discovered something interesting: If one had been abused for only one 'reason', then one would unconsciously 'know' that blocked-from-that-privilege/authority was what offended one ( white/middle-class women wanted to be included in privilege/authority that white/middle-class men had ), but one who'd been abused for multiple 'reasons', and only ones who'd been subject-to-multidimensional-obliteration-of-worth had their unconscious-mind know that abuse was wrong ( black-women were embedded in abuse for being women, for being poor/inferior-class, for being black... understood the nature of the wrong, rather than being offended by having-it-block-them-from-exclusive-privelege ).
This got me, because I'd been damn helpless among my own life ( organizations can abuse worth, whether the organizations are church or cultural or 'civil' ).
Interestingly, it was a few years later when I discovered that I understood why this-one's life embedded-in-obliterative-negation, be...
My soul's karma, my "previous day's committed-meaning" ( the biblical rendition is "the robe made of one's deeds" ) had made the meaning I'm embedded-in ( I'm using the term 'day' in the biblical sense, of 'life', as-in "the day of Isaiah", or "the day of John" -- the sense is gnostic, rather than calendar/conventional, but validly is used in most traditions ).
Buddhism doesn't allow non-responsibility any ground: knowing that the obliteration one's life helplessly is in, is rooted in my own soul's previous-action, the only sane action is to counter! to make certain that no future abuse is made by this-one to trap my soul's future in.

Athlon/Barton page, translated from Chinese, 2 ways...

Does that make it Translation-MP?

Babelfish translation of original chinese
-- Damn, but that kills: you've got to see what machine-translation creates in instances of this kind... Damn..

The Human Translation Edition ( glance at the original Chinese, in another window, so see the images etc. )

The Original Chinese

Evidently, the front-side bus makes more difference than the extra cache does ( in Windoze )... so I await the 200/400MHz frontside bus version? ( and remember that the things can be modified to run dual with a bit of silver-pen carefully applied... , though I don't remember which bridge need be shorted... )

Also, this interesting item...
Microsoft is own worst enemy ( the culture of obliterate trust/independent-worth/independent-determination is Microsofting Microsoft's long-term-survival... )
The opinion/story.

The MX5 super Bike Engine ( 33.6cc )

You may have wondered why we only make our world damaging-against-wellbeing, and much ( nearly all ) of what we do is enforced by our unconscious determination to do what we already have immediate-habit-of, but Christopher Alexander dug and realized that fundamental patterns of our civil order are non-necessarily damaging, and he wrote the alternatives he saw.

I don't agree with some of his fundamental assumptions ( my fundamental assumptions are buddhism: I'm a non-religious-tradition tulku, and buddhism is a means and philosophy, rather than a religion ), but these patterns are important to consider.

Here you get the freely offered Daily Pattern, taken from his 'A Pattern Language' book, out-of-print since 1977.

Here's another awesome resource ( this one for anyone committed to creating a home or starting-a-community without idiocy choosing the way it gets done ):
OwnerBuilderBook.com, with its scythe-the-crap insight and enabling.

... though you'll have to read the entire page to get maximal gain from it...

A beginner's guide to choosing equipment for nature photography

Excellent info there...