Naomi Klein's 'The Rise of Disaster Capitalism'

Out of sheer prejudice and a certain reluctance to purchase books at full whack, I had resisted buying a copy of Naomi Klein's new book The Rise of Disaster Capitalism until this week.

When I saw it for 30% off at Indigo, and remembered that I had my Indigo card on me, which gave myself a further 10% off, I took the hardback plunge.

I am now about a 1/3rd of the way through and am annoyed at myself for both not buying the book sooner and for, at least to myself, pre-judging it.

It is really -- and those who know me may be surprised at what I am about to write -- a very, very good and important work that will have much staying power. Not only is it a good story well told. It is also a story both horrifying and horrifyingly believable.

In a way it reminds me of Alasdair MacIntyre in that it shows what the effects of misguided Chicago policies are on the ground and does not simply build a case up in the clouds against the boys from Chicago. It is also why I am an Oakeshottian.

I will write more after I finish the book. But this is one book that is, for me at least, a must read.

Hats off Ms. Klein!!!

Who Says Toronto Doesn't Lead the Way; Halifax Will Also Lock Up Unlicensed Pussy Cats!

Seniors will get a discount!

Halifax approves bylaw to stop cats from roaming

Updated Wed. Oct. 24 2007 12:15 PM ET

CTV.ca News Staff

Halifax regional councillors have approved a controversial animal bylaw aimed at preventing cats from roaming in public.

The bylaw, narrowly approved in an 11-9 vote on Tuesday night, means cat owners must register their pets by April.

If a cat is found outside its owner's property, it may be trapped and sent to a municipal shelter -- which is to be built and operated at an estimated cost of $3.3 million.

"The thing is we don't know what the total cost is going to be and nobody can tell us right yet," Spryfield-Herring Cove Coun. Steve Adams told CTV.ca.

...

Snow did say she received one nasty email from a constituent who said they'll never vote for her again because of the decision.

Owners will have to pay $10 for an altered and inoculated pet and up to $30 for an unaltered one.

Seniors will be given a discount.

Hat Tip: Comrade Schroeder

Rogers is Quite Obviously Filtering Their Internet Traffic and Keeping Mum About It

The Other, Other Ted



It would be nice to see this here:

Comcast to face lawsuits over BitTorrent filtering
Posted by Chris Soghoian
October 23, 2007 5:37 AM PDT
Law, Security

The blogosphere is abuzz over an Associated Press investigative article this past Friday on the subject of Comcast's BitTorrent filtering. Briefly, there were a number of articles in early September which alleged that Comcast was using some fairly sneaky techniques to throttle BitTorrent traffic on its network. Comcast, of course, denied any such behavior. It took a month and a half, but both a mainstream media news organization as well as the Electronic Frontier Foundation have tested and confirmed the previously reported claims. It turns out that Comcast is not only throttling BitTorrent, but Gnutella and, strangely, Lotus Notes are also suffering.


Comcast's PR people gave me the following statement on Monday: "Comcast does not block access to any Web sites or online applications, including peer-to-peer services like BitTorrent...We have a responsibility to provide all of our customers with a good Internet experience and we use the latest technologies to manage our network so that they can continue to enjoy these applications." I was also able to interview a Comcast Internet executive who would only speak on background. He bobbed and weaved, sticking to his talking points, yet a few things were clear: he would not deny that the company was sending out TCP RST packets, but stated that if it were being done, it was at a "low level" where average users would not see it.


When your ISP receives a spam e-mail, and deletes it without delivering the message to your in-box, it is blocking access to your in-box. (This is a good thing.) When you install a firewall on your home computer and someone else tries to connect to you from another network, your firewall software "blocks access" to that other party. The packets attempting to initiate a connection to your machine will either be silently dropped onto the floor, or in some cases, a rejection message will be sent back to the session initiator telling them that their connection attempt was refused.

Comcast LolCat
(Credit: Comcast and LolCat Buildr)

If Comcast deployed networkwide firewall rules that would drop any BitTorrent packets that came in and out of its network, Comcast would be "blocking access." However, it is not doing this. Primarily, because if it did so, the BitTorrent downloads of its customers would fail, and thousands of users would complain. Instead, Comcast is attempting to only target the sharing or uploading portions of BitTorrent, which are not nearly so noticeable for end users. Comcast will still see a significant drop in network traffic by targeting uploads, but is far less likely to suffer the wrath of its users.

So what is Comcast doing? It is letting BitTorrent traffic flow across its network, and thus is not technically "blocking" anything. Instead, it is forging TCP reset packets that are misleadingingly labeled as being sent by one of the two ends of the BitTorrent connection. That is, Comcast is masquerading as its customers, and sending out data with false sender information. When the BitTorrent clients receive the false reset packets, they themselves terminate the connection, as they think the other host has told them to go away. Thus, through sneaky techniques and network-level false statements, Comcast is able to trick users' software into terminating their own transfers.

Interestingly enough, were Comcast applying this same technique to e-mail, and falsifying the header information of e-mail messages, it would soon find itself violating the Can-Spam Act. That law states that "Whoever...materially falsifies header information in multiple commercial electronic mail messages and intentionally initiates the transmission of such messages...shall be punished...with a fine...or imprisonment for not more than one year."

As for the idea that Comcast is using the "latest technologies" to manage its network--hogwash. The concept of forging TCP reset packets is at least 10 years old, if not older. Purdue professor Gene Spafford and a number of his graduate students developed a "synkill" system to defeat SYN flood attacks that used the very same technique, back in 1996.

Full Article Here

Build Your Own Sputnik; Just Leave out Laika

1. Tomy baby monitor - transmitter and aerial
2. Wireless router - backup transmitter and aerial
3. Mercury thermometer - temperature sensor
4. x4 large batteries - power supply
5. Balloon - pressure sensor (expands and pops if case punctured)
6. Power-pack - backup power supply
7. Domestic thermostat - activates fan and changes radio signal
8. Battery powered fan - moves heat to casing (once tin lid is on)
9. Biscuit tin with foil - houses components and reflects solar radiation

The BBC helpfully provides more information here.

Some Stuff You Can't Make Up

It's for real

A selection from Ariel Online (the inhouse BBC paper) on the Job Cuts.

A selection from Ariel Online (the inhouse BBC paper) on the Job Cuts.


Make no mistake about it, but the BBC is part of a decentralized conspiracy (shades of Al-Qaeda) to subvert this country. When economic Marxism started to stagnate in the 1960s and collapse in the 80s, the left-wing elements of our society decided that the way forward was to take over our institutions...
contributor to the Telegraph
________________________________________
At least it is a cull but I would have preferred it to be genocide...
contributor to the Mail
________________________________________
And now, instead of having 100 biased BBC reporters bashing Israel, possibly we will have only five.....
contributor to the Telegraph
________________________________________
If anything tells you all you need to know about the BBC's impartiality then you need to do no more than type in the full name of their previous boss Gr*g D*ke to be told that your message contains offensive content that must be removed.
contributor to the BBC news website
[NB: we tried this, it's rubbish]
________________________________________
Is there really an argument that ‘Help I Smell of Fish’ or ‘Help Me Anthea - I'm Infested’ should really be funded by the undemocratic TV Tax?
contributor to the Mail
________________________________________
Let's look at this as a country. 2800 jobs to go at the BBC but 3000 strawberry pickers jobs created. A net increase of 500! Well done Gordon B.
contributor to the Mail
________________________________________
If Thompson winds up cutting BBC news and factual programming, he should quite simply be taken out, put against the wall, and shot. He will have been responsible for destroying one of the signal products of Western civilisation...
contributor to the Newsnight blog
________________________________________
There are simply too many BBC newshounds everywhere... From our Special Albanian Traffic Correspondent. Our Afghan Hound Correspondent. Our Brighton and Hove Alternative Therapy Correspondent, etc....
contributor to the Telegraph
________________________________________
I only watch the factual programmes on the BBC and never watch BBC3 or BBC4...
contributor to the Newsnight blog
________________________________________
Racist they will cry, but I do not expect to see an Iraqi reading the news in Sweden, and they are the best at accepting refugees, unfortunates. Also, nice as she is, please tone down Zainab Badowi(sic), she is over exposed to death...
contributor to the Telegraph
________________________________________
Please pull their licence fee and leave them to play with themselves without the rest of us having to care.
contributor to the Telegraph
________________________________________
No amount of tinkering will sort out the BBC. It is in cahoots with the government as was Pravda and Radio Moscow in Soviet times.
contributor to the Telegraph.

Hat Tip: Comrade Scarlett.

Same old, same old....

Poll: Bullshit Is Most Important Issue For 2008 Voters

Is it Possible to Wedge an Already Brown Nose any Deeper?

MP proposes Pierre Elliott Trudeau Day

Canadian Press

October 19, 2007 at 1:06 PM EDT

OTTAWA — A Liberal MP has tabled proposed legislation that would officially recognize the birthday of former prime minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau each Oct. 18.

Mario Silva says Mr. Trudeau had “vigour, innovation and daring” and symbolized Canada at its best.

Hat Tip to Comrade Schroeder

Making Waves

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2007/11oct_undularbore.htm?list1043252

Undular Bore Waves. A first for me to.

So That's All Right Then

[ Johannesburg, 16 October 2007 ] - The National Defence Force is probing whether a software glitch led to an antiaircraft cannon malfunction that killed nine soldiers and seriously injured 14 others during a shooting exercise on Friday.

SA National Defence Force spokesman brigadier general Kwena Mangope says the cause of the malfunction is not yet known and will be determined by a Board of Inquiry. The police are conducting a separate investigation into the incident.

Media reports say the shooting exercise, using live ammunition, took place at the SA Army's Combat Training Centre, at Lohatlha, in the Northern Cape, as part of an annual force preparation endeavour.

Mangope told The Star that it “is assumed that there was a mechanical problem, which led to the accident. The gun, which was fully loaded, did not fire as it normally should have," he said. "It appears as though the gun, which is computerised, jammed before there was some sort of explosion, and then it opened fire uncontrollably, killing and injuring the soldiers."

Other reports have suggested a computer error might have been to blame. Defence pundit Helmoed-Römer Heitman told the Weekend Argus that if “the cause lay in computer error, the reason for the tragedy might never be found”.

Electronics engineer and defence company CEO Richard Young says he can't believe the incident was purely a mechanical fault. He says his company, C2I2, in the mid 1990s, was involved in two air defence artillery upgrade programmes, dubbed Projects Catchy and Dart.

Software details

During the shooting trials at Armscor's Alkantpan shooting range, “I personally saw a gun go out of control several times,” Young says. “They made a temporary rig consisting of two steel poles on each side of the weapon, with a rope in between to keep the weapon from swinging. The weapon eventually knocked the polls down.”

Young says he was also told at the time that the gun's original equipment manufacturer, Oerlikon, had warned that the GDF Mk V twin 35mm cannon system was not designed for fully automatic control. Yet the guns were automated. At the time, SA was still subject to an arms embargo and Oerlikon played no role in the upgrade.

“If I was an engineer on the Board of Inquiry, I would ask for all details about the software for the fire control system and gun drives,” Young says. “If it was not a mechanical or operating system error, you must find out which company developed the software and did the upgrade.”

Young says in the 1990s the defence force's acquisitions agency, Armscor, allocated project money on a year-by-year basis, meaning programmes were often rushed. “It would not surprise me if major shortcuts were taken in the qualification of the upgrades. A system like that should never fail to the dangerous mode [rather to the safe mode], except if it was a shoddy design or a shoddy modification.

“I think there have been multiple failures here; in software and the absence of interlocking safeguards.” He asks if the guns were given arcs of fire and whether these were enforced with electromechanical end stops. “On a firing range you don't want guns to fire through 360 degrees.”

Oerlikon's local agent, Intertechnic, did not respond to requests for comment. The SANDF said investigations were still under way.

The air defence artillery will, in the next two years, receive new missiles, radar and computer-based fire control equipment worth R3 billion as part of projects Guardian and Protector.

Surprise, Surprise: Diddly-doodly-done-diddly-doodly done-diddly-doodly Status Quo

The CBC is running as a leader the groundbreaking news that:

Canadians don't want another election right now': Dion

In other CBC news:

Violence on rise among residents in Ont. nursing homes

Monsieur Dion in Training for the Next Election

Too Good Not to Post; Obama on Cheney

"Every family has a black sheep," - Barack Obama's response to the news that he is distantly related to Dick Cheney.


HT: AS

Pool Alert: Will Stephano Bite?

Personally, I don't think the Machiavelli (not!) of Quebec will bite. I neither think his appetite is great enough nor do I believe the bait sufficiently enticing. He and his party are also in no position to play ball. Dion's political acumen, however, is so suspect that it is anyone's guess. That said, I am running a game (read the place you go for a swim without fear of sharks and your eyes go red from the chlorine) for the person who predicts most accurately when the writ is dropped. (A dropped writ seems the most definitive indicator that sign posts will soon be seen in front of a house near you.) Leave a comment below or drop an email to me of your prediction, and your best guess will be recorded, and a prize, if you win, begrudgingly, awarded. Look deep into the waters. Jeff

We'll always have Paris; Just Count 'Em, 16 Red Lights

This is one of the times I feel homesick for a place that never was my home.

Feeling Distinctively Uncomfortable with Putin’s Visit to Iran

There seems very sinister about Putin, President of a newly resurgent Russia, visiting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President of a newly resurgent Iran, in what once was called Persia, about their current Nuclear Arms programme.

(Sasha Baron Cohen famously quipped that Borat was unavailable for comment on receiving a prestigious award as he was at the Holocaust Denial Conference in Tehran. Cohen went on to say that he had tried to call the President of Kazakhstan to tell him the news but that both
lines were engaged.)

It's not perhaps surprising that they should meet, only unsettling that they are. Somehow I feel that the visit will be more than ceremonial.

Rumsfield's Credit Card Bounces

The credit card, a Fort Knox Executive Club Visa granted to the U.S. during the Clinton Administration, had an assigned $300 million credit line. When the country accrued a balance approaching the limit in 1995, the credit-card company awarded the U.S. additional credit. According to a Visa representative who spoke on the condition of anonymity, the company granted extensions 14 times since then, but as of Monday, the card had never been rejected outright.

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/30634?utm_source=EMTF_Onion

Cut and paste if necessary or click on title.

Cheap Shot (but deserved): The Commander in Chief fielding a 'tough' question

Face of the Day

Worth a Read; Censoring the Internet in China

http://www.rsf.org/IMG/pdf/Voyage_au_coeur_de_la_censure_GB.pdf

You'll have to cut and paste the link.

Facebook Blast from the Past

John Tory next premier of Ontario
Student Groups - Political Groups

Size:
663 members
New:
108 Fewer Members, 3 Board Topics, 41 Wall Posts

Profile updated about a month ago