But PowerPoint also has a private, interior influence. It edits ideas. It is, almost surreptitiously, a business manual as well as a business suit, with an opinion‹an oddly pedantic, prescriptive opinion‹about the way we should think. It helps you make a case, but it also makes its own case: about how to organize information, how much information to organize, how to look at the world.
http://polyglot.lss.wisc.edu/lss/intime/AbsolutePPT.pdf
Oswaldo manda avisar: Entrevista muito interessante com Jeremy J. Shapiro no ACM: Ubiquity.
Computer technology is, to use a McLuhanesque expression, an extension of your mind -- if other people are controlling it, they're controlling your mind.
http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/interviews/j_shapiro_2.html
What is it ? Tempest for Eliza is a Program that uses your computer monitor to send out AM radio signals. You can then hear computer generated music in your radio.
Why this program ? You need no additional hardware to understand that it is really possible to observe your computer without physically touching it. (tempest). I wrote this program because it was fun and because it teaches in an amusing way that tempest really exists. i want people to understand that their computers can be observed.
http://www.erikyyy.de/tempest/
In the mid-seventies America faced a new and escalating crisis, with US commercial jets being hijacked for geopolitical purposes. Determined to gain the upper hand in this new form of aerial warfare, two American multinationals collaborated with the Defense Advanced Projects Agency (DARPA) on a project designed to facilitate the remote recovery of hijacked American aircraft. Brilliant both in concept and operation, ³Home Run² [not its real code name] allowed specialist ground controllers to listen in to cockpit conversations on the target aircraft, then take absolute control of its computerized flight control system by remote means.
From that point onwards, regardless of the wishes of the hijackers or flight deck crew, the hijacked aircraft could be recovered and landed automatically at an airport of choice, with no more difficulty than flying a radio-controlled model plane. The engineers had no idea that almost thirty years after its initial design, Home Run¹s top secret computer codes would be broken, and the system used to facilitate direct ground control of the four aircraft used in the high-profile attacks on New York and Washington on 11th September 2001.
http://geocities.com/mknemesis/homerun.html
Marcelo manda avisar, Frei Betto contando a história do clã dos Bush:
Prescott Bush integrava, em 1918, a associação estudantil Skull & Bones (Crânio e Osso). Desafiado pelos colegas, invadiu um cemitério apache e roubou o escalpo do lendário cacique Jerônimo.
Deflagrada a 2.ª Guerra Mundial, Prescott Bush, sócio de uma companhia de petróleo do Texas, recebeu punição do governo dos Estados Unidos por negociar combustível com a empresa nazista Luftwaffe. O tribunal admitiu que ele violara o Trading with Enemy Act.
http://www.estado.estadao.com.br/editorias/2001/10/31/aberto002.html
PC manda avisar:
The Taliban has offered a $50 million bounty for the capture of George W Bush.
The regime's head of security has made the announcement, and claims it is double what the US has placed on the head of bin Laden.
Mohammed Saeed Haqqani says Osama bin Laden could not have carried out the attacks in New York and Washington.
According to the Inquilab, he said: "Osama bin Laden does not have the means to carry out such acts."
He went on: "If the rich Americans have offered $25 million for Osama we will give $50 million to anyone who can capture Bush for us, in spite of being a poor country."
Haqqani claims all good Muslims will reject the opportunity to cash in on the $25 million offered by the US.
"All Muslims will side with their faith. No offer can tempt us," he added.
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_454854.html
If you take a look at Vladimir Propp's 1928 book "Morphology of the Folk Tale," which lists just about every convention ever used in fairy tales, you can check off, one by one, the devices that Rowling has unabashedly picked up. At the beginning of the story, Propp says, the villain harms someone in the hero's family. (The evil wizard Voldemort murdered Harry's good-wizard parents when the boy was a year old, and tried to kill him, too.) The hero is branded. (Voldemort's attack left Harry with a scar in the shape of a lightning bolt on his forehead.) The hero is banished. (Harry is forced to go live with his loathsome aunt and uncle, the Dursleys.) The hero is released. (Harry is finally informed that he is a wizard, and goes off to live at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.) The hero must survive ordeals, seek things, acquire a wise helper, all of which Harry does. The villain must change form and leave bloody trails; Voldemort obliges.
http://www.newyorker.com/FROM_THE_ARCHIVE/ARCHIVES/?011119fr_archive01
To give birth to a god requires a considerable act of imagination. It's too big a job for most of us to pull off on a first attempt. Knowing this, the ancient sages have passed down to us the technique of Puja, whereby one can build up the image of the deity bit by bit. Each bit is a symbol or set of symbols which describe the deity in a particular way. Every symbol begins at a different point within the mind, and grows larger the more you meditate on it. Eventually the symbols start to link up with each other, describing the same aspect of the deity in different ways. When this begins to happen, the process unconsciously continues 24 hours a day (perhaps more) until the image of the deity becomes coherent (although it may still be impossible to call that deity into consciousness). Once such an image has been formed, it becomes inhabited by the god or goddess in question, and one can work magick with the her or him. Puja is therefore a very useful mystical and magickal practice which opens the door to a multitude of fascinating new experiences.
http://www.cix.co.uk/~ganesh/ganesha4.htm
Robert Fisk mandando bem:
The real problem is that Afghanistan contains only tiny minorities of the ethnic groups which constitute its population. Thus, the 7 million Pashtuns in the country are outnumbered by the 12 million Pashtuns in Pakistan, the 3.5 million Tajiks in Afghanistan are outnumbered by the 6 million Tajiks in Tajikistan. The 1.3 million Uzbeks are just a fraction of the 23 million Uzbeks in Uzbekistan. There are 600,000 Turkmens in Afghanistan but 3.52 million in Turkmenistan. So why should the Afghan Pashtuns and Tajiks and Uzbeks and Turkmens regard Afghanistan as their country? Their "country" is the bit of land in Afghanistan upon which they live.
...
Hence, today, the constant fear for Pakistan's leader, General Pervez Musharraf, is not so much an Islamic revolution but a rebirth of the notorious demand for "Pushtunistan" in the North-West Frontier province.
http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=105385
Usando o Ajeeb dá pra entender o que rola no site da Al Jazeera:
http://tarjim.ajeeb.com/ajeeb/
Tentei montar um link direto, mas não rolou, o endereço da Al Jazeera é:
Robot Wisdom manda avisar, Billy Dare x Dr. Mordu na Salon:
http://salon.com/comics/boll/2001/11/08/boll/index.html
Demosthenes manda avisar:
Utlanning - o estranho que reconhecemos como humano de nosso planeta, mas pertencente a outro país ou cidade.
Framling - o estranho que reconhecemos como humano, mas de outro planeta.
Raman - o estranho que reconhecemos como humano, mas de outra espécie.
Varelse - o verdadeiro alienígena, com eles não é possível conversar. Eles vivem, mas não podemos adivinhar que propósitos ou causas os fazem agir. Eles podem ser inteligentes, ter autoconsciência, mas não podemos saber.
http://www.hatrack.com/research/questions/q0068.shtml
Osama Bin Laden manda avisar:
We should view events not as separate links, but as links in a long series of conspiracies, a war of annihilation
John Robb's Radio Weblog via Kill Your TV:
One thing that they don't teach you in school is that monopolies are the natural result of free markets left unconstrained. Competitive markets are an aberration caused by constraints place on the market mechanism by an external agent (the Government). If left unconstained, a firm with a profitable monopoloy in one market will quickly use that monopolistic power to take over other markets to create new monopolies. If left alone long enough, a firm could take control of a large segment of the US economy.
Microsoft is on a growth path that will eventually let it take over the computer industry. It has leveraged its monopoly in desktop operating systems to take control of desktop productivity software. Next on the list:
1) Console Game hardware and software.
2) PC hardware and home networking.
3) Small device hardware and software.
4) Web services.
http://jrobb.userland.com/2001/11/03.html
Halloween had its beginnings in an ancient, pre-Christian Celtic festival of the dead. The Celtic peoples, who were once found all over Europe, divided the year by four major holidays. According to their calendar, the year began on a day corresponding to November 1st on our present calendar. The date marked the beginning of winter. Since they were pastoral people, it was a time when cattle and sheep had to be moved to closer pastures and all livestock had to be secured for the winter months. Crops were harvested and stored. The date marked both an ending and a beginning in an eternal cycle.
The festival observed at this time was called Samhain (pronounced Sah-ween). It was the biggest and most significant holiday of the Celtic year. The Celts believed that at the time of Samhain, more so than any other time of the year, the ghosts of the dead were able to mingle with the living, because at Samhain the souls of those who had died during the year traveled into the otherworld. People gathered to sacrifice animals, fruits, and vegetables. They also lit bonfires in honor of the dead, to aid them on their journey, and to keep them away from the living. On that day all manner of beings were abroad: ghosts, fairies, and demons--all part of the dark and dread.
http://www.loc.gov/folklife/halloween.html
"If any government sponsors the outlaws and killers of innocents," George Bush announced on the day he began bombing Afghanistan, "they have become outlaws and murderers themselves. And they will take that lonely path at their own peril." I'm glad he said "any government", as there's one which, though it has yet to be identified as a sponsor of terrorism, requires his urgent attention.
For the past 55 years it has been running a terrorist training camp, whose victims massively outnumber the people killed by the attack on New York, the embassy bombings and the other atrocities laid, rightly or wrongly, at al-Qaida's door. The camp is called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, or Whisc. It is based in Fort Benning, Georgia, and it is funded by Mr Bush's government.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4287795,00.html