Windows 7: Open Thread
October 15th, 2009There’s nothing worse than this OS vs. that OS threads, but people are asking me about Windows 7.
I’ll be very brief, so my head doesn’t explode:
Would I pay to upgrade my Windows XP box to Windows 7? No way.
Would I avoid Windows 7 like the plague/Vista? No.
If I was buying a new computer, would I get Windows XP or Windows 7?
This one is very subjective. If you want a modern looking GUI, maybe Windows 7 is for you. For me, I’d stick with XP. All of my software works 100% of the time. The thing is rock solid and fast. The end.
Besides, I run very demanding financial analysis software that needs to be reliable in real time trading environments. While I could use virtualized XP on Windows 7, why bother since I have everything running fine under native XP?
Re: Macs: I like Macs.* I’ve used them, off and on, since 1984. I’ve always accommodated the handful of Mac users who wanted to use their machines on corporate networks I’ve been involved with, even against the orders of stupid PHBs. While I like Macs, in general, the software I need to use doesn’t run on Mac OS.
* The Apple price premium, however, is absurd and Steve Jobs is a serious asshole. While Bill Gates may be the antichrist, or worse, somehow he doesn’t rise to that Steve Jobs level of asshole. That said, in the years before Steve Jobs came back, Apple nearly died. Apple needed a serious asshole like Jobs.
Re: Linux: Linux on the client side remains broken, in my opinion. Yes, many of you use Ubuntu. I’m happy for you. Wake me up when Photoshop runs on that thing. Mentioning WINE or Gimp will convince me that you don’t know what you’re talking about. Video editing? Never mind.
On the server side, however, Linux makes the most sense, in my opinion.
Cryptogon Readers Sign Up For Hosting With BlueHost
October 15th, 2009Thanks to the owner of marvinmolina.com and to Anonymous for signing up for hosting with BlueHost. Cryptogon received $180.
Cryptogon Readers Send Contributions
October 15th, 2009Thank you.
GM $20
DW $50
Facebook – Coke Zero Facial Profiler
October 15th, 2009Cancer in a can and Twitbook. The zombies will love this.
Via: Wikipedia:
Facial Profiler is a social experiment [1] created and launched in 2009 by Coca-Cola Zero. Taking the form of a Facebook app, Coke Zero’s Facial Profiler uses facial recognition technology to search a database of Facebook users (who have opted in to participate) to find people who look alike. [2] Once matched, users have the option to contact their look-alike. [3] Coke Zero claims the inspiration for Facial Profiler came from the drink itself. Marketing its drink as having real Coke taste and zero calories, Coke Zero based the creation of Facial Profiler on a simple premise: “If Coke Zero has Coke taste, isn’t it possible that someone out there has your face?” [4]
To ensure accurate results, the Facial Profiler’s initial phase involves the creation of a face database. [5] Faces are gathered from photos that users have personally uploaded and tagged to Facebook, stored photos uploaded from user hard drives and webcam photos taken via the app itself. [6] Once the database has gathered a statistically significant number of faces from both genders, various age groups and multiple ethnicities – results will be released to the public and matches will be delivered. Users are then notified via Facebook. [7]
Research Credit: JB
Benito Mussolini Was British Intelligence Asset
October 14th, 2009Via: Guardian:
History remembers Benito Mussolini as a founder member of the original Axis of Evil, the Italian dictator who ruled his country with fear and forged a disastrous alliance with Nazi Germany. But a previously unknown area of Il Duce’s CV has come to light: his brief career as a British agent.
Archived documents have revealed that Mussolini got his start in politics in 1917 with the help of a £100 weekly wage from MI5.
For the British intelligence agency, it must have seemed like a good investment. Mussolini, then a 34-year-old journalist, was not just willing to ensure Italy continued to fight alongside the allies in the first world war by publishing propaganda in his paper. He was also willing to send in the boys to “persuade” peace protesters to stay at home.
Mussolini’s payments were authorised by Sir Samuel Hoare, an MP and MI5’s man in Rome, who ran a staff of 100 British intelligence officers in Italy at the time.
Cambridge historian Peter Martland, who discovered details of the deal struck with the future dictator, said: “Britain’s least reliable ally in the war at the time was Italy after revolutionary Russia’s pullout from the conflict. Mussolini was paid £100 a week from the autumn of 1917 for at least a year to keep up the pro-war campaigning – equivalent to about £6,000 a week today.”
Hoare, later to become Lord Templewood, mentioned the recruitment in memoirs in 1954, but Martland stumbled on details of the payments for the first time while scouring Hoare’s papers.
As well as keeping the presses rolling at Il Popolo d’Italia, the newspaper he edited, Mussolini also told Hoare he would send Italian army veterans to beat up peace protesters in Milan, a dry run for his fascist blackshirt units.
“The last thing Britain wanted were pro-peace strikes bringing the factories in Milan to a halt. It was a lot of money to pay a man who was a journalist at the time, but compared to the £4m Britain was spending on the war every day, it was petty cash,” said Martland.
“I have no evidence to prove it, but I suspect that Mussolini, who was a noted womaniser, also spent a good deal of the money on his mistresses.”
After the armistice, Mussolini began his rise to power, assisted by electoral fraud and blackshirt violence, establishing a fascist dictorship by the mid-1920s.
His colonial ambitions in Africa brought him into contact with his old paymaster again in 1935. Now the British foreign secretary, Hoare signed the Hoare-Laval pact, which gave Italy control over Abyssinia.
“There is no reason to believe the two men were friends, although Hoare did have an enduring love affair with Italy,” said Martland, whose research is included in Christopher Andrew’s history of MI5, Defence of the Realm, which was published last week.
The unpopularity of the Hoare-Laval pact in Britain forced Hoare to resign. Mussolini, meanwhile, built on his new colonial clout to ally with Hitler, entering the second world war in 1940, this time to fight against the allies.
Deposed following the allied invasion of Italy in 1943, Mussolini was killed with his mistress, Clara Petacci, by Italian partisans while fleeing Italy in an attempt to reach Switzerland two years later.
Martland said: “Mussolini ended his life hung upside down in Milan, but history has not been kind to Hoare either, condemned as an appeaser of fascism alongside Neville Chamberlain.”
Sweden Loses its Internet Connection for an Hour
October 14th, 2009Via: Telegraph:
At 9:45pm local time on Monday 12 October, every Swedish website went down, and no emails to or from Swedish domains could be received. Around 900,000 domains were affected.
The problem was caused by an “incorrectly configured script” in an update of the .se domain, according to Pingdom, a Swedish web monitoring company.
Apparently a single missing full stop at the end of the code meant that the Domain Name Systems (DNS) failed to recognise .se as the “top-level” (country-wide) domain.
Research Credit: Lagavulin
Saudis Seek Payments for Any Drop in Oil Revenues
October 14th, 2009Maybe you need a laugh this morning.
Via: New York Times:
Saudi Arabia is trying to enlist other oil-producing countries to support a provocative idea: if wealthy countries reduce their oil consumption to combat global warming, they should pay compensation to oil producers.
The Job Market, in Charts
October 14th, 2009These charts are interesting, and as grim as they are, they can’t hold a candle to how grim it really is. These are using the official bogus data! Show us the line that includes the millions of people who have dropped out the bottom and aren’t counted anymore.
For anyone who thinks that this “recession” isn’t different, look at the, “Part Time for Economic Reasons” chart.
Via: New York Times:
You may have heard by now that the unemployment rate reached 9.8 percent in September. There are lots of other ways to gauge the health of the job market, however. Here are a few graphs that show how tough it is out there.
Research Credit: tochigi
Bleak U.S. Job Market Boosts Military Recruitment; All Recruitment Goals Met for First Time
October 14th, 2009Economic conscription.
Via: Reuters:
Aided by a bleak job market, the U.S. military met all of its recruitment goals in the past year for the first time since it became an all-volunteer force in 1973, the Pentagon said on Tuesday.
Military services have been stretched thin by conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, giving added weight to recruitment efforts as President Barack Obama considers sending another 40,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan next year.
The United States already has 67,000 troops in Afghanistan and about 119,000 in Iraq.
Pentagon officials said recruitment gains were fueled by the deepest U.S. recession since the Great Depression and an unemployment rate nearing 10 percent.
“For the first time since the advent of the all-volunteer force, all of the military components, active and reserve, met their number as well as their quality goals,” said Bill Carr, deputy undersecretary of defense for military personnel policy.
The U.S. Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force sent a total of about 169,000 active duty recruits to training in the 2009 fiscal year that ended on September 30, beating their 164,000-member goal, the Pentagon said.
National guard and reserve forces sent about 128,000 recruits to training, beating their goal.
Carr said rising private sector unemployment was a force behind the increase in military recruitment but was not the only factor that “allowed us to be, for much of the year, in a very favorable position.”
Guardian Censored, Can’t Identify the Reason Why
October 13th, 2009From Wikileaks, Trafigura Toxic dumping along the Ivory Coast:
Following press reportage about dumping off the coast of Africa, Waterson & Hicks, a UK law firm acting for Trafigura, a large London based oil and commodity trader, ordered and received this confidential report (the so-called “Minton report”) into toxic dumping practices by its client along and on the Ivory Coast. The report reveals a number of toxic dumping incidents and appears to be the report behind the extraordinary secret October 11, 2009 gagging of the Guardian newspaper. WikiLeaks believes the Guardian was gagged to prevent it reporting the following Parliamentry question:
Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme) – To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of legislation to protect (a) whistleblowers and (b) press freedom following the injunctions obtained in the High Court by (i) Barclays and Freshfields solicitors on 19 March 2009 on the publication of internal Barclays reports documenting alleged tax avoidance schemes and (ii) Trafigura and Carter-Ruck solicitors on 11 September 2009 on the publication of the Minton report on the alleged dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast, commissioned by Trafigura.[1]
Via: Guardian:
The Guardian has been prevented from reporting parliamentary proceedings on legal grounds which appear to call into question privileges guaranteeing free speech established under the 1688 Bill of Rights.
Today’s published Commons order papers contain a question to be answered by a minister later this week. The Guardian is prevented from identifying the MP who has asked the question, what the question is, which minister might answer it, or where the question is to be found.
The Guardian is also forbidden from telling its readers why the paper is prevented – for the first time in memory – from reporting parliament. Legal obstacles, which cannot be identified, involve proceedings, which cannot be mentioned, on behalf of a client who must remain secret.
The only fact the Guardian can report is that the case involves the London solicitors Carter-Ruck, who specialise in suing the media for clients, who include individuals or global corporations.
The Guardian has vowed urgently to go to court to overturn the gag on its reporting. The editor, Alan Rusbridger, said: “The media laws in this country increasingly place newspapers in a Kafkaesque world in which we cannot tell the public anything about information which is being suppressed, nor the proceedings which suppress it. It is doubly menacing when those restraints include the reporting of parliament itself.”
The media lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC said Lord Denning ruled in the 1970s that “whatever comments are made in parliament” can be reported in newspapers without fear of contempt.
He said: “Four rebel MPs asked questions giving the identity of ‘Colonel B’, granted anonymity by a judge on grounds of ‘national security’. The DPP threatened the press might be prosecuted for contempt, but most published.”
The right to report parliament was the subject of many struggles in the 18th century, with the MP and journalist John Wilkes fighting every authority – up to the king – over the right to keep the public informed. After Wilkes’s battle, wrote the historian Robert Hargreaves, “it gradually became accepted that the public had a constitutional right to know what their elected representatives were up to”.
