Gusalmighty.com: A Leaded Perspective

Investigative Detention

Whew! It looks like the US Constitution is being revised by the same people that came up with the idea that Afghanistan POWs aren't warfare plunder but some kind of pseudosoldiercriminalcountrylessmeatbags. According to an article I found, you can be detained by the police without being arrested if you are suspected of being a terrahist.

The snitch society is upon us folks, and it ain't no joke. If someone decides that your picture taking is suspicious and reports you as such, the cops can arrest talk to you without granting you any of the typical protections that used to be a part of US civilian life.

Oh, and don't go out and try to protest, or you'll get life in prison for being, you guessed it, a terrahist.

Easy Voting reform: None of the Above!

Voter apathy is well known and reported in the United States, but no one seems to care too much about it. Everyone realizes that people don't vote because there are no options: the two major parties are paid for by the same companies and the independent candidates don't have a chance.

We can't give in to apathy and dejection just because the pickings are so slim! Things have become too structured, rigid, and predictable, far from reflecting the chaos of reality. We need a Discordian solution almost as much as we need a Discordian candidate. Eris herself would have my vote except for her predilection for getting drunk and missing meetings.

Complacency is a virture of the rich, fat, and weak. I'm fat and weak, but stone broke paying for the accoutrements of status in the modern like clothing, pizza, and broadband internet access. But whereas fatness and weakness rarely contribute to richness, richness and fatness inevitably lead to weakness. America as a nation earned its complacency long ago by this route.

As usually happens when confronted with a plethora of solutions as is available to this pandemic of complacents, we are oft forced to choose between the pragmatic and idealistic. This naive collapse of the state vector squanders our neuro-empathic connection with the universe offered by our understanding of quantum dynamics and popular advertising. If we can be convinced that pisswater with alcohol in it can both "Taste Great" and be "Less Filling" there is no reason why we can employ pragmatic idealism (or in more desperate cases, idealistic pragmatism) to solve the complacademic scourge on democracy.

Some have suggested a weighted voting system where voters are given, say, 10 points to vote with. They can give all 10 points to one candidate, 1 point to their 10 favorite candidates (or even 1 point to the 10 candidates they hate, if they are so disposed I suppose) or any other combination. This sort of flexible vote expression theoretically gives voters the opportunity to vote the candidate of their choice but still give a little bit to the candidate that actually has a chance to win (who by coincidence is usually fat, rich, and weak).

Other schemes similar to this would allow voters to vote for 2, 3, or more candidates in a ranking order (first choice, second choice, etc.). Candidates receive, say, 5 points for a "First" vote, 3 points for a "Second" and 1 point for "Third." Whoever gets the most points, wins. This too permits voters to vote for their longshot candidate First but still drop in a bit of weight for the Republican/Democrat candidate.

These systems have a fair amount of appeal to me and I figure they probably would do a better job of expressing people's sentiment at the polls, but they are chicken-shit solutions to the problem.

I can't accept this notion that voting for so-called 3rd party candidates somehow "takes away" votes from the majority candidates. Takes away? Talk about complacency! A vote is intended to express your opinion and beliefs and should be used to select a candidate that most closely reflects those. Your vote shouldn't be used in a negative sense to block an opposition candidate. As much as it feels like it, we are NOT forced to choose between the lesser of two evils for president.

Vote for who you think would be the best candidate, even if you think that it means that the worst of the two evils will end up winning. Less than half the eligible voters in this country vote because they feel like they are wasting their vote because of sentiment like this.

I think the easiest way to change things tough is to simply add the option "None of the Above" to the ballot. If NotA gets the most votes, toss out the candidates on that ballot and run the election again in two weeks. Simple. Don't try to whine that you can't have an election in 2 weeks. Countries all over the world don't have planned election schedules like we have in the US. And surprisingly, they don't have 18 month campaigns either.

Giving voters a NotA option truly opens up the field. Having the ability to invalidate all the efforts of the rich, fat, and weak overnight would bring droves of NotA voters to the polls. Of course the chaos that would ensure after a few elections cycles like this would probably wear on some of them and they'd begin to vote for actual candidates. NotA would get them back in the voting flow and also do a damned good job of injecting a needed amount of chaos (Hail Eris!) back into domestic life.

One other nice side effect of this idea is that it is an easy litmus test to see what people believe. If anyone opposes this idea, they are obviously an agent of the corporate system of complacency and shouldn't be trusted.

So spread the word and get it on the ballot: None of the Above! NotA!

Biological warfare of my own

Eris, the goddess of chaos and discord and patron slut of leaded persons throughout the Universe, paused from her party in Baghdad to mix the pot in my very own household. Within moments of jesting about President-wannabe Bush's whining about being Job-ed (as in Book of Job), I was assaulted by a contingent of foreign bacterial and viral assassins in my nasal, bronchial, orbital, and gastro-intestinal cavities.

Caught by surprise, defensive forces initially fell back and ceded large territories of the upper throat, eyes, and nasal cavities. Commanders of allied forces called for immediate neo-hibernation that provided an opportunity to regroup and re-energize T-cell brigades and phagocyte fighters. These forces eventually drove the invaders out of the esophageal regions, but they were unable to entirely defeat the poisonous killers.

Currently the foreign agents aimed at destroying my biological capacities are entrenched in the nasal cavities and are running savage guerrilla attacks on the soft vision targets in the orbital cavities. Allied forces are constantly engaged with the enemy and analyses of the frequent effluent discharges indicate that the enemy is taking heavy casualties.

Local commanders, while always wary of predicting the twists and turns of warfare, suggest that full biological function may be restored within 48 hours, pending the strength of allied forces and the will of Eris herself.

Bush's extended plans for fighting bioterrorism in China

Now that the new SARS virus has been nailed down to a Hong Kong hotel, President-selected Bush announced plans to invade The People's Republic of China "at a time of our choosing."

"Biological weapons are bad," Mr. Bush said. "It's obvious that when people die from disease, a weapon has been employed. We took out the Iraqis for past possession of these weapons, and we'll take out the Chinese for it too."

In other news, earlier reports that Bush had cursed his God for giving him a runny nose on the eve of his conquest of the Middle East could not be confirmed. Initial reports that shouts of "WHY HAST THOU FORSAKEN ME!" came from the Oval Office can only be considered rumor at this point.

Thank goodness for product placement!

Nothing makes a reality show more real than selling out to advertisers who want to put product placements in them. Finally, a reality show that reflects the pathetic downward spiral of monetarizing everything in life, and saves you the hassle of watching commercials.

Do the world a favor and stop watching TV.

A little bit of sanity in all the mania

Just when I was about to give up hope for the leadership of our country, I see that some Republican leaders have their heads on straight and are taking appropriate and necessary actions to break the deadlock at the UN. Their radical suggestion that we abandon the use of the word "French" in such delightful culinary delights as French Fries and French Toast is the kind of diplomacy that politicians today haven't the balls to undertake. Not only have they taken a productive stance on the exclusion the name of the seditious nation of France, but they suggested that we substitute the beautiful term FREEDOM! in its stead. For proper effect, FREEDOM! must always be screamed aloud with the emotion of Mel Gibson's William Wallace as he is drawn and quartered alive.

On second thought, though, we shouldn't use that rebel Wallace as an example, especially considering that he was fucking a Frenchie by the end of the movie. That she was forced into marriage with a faggot English prince doesn't doesn't excuse her from her heritage.

But back to the menu:

"This action today is a small, but symbolic effort to show the strong displeasure of many on Capitol Hill with the actions of our so-called ally, France," said Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, the chairman of the Committee on House Administration. Ney, whose committee has authority over the House cafeterias, directed the change, after colleague Walter Jones, R-North Carolina, circulated a letter suggesting such a move. Jones said he was following the example of a local restaurant owner in his North Carolina district.

These great congressman have also broken with the current administration and have chosen to base their policy decisions on the attitudes of their constituency. How refreshing to finally have leaders willing to stick their necks out, listen to We, The People, and do something about the Handbasket to Hell (with gravy!) that we're riding on these days. Bravo!

I propose we go one further and announce the Free the Fucking Frogs From the Faggoty French Foundation Front. We know that none of the denizens of that country really want to be French and would rather by FREE! and the FFFFFFFF aims to offer sematic support by eliminating the root and derivatives of that evil word from the languages of the world. The nation of France shall henceforth be called "Freedom Zone #1 of Western Europe with 2 Coasts, one on the Atlantic and one on the Mediterranean." In deference to the consonant F, we shall refer to the people of Freedom Zone #1 as Freedomites (although Freedominians is an acceptable local variant). This effort will undoubtedly liberate the Freedomites from the evil weight of being known as French and the lift of their collective self-esteem will give rise to World Peace and the eliminate of Weapons of Mass Destruction everywhere!

Solidarity, brothers!

In other news, I was elated to find that mall security in New York is doing its part to squelch opposition to the war in Iraq. Who the fuck do those assholes who wore "Peace on Earth" shirts think they are, wearing T-Shirts emblazoned with such liberal tripe in a public food court? And considering that these weren't just off-the-rack propaganda but were actually order made, I think that we ought to give these ignorant buttards a real opportunity to express their opinions by drawing and quartering them in a public arena. The food court would be as good a place as any, I imagine.

FREEDOM!

Bad Google!

We talked about why google might be bad in a different thread here, mostly just talking out of our asses as to why John Barlow was asked if Google was evil.

Not long after that, Google was nominated for a BigBrother award for all the evil shit it does. and then I found this article on Wired about using Google to help find vulnerable sites, specifically databases. The first link about the big brother awared nomination is much more interesting, but they are both worth reading.

Slashdot also has two stories (#1 and #2) about Google worth checking out. The first talks about some of the problems people have with google and the second is about some notes a guy posted from a talk by the Google founder that mentions that Google itself was an accident. It wasn't intended to be a search engine as much as an annotation of the internet.

Post your comments or discuss this in our forums

Psilocybe Fanaticus Busted!

[Nute Note: Due to an infestation of blog spam, I've had to shut off all comments. However, this thread in particular gets a lot of hits, so I've archived all comments thus far in my forum, which does allow for anonymous or registered comments. Please take a minute and post your thoughts there. There is also a followup post hereThanks for stopping by.

--Nute]

Chatting in ArsTechnica #macintosh channel today, we drifted from the subject of North Korean insanity into McDonald's food profit margins into food aversions. I mentioned my conviction that mushrooms are foul, to which irish replied that he only likes one kind of mushroom. This lead to a discussion of the merits, benefits, and all around wonderous nature of psilocybe mushrooms. It made me think of PFTek and I popped over to the Psilocybe Fanaticus website for a reminder of the ease of growing this truly magic mushroom.

When the website refused to load, I had a sense that Fanaticus had been devored by the recent federal smackdown on head shops and paraphernalia vendors.. Indeed, Google informed me that the worst had happened.

Irish mentioned that he found a report that mentioned there was a mushroom growing operation at the PF guy's house that he used to harvest the spores. The news reports mistaken reported that he was actually selling mushrooms, but he only sold legal spores in legal syringes in a mixture of legal water. The instructions for how to grow mushrooms using the spores made him guilty of something, I guess. Probably a terrahist. (Edit: I found the DOJ press release that explains in more detail here.)

I did kind of like the investigators' idea about selling ready made meth kits. Could call it Krank'it (Crank Kit, get it?) and make millions!

I link to another news story and provide its text in the rest of this entry.

Investigators: Magic mushrooms via the Web Note: This link may redirect you to a login/signup page, but on my browser the whole news story loaded, then redirected. If you stop the page loading at the right spot, you can probably view the story with pictures. I've reposted the story in its entirety here though.

02/19/2003
By CHRIS INGALLS / KING 5 Investigators

They're called "magic mushrooms" and they produce an illegal high. Tuesday, federal agents raided a local company that made tens of thousands of dollars a month selling them on the Internet.

The KING 5 Investigators have been looking into this company for weeks now. The company is known as Fanaticus and they sell syringes, filled with a solution with countless spores. With these and a little know-how, just about anyone can grow potent psychedelic mushrooms. KING 5 was there when drug agents brought in one of two men suspected of putting a high-tech twist on the sale of an old-time drug by operating Fanaticus, the Web site that sells the magic mushrooms via the Internet.

Agents say the men operated out of a home near Lake Quinault in the remote rain-forest country of the Olympic Peninsula ? the perfect climate for growing mushrooms. Authorities say they first heard about Fanaticus in phone calls coming in from across the country. The KING 5 Investigators obtained some syringes from Fanaticus. A close look shows the tiny black spores floating in a solution.

Prosecutors say the spores themselves are not illegal. They don't contain the hallucinogenic properties of a full-grown mushroom, but the Web site contains specific instructions on how to inject the spores into a jar and grow a potent magic mushroom.

"It's the equivalent of selling somebody the ingredients to make meth and telling them how to mix it up, and getting paid for it. You'd be guilty of conspiring to distribute methamphetamine," said Doug Whalley, federal prosecutor.

At $10 per syringe, it appears the suspects? worldwide sales were making them rich. At a court hearing Tuesday, suspected ringleader Robert McPherson admitted earning $30,000 per month and authorities say his only source of income comes from his thriving mail-order mushrooms.

DEA and the postal inspector?s office have been investigating Fanaticus for years. They actually planted some of these spores and grew mushrooms in a DEA lab to make sure the process works. And it did.

DMCA ownz yuo!

Wired reports that Lexmark has won its case against Static Control, a company that provides competition to the Lexmark's monopoly on ink cartridges for Lexmark printers. Lexmark built a specialized chip system into their printers that prevent the use of ink cartridges that don't have a certain chip built into them. Static Control figured out a way to make their own cartridges work and sold them as a low cost alternative to the price-gouging offerings from Lexmark.

Lexmark then sued under the auspices of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act which was passed to aid in stemming the illegal copying of copyrighted Intellectual Property, mostly music and video. One of the most controversial aspects of the DMCA is that it outlawed the circumvention of copyright controls such as encryption, even if the reason for the circumvention was to use the copyrighted material in legal ways. This has the effect of locking up material that can otherwise be legally used.

In this case, Lexmark claims that Static Control's discovery of how to integrate their ink cartridges with Lexmark printers violates this same rule. The most amazing thing is that Lexmark claims this is good for competition:

From the article linked above:

Vincent Cole, Lexmark's general counsel, said Thursday the company was pleased. "We believe that our printing solutions and services make us unique, and we intend to vigorously protect the intellectual property that helps to set us apart from our competition," he said in the statement.

Huh? What competitors do you have when you shut off their access to the market? Zero! Nada! Nai! Njet!

It is this kind of application of the DMCA that nicely illustrates how flawed it is. The idea behind copyright is to encourage innovation by protection granting a short-term monopoly to innovators for profit. DMCA was supposed to just help provide that incentive, but here we see it being applied to squash innovation and reduce marketplace competition. It hurts the job market (imagine if Static Control has to close up shop. More unemployed, yo).

Anyone interested in understanding more of how the DMCA is ruining the world should read this PDF from the Electronic Freedom Foundation.

More information that I'll never know about

A new report indicates that internet use is expected to double annually over the next 5 years. And this isn't just a widening net of grandma and grandpas getting their rocks off on email and yahoo games, but serious porn fiends and hardcore gamers. At least that is what I'm lead to believe by the prediction that broadband consumers will constitute 60% of the traffic on the net in 5 years (and the article thankfully points out that the other 40% would be business users. These folks are sharp. So sharp that they provide "a five-year forecast of global Internet traffic growth over the next five years". Don't cut yourself!)

To put this in perspective, they explain the amount of data transfers in terms of terabytes and petabits. They expect traffic to increase from 180 petabits per day in 2002 to 5,175 petabits per day by the end of 2007. Ignore the fancy word and focus on the increase from 180 to 5,175. Not a bad return if on an investment. Now realize that the fancy word is the alphabet version of 15 zeros. That's right, in 2002 the daily average traffic on the entire net was 180,000,000,000,000,000 bits, but that will increase to 5,175,000,000,000,000,000 bits in 5 years. Boo-yah!

But just as we got burned when we realized that a 56k modem is really only 7K (kilobits vs kilobytes with 8 bits to a byte), the numbers aren't quite that big. 180,000,000,000,000,000 bits is 22,500,000,000,000,000 bytes and 5,175,000,000,000,000,000 bits is 646,875,000,000,000,000 bytes. But who thinks in terms of bytes anymore than in bits?

By definition, a kilobyte is 1000 bytes (let's play metric, not binary calculation, mmkay?) so 22,500,000,000,000,000 bytes can be thought of 22,500,000,000,000 K, which would take you 321,4285,714,286 minutes (assuming a constant stream of theoretical peak speeds of 7K in your modem) or 53,571,428,571 hours or 2,232,142,857 days or 6,115,459 years to download. That's one day of traffic in 2002 and it takes your pathetic lose ass over 6 million years to download it. No wonder peeps want broadband!

Something odd I just noticed as I wrote up those numbers is that the string of 857 was in each of the minutes, hours, and days numbers. Oddly enough, (8-5) - (5-7) = 5 and the Law of Fives strikes again.

As much as I seek to enlighten your experience here, I will resist the desire to break down the bandwidth traffic predicted in 2007 and leave that as an exercise for those readers who really are interested in getting some hands on expertise in calculator button pushing.

To approach this from a different angle, we'll look at the 2002 daily number again where we left off: 22,500,000,000,000 K. This can be simplified by breaking down into Megabytes (22,500,000,000) or Gigabytes (22,500,000,000). I'd go into Terabytes, but then we'd back in the realm of fancy language which is what this whole exercise is supposed to dispel.

What this means is that if you had six million one hundred and fifteen thousand four hundred and fifty nine years available to download a days worth of traffic in 2002, you'd need twenty billion five hundred million Gigs of drive space to download it on to. To make it easy, we'll assume you have 100 GB drives in your server, which means you'd only need 225 million hard drives! Yay for small numbers!!!

I think I've taken this exercise way to far already and probably made a mistake in my calculations very early on that rendered my results meaningless. And as I wrap this up, I realize that I didn't even get to the point I was originally trying to make with the title, which is mainly with more and more stuff getting bandied about and assuming that more content gets added instead of the possiblity that the increased traffic is just due to more and more people downloading the same content from 2002, there will be even more information made available to me that I will not be able to read. Factor in the signal to noise ration (this blog is all about masking signals) and the probability that a majority of those sites will be written in Chinese, and it makes the nuggets of goodness that we eventually tumble across all the more to be cherished.