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The Almighty Buck

Submission + - America in debt

Submitted by
HomelessInLaJolla
HomelessInLaJolla writes: "
Create debt. Maintain debt. Keep people in debt. Work them until they die of debt.

Courtesy of the "This day in history" service part of the NYTimes daily e-mail delivery.

In 1941, President Roosevelt chose to saddle the American population with an increased debt that, as a nation, they had not truly acquiesced to. The 14th Amendment (specifically section 4), conveniently for those brokering power and money to the rest of us, stops citizens, or even states, from contesting the validity of that debt.

Some politicians (in particular, then Senator Wheeler of Montana) attempted to point out the ulterior motivation behind the Lend-Lease bill:

"The American taxpayer must make up his mind now that we have given the President power to carry on undeclared wars all over the world. He is probably going to have his taxes doubled and the national debt will be $100,000,000,000 instead of $65,000,000,000 if the war lasts for any length of time.

"This is what the Morgans and the other international bankers asked for and I hope they like it.

"As far as I am concerned I will make no effort to tie the hands of the President regarding the appropriations. It is up to the conservative majority in the Senate to the money. They supported the bill."
And it continues today. Inescapable debt is slavery.
"

Feed Turkey Lifts YouTube Ban (wired.com)

From feed by wiredfeed
An official for Turk Telekom says the court is lifting the block on YouTube, imposed because of videos insulting to the founder of modern Turkey. By the Associated Press.


Security

Submission + - A more secure OS X before Leopard

Submitted by
Sebastiaan de With
Sebastiaan de With writes: "I've made a how-to from tips by Jay Beale on the last DEFCON Security conference and some own security tweaks to improve the overall security of your OS X. Make sure some default settings that can allow for vulnerabilities are set properly, and tune your firewall rules. A more advanced follow-up is coming soon."
United States

Submission + - Bush administration again stifles scientists.

Submitted by niloroth
niloroth writes: The Independent Online Reports on a leaked memorandum from the US Department of the Interior instructing members of the US Fish and Wildlife Service to refrain from mentioning climate change, sea ice, or polar bears in their trips to countries the arctic region. Following other such attempts by this administration to control either scientists connected with the government, or the results of those scientists, is there any hope for the next few years? Or is this just how it will be in the future no matter who is in power? Is the mix of science and government funding just too volatile?
Power

Submission + - EU To Mandate CFL In Homes

Submitted by
BertieBaggio
BertieBaggio writes: "How many EU leaders does it take to change a light bulb? Hot on the heels of similar moves by Australia and California to energy-saving CFL bulbs, EU leaders have told the European Commission to rush through proposals to replace incandescent light bulbs in the homes of all 490 million EU citizens. Sales of incandescent bulbs are likely to be phased out in favour of compact fluorescents, but existing stocks can still be used. This plan is part of the drive to cut CO2 emissions by 20% by the year 2020.

Engadget also has coverage of the story"
Microsoft

Submission + - Vista activation circumvented with BIOS emulation

Submitted by
Steve Kerrison
Steve Kerrison writes: "If a brute force Vista product key-gen won't work, then a tool to exploit the volume licensing used by OEMs might. HEXUS.net reports that a toolkit has been produced that emulates an OEM BIOS to make the system appear as a pre-activated machine. Combined with the correct certificate and OEM key, Vista won't perform any further activation."
United States

Submission + - U.S. plans for new nuclear weapons

Submitted by
oitotheworld
oitotheworld writes: "The Bush administration is planning a secret meeting in August to discuss the construction of a new generation of nuclear weapons, including "mini-nukes", "bunker-busters" and neutron bombs designed to destroy chemical or biological agents, according to a leaked Pentagon document. ("http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,8985 50,00.html) is the article. These smaller nuclear weapons are meant to fit in with the Bush doctrine of preemptive strikes. It is thought that smaller nuclear weapons will be seen as more of a threat by foreign countries because there will be less hesitation about using them than its current arsenal of planet decimating warheads. It is in fact an expansion of our existing nuclear arsenal, as the U.S. has no intention of decommissioning any of its existing nukes."
Portables (Apple)

Submission + - Apple to re-enter the sub-notebook market

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: AppleInsider is reporting that Apple has plans to reenter the sub-notebook market this year. FTFA: "This new tiny MacBook, people familiar with the project say, remains in development ahead of its target launch date around the time WWDC rolls around mid-year. It will be both lighter and more compact than any other Mac portable Apple has put forth in recent years, bundling a display of similarly smaller proportions."

http://appleinsider.com/article.php?id=2500
Handhelds

Submission + - Telstra to Apple: 'stick to your knitting'

Submitted by
Whiney Mac Fanboy
Whiney Mac Fanboy writes: "Australia's monopoly Telecommunications provider Telstra has ruled out carrying Apple's iphone, in a rather stinging attack on Apple, the Telco's spokesman said:

"There's an old saying — stick to your knitting — and Apple is not a mobile phone manufacturer, that's not their knitting," Mr Winn told AAP. "You can pretty much be assured that Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and ZTE and others will be coming out with devices that have similar functionality."
It should be noted that Telstra has the only cell network (2.5G) in Australia that is capable of supporting the iPhone. Does this mean Australian's will not be getting iPhones at all?"
Microsoft

Submission + - PowerPoint for War Planning

Submitted by
Geodesy99
Geodesy99 writes: "The U.S. Central Command's war plan for invading Iraq postulated in August 2002 that the U.S. would have only 5,000 troops left in Iraq as of December 2006, according to the Command's PowerPoint briefing slides,
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB214/inde x.htm

Lt. Gen. McKiernan later told Washington Post reporter Thomas Ricks (Fiasco, p. 75):

"It's quite frustrating the way this works, but the way we do things nowadays is combatant commanders brief their products in PowerPoint up in Washington to OSD and Secretary of Defense... In lieu of an order, or a frag [fragmentary] order, or plan, you get a set of PowerPoint slides... [T]hat is frustrating, because nobody wants to plan against PowerPoint slides."

Retired Army Col. Andrew Bacevich told Ricks (Fiasco, pp. 75-76) that PowerPoint war planning was the ultimate insult:

"Here may be the clearest manifestation of OSD's [Office of Secretary of Defense] contempt for the accumulated wisdom of the military profession and of the assumption among forward thinkers that technology — above all information technology — has rendered obsolete the conventions traditionally governing the preparation and conduct of war. To imagine that PowerPoint slides can substitute for such means is really the height of recklessness.""
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft blasts IBM in open letter

Submitted by carlmenezes
carlmenezes writes: Arstechnica has an article on Microsoft's open letter to IBM that adds fresh ammunition to the battle of words between those who support Microsoft's Open XML and OpenOffice.org's OpenDocument file formats. Microsoft has strong words for IBM, which it accuses of deliberately trying to sabotage Microsoft's attempt to get Open XML certified as a standard by the ECMA. In the letter, general managers Tom Robertson and Jean Paol write: "When ODF was under consideration, Microsoft made no effort to slow down the process because we recognized customers' interest in the standardization of document formats." In contrast, the authors charge that IBM "led a global campaign" urging that governments and other organizations demand that International Standards Organization (ISO) reject Open XML outright.
Could MS actually be getting a taste of their own medicine?
Mozilla

Submission + - Over 27% of Firefox patches come from volunteers

Submitted by
dolphinling
dolphinling writes: "Everyone knows the Mozilla Corporation makes a lot of money and employs a lot of people now. Google has full-time employees working on Firefox too, as do a number of other places. Yet despite that, in the six months up to Firefox 2 "27% of the patches to Firefox and Gecko and other key projects were submitted by key volunteers, [and] those patches represent 24% of changes made to the source code". What's more, those numbers only counted contributers with 50 patches or more, so the actual numbers are probably quite a bit higher. It's good to see that even as Mozilla does so well in the business world, it can still keep its ties to the community so strong."

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