Saturday, July 30, 2011

USA Shed debt

U.S. debt vote highlights bitter divide


Now let me see if I understand the situation here.

Everyone and the dog bought up usa debt , and they're holding various treasury bonds that have a specific number of usa dollars on them. Say , 100$ bonds , as an example.

so , the USA decides it's spending too much money. More than it has. And it tries to cut back , but the two political houses fight and that doesn't happen, so they print more money.

And when they print more money , the value of the US dollar goes down.

so the 100$ treasurey bond you bought , is suddenly worth only 90% of what it was yesterday , even though it is still worth 100$ , those dollars are now smaller dollars so to speak.

And where did the 10% go ? The value that the bonds lost ?

Why , it's in the USA. The new money they printed has that 10%.

So , by printing more money , they have effectively "Shed" debt. Not payed it off, just dropped it in the trash like last weeks refuse.

And everyone in the world is holding those bonds , or at least their nations are.

so by printing more money, the USA has effectively reached into every bank account in the world and taken a little bit out, without bothering to ask anyone for permission. Because part of the value of *YOUR* currency is based on how many assets your nation has, and holding us debt is considered an asset. An asset that just shrank when the usa printed more money.

Welcome to world economics . Lesson 1: It's great to be the bench mark currency of the entire world.

Thursday, July 28, 2011

Lets Start A Crusade Against Idiots

Norway attacks boost political parties' membership


All of Norway's main parties say they have seen a jump in membership since Norwegian Anders Behring Breivik killed 76 people last Friday in a bombing and shooting attack he saw as a "crusade" against Islam and multiculturalism.


He got 76 people ? And most of them I'm willing to bet are white caucasians ,not muslims , and he's on an anti-islam crusade ? Way to go , bozo. Shooting your own people because you're mad at someone else. (he shot up the Labour party for it's Treason, so he wasn't aiming specifically at middle eastern immigrants he shot anyone in the compound on the assumption they belonged to the labour party)



For Tunisian-born Norwegian Izzeddine al-Saweih, 57, change will not come soon enough.

"There has to be a debate on the right principles, an open debate, and Muslims must take part," he shouted at an outdoor gathering of Labor Party politicians in Oslo Thursday.

"The media writes a lot negative things about us, big and small. They put us under suspicion, and now we don't know our identity, despite us belonging to this land and its laws. Why?"


Could it be because you are part of a religion that has people shouting from the highest rafters that they want to kill all Infidels everywhere in the whole world ? I believe their exact words are "First the Saturday people, then the Sunday" (Saturday people = Jews, Sunday people = Christians)


(from the Quaran )
Fight against them until idolatry is no more and Allah's religion reigns supreme. (different translation: ) Fight them until there is no persecution and the religion is God's entirely. - Sura 2:193 and 8:39

Fighting is obligatory for you, much as you dislike it. - 2:216
(different translation: ) Prescribed for you is fighting, though it is hateful to you.

..... martyrs.... Enter heaven - Surah 3:140-43


You seriously need to disassociate yourself from these people if you want to avoid getting painted as just like them. The Catholic Church didn't get far with "Silent Consent" either.

You know what ? We need to start a crusade against idiots. Anders Behring Breivik is an obvious candidate , shooting up his own people because he disagrees with their policies. Hello ? Democracy ? Anyone ever hear about that thing ? People are allowed to hold different opinions than you , it's not supposed to be a death penalty.

As for Izzeddine al-Saweih, sorry buddy , but your religion openly has verses in it's holy book stating you got to go to war with the non believers whether you like it or not , and you're openly saying you believe in this religion. You're an idiot for thinking there are no consequences for that action.

And to all the other anti-muslim crazies out there , I have news for you. Not everyone in the world is a fanatic. If you read even the christian bible you'll see some rather outrages stuff (stoning people for working on the sabbath comes to mind ... so the cops can't stop a mugging on sundays? Sundays are a muggers delight ? I don't think so !)

Most people just want to get along with their lives with out any unnecessary drama , and they sign up for a religion just to avoid trouble , not because they actually believe. The world census states that there are several billion Muslims in this world, but really ? Are there ? How many signed up because someone held a gun to their head, or told them only Muslims are allowed to work at this job , or denied them services or payment until they converted ?

I think you're going to find that population wise, the number of true believing muslims is as few as the number of true believing christians.

And that means no going on a shooting spree. You want to beat this Islam threat thing, democracy and fair treatment of the population is the way to go. And thats what democracies are good for. And thats why Idiots like Izzeddine al-Saweih , despite his religious beliefs, should be treated fairly. Because odds are he's not interested in shooting anyone , he's just trying to hold down a job and feed his family. And such people are a benifit to most any society.

Cloud Computing

Microsoft: Cloud need only be open surface, not open source


Microsoft is more open — at least on the surface — and that’s all that matters in the cloud era, one company exec maintains.
At Oscon 2011, Gianugo Rabellino, Senior Director for Open Source Communities at Microsoft, said as long as the APIs, protocols and standards for the cloud are open, that is, open surface, customers don’t care about the underlying platform.


Being a huge computer nerd, and former computer programmer before all the programming jobs left town for china or other dollar a day countries, I have my opinions on Cloud Computing.

It's worthless.

Where to begin. What is Cloud Computing ?

Cloud Computing is a marketing term to take a very old idea , shine it up , and make it new and exciting. The idea itself is that all your data and computation goes on in some unspecified server on the other side of the world so you don't have to have big computers on site.

The problems are two fold.

First, you're no longer in charge of your data. It's now under the laws of some foriegn country that has a vested interest in letting it's home countries violate your privacy on a regular basis (Yes, I'm talking about the united states).

Second, computers are dirt cheap. So is storage space.

At christmas this past year I went and I bought a two tera byte (thats two THOUSAND gigabytes) drive that just plugs into my usb port on my computer. No special drivers or anything it just looks like a really REALLY big usb memory stick. It was about 120$ . Brand new.

I have a new lap top. Nothing special , it was 600$ brand new.

These prices may cause problems for a private individual , but we're talking shoe string budget for a start up business. A lap top and a back up drive and a desk in your basement and you're on your way here , no cloud computing required.


What exactly are you saving on , precisely , anyways ? Where's the benifit for you for going cloud ?

You can get free copies of office products ? Ever hear of open source ? They give away a copy of "Open Office" free these days. Word processer, spread sheet , the works. You wanna pay microsoft huge sums of money or you want the same thing for free ?

At most you'll need one computer with microsoft office on it for translation purposes for those die hard customers that demand you have everything they have (I've been on that treadmill before ...they upgrade, they scream at you for incompetence because you didn't upgrade ... then you wind up spending a fortune upgrading to get something that does no more than what you already had ... all so you can read stupid internal memo's ...bleh !)

Tech support ! They do your tech support for you !

Not these days. Every worker in your office still needs a desk and a computer , right ? You still got a lot of computers on site and they aint doing tech support for that. You're still hireing techies out of college or university or whatever to keep the place running. Exact numbers vary depending on whether people are just running word processers or doing something strange and weird on their computers. (I saw one place where there was one desk with a dozen computers and monitors, and one guy running the show ... lot of tech support needed for that one station ... lot of tech support)

Cloud computer is the old client server architecture and it died long ago for a very good reason. The price of computers dropped through the floor. It died, and it should stay dead.

Saturday, July 16, 2011

Understanding the Honesty and Integridy of the Police Organizations

Stain From Tabloids Rubs Off on a Cozy Scotland Yard


LONDON — For nearly four years they lay piled in a Scotland Yard evidence room, six overstuffed plastic bags gathering dust and little else.


Yeah , it's too much effort to actually look at evidence.

Inside was a treasure-trove of evidence: 11,000 pages of handwritten notes listing nearly 4,000 celebrities, politicians, sports stars, police officials and crime victims whose phones may have been hacked by The News of the World, a now defunct British tabloid newspaper.


Defunct this very week , as the owner shut it down and tried to run and hide in an act of damage control.


During that same time, senior Scotland Yard officials assured Parliament, judges, lawyers, potential hacking victims, the news media and the public that there was no evidence of widespread hacking by the tabloid. They steadfastly maintained that their original inquiry, which led to the conviction of one reporter and one private investigator, had put an end to what they called an isolated incident.


"They steadfastly maintained..." has anyone ever dealt with the military ? Ever spent a summer in the militia ? One of the things the officers learn is leadership , which means speaking confidently to lead your troops and inspire them. Civilians , by the way , call this "lying through your teeth" .

It has been my experience most police organizations are built on military grounds. The problem is , unlike the military , when you lie to a private you can tell him to shut his mouth or he'll be horribly punished. When you lie to a civilian ... he generally makes a big stink about it.

These police have the wrong training , plain and simple. They're an organization tasked with finding the truth , and trained to lie.


After the past week, that assertion has been reduced to tatters, torn apart by a spectacular avalanche of contradictory evidence, admissions by News International executives that hacking was more widespread, and a reversal by police officials who now admit to mishandling the case.

Yep. Thats what generally happens.

why is this relevant ? Because police officers receive more or less the same training all across western society. And certain jail block video cams in ottawa , along with a dead polish guy at the vancouver air port , are giving impressive proof that it seems to be the same problem everywhere.


Assistant Commissioner John Yates of the Metropolitan Police Service publicly acknowledged that he had not actually gone through the evidence. “I’m not going to go down and look at bin bags,” Mr. Yates said, using the British term for trash bags.


After saying you were doing every thing possible you are now desgusted at the suggestion that you might have to do your job and go through some evidence, likening the process to rooting through the trash.

If you don't want to do your job , why are you still employed at it ?


At best, former Scotland Yard senior officers acknowledged in interviews, the police have been lazy, incompetent and too cozy with the people they should have regarded as suspects. At worst, they said, some officers might be guilty of crimes themselves.

“It’s embarrassing, and it’s tragic,” said a retired Scotland Yard veteran. “This has badly damaged the reputation of a really good investigative organization. And there is a major crisis now in the leadership of the Yard.”


There we go with that "leadership" term again. He means military leader ship , which civilians call "lying through your teeth". And he's suggesting that they return to their roots and show more leadership.

ha ha ha. It's so funny it's sad.


The testimony and evidence that emerged last week, as well as interviews with current and former officials, indicate that the police agency and News International, the British subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation and the publisher of The News of the World, became so intertwined that they wound up sharing the goal of containing the investigation.


The police got cooped by the business men. Who weild substantial political power in the form of donations made to politicians. And the politico's , of course, yank the polices chains and get them to cooperate ... fascinating how the political angle of all of this gets ignored. Or are the British Bobbies that easy to bribe ?

Scotland Yard’s new inquiry, dubbed Operation Weeting, has led to the arrests of a total of nine reporters and editors, with more expected. And the police have opened another inquiry into allegations that some officers were paid for confidential information by reporters at The News of the World and elsewhere.


Apparently they are. I'm impressed by the display of "Leadership" these people are displaying.


The Metropolitan Police itself is now the subject of a judicial inquiry into what went wrong with their initial case, as well as into the ties between the department’s top officers and executives and reporters for News International.


I'll tell you what went wrong. They were trained to be soldiers , who routinely lie to their troops , tasked with the job of finding truth , and then set loose among a civilian population where getting caught lying isn't something you can bury with a few threats.

Wrong training. Wrong structure. Wrong organization.


It was not until last autumn that the police were forced to confront their own mistakes. By then, they were facing an escalating stream of requests by people who suspected that their phones might have been hacked. Two dozen people had also brought civil cases against News International, and that compelled the police to release information from Mr. Mulcaire’s files.


And this is the crux of the matter. Only when they couldn't hide it any more, only when it became blindingly obvious that their lies were no longer being believed, did the police decide to come clean.

Make no mistake about this. They don't believe they did anything wrong , leadership wise. They fully beleive that lying their behinds off is part of their job, and they are completely ruthless about it. And they have no intention of stopping.

The western nations have deliberately trained up and created a set of organizations that are trained to lie , and trained to fight, and then set them loose among the civilians they are supposed to protect.

This is the nature of all police forces, and indeed any organization with military training , any organization that uses the word "leadership" in a military fashion.

And when you understand this , then you will understand the Honesty and Integrity of all police organizations.

In the same fashion as a polish imigrant in the vancouver airport did.

In the same fashion as a woman in ottawa who was falsely accused of public drunkenness (they never found the bottle) thrown in the cell block , and then sexually assaulted in front of the cameras. Not by a single rogue officer, but by a gang of them that honestly believed it was their right to do this , they don't believe they did anything wrong.

This is their Honor, and their legacy.

Obama, lawmakers press ahead for elusive debt deal

article


(Reuters) - President Barack Obama and congressional leaders pressed ahead with private talks on deficit reduction on Saturday, seeking an as-yet-elusive way to lift the debt ceiling and avoid a U.S. default next month.


Ah , good old America, my most favorite country that I've never set foot in. Only in America do you elect a leader , and then black mail him with bankrupting the country so that he has to do what the opposition wants.

I'm sorry , was it Obama who got elected ? , or the republics that want to cut social spending but the people of privilege lose nothing ?

Anyways, ignoring the internal politics, it is obvious the Americans will not be able to get a hold of their current ballooning economic crisis , and they will in a little while be de-listed as the bench mark currency that the world pegs it's other currencies against.

Time to batten down the hatches and start investing in things people have to have no matter what. Shoes, grocery stores, people always have to eat , right ? Even in hard times ? Yeah. Time to attach yourself to some industry that isn't going to sink.