Mike the Usurper wrote:

In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar.

I seem to remember saying something like this was going to happen a while back. If people thought the current recession hurt, wait until this gets stacked on.

This should be news to no one. It's been on the radar since at least 2000 when Iraq switched their oil pricing to the Euro. I remember the tremors caused by that. Speculation over what would happen if all of OPEC switched. Iran announced its oil bourse plan in 2004. By 2006 more than half of their oil export income was received in Euros.

This latest development is part of a logical progression.

RE: The demise of the dollar - Business News, Business - The Independent

janelane wrote:

''Whether the issue is improving the involvement of young women and girls in education, to climate change and all political, economic, and social issues in between, I think empowering women is central to what the world has to do in the 21st century,'' he said.

You're damn right.

-janelane

Not trying to be snarky, but what does that mean exactly?

I was at a community activity today and someone offered to help this girl carry a box. She remarked how sweet it was and how rare it is for that to happen these days.

What is "empowering a woman?" Does it mean carry your own boxes and stay out of the way? Where's the line?

RE: Global Initiative Takes on Gender Inequality - NYTimes.com

The widespread opposition to a Presidential address to students, a priori, for partisan reasons, is a total disgrace. This is a new low for political polarization in this country. The outrage represents basic disrespect for our democratic institutions and is fundamentally unpatriotic.

You can disagree all you want with the policies, and you all know that I disagree vehemently with many of the policies of this administration as well as the previous administration. But if you don't respect the institution of the Presidency and right of the elected President to serve that roll, you invite disdain for democracy on the whole and for our system of government on the whole. I might understand that if it was coming from the political margins, but its an entirely different thing when it comes from a vastly powerful political coalition that can and does win elections and make policy. In those shoes it is an invitation to political collapse.

What message are you sending to children who don't understand your politics when you tell them you don't want them to hear an address from the President?

Disgraceful

Decius wrote:
Here is the notice I received:

Have you sent this over to Chilling Effects? John at Cryptome might be interested too.

RE: MemeStreams receives DMCA takedown from Texas Instruments

Decius wrote:

Before the Apple II had floppy drives, however, it had an audio cassette interface for storing programs and data.  This was a very primitive system, requiring you to hook up a cassette recorder to your computer and fiddle with the volume knob until things started working.  To read data from tape, you specified a range of memory to fill, and hit the "play" button on your tape recorder.  If all went well, the computer cheerfully beeped at you and off you went.  Loading BASIC programs was even easier, because the start location was pre-determined, and the length was stored on the tape.  All you had to do was type "LOAD".

I recently found myself extracting software from cassette tapes purchased on eBay.  At the start of the project, I thought to myself, "it's awkward to get at the data, but at least there's no copy protection."  As it turns out, I was wrong.

A little walk down memory lane.

The history of nibble copiers for floppies is a fun read too.

RE: Early Copy Protection on the Apple II

Decius wrote:

More than half of the internet’s top websites use a little known capability of Adobe’s Flash plugin to track users and store information about them, but only four of them mention the so-called Flash Cookies in their privacy policies, UC Berkeley researchers reported Monday.

Awesome! Thanks Adobe!

I remember someone asking me why when they cleared their cookies their bank still didn't ask for "extended authentication" questions.

"Did you clear your Flash cache?"

"My what?"

What concerned me more was that the bank actually used some nugget of client side data as a security feature.

RE: You Deleted Your Cookies? Think Again | Epicenter | Wired.com

Acidus wrote:

Sometimes you find that your lifestyle, or (in some cases) your job, means that you parent somewhat differently than may be the norm. This rare moment of self-reflection came when I was standing in my daughter's room, watching her sleep through a pair of night-vision goggles. This way, I can make sure she actually is sleeping without turning on a light and perhaps waking her, or alerting her to my presence as I bear witness to whatever level of shenanigans she's getting up to.

I wonder, idly, if there is enough ambient light to see the outline of my head. I then wonder if this is how alien abduction memories begin.

Really? Cause I was wondering if you are a sick bastard.

Jame Gumb perhaps?

RE: Very creepy Ars

Decius wrote:
Good Morning America is a bit flashy but this news report contains actual footage which a lot of reports about this thing don't have. I hate encountering garbage while swimming in the ocean - the idea that there is a garbage patch that spans the pacific is nearly the most disgusting thing I can imagine.

We'll be right back to Good Morning America after a quick word from our sponsors who will implore you to buy more plastic goods.

Reminds me of some radio talk show I was listening to where the host was railing about 27 million Americans on anti-depressants. One of the next commercials was for an anti-depressant.

Cognitive dissonance, gotta love it.

RE: YouTube - The Great Pacific Garbage Patch - Good Morning America

Except...

I'm bring Ballmer back.

MUHAHA

I have nothing to say...

When it comes to time spent on site, Facebook is followed by May’s leader Yahoo, whose visitors spend an average of 3:15 hours on various Yahoo properties. AOL is third with 2:43 hours, followed by Google with 2:31 hours and Microsoft with 2:12 hours.

...

All your friendships are belong to Facebook.

Facebook now the internet's ultimate time waster