these are all such meaningless changes. the program launcher gui as a selling point? well, they're an operating system, sure, but it's being a little literal. for years, now, it's like they've been making operating systems the same way they design xbox games.

and how many people are going to turn this all off and go back to a windows xp desktop within ten minutes of powering it up? and, who can blame these people, given the difference in performance?

what about driver support? take a flip through some forums. they broke things as simple as file operations moving to vista (ten hours to copy files?) and never really fixed it in 7 or 8. how about creating a version with an optimally compiled kernel, designed for speed rather than appearance? stripping xp to the core and calling it "windows lite" sounds like a waaaaaay better idea to me....

the share of xp users is actually around 30%. that's more than apple and linux combined. the reason they've stuck with xp is because it's fast and stable, and the "upgrades" are flashy and obtuse. that's a huge share of the market that's going to walk the other way if they don't get something concrete and without frills that they can actually use for terrestrial purposes.

the headline made me lol.

actually, i think we should open a national discussion on pragmatic uses of dead bodies. we waste so much good organic material by dumping it in boxes. it's madness, really.

incinerating isn't as good an idea as composting, granted. but, it's better than burying it.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/10717566/Aborted-babies-incinerated-to-heat-UK-hospitals.html

i'm mostly not a bentham advocate, definitely not a utilitarian, but he had a point on this topic. robert newman's pope example is not likely to happen, but it would be nice to see some prominent people stand up and advocate for recycling human tissue.

we understand now that a lot of the things we need to exist are finite. it's just good resource management.

the chechnya thing...

the primary reason the chechnya thing is a bad parallel is that it isn't really a populist movement. the fairness of elections is always suspect, but the official results of elections in chechnya have consistently been to stay in russia.

i don't want to present the fallacy that i'm an expert on this complicated conflict, i am not, but my understanding of the dynamics is that it's a conflict between what are basically local tyrants (mostly western-backed islamic extremists) and the centralized state in moscow, with an ethnic group that identifies as neither. that is to say that there really isn't a significant independence movement there, but rather that there are two equally oppressive forces fighting over control of the region. for moscow, it's a slippery slope problem - let one small area break away, and deal with western-backed insurgents at every crossing point. for the west, it's destabilization. for the local tyrants themselves, there may be some religious aspect but it's just mostly about control. and for the people that live there it's about trying to escape...

chechens are caucasians, which are thought by linguists to have existed in the region between the caspian and black seas for upwards of 20,000 years. geneticists may point out that there has been large amounts of migration from arabs (and other semitic groups, like assyrians), indo-europeans (alans, greeks, armenians, persians and plausibly hittites), turks (including contemporary azeris), mongols and others, making the area more of a cultural melting pot. but, one of the arguments for this being the urheimat of the caucasian languages is the diversity of languages in the region. these languages are thought to all be of the same family, but sometimes it's hard to draw the connection. there's no really serious understanding of how the caucasian languages, turkic languages, indo-european languages and basque are related, but one idea is that they all split off roughly the same time through geographic separation some time around the last ice age, but that indo-european and caucasian may share a closer derivation. that is to say that the chechens (along with the georgians and some of the other groups in the region) seem to be the descendants of the ice age humans that lived in the caucasus mountains. it's probably not a coincidence that these isolated language isolates are mostly in remote, mountainous areas that have been able to withstand or ignore colonization happening around them; the colonizers would always argue it was easier to let them be, so long as they didn't bother them. the area was still considered uncrossable, uninhabitable and controlled by savages (i.e. not part of the civilized world) deep into the roman period.

what i'm getting at is that a greater caucasian state is an impossibility. first, you've got iranians on both sides of the mountain. second, you've got turks all over the place. third, you've got armenians, assyrians and various other types of indo-europeans and semites to the south. then you've got the russians to the north. but worst of all is that every city in the region speaks it's own language and has it's own identity. these are very insular people, that *culturally* prefer the idea of withdrawing to isolation to the idea of fighting for independence.

that makes a real separatist movement almost impossible to develop organically. they're more likely to want to define themselves in opposition to the city 50 miles down the road than work together to build a common identity. it's tribalism to the extreme. but, mostly, it's isolationism to the core.

what the chechen people want is autonomy, in the sense of being left to live alone without being forced into any kind of national framework. that is cultural anarchism that is inherently opposed to nation-building types of independence movements and is likely to see a local warlord as a greater threat than a distant oligarch. the results of the referendum are constantly reasonable, in the context of that desire for autonomy. as an anarchist myself, i can completely understand the preference for russian tanks over islamic extremists; one is a more or less benign military occupation that ultimately doesn't care about how i choose to live, while the other wants to enforce laws and dictate it's conception of society.

so, again, election results anywhere are difficult to take at face value, and the context makes them particularly difficult. yet, the idea that chechen citizens would prefer autonomy within russia over independence in an islamic emirate is entirely believable, given all the things i just typed.

so, it's a bad comparison.

hardly commie propaganda:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/1440823/Most-Chechens-want-to-remain-part-of-Russia.html

it's so surreal. it's based on a cnn program that may or may not still be on, called crossfire. identical, just competing propaganda...

makes you realize what we're really subjected to.

predictable. the existing pq regime has been horrific. see, they're trying not to "split the vote" by swinging right to accommodate (pun intended) a rising right-wing separatist movement. this is not going to work (when will the establishment learn that the right is impossible to swing because it's tied to symbolic, hierarchical change?); rather, it's alienating both left and centrist separatists, as well as soft separatists.

a certain subset of quebeckers has been complaining about "the ethnic vote" since 1995. it can be xenophobic and astute at the same time. but, it's the modern world, where national identities are no longer correlated with geographic areas.

fuck nationalism.

http://news.ca.msn.com/top-stories/quebec-liberal-party-races-ahead-in-the-polls-1

i'm getting the msn links from the weather network, btw.

the best thing that could happen to quebec would be for the pq to renounce sovereignty and merge with the ndp to create a local soft-left party. the quebec liberals are not left of centre. but the pq have swung to la-la land to dismantle the adq, and there needs to be a solid rejection of this by the quebec mainstream, let alone the quebec left.

it's rooted in the priority of separatism over governance. quebeckers have the right to expect local governance first, anachronistic declarations of nationalism second (wherever they stand on the spectrum). getting that backwards is a fail that ought to have serious reverberations.

as much as i may disagree with the adq on the issues, they are correct that a sovereign quebec needs to have a spectrum of sovereigntist parties. otherwise, it's on the path to a one-party dictatorship. the americans are actually perfectly reasonable in their rejection of this possibility.

so, it's pointless to keep pushing 50+1. when there are three separatist parties in quebec and they dominate the spectrum they will work together on the issue. that's what a real democratic expression of independence would look like.

might doesn't make right?

i said something a few months ago about this area being shielded from nasty southern movements of cold air due to being nestled in between the great lakes, and that i'm going to have to get used to understanding the weather in terms of warm air moving north from the greater mississippi/ohio basin, as that's what was going to dominate it. i was trying to understand why it was so much warmer here than it was a few degrees to the north in ottawa. well, then we had an extreme/unusual push of cold air that just obliterated everything, south to florida....

but, this is a fast forward to thursday, and one can see that the cold air is being beaten back by warm air coming up from the valley. i think that's a season-changing event...

my stomach remains quiet, though. sorry.

lol. no...

when somebody with an identity of some kind challenges your preconceptions, prejudices and stereotypes that doesn't mean you should question their identity.

what it means is that you should question your prejudices. 'cause that's what's got you confused, you see?

you humans...

it's actually a science v. philosophy argument. evidence v. reasoning. empiricism v. deduction.

the individual that challenges your prejudices is evidence that your prejudices are wrong; the idea that they are not as they identify because they don't fit your prejudices is medieval logic.

found my troll twitter account.

still think it's stupid.

https://twitter.com/dgkfgjklgjkgjka

ok. so, that cd drive doesn't read anything. it just spins. lol...

i think it's the only actual *cd* i have. i have two dvd ides, and two dvd satas. that was the initial cd-r i saved up to buy when i was in my mid teens. you know those reasons you get a job when you're 15? i wanted a cd burner, to make demoes with. but it seems to be cooked...

it doesn't sound good, either.

couldn't be more than $5 on kijiji. if i can find one...

this is some progress:

if i put in a cd-r (not a dvd) into a cd-rom (not a dvd-rom) connected via the master ide cable, with the jumper to master (not cable select) it indicates drive activity that is otherwise not present.

unfortunately, i burnt the motherboard cd on what seems like my last cd-r. i thought i had a stack of lightscribe cds, but it turns out they're dvds. i'm not sure why i bought lightscribe dvds, but whatever. and i was silly enough not to put the amiboot.rom file on it.

so, now i'm searching for a cd-r to burn a 1 mb file on to. *sigh*.

why aren't they seizing production? do they need to wait another three years before it clicks in that the "democracy" they live in is a sham, and the only response they're going to get is an escalation from tear gas to live ammunition?

fighting over roads just plays into the state's narrative, giving it a justification for "security". they can't beat the cops, and if they did? they win a sewer grate. hurrah! talk about pyrrhic...

their society has literally collapsed and they still don't get it. what's it going to take? and, in spain, of all places....

the cops always start the fight, because they understand the class war and the hippies don't.

if you can't translate the signs, they say SLAVE LOOKING FOR OWNER.

so, instead of seizing control of production, they gather together to demand more jobs.

#brainwashedslaves

actually, i had connected my floppy cable upside down in the process of swapping drives around, which is why the light was solid :|. put in the right way, there seems to be no power to the drive at all. no seek from the boot block. bricked...

reason: there's no power to the board. hotwiring it isn't going to get the read info. shorting things would only be useful if it's not reading from boot block at all, which i'm not convinced is it.

see, i may have two damaged drives. the pins on both are bent all around. in contrast, the cd-r powers up, through ide or through sata. i'm not convinced it's reading anything, especially through sata, but it spins and flashes and turns the fan on and stops. it doesn't seem to matter what disc is put in...so that seems more like firmware...

...but it powers up. neither floppy does.

i've also determined that at least one of the floppies i was using is unstable. i could have several bad floppies. the copy operation seems fine for about ten minutes, then seems to evaporate. like, i'll do a format /u and copy the rom over and three hours later will get read errors on that disk in that drive.

it's tedious, and i don't think it's the problem, but i have to determine the integrity of the floppy disks before i give up on this approach.

i then have to try every cd-r/cable combo i have.

however, i am currently resigned to reprogramming the chip.

http://www.oocities.org/rrbhaius/recoverbios.pdf

i suppose i could still try some older roms.

the floppies could be damaged.

but i don't seem to be getting read/write access.

i mean, the light is on. and it spins. but it's not reading.

it's a better idea every single one than to short. so, here i go on that...

i mean, it seems like they're perfectly describing the situation....

yeah, that still doesn't turn the power on the mobo on. i wasn't sure if usb needed it the same way the older connections do. apparently, so.

i can't see how a drive would work where a hub doesn't. so, i'm leaning more and more towards shorting.

actually, my hub has a power in. i don't use it, but....hrmmn....let me test this, anyways, see if i learn anything from it.

precisely whether the short works or not depends on if the information needed to get power (rather than instructions) to the peripheral i/os on the board is accessible somewhere outside the bios (proper), which the proposed recovery process (through boot block) suggests is actually the case. otherwise, i can short it all day without accessing the power info in the bios that doesn't exist.

nope.

i'm not getting any power to the board past a certain point, which is a different problem than i dealt with the last time i did this. see, but it's a bit deceptive, because the externals all take power from the psu. so, the cd spins when you put something in it and the floppy lights up, but neither are able to communicate with the cpu, so the emergency bit doesn't come in.

one of the things that made me understand what's happening a little bit better was plugging an mp3 player into usb. i wasn't expecting power from the board, but i was hoping the power on the key would be enough to get over the hurdle. unfortunately, the key is programmed to turn off on the physical connection, rather than an electronic one. so, no good.

that leaves me with three remaining options:

a) i can try and short the chip, but i think this is unlikely to work.

b) a better idea is to try an externally powered usb connection. and, thinking back, i think that might have been what i did last time, too. i need an external usb drive for two other reasons now so it will be top priority next monday...

c) i can try and use a jumper to replace the bios. i'm going to have to wait until monday for this, too. it's an excuse to get the soldering iron that i probably should have inherited but, for whatever reason, didn't.

so, my gst money on the 5th is basically going to computer repair. that's mildly irritating, but ok. i don't budget that. it's all stuff i should have around, anyways.

i'm not going to short the chip unless i can find a precise set of instructions. see, i don't think the boot block isn't kicking in, i think the board needs power to communicate with the devices. the short might reset the power along with the force, which shouldn't be missing in the first place, but it's not the intent of the process, so i'm a little cautious about messing with it. as it is, i have no keyboard commands, because there's no power. i have no video out because there's no power. yet the fans are all spinning so it's clearly that the bios crashed before that point...

if i can get some power to the board, i think it should go into recovery and flash off of any media it can read. but, i need to be careful with that.

i could do this with a screwdriver, and conceivably have it up in a few hours. in the back of my mind, though, i'm thinking that, if i wait, and the usb trick works, it won't be necessary - and that the jumper is a safer way to force it. it's simplicity v. safety...

if i can find exact instructions, i will do this. if not, i'll wait for at least the external usb.

there's always reading to catch up on.

actually, i'm realizing the emergency iso i downloaded doesn't have the right file. i have to try that...

yup. i've tried every possible combination and the boot block is just not setting in like it should. i'm rather confused, though. that should be there.

i'm going to have to wait a few days before i can get the materials for a jumper.

the floppy isn't doing what it's supposed to, and the cd isn't either. the flash shouldn't have fucked my boot block, but i'm not even getting beeps with no ram.

so, it's looking like i'm going to have to jumper this. ugh.

it was indeed one bad bios, along with at least one drive of questionable integrity, and i'm irritated i spent so much time with it. there wasn't a way to reset the cmos, but a "set to default" got the floppy working properly in freedos. sort of. it's still sketchy. i'm going to have to flash...

first, to find a disk that i can actually format. i'm confident that this should get the main pc's bios in.

well, i found a bios, and i can't see how one version of dos is really better than the next...

there doesn't appear to be a way to clear the cmos, besides "shorting" it. like i want to do that...

so, dumbass move #2 this month was flashing my bios. i thought it would be a good idea, moving up to 64-bit. my recording machine has been unable to post since friday evening.

a stuck bios chip is not an irresolvable problem, in theory. these particular chips have something built into the firmware that checks the floppy drive. there's also a cd utility i've used before, but cannot locate right now. i'm hoping the floppy works.....

...but i've been having difficulty finding an operating system that will read a floppy drive. there's a known issue with xp (the workaround is to use server 2003, because home users shouldn't need floppies, apparently). my copy of 98 is broken, in general, and won't read it either. i've tried three specialized recovery linux live cds that won't mount...

so, i'm resorting to installing freedos. and then real dos, if that doesn't work.

worst case scenario, i'll have to go in with a parallel cable and reprogram it manually. so, there's a few more days lost....

i know the drive works and the discs are good, if for no other reason than that i just installed 98 with a boot floppy (even though the os won't read, and it won't read from funny windows 98 dos).

so, i either have two bad floppy cables, two bad floppy drives or one bad bios. i can't get the floppy to do anything at all on this backup motherboard.

the bios hasn't been flashed since 1999. i doubt it supports any method besides a floppy flash. ironically. nor do i suspect asus still has bioses for this thing around...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HarZg-G0ZLw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFyHEtQuXug
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00NE21sas9I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoQUrdKfDPc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5e8SHChbKh4

the cold war never ended in the first place. it's just a name for a specific period of moscow's rivalry with london for global hegemony, a rivalry that began centuries ago, namely the phase where moscow was experimenting with unusual approaches to capitalism.

the panama comparison is a good one.

there's also the suez canal.

he has the left/right thing backwards, though, as it pertains to ukraine.

(that doesn't really affect his point)

i was half asleep last night (at the end of 36 hours of computer frustrations); that's the bloc that were tories, not the pq. the basic premise remains. as a populist party, the pq has and will continue to swing around to appeal to what it perceives as popular opinion.

it's about this.

http://metronews.ca/news/canada/980165/parti-quebecois-leader-pauline-marois-warns-of-splitting-sovereigntist-vote/

i'm going to be careful about what i say about this. the important thing to take away is that resistance has been growing for nearly three years. it's integrated with some of the other protests, like some of the anti-fracking protests. the people that keep an eye on these things are well aware of this.

paul is correct about land claims, but for a more jaded (and i think realistic) view of the situation, seek out pamela palmater. in theory, it's a better approach. in practice, not at all.

but this is the argument, certainly. it's not an accident that these lines ran through native communities when they were built. sure, the pipelines are already there, but they either run natural gas or much lighter crude. the reversal and similar lines through the general area will spill, and they will spill in indigenous communities. so, it's natural to think they should have some say in the matter - due to questions of sovereignty or just basic democracy.

the coalition is being built around what could be called progressive community activist groups - the type dominated by white liberals that have substituted socialism as an atheist reaction to what is fundamentally a deeply rooted christian value system. it's nimby to the core, just like in bc.

it's going to come down to the politics, of course. unfortunately, militant tactics - coerced or not - are going to harm the activists on a pr front, even as it helps them in court. beneath the upper crust intelligentsia, canada does not hold up to it's reputation as a social left paradise. the news will talk about development producing jobs and violent savages and most canadians will buy it.

....and i don't honestly think the western pipe is even dead yet. keystone will be approved when it's politically viable. this is all of the above, not one or the other.

something else they'll try and trick us with is the idea that it will reduce gas prices, which of course is not true - it's for export.

worst of all, the ndp is supporting it over the western pipelines because it will create union refinery jobs (and the western stuff would be refined offshore).

the courts may save the day in the end, but the canadian people will certainly not.

also...

the party on the streets was quebec solidaire. everybody in the protest movement saw what was coming.

it's a little known fact that clinton had the airforce on standby back in the last referendum. that wasn't something that was actually going to happen. is peladeau less crazy than bouchard? different kind of crazy. the contingent plan has no doubt changed little.

as for where the pq stands on the political spectrum, the truth is they don't. they're opportunistic. it's a thing in canada, where parties represent the positions they think define the way the winds are blowing.

they're not creating this wave of white nationalism (and that's what it is), but co-opting it away from other forces, like the adq, who took a good run at power. it's horrific, and the liberals are being spineless about it - a really sad show, all around. but this is a reaction to hold the ground to keep the movement together...

...just as their previous swing to the left was. let us not forget that the pq was formed primarily as a split from the progressive conservatives, who (outside of social credit) were the most right-wing of the serious parties at the time.

just to preemptively counter some textbooks that may be overly idealistic or flat-out out of date...

consider the following four combinations:

a) properly written kernel mode drivers written in an os with weak kernel mode security (xp, with most hardware combinations).
b) kernel mode drivers written for an os with weak kernel mode security being run in an os with strong kernel mode security, and that expects almost all drivers to run in user mode. (vista/7/8, with some hardware combinations)
c) badly written user-mode drivers written in an os with strong kernel mode security, and that expects almost all drivers to run in user mode. (vista/7/8, with some hardware combinations)
d) correctly written user-mode drivers written in an os with strong kernel mode security, and that expects almost all drivers to run in user mode. (vista/7/8, by design)

the reality will agree with the textbook in stating that a is faster than d, on the same hardware - meaning xp is faster by design, but less secure (that's the trade-off). again, windows 7 on faster hardware may seem faster than windows xp on slower hardware but that's an apples and oranges comparison that reduces to an actual comparison of the hardware.

but the situation i'm talking about is with either b or c, which are both going to be slow and buggy and which is still the reality with some hardware.

if you think back to '06, vista had a horrible reputation. this is the actual root of the problem. microsoft understood it perfectly well. it's support agents (one of whom was me) understood it perfectly well. the hardware companies understood it perfectly well. but part of my job was confusing people into blaming intel or nvidia instead of microsoft. which isn't to say that they didn't share the blame. but that was microsoft's official strategy - fuck the issue, lie to the customers. they saw it as a pr game.

i can't count the number of times where i nearly broke down and just leveled with the poor bastard on the other side of the line. but, given that everybody understood that the problem had no solution, my job was to ensure that the person walked away from the conversation blaming the person that made their board or chipset or video card, rather than the company that made an operating system that changed all the industry standards without proper documentation or sufficient warning.

again, though, it's eight years on, now. there's no excuse for it still being a problem.

so, that's actually something else to take away from this: if support agents can solve your problem, they will. if they can't, they will lie to you - and get promoted if they're really good at it.

going back to the usb test, i should point out that my pc actually has a faster processor, surprisingly, given that the chip is from 2005. my pc is a pentium D @ 2x3.6. the laptop is an i5 @ 2x2.4. the difference between ten minutes and 30 seconds is still incredible, though, and can't be explained purely by the processor speed. especially given what i know about the way the drivers work...

listen: i worked support for microsoft. i'm telling you the story from the inside. from microsoft training. from documents written by microsoft engineers. it might sound incredible, but it's the actual, blunt truth.

i'm transferring files around right now, and this is a good example. it took almost ten minutes for me to transfer a few gb of files from my laptop (which is running a 64 bit windows 7, with a core i5 and 4 gb of ram - certainly better hardware specs on paper than my desktop) to a usb key. it took 30 seconds to transfer the same data from the same usb to my pc's hard drive, which is currently running an xp x64. if i were to do that on a fully patched vista, it would take ten hours.

ten hours!? yes. ten hours.

...because intel won't update the chipset to conform to the very different driver signing standards. the way windows handles drivers was a huge update from xp to vista.

i'm willing to accept that a lot of hardware manufacturers initially didn't understand how to rewrite their drivers for vista/7/etc. but, they did eventually figure it out. and there's really no excuse for not doing so, other than driving the hardware market.

it's a very widespread problem.

https://www.google.ca/#q=vista+slow+file+transfer&safe=off

all those answers are dead wrong. it's the change in driver framework.

(specifically, chipset drivers)

windows 98 is no longer useable for a number of reasons (for me it's mostly sata drivers), but it would be way faster than xp, too.

generally speaking, the older an operating system is, the faster it is (when compared on the same hardware). of course, it's going to have less functionality. it may be less safe to access the internet with, in theory if not in practice.

this may seem counter-intuitive, but it shouldn't. making something more complex makes it work slower. what doesn't make any sense at all is the idea that upgrading your os will make your machine run faster.

this is a brief explanation.

"If we're only using two isolation rings, it's a bit unclear where device drivers should go-- the code that allows us to use our video cards, keyboards, mice, printers, and so forth. Do these drivers run in Kernel mode, for maximum performance, or do they run in User mode, for maximum stability? In Windows, at least, the answer is it depends. Device drivers can run in either user or kernel mode. Most drivers are shunted to the User side of the fence these days, with the notable exception of video card drivers, which need bare-knuckle Kernel mode performance. But even that is changing; in Windows Vista, video drivers are segmented into User and Kernel sections. Perhaps that's why gamers complain that Vista performs about 10 percent slower in games. "

https://blog.codinghorror.com/understanding-user-and-kernel-mode/

this explains a bit about the actual problem, without getting into it. i don't really want to spend any more time looking around about this. it's something that nobody seems to want to be published. i wouldn't know this if it weren't for reading internal support memos that said DON'T TELL THE CUSTOMERS THIS all over them.

but, as i've stated, this is irreversible on some hardware, without getting the manufacturers to update their drivers. what's happening is that the drivers are running in kernel mode, when microsoft wants them to run in user mode. this is producing huge amounts of security checks (by design) that slow the fuck out of the file operations. what intel needs to do is rewrite their drivers to run in user mode, like microsoft wants them to do. but they'd rather blame it on vista and tell people they have to upgrade their hardware, as microsoft blames it on the hardware manufacturers (at least internally).

https://msdn.microsoft.com/windows/hardware/drivers/wdf/user-mode-driver-framework-frequently-asked-questions

the result is unusable hardware, on any windows version beyond and including vista.

but, the design changes in how vista uses drivers make xp faster (by design) anyways.

you can think of it as a trade-off between speed and security. xp is all speed, weaker security. vista is all security. now as the hardware has caught up, it's evened out (in terms of perception). but xp remains inherently waaaaay faster.

i mean, this isn't entirely microsoft's fault. it's as much on intel and others (my problem is with intel, i don't know how much others have caught up. initially, nvidia was dragging their feet on this a whole lot.). but, what the hardware people were saying at the time was that microsoft didn't give them enough warning. their engineers had to go through a lengthy retraining process. it's apparently not the kind of change you can gloss over in a weekend. the retraining required was substantial.

how much of that is an excuse, i don't know. but there's a reason that microsoft is widely acknowledged as incompetent. and the whole driver framework switch from xp to vista really demonstrates it.

even so, there's no excuse for this still being an issue, 8 years later.

just a note that if you're still geek enough to be using xp (and i and others have very good reasons that will not change soon, if ever - i'm more likely to move to linux than a post-vista windows system, because they're really legitimately awful on a lot of levels) - support ends on april 8th. so, it's a good time to track down all the updates. if, for example, you've been relying on an sp2 disc and then running windows update whenever you reinstall, you won't be able to do that anymore.

somebody will no doubt do this and torrent it, but trusting them is another issue. better to do it yourself while you can.

there are hardware issues that jumped up in vista that never got solved. the only solution is to buy specific hardware. i mean, if you're running a pre-built system then you probably won't notice any of this. but, as deep and valid as the criticisms of apple are, you're better off with a mac than a dell or an hp....

there's a lot of fixes that don't work floating around. i actually worked support for vista and i will authoritatively tell you that microsoft's response is to blame it on the hardware.

yet, the same hardware works flawlessly with xp.

so, there's conspiracy theories floating around that probably have a lot of truth to them.

around '06, microsoft started loading it's operating systems up with meaningless services that are designed solely to require faster hardware. there's almost no functional use for any of this, except to coerce people into upgrading their systems. that much is really not debatable.

but you can turn that off. that's minor.

one of the bigger problems is with copy operations, and while it may be true that this is at it's core a problem with user-mode drivers (that is to say that the hardware people never made drivers that work properly with the security aspects of windows, post-vista), there's still this lingering question of whether the thing is by design.

what that means is that people with certain types of fairly modern hardware are stuck with xp, unless they want to upgrade central aspects of their system or deal with cripplingly bad file operations.

that's a very good reason to either stick with xp, or move to linux. microsoft isn't going to make an exception - they're going to blame it on the hardware manufacturers. and the hardware manufacturers are going to tell you to buy new hardware - and you'd better do the research to make sure the drivers work right.

for me, the precise issue is my board. but, i mean, it's a perfectly good asus with sata connectors that can handle up to 16 gb of ram. there's no good reason to upgrade this board. intel just won't fix the chipset drivers to work properly with the way windows does, post-vista.

but if i stick with xp, then i get full use of the board.

worse, the truth is that xp just performs better at core os functions for the simple reason that it's doing less things in the process. getting the drivers to work right will speed up file operations, but it will never be as fast as xp on the same hardware. that would defy basic logic; it would require doing more things in less time. nor does a home user need to care about the security functions that slow everything down...

so, again, it goes back to the conspiracy theory: were the security updates really necessary and were they really buckling to pressure to idiot-proof the os, or are they just driving the hardware market by literally introducing billions of empty cycles?

i'm hoping microsoft decides to do a final platform update or something that pulls everything together. that'll make life easier. but, i suspect that they won't. so...

april 8th.

i'm surprised that i was able to log into my school account, but i was. i was looking for a way to download 7, home premium due to the extra key i have. the links that are all over the internet are all corrupt. i've tried four times, and have given up.

they did, however, have a 64-bit xp, with key. well, that's the best option, really.

i should be able to reimage a 32-bit version based on an old compaq corporate image from about the year 2003. it's all patched up, and ready to be ripped apart.

so, i will come out of this with a 32/64 all-xp dual boot that i will plan to slowly transfer over to 64. first, i need to focus on replacing the dead hd. and i still need to know if i can get the script off.

getting a few more sticks of ram will help act as an incentive to the switch.

probably not today, but almost certainly tomorrow.

bad iso.

ugh.

i won't do this a third time.

i'm going to end up mostly running 32 bit software. 32 bit software on a 64 bit os is a bad idea. i mean, it works, but it's pointless to upgrade if your key programs are 32 bit.

i was going to maintain a dual boot, anyways. but i'm thinking old xp - even broken - will still be dominant for the near future.

i built that machine - and this was many years ago now - to get up to 64 bit xp in time. expandable to 16 gb on the board was pretty advanced at the time, although i've never put in more than 4.

contrary to claims otherwise, moving to 64-bit from 32-bit with 4 gb of ram can get extra resources because 32-bit will inevitably ignore one of your sticks to fit the total (including the ram from your video card) under 4. it's not a max of 4 + bios + video + whatever else. it's 4. max. total. so, if i upgrade then i get another gb...

...but the reality is that setting the pagefile to 10 gb is just as good. the system may have to dump stuff to the drive here and there, but you never have to use more than 3 gb of ram all at the same time and if you did your system would crash because it couldn't.

i'm standing here all these years later and sort of laughing at myself. 64-bit is still a niche market. and i have to admit i don't see any real reason to upgrade, either. there's nothing i can think of that will work in 64 that doesn't in 32.

it's mostly the lack of evaluation software. there's lots of software i could buy. i can't afford to even think about that. so if i'm running everything in 32 anyways because it's all i can find then it's meaningless.

but it may be useful to have a non-broken system, from time to time.

yeah.

the problem with running 32 in 64 is that you're constantly converting it. what you're actually doing is running through a virtual machine. that's a net loss in speed (it may not be measurable, but it's a downgrade). considering the amount of drivers in use in sound production, that's bad news waiting to happen.

i just realized i installed the wrong version of 7 on my laptop. it's a home premium key on the back. i have a pro version i got from school, that resulted from a wipe on the recovery console. i can't swap the keys out without reinstalling, so i'm going to download home premium and try that for my 64 bit escapade, instead.

it's what i should have done in the first place.

(i could call them, but it's not worth it. they never really fixed the copy issues in vista.)

a google search suggests it's still a problem with 7. well, i'll find out.

i highly doubt there are 32-bit linux drivers for my mixer, let alone 64-bit ones. it's not feasible.

currently reminding myself why vista is the wost operating system ever...

i mean, i can handle a little bit of performance degradation from an optimized xp to an out-of-the-box vista, at least for now. but my windows 98 computer (currently running xp) can transfer files faster. it's preposterously slow.

i don't have the interest in stripping it down the way i stripped down xp, but i'm going to try to vlite it before i essentially give up and stick with what is a half-broken xp. the cd install is the broken part. the scripts i lost in the hard drive crash were what fixed them...

....and then this no good, third rate os has the nerve to reject my perfectly valid product key. fuckers...

you are SO getting formatted, windows vista.

i actually worked vista support for a while, believe it or not. i wrote some of those kb articles. it was a fun job with good pay, even. canadian labour can't compete with labour in the philippines, though. and alas...

sssssso, the president just took advantage of a non-situation that most americans don't care about to give himself more power to authoritatively act unilaterally in dictating sanctions.

given that sanctions are an act of war, isn't this the kind of thing that congress should be doing?

then again, yet another power grab by obama is really just a pretty average thursday.

good point near the end.

note that parubiy is one of the people that the russian media has identified as a fascist, and that observers have carefully agreed is actually one.

i'm actually wondering if ukraine was partitioned, ala molotov-ribbentrop.

note, though, that he just gave himself the power to unilaterally slap sanctions on russia. that's a huge power grab. let me see what the order says...

this is actually very weak, on both sides. it's for show.

as for a lack of media coverage:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSltb2vzCNI

also, al jazeera and al arabiya are state owned media.

the independent media *does* focus on this.

this is a better analysis. cockburn is a high-end analyst, it's nice to see him on camera. i'm mostly just "newsing" when i eat nowadays...

there's an unusual narrative that is worth at least understanding. back in wwI, there was an agreement between the british and the saudis that the arabs would get a centralized state in return for their aid against the ottomons. instead, they got a lot of little countries and a century of pointless conflict.

there currently seems to be an alliance between the white house, the saudis and what is left of al qaeda. the re-establishment of a caliphate was one of the demands of al qaeda, and while you'd have a hard time getting american or saudi diplomats to use that language, it is clear that they want hegemony over the arab world.

so, this all ties together through that hundred year old promise, in conjunction with the world being broken into trade blocs.

the eu, the sco, mercosur, the au, nafta. these are the types of organizations that really define sovereignty in the 21st century.

there seems to be a view that an arab league type bloc is the right way to set up the area, just as was promised in the great war. for whatever reason, the saudis are acknowledged as the hegemon in this bloc.

ok, so, read between the lines. heist? i think not.

what it exposes is that currency is the root of corruption, not the way that currency is produced.

https://news.vice.com/articles/over-100k-in-bitcoin-was-stolen-in-a-ridiculously-low-tech-heist?trk_source=homepage-in-the-news

this is the kind of doublespeak that's useful in understanding what they're up to.

http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/2/8/8710/World/Region/Gates-Libya-turmoil-could-destabilize-Egypt,-Tunis.aspx

this analysis is prevalent, and i don't want to say it's wrong, but i don't think it gets to the point.

how can the issue be discussed without mentioning the uprising in egypt? libya was mostly opportunistic. i understand paul's confusion in regards to the timing, but it just had to do with a window of opportunity.

a more interesting question is why he wasn't bombed previously. why wasn't there an invasion as far back as lockerbie? even clinton could have theoretically pulled this one off without a duck in approval ratings. but it was tactically problematic, because removing ghadaffi would no doubt destabilize egypt - something that the israelis and americans alike had no stomach for. similarly with syria.

but with both egypt and tunisia already in chaos, the argument against destabilizing the region no longer applied. rather, the window of opportunity could not be ignored. peace through coercion became secondary to an easy kill. remember: these people aren't liberals that use force as a last resort, but rather predators that resort to diplomacy when force is unlikely to be successful. so, the imminent invasion that had been put off for decades was activated.

the russians have been clear that this pissed them off. the way the americans did it showed a complete lack of respect for their ambitions. as we see repeated in syria and now ukraine.

i think there's also something to say about saudi ambitions. he speaks of france, but we know who france speaks for. the other side of libya is algeria, a country we do not hear much about but that may pose a natural boundary in the western extent of saudi influence.

but, it was mostly an opportunistic kill. like the vultures they are....

a different story than snipers on the roof.

that's pretty fascist sounding, too. pretty much brownshirts...

like, what did they do? run a theatrical presentation?

propaganda or not, nato needs to be doing something about this.

if a big part of the problem is stagnant wages, would it not make sense to tax the corporations that are profiting from it, relative to stagnation?

http://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2014/03/18/tax_hikes_loom_for_upperincome_earners_in_ontario.html

i happen to have one of those cords from an old phone. i may end up trying this, after i swap out the chips.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ZBsf-5iiDE

i have a .10, though, not a .11. the bug that affects the .11s doesn't affect my model.

regardless, if i can't get it to read, trying to hack in through hyperterminal is a third thing i can try.

yeah. i think if i just download everything from bandcamp, and repeat the process of categorizing all the cd-rs and dvd-rs in the box...

it's not worth the amount recovery is going to cost. sadly.

tools or bust. i'll find out in two weeks.

musically, what i've lost is xml files and transitional pieces. parts to build tracks up, but nothing completed.

for right now, i'd rather spend the cash on a good external backup drive.

on second thought, data recovery is much more expensive than i thought it would be.

there are two further troubleshooting steps i can try at the beginning of april, when i can get the right tools, but i think they're both low probability. i've resigned myself to needing somebody to open the drive up. that could take years to save up for...

obviously, i can't leave myself in suspended animation for that long. so, i'm going to take the opportunity to upgrade as much software as i can.

in the end, i'll have to decide if it's worth it. am i happy with a vanilla vista or a vanilla xp? do i really need to recover a few dozen source files for the sake of having them? or is the iso i'm about to reconstruct "good enough"?

i could see the drive sitting in a box for the next ten years gathering dust.

i absolutely must try those fixes, though. and if they don't work, and i'm happy with the replacement, i might get experimental about it.

of course, i don't have the right sized screwdriver.

...and i just spent my last $20 for the month on fruit and vegetables....

 powerless until april. guess i'll grab a book...

well, i guess i can try the store tomorrow. maybe they'll even let me use a screwdriver.

there's no use in installing on the backup drive, because it's going to be wiped out as soon as i get the data recovered. by the time i can use the os, i'll be writing over it.

i have four identical drives.

i'm going to swap out the circuit board, just to see. surely, i can't damage anything...

on second thought, if i hold it up really close to my ear, i *can* hear it clicking. it's just a super quiet drive. that's not what i wanted to learn, but at least it clarifies the problem. and i don't see why i can't get the info off...even if i have to save up for several months...

i'm hoping it's this easy.

i'm going to stumble out to the local store tomorrow and see if they'll just plug it in for me to check.

i wasn't able to try it from an e-sata 'cause i don't actually have the right cable.

i mean, the data is there. i should be able to get it off. it seems like the power is broken. it's not whirring, it's just not reading.

i need it to bypass the bios somehow to determine if it's the power or not. if it's the power, i'm going to have to pay somebody to replace it...

the only other thing i can think of is that the self-test is failing, and that's why it's neither whirring nor being read by the bios. still reduces to paying somebody to swap it out.

it's not that stalin was justified in shipping the crimean tatars back to their homeland to the east of the caspian, it's that western media narratives do not even concede that their homeland was east of the caspian, and that the indigenous peoples of the region were slavic/scythian groups.

i'm a history geek. i understand most people aren't. but in glossing over this, the western msm is actually glossing over one of the greatest atrocities in human history. race politics and geopolitics, unfortunately, have led to the slavic slave trade being something that most people don't even know about.

but the depopulation and colonization of eastern europe at the hands of successive groups of turkic and mongol invaders is, in fact, a crime on the level of the transatlantic slave trade or the depopulation of the americas. and it should be understood in that context.

over a space of roughly five centuries, millions of slavic speaking people were captured by the crimean tatars and shipped south to the ottoman empire. *the slave trade was the basis of the crimean economy*. within the islamic world, the slavic peoples were not treated differently than african slaves.

you'll notice that slave and slav look similar. in english, they are the same word. our word for slave is the same as our word for eastern european. this is due to the slave trade that the tatar khanate in the crimea carried out.

you didn't know that, did you? that's ok, few people do.

but i did and, knowing that, it's persistently exceedingly difficult to listen to the western narrative of the poor tatars being expelled from their homeland. this is absolute, total fucking bollocks.

imagine speaking of the african national congress expelling the afrikaaners from their homeland, as nearly happened. or mexicans expelling texans and californians from their homeland.

it IS that bad.

again, it's not to justify stalin's deportation. one crime does not justify another.

but read this. please....

http://books.google.ca/books?id=Qjwid7xcOPIC&pg=PA26&lpg=PA26&dq=tatar+slave+economy&source=bl&ots=A4Zwyz67ji&sig=-HoRTHNvj7BNpoG1bmyoj9vk9o0&hl=en&sa=X&ei=DfIoU6uwOoTCyAHJzIGICQ&ved=0CEMQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=tatar%20slave%20economy&f=false

comment elsewhere:

"international law is a type of public relations, not a system that governs the behaviour of states. the major powers trot it out only when they have no further recourse on an issue and instead want to turn public opinion against the country that has won the match. russia does this routinely, as well.

this is the first match russia has won in many years. they get to keep their port. the tables will be turned soon enough."

eightgeorge
Was Libya Legal?? As Hillary Clinton Said "We came, we Saw , He Died!! What difference does it MAKE!!!

deathtokoalas
indeed. international law is a type of public relations, not a system that governs the behaviour of states. the major powers trot it out only when they have no further recourse on an issue and instead want to turn public opinion against the country that has won the match. russia does this routinely, as well.

this is the first match russia has won in many years. they get to keep their port. the tables will be turned soon enough.

sounds like a false flag attack. they're going to blame it on the fascists. while i think kiev-inspired (and western-backed) violence remains a possibility, i couldn't see a purpose in them randomly picking off two soldiers like this...

i'd expect the character assassination of putin to increase to comedic levels in the near future, if it hasn't already.

everything i've seen suggests to me that the russians were legitimately concerned about being evicted from their naval base, and that they concluded that the only way to ensure that wouldn't happen would be to annex the region. might the new ukrainian government have allowed them to stay? maybe. but, given their nationalist (and anti-russian) rhetoric and their projected alliances, the russians seem to have calculated this was too risky to allow to happen organically. the rest is propaganda.

i really think it's as simple as that. i don't consider this situation to be at all complex. the russians are simply asserting control over a naval base that they feel was threatened by events in ukraine. that is all.

i'm still irked by the lack of transparency, and not really happy about the annexation, but i can reasonably understand that through the policy not yet being entirely formed. if the goal is to maintain control of the port, is this the most reasonable approach? it certainly is. is there much of a difference between setting up an autonomous region as a protectorate and just annexing it? merely legally.

i do agree with the prof, though, in his view that russia is making it seem like everything follows the law perfectly well. let us recall that the bush administration made sort of a big deal about american sovereignty giving it the right to act unilaterally, outside of the united nations. iraq was completely illegal. obama has softened this, but not retreated from it. consider libya, which was basically a trick (the resolution was to protect civilians in the case of attacks by ghadaffi, but nato used it to invade without demonstrating that such things were happening). so, this seems to be a systemic shift in american policy, one that would give a certain OLD right strain a nice big smile: fuck the pinkos at the un, the americans can do what they want. so said mr. birch to mrs. roosevelt...

the russians have been reacting to this by upholding international law at every opportunity they can. do they really believe what they're saying? well, maybe they've convinced themselves. but, it's mostly been a way to try and rein in american hegemony. and, what else can they do? they can no longer threaten the americans. so, if the question is "or else what?" then the russian response is "or else you're in breach of international law and will be condemned by the international community."

weak? an understatement, but it's what they've got. so, they've been sort of obsessed with it. it's become very routine for the russians to try and follow international law as best they can to set that example.

that doesn't mean they believe in it. "niceties" is the right language. and they'll likely keep it up.

rap news 23

L00NGB00W
Gotta ask, are you guys affiliated with RT?

selvmordspilot
afaik they're based in australia. I'm afraid it's the other way around. RT has gotten their hands on some great journalists - that are worth featuring in the rap news. #powerfulabbymartin

deathtokoalas
they are recently, yes. check their facebook page.

L00NGB00W
I can see no evidence of this.

dangerouslytalented
They have some great journalists, and are not afraid to use them... But only if and when the facts are on the Kremlin's side. The problem is when the facts are not on the Kremlin's side, whoops journalism broke.

selvmordspilot
true, and it's still up to us to decide who to believe in these matters.

dangerouslytalented
... basically, if Russia has a vested interest in not telling the truth, then don't trust them.

deathtokoalas
all media has a motive, otherwise it wouldn't exist. i mean, it's not like rap news is void of bias, either, we just all like their biases. so, i dunno why people have this naive perception that some media is more trustworthy than other media. all media is full of lies; it would't exist if it wasn't. and the other response consequently gets it right. you have to be constantly skeptical....

dangerouslytalented
That completely depends on what the motives are, Take the Guardian for example, their business model relies on their integrity. If they sell that, then there is no more money. Ever.

L00NGB00W
Assuming that all media is lies borders on paranoia.  

One must take the stories with a grain of salt, and realize there is bias. 

The idea of the fifth estate is to report on the actions of those in power. With enough viewpoints, one can piece together the truth.

deathtokoalas
the guardian is one of the worst advocates of liberal imperialistic bullshit and general state apologism out there. their coverage of foreign conflicts often seems written by the british state department, if not by the cia. kind of like the new york times, actually, which markets itself as relying on integrity, but is basically state media. both cnn and fox claim to be "trusted" as well; generally, when "trust" is a part of your advertising campaigns, that's a flag not to trust you. to see how bad the guardian is, all you have to do is read the independent, who is a rare source in the western world. you can at least vaguely trust the general idea of what they're presenting. but, even they have certain lines that they need to be artistic in dancing around.

@L00NGB00W it's not paranoia, it's a type of hypothesis testing. the null hypothesis is that what they're telling me is bullshit. now, can enough evidence be generated to reject that null hypothesis?

i suppose scientists are just a bunch of schizophrenics, living in a delusional fantasy reality.

we need more scientific thinking, to increase the bar so to speak, not vague accusations of paranoia and more pandering to rupert murdoch.

L00NGB00W
There you go. Case in point.  

I'm not pandering to Rupert Murdoch, he manipulates the news. <_<  

Assuming everything is a conspiracy is not a null hypothesis. Even if it were... One true news article would debunk said hypothesis.  

Weigh each story on an individual basis. And skeptically if it is merited.  

Pretty sure I am the one thinking scientifically here.

deathtokoalas
you don't know what science is, clearly.

this is painful: "Assuming everything is a conspiracy is not a null hypothesis. Even if it were... One true news article would debunk said hypothesis."

and i'm just going to request that you stop, educate yourself and come back.

L00NGB00W
Ugh.  

The truth is painful sometimes. ^_^  

I will stop now. But I will not return.   

It's not like I have anything to gain from this conversation, other than enlightening someone.  

Good day to you. ;)

deathtokoalas
can somebody other than me explain what a null hypothesis is and why the statement that it can be contradicted with a single counter-example is hilariously misinformed?

L00NGB00W
Sure, I'll explain it to you with an example. ;)  

Hypothesis: Squirrels are eating my strawberries.
Null Hypothesis: Squirrels are not eating my strawberries.  

Experiment: Set up a camera to see what is eating my strawberries...

Result: squirrels.  

Hence, the Null hypothesis is contradicted.  

LOGIC  

You're welcome. ;)

deathtokoalas
that's right. now, what happens when you apply that to the question of whether media coverage is accurate or not?

(note that i'm being generous for brevity, there's no use in getting picky about the language given that the discussion is circling around an idea)

this is all getting to the point that if you want to approach the question of media truth with a scientific perspective, you begin by assuming falsity and then generate evidence otherwise. that doesn't mean you should be calculating p-values to analyze the evening news and it doesn't mean you need to walk around with a tinfoil hat on, literally or figuratively. it's just a rule of thumb, in context. one could summarize it with the word skepticism.

...and to clear up that loose end (if it's not clear), suggesting that finding one "counter-example" (which in this case would be an honest newscast, and these do certainly exist) proves that all media is correct is one of those classical logical fallacies. i'm pretty stingy with my likes, but i'll +1 the first person that points it out.

L00NGB00W
Same. But your original statement was that 'all media is biased', Not whether 'all media is accurate'. They're rather different statements.

With the former, finding one contradiction invalidates the Null hypothesis.

With the latter, all media would have to be true to falsify the null. Which it isn't.

Perhaps I'm just  being picky.

deathtokoalas
yeah, you very much misunderstood what i said. the statement "all media is full of lies" is not the same thing as "all media is solely lies". and if you could find me a media source that's never lied, i'd be interested in hearing what it is. further, you couldn't do a meaningful test on the question of "is all media solely lies?" because you're not dealing with a specific enough question. i mean, sure, a counter-example would demonstrate it false, but it's an absurd statement to begin with. hypothesis testing has to work in a more specific context than that. i thought that was obvious, but apparently not.

it's again a basic fallacy. x is in Y does not meant Y only consists of x.

what you could do, i suppose, is generate a data set of broadcasts from a single news source and then ask "does this specific news source lie?". but that's about as broad as the method allows for (and perhaps badly (but, with some sources, perhaps reasonably - it's a question) sets all reporters as equivalent), and is something different altogether.

i was working on the assumption of analyzing claims on a statement-by-statement basis by beginning with the perspective that, because all media is full of lies, skepticism is perpetually required.

i couldn't imagine anybody not realizing that.

dangerouslytalented
There are two classes: "trust but verify", and "these guys are full of horseshit, if I want to know about this story, I am going to go somewhere else for the primary source".

L00NGB00W
No I did not, but I'm tired of arguing with you. 

"It's an absurd statement to begin with."  

Yes. Precisely. Some reporting is honest and accurate, some isn't.  

Good day.

deathtokoalas
well, it works out to the same thing in the end. you're presenting a categorization of required rigour, if anything. i think it's largely illusory, and reduces to your own biases. one person will put fox in a and democracy now in b, and the other will flip them around. in the end, you're doing your homework, either way. that's the important part.

personally, i think it's more worthwhile to figure out what the biases are so that they can be actively countered. this whole crimea thing has actually been useful, as it's brought some closet communists out (and hopelessly misguided ones, given that russia is currently the most right-wing of any major country, including the united states. one might even call them useful idiots.).

97%, huh?

sounds just like old times.

actually, crimea was previously a part of the venetian republic.

the "venetian republic" was actually a maritime empire.

so, he's recognizing their autonomy, which is what they were saying. but, i mean, it's hard to square the whole fiasco without russia seeing this as a rubber stamp process....

i've stated before that i have the mind of a 70 year-old woman in the body of a 12 year-old girl. but i was sort of joking.

it's not that strange for people to skip their childhood. childhood is really a social construction in the first place. the truth is it's the parents that won't let go of the innocence; in reality, most of the world is working at ten and reproducing at fifteen. keeping young people juvenile throughout their teens and even into their twenties requires huge amounts of biological and psychological suppression. rather than saying "i skipped childhood", the better idea might be "i escaped the christian cult's attempt to stunt my development to uphold their warped perceptions of purity".

but, i don't expect white liberals to lose their fantasy reality any time soon.

so, skipping childhood is common and normal; it's the idea of childhood that is perverted. but, skipping adulthood is really bizarre.

i mean skipping adulthood as a phase of life, rather than having any cultural affinity with people twice my age. the entire set of goals just seemed pointless to me. property? what for? vehicles? i'd prefer something more ecological. job? status? you know you're going to die, right? what's the point? partner? i prefer my independence and i need to spend most of my time alone, anyways - it's impossible for me to maintain a relationship with the need for that much alone time. children? i'd rather be paraded through downtown by my entrails than become a slave to my offspring, thank you.

it was the goals of retirement that appealed to me directly from childhood: time to read, a space to grow a garden and maybe a pet (at this point, though, i think pets are as much enslavement as children).

i mean, we have some pretty bizarre ideas of what an adult is in our society. the definition of an adult in our society is identical to that of a slave. then, we associate adulthood with freedom. 'cause freedom and slavery are the same thing, here.

but to just skip the entire phase of existence - the dominant phase, the defining phase - is something i'm having a hard time understanding in myself, even as it is crystal clear to me that it is true.

briefly, then:

1) unilateral declarations of independence may be unconstitutional in individual countries. however,
2) international law is that the right to declare independence trumps everything and
3) liberal courts have generally agreed that democratic states should not use force to repress established independence movements.
4) the referendum in crimea is consequently illegal under ukrainian law but legal under international law. further, it would be contrary to international norms for ukraine to react with force to suppress an independence movement.

however, the reality is that neither side cares about national or international law.

as far as i can tell, the western media line that the referendum was illegal and should not be recognized is rejecting international law on the subject, which is that sovereign states have no rights whatsoever in preventing independent movements.

people are talking kosovo, but the example i understand best is quebec. (yes, i've studied this formally).

there's been a subtle supreme court ruling on the matter in canada, which is best to toss in the garbage as utter bullshit. those are strong words and i mean them. it's that bad. really. the succession reference case in canada is actually a breathtaking example of blatant historical whitewashing and revisionism to create a trumped up pretext to uphold state interests. it is now all but illegal for quebec to separate from canada, but if they decide to do it anyways is it legal to stop them?

this is where the ruling becomes subtle. it's all but illegal to separate, yet equally illegal to try and stop them, should they succeed in declaring independence. further, a successful declaration of independence is defined by the ability to assert sovereignty, which is essentially the ability to prevent canada from stopping them. the ruling consequently purposefully states nothing of value about quebec's functional right to unilateral succession (despite being clear it would be all but illegal in canadian law), but it does put restrictions on canada's ability to prevent it by force.

on that point, the court did pick out the more interesting question. anybody can claim anything. who that opposes this is going to stop them? the more pressing question is what kind of rights exist in suppressing independence movements, and when worded like that it becomes clear that these rights must be limited or perhaps even non-existent. regardless of what crimea's rights may or may not be, to what extent is ukraine justified in actively preventing an expression of sovereignty? the reference case's rejection of a right of canada to use force to reassert sovereignty essentially negates the relevance of the canadian constitution, should quebec decide to forcefully declare it's own interests as an expression of it's own will. i couldn't see how a ukrainian court of any remotely liberal lean could rule differently over crimea.

the international law is consistent with this position. in international law, declarations of independence trump everything else. they certainly trump constitutions. i think the above discussion provides some context as to why that is.

now, that's not to deny that something sneaky has become apparent over time. the russians have not been transparent about this. in order to regain lost credibility with me, they would have to reject the referendum and reassert crimea's place in ukraine. this was their initial position, which they've now flopped on. the position is extremely important in the context of them moving military people to the region - it's one thing to temporarily invade to protect a base, it's another to invade with the goal of annexation. rejecting the request to join russia is not the same thing as rejecting the validity of the referendum. and pointing out russian dishonesty is not the same thing as unilaterally rewriting international law. it's consistent to both disagree with the russian position on the annexation and uphold the legality of the vote. that seems to be the correct position.

briefly, then:

1) unilateral declarations of independence may be unconstitutional in individual countries. however,
2) international law is that the right to declare independence trumps everything and
3) liberal courts have generally agreed that democratic states should not use force to repress established independence movements.
4) the referendum in crimea is consequently illegal under ukrainian law but legal under international law. further, it would be contrary to international norms for ukraine to react with force to suppress an independence movement.

however, the reality is that neither side cares about national or international law.

click.
hope.
fail.
groan.

repeat.

i'm getting a rough directory structure, but almost all the actual data is garbled. that's useful in triggering my memory in reconstructing things, at least.

i've decided on the following plan:

1) finish trying to recover as much as i can.
2) back up everything else i might want to back up.
3) while i'm waiting to see if i can recover, upload some things that are already complete. that is, jump ahead.
4) make further decisions based on what i can recover.

so, there should be some new (old) tracks up in the next few days, after all.

93%, huh?

why do they bother?

this really asserts a lot of negative stereotypes.

".....to meet those interests through the unilater-err

shakes head

..international, multilateral legal norms..."

freudian slip of the year?

success with the router...

a small victory in a weekend of bad news.

deathtokoalas
i know they're indignant over an act of barbarism, but why aren't these protest movements seizing factories and farms instead of getting beat up by riot cops in downtown parks?

Michael IV
That would be the best option if their aim was to start a civil war but it isn't. They simply want to be heard by their government, not create a new one on their own. 

deathtokoalas
yeah, there's this impossible problem we've created by not educating our citizens. as a result of living in almost total historical ignorance, they grow up thinking ridiculous ideas, like that there's some kind of culture of democracy in the western world. this leads them into protest movements that demand change from this inane, supernatural force they call 'government' - rather than realizing that government is they themselves, and their inaction (a function of their terrible education) is a function of the system's planned failure.

a better education would teach them that the class war is perpetual. the civil war is not determined by dates and events, but is always carried out between those who own capital and those who do not. there is consequently no solution other than to attack those who own property, and redistribute it to the people.

yet, so long as we are kept ignorant, we will gather in squares and chant slogans instead.

Abayarde718
Yo bro you're the fucking man. That was brilliant. If we gathered to grow public gardens and make abundance the norm it would be 10000X more effective than shouting words in anger. If we grew food and cannabis, our own medicines, to become independent of the need for so much capital and consuming, we could crash the economy. People Dont want real change. They want nanny states. Peave to u.

deathtokoalas
i think it's worse than that, actually. they seem to legitimately want things to change (or, in the case of turkey and many other places, perhaps not change), but they're fundamentally incapable of carrying out that change, which is by design. a big part of the problem is that we're taught all kinds of lies about how our governments represent us, rather than the truth, which is that they represent the interests of capital (banks and big corporations, still mostly resource and extraction based at this high a political level). this leads us to the delusional (religious, really) belief system underlying these demonstrations - prayers to the state will be heeded if they are loud enough and targeted enough. that's less a desire for a nanny state, and more blowback from social engineering.

in truth, demonstrators are doing precisely what they're taught to do, and being beaten up by a demonstration of state force like they're supposed to be. cries of "human rights violations!" exist in some parallel universe, full of rainbow unicorns prancing through fields of money trees. you've all confused the state for an entity that actually gives a fuck.

the handful of examples of large scale successful demonstrations have not been peaceful. in actual fact, gandhi was demonstrating to the british authorities the size of a potential army (and the hopelessness of their position, tactically). it was the threat of force that won him his aims (which were full of far more fail than win). likewise, the civil rights protests would have been entirely useless if the demonstrators weren't armed (they don't teach us that). in order for "non-violent protest" to be effective, it must come with the threat of imminent violence. that is to say that, when effective, it is not truly non-violent at all, but merely a more enlightened type of violence.

but, it's the government's desire to keep us ignorant and stupid that is both at the core of these protest movements and the reason they offer no hope for the future. the reason they sit in squares and sing songs isn't that they don't want to improve their own lives, it's that they don't know how to. they only know how to ask their state deity to solve problems for them - just as they're supposed to.

these protests are consequently the exact opposite of a hopeful youth movement. rather, they are evidence of the impending doom that we face as a consequence of not educating our young people.

"you mean, you shouldn't put gatorade on the crops?"

Michael IV
The people will always be ignorant, there's is a slow change. It's the leaders that are the ones who can bring true change and quickly. Therefore people should study for themselves and learn for themselves and then lead their people. Instead of teaching the whole populace, which seems quite impossible.

deathtokoalas
ach, no. no gods, no masters. smashing the state is the only possible way to bring back history....this just isn't the way to do it.

leaders never represent people. they always represent capital. putting hope into leadership is only possible through not understanding the inherently exploitative nature of capitalism.

Michael IV
There will always be leaders in this world, that's an inevitability. There are those who follow and those who lead. The only chose we have is who are the ones to lead.

deathtokoalas
see, michael is terribly brainwashed. he thinks there are only those who follow and those who lead. that allows him to internally validate an authoritarian system as irreplaceable in one form or another. it may convince him, one day, to pick up a gun to protect a flag, rather than attack those who handed him the gun.

leaders are those who follow from the front. the quality that defines a good leader is an ability to understand the tendencies in the herd, then repeat it back in a way that justifies their use of power. there is consequently no real difference between a leader and a follower, except where they exist in the hierarchy. if we are to be reduced to only leaders and followers, we're destined to stumble around in circles. only the blind may lead, and only the deaf may follow.

there is, however, a difference between those who engage and those who do not. rather than thinking in terms of this silly leader/follower distinction, it would rather behoove you to conceive of situations in a philosopher/actor sort of distinction. actors are leaders and followers - people who take part in the group. philosophers are those who sit back and watch the leaders follow themselves around in circles. from this point of abstraction, they are able to conceive of problems in the way people behave.

it's not that we need more philosophers. we have plenty. it's that we need to start listening to them.

Michael IV
We've had plenty of Scientific revolutions and extreme changes in knowledge over the years. We've all listened to plenty of philosophers and learned from them, but much of the world is deaf to sense and reason. That is why we still have wars, that is why we still have strife, because the populace fails to listen. Like Sun Tzu said, deception simply has a bad connotation. If the deaf populace is led by an enlightened leader, then there is no need to fight the redundant battle of trying to convince everyone of "the right way to think". Only one person has to understand everything, and that is the leader.

deathtokoalas
you're deifying your government leaders; the concept you seek is called "god", and the system you envision is called "fundamentalism". it's the kind of thing that exists in iran, and that once existed in rome. there are three reasons why these systems fail. the first is that human wisdom is not only finite but bounded much lower than our imagination would like. we're dumb apes. the second is that power corrupts; there is no enlightened sage that will reform a corrupt system, it is the system itself that needs to be abolished. removing bush did not end targeted assassination programs. removing yanukovich will not end endemic ukrainian corruption. removing erdogan will not dismantle the turkish military-industrial complex.  the third is that society is collaborative by definition and must function through consent to be stable. hierarchical, authoritarian societies are constantly in rearrangement, perpetually on the brink of implosion and collapse. it's these shifting class divisions, and desires to maintain power within them, that are the reason we continue to fight. there is no way to abolish conflict (this, again, is delusional religious thinking), but only a way to abolish want, making conflict difficult on an organized scale. so long as leaders may raise armies, they may start wars.

i don't wish to write off the masses. i am a member of these masses. i stand with them. rather, i point out that we are losing the fight against the leaders that wish to enslave us by reducing us to ignorant fools that are dependent upon them for survival. this is a created condition, not an endemic one.

i don't wish to continue this discussion.

scrbble
I haven't read a well thought out comment on youtube in a while, thanks for that.

Kim Jong-un 
deathtokoalas please marry me!

deathtokoalas
i'm the biggest loner in the world, it wouldn't work out.

Kim Jong-un
I'd make it work. Just text me if you change your mind.

Cristian Sosa 
I wish people could start to seize government buildings around the world, and rise in an utopian anarchism. But sadly mankind is eons behind to be ready to leave in peace without the need of a government.  And a change of politics in the government, say from Capitalism to Socialism for instance, would be like placing a band aid on a major laceration. We are broken, and fixing our entire society must be one of the hardest things humanity has yet to face.

deathtokoalas
i'm not really in agreement with the idea that we're centuries away from actual freedom. if there's a temporal component, it's in the technology and i actually think that automated production has the potential to revolutionize the mode of production within our lifetime, and the social system will have no choice but to adjust to that extreme economic reorganization.

but, if it's true, the end point can only be accomplished by failing dozens or hundreds of times. there's no teleology in history - not marx' teleology of historical materialism, nor hegel's end of history, nor the dreaded orthogenesis that came out of trying to reconcile darwin with genesis. we will not get to an end point as a function of time, we need to push our way there. and there may be a few messes along the way...