ROM-DOS

OK, can someone better explain this one to me? [sometimes my brain just doesn't want to comprihend things way outside the box] "The pay-as-you-go computing model enabled by Microsoft's FlexGo technology allows customers to have a fully featured PC at home by paying only for the time as they use it through the purchase of prepaid activation cards or tokens." "AMD intends to develop processors designed specifically to support Microsoft FlexGo technology." "Along with the new pay-as-you-go model, Microsoft has also been working with major telecommunication companies around the globe on subscription computing offerings that provide convenient and predictable monthly payments for a full-featured PC with broadband access and genuine software. With the availability of Microsoft FlexGo technology, it will be possible to expand the potential of the subscription model by enabling telecommunications providers to better secure the PC asset from default and offer this option to a broader range of customers." "Telecommunications partners around the world have worked with Microsoft for more than a year conducting successful commercial offerings under this business model." . . .is this the same tactic used by the "lease-to-own" car dealers ~ for people who can't really afford them? or some Rent-a-Center M$ scam? http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/flexgo/default.mspx

Americans don't have the right to use software such as Skype if it doesn't support mandatory backdoors for wiretapping. http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-05-151A1.pdf The Federal Communications Commission thinks you have the right to use software on your computer only if the FBI approves. According to the three-page document, to preserve the openness that characterizes today's Internet, "consumers are entitled to run applications and use services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement." Read the last seven words again. Nowhere does the commission say how it jibes this official pronouncement with, say, the First Amendment's right to speak freely, not to mention the limited powers granted the federal government by the U.S. Constitution. What's also worth noting is that the FCC's pronunciamento almost tracks the language of the 1996 Telecommunications Act. Almost. But where federal law states that it is the policy of the United States to preserve a free market for Internet services "unfettered by federal or state regulation," the bureaucrats have adroitly interpreted that to mean precisely the opposite of Congress said. Ain't that clever?

. . .have you noticed the size of your drive a lot smaller? Read this ~ Vigilante Trojan on the loose I would definately get an Anti-Virus up and running! Avast! 4 Home Edition ~ is a FREE full-featured antivirus package, outstanding detection abilities ensures that no virus will be started on your computer - 7 On-Access Scanners http://www.avast.com/eng/avast_4_home.html AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition ~ offers Resident Shield, E-mail and On-Demand Scanners. Free Virus Database Updates for the lifetime of the product http://free.grisoft.com/doc/2/lng/us/tpl/v5 Spybot - Search & Destroy ~ free - spyware killer/remover - catches what Ad-aware misses http://www.safer-networking.org/index.php?page=download Ad-aware ~ free - spyware killer/remover - catches what spybot misses http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/ SpywareBlaster ~ doesn't scan for and clean spyware - it prevents it from being installed in the first place http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html

If you use Yahoo Instant Messenger or any other IM program, be wary of links you click on. A new worm has started spreading via these IM programs, which changes your background, starts looping some aparently awful music in the background quite loudly, installs it "Safety Browser" ironic or what, changes your homepage, starts sending out the link to go and get yourself infected when your chatting and looking at someone's yahoo profile, and sends you to adverts sites which riddle your computer with all sorts of nasties. Check out; http://blog.spywareguide.com/2006/05/hijacking_your_browser_withano_1.html

. . .just found this site; Airliners.net It's the biggest and most visited aviation interest site on the Internet, logging over 3,000,000 page-views from 200,000 distinct users every day. . . .Great Pics!!

Mashing Up Maps of the Heavens "Taking the information contained in individual sighting reports from the National UFO Reporting Center (yes, it does exist) points are plotted on the Google map interface. Cute little spaceship cartoons tell you where the latest one has been spotted

It's not just phone companies grappling with reported potentially privacy-intruding requests from the NSA and other branches of government: Banks, Internet-service providers and other companies that possess large amounts of data on their customers say that police and intelligence agencies have been increasingly coming to them looking for tidbits of information that could help them stop everything from money launderers to pedophiles and terrorists. The Wall Street Journal reports. From the article: 'According to AOL executives, the most common requests in criminal cases relate to crimes against children, including abuse, abductions, and child pornography. Close behind are cases dealing with identity theft and other computer crimes. Sometimes the police requests are highly targeted and scrupulously legalistic, while other times they were seen by the company as little more than sloppy fishing expeditions. AOL says that most requests get turned down. Requests for Corporate Data Multiply "The Justice Department last month reported that the FBI last year issued 9,200 administrative subpoenas known as National Security Letters, seeking information on 3,501 U.S. citizens and legal residents from their banks, credit card, telephone and Internet companies without a court's approval. The records are supposed to be about people in terrorism and espionage investigations, but the FBI is not required to show how they are connected to any terrorism case." ". . .corporate lawyers often spend their energies negotiating with the government to limit the scope of their demands rather than to refuse them outright. "Companies want to be cooperative, but also have to protect their interests and their clients, and the best way to do that is determine upfront, right away about what the government is going to get and when," she said. "Often the government agrees because it doesn't want to go public with a fight." "Fights are sometimes inevitable. Last year, the Justice Department demanded that AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft MSN and Google hand over customer search records in a bid to prove that filtering software doesn't screen kids from online porn. Google refused, saying that the government was abusing its subpoena power by seeking information that had nothing to do with criminal prosecution. A judge ultimately ruled that Google need turn over only 50,000 Web addresses, not the one million originally subpoenaed." "But even when companies can push back they are not always willing to do so. Because they are so heavily regulated, phone companies have a long history of contact with the federal government. And the government has long been one of the telecom companies' biggest customers offering multimillion contracts for services. One key federal technology-service contract called "Networx" worth roughly $20 billion is up for grabs now. It's likely it will parceled out to several telecom companies over the next year or so." Copyright

. . .one more take; IPv6 stands for Internet Protocol version 6. It is the second version of the Internet Protocol to be used generally across the virtual world. The first version was IPv4. IPv5 was a protocol of a different sort, intended to support video and audio rather than all-purpose addressing. IPv6 is also known as IPng, which stands for IP Next Generation. Internet protocol employs a series of hosts that collaborate to transmit data via the Internet. Devices connected to a network, whether a local area network (LAN) or the Internet itself, receive Internet protocol numbers

check out; http://www.answers.com/topic/directx and http://www.microsoft.com/windows/directx/default.mspx

x_6985381 ~ did you just replace any hardware in your PC? make sure everything is seated right and all your connectors are secure. Try shorting or resetting the CMOS before flashing your BIOS, first. Does it boot to Windows at all?

Well, there is a 'free' program called Vaestro. Support Center get inside the Vaestro site and look for Audio FAQ (lower right) click on What is Vaestro?

MIT Plans To Convert Cell Phone Users Into Podcasters A new research project at MIT's Media Lab, entitled RadioActive, aims to turn every cell phone or PDA carrying member of the public into a podcaster, and every mobile device into a virtual podcasting studio. The project defines a large-scale asynchronous audio messaging system in which voice messages can be threaded like text in a discussion forum as a method of 'discussion-on-demand. "The first reportedly working prototype was built on a Motorola A1000 cell phone, and is currently being tested in Spain as part of the Electronic Lens project. A live demo of the new project, which has been dubbed "RadioActive," should be available soon."

The article misses an important point, I think. It speaks about the full spectrum of US involvement in Iraq as if it were all one affair. The invasion was successful in that American forces rapidly toppled the Iraqi government and defeated those Iraqi forces that presented resistence. That was a purely military operation, and the American technology that was designed for high-intensity conflict worked quite well. However, at the conclusion of the invasion, American forces had to switch to peacemaking activity. American units in Iraq are part of a larger civil-military effort, and regardless of whether you feel the effort will succeed in the long run or not, it clearly hasn't succeeded yet. The invasion lasted 21 days. The peacemaking effort has lasted three years. According to the Army's own manual on low-intensity conflict [globalsecurity.org], peacemaking operations run into trouble if they last too long: Low-intensity insurgency/counterinsurgency operations have always been markedly different than all-out war. Technology is not the force multiplier that it is in high-intensity operations. The most important factors in the success of counterinsurgency operations are political. Troops on the ground are constantly engaged in diplomacy, as the article demonstrated. But soldiers and marines do not conduct their negotiations in a vacuum. If the larger political context is not positive, soldiers confronting insurgents are fighting an uphill battle. In Iraq, the locals know the physical environment. They know the cultural environment intimately. They know the individuals and organizations that influence a particular area. Regardless of sectarian schisms, they share a common religion. Technology gives occupiers no advantage in dealing with these advantages enjoyed by insurgents. Getting involved with the locals and making them feel comfortable often requires taking some risks in order to demonstrate good intentions. The American approach, which emphasizes technology and force protection above all else, may actually hinder the development of trust between locals and American forces. The larger issue is that while Saddam placed his trust in generals who only gave him news he wanted to hear, ~ our Secretary of Defense seemed to feel that American warfighting technology would win the war and somehow obviate the need for occupation of Iraq. As we have found out, the miscalculation was enormous.

There are some pretty interesting posts in the SAVE LIVES IN MAY FORUM http://www.savelivesinmayforum.com/FindPost922.aspx ". . .recently there has been a lot of federally funded construction going on in North Dakota. ND has 0 population growth, 650,000 people, yet they are building stores, huge parking lots, housing, wind farms, ethanol plants, identification chip manufacturing plants etc.. Most of the busineses are hardware stores, mega grocery stores, and electronics. We have such a small population here that it took them months to open the stores due to lack of employees. WHY would the federal government fund these projects unless they KNEW the population of this state would suddenly increase exponentially?" "In this instance, I have had contact with ..beings... that told me North dakota would become a refugee state largely dependent on wind energy."

I'm just suprised that DX10 isn't required! "At one point, DX10 was believed to be a requirement for the Aero interface; both the Advisor, as well as Microsoft's statement this afternoon, confirm that DX10 will not be a requirement for Aero." http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/05/18/microsoft_tweaks_vista_compliance_language/

U.S. forces in Iraq are waging a pivotal campaign in modern warfare

HOUSTON, May 19 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Eric Julien, former military air traffic controller, twin engine jet pilot and former instructor at astronaut Patrick Baudry's Space Camp -- Discovery Shuttle flight -- Confirms His Prediction of a Giant Tsunami in the Atlantic on Upcoming May 25 . . .looks like Eric Julien has a new web site http://www.savelivesinmay.com/ and a forum, now

yeah, I like that F-18 Hyper-Dimensional effect!! . . .imagine a swarm of them coming down on the Talibany wannabe's in Iran!

. . .would have been cool to have one of those 'test-dummies' in a life boat as the f-14 did it's flyby ~ lol

Symantec sues Microsoft over trade secrets By Benjamin J. Romano ~ Seattle Times technology reporter Symantec filed a lawsuit in Seattle today alleging Microsoft committed a host of business misdeeds, including misappropriating trade secrets and violating a contract that covered code used in part of the coming Windows Vista operating system. The suit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, relates to a contract between Microsoft and Veritas, which merged into Symantec last year, dating to 1996. Symantec alleges that "Microsoft has deliberately and surreptitiously misappropriated Symantec's valuable data-storage technologies, misled and thereby convinced the United States government to issue patents to Microsoft based on technologies invented by Symantec, attempted unsuccessfully to persuade Symantec to forgive Microsoft' s misdeeds under the guise of expanding a business relationship, and ultimately built portions of its next generation operating system on this house of cards." Microsoft said in a statement that the suit "stems from a very narrow disagreement" over terms of a contract with Veritas to license volume management technology, which allows operating systems to handle large amounts of data. "We worked hard to try to resolve these issues with Symantec, but were not able to reach an agreement. We believe the facts will show that Microsoft's actions were proper and are fully consistent with the contract between Veritas and Microsoft," Microsoft said. "These claims are unfounded because Microsoft actually purchased intellectual property rights for all relevant technologies from Veritas in 2004," the company said. Copyright

The biggest hacking incident in the web-hosting history Yesterday the Turkish cracker going by the handle "Iskorpitx", succesfully hacked 21,549 websites in one shot (plus 17,000 as our last update) and defaced (on a secondary page) all of them with a message showing the Turkish flag (with AtaTurk face on it) and reporting: "HACKED BY iSKORPiTX F*CKED ARMANIAN-F*CKED FRANCE-F*CKED GREECE-F*CKED PKK TERROR iscorpitx, marque du monde, pr

I even switched drives to see it there was a diff. ~ notta! THIS SUX! :::.. Download Stats ..::: Connection is:: 2861 Kbps about 2.86 Mbps (tested with 1075 kB) Download Speed is:: 349 kB/s Tested From:: http://s1runsit.com Test Time:: 2006/05/19 - 6:19am Bottom Line:: 50X faster than 56K 1MB Download in 2.93 sec Tested from a 1075 kB file and took 3.078 seconds to complete Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; Avant Browser; Avant Browser) Diagnosis: Looks Great : 11.06 % faster than the average for host (qwest.net) Validation Link:: https://testmy.net/stats/id-3MZSIUE4Y STILL SUX! :::.. Download Stats ..::: Connection is:: 3723 Kbps about 3.72 Mbps (tested with 5248 kB) Download Speed is:: 454 kB/s Tested From:: http://s1runsit.com Test Time:: 2006/05/19 - 6:21am Bottom Line:: 65X faster than 56K 1MB Download in 2.26 sec Tested from a 5248 kB file and took 11.547 seconds to complete Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; Avant Browser; Avant Browser) Diagnosis: Awesome! 20% + : 44.53 % faster than the average for host (qwest.net) Validation Link:: https://testmy.net/stats/id-ZQU27N941 WTF. . .? :::.. Download Stats ..::: Connection is:: 4121 Kbps about 4.12 Mbps (tested with 20972 kB) Download Speed is:: 503 kB/s Tested From:: http://s1runsit.com Test Time:: 2006/05/19 - 6:22am Bottom Line:: 72X faster than 56K 1MB Download in 2.04 sec Tested from a 20972 kB file and took 41.687 seconds to complete Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; Avant Browser; Avant Browser) Diagnosis: Awesome! 20% + : 59.98 % faster than the average for host (qwest.net) Validation Link:: https://testmy.net/stats/id-587IKM1HG ______________________________________________________________________ as compared to TMN server 1 test [this is even lower than the 6+ Mbps I usually get!] :::.. Download Stats ..::: Connection is:: 5437 Kbps about 5.44 Mbps (tested with 5983 kB) Download Speed is:: 664 kB/s Tested From:: https://testmy.net (Server 1) Test Time:: 2006/05/19 - 6:26am Bottom Line:: 95X faster than 56K 1MB Download in 1.54 sec Tested from a 5983 kB file and took 9.015 seconds to complete Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; Avant Browser; Avant Browser) Diagnosis: Awesome! 20% + : 111.06 % faster than the average for host (qwest.net) Validation Link:: https://testmy.net/stats/id-DIZANFTM4 What's going on?

Mip! Mip! Mip!

<img src="http://imagehouze.com/uploader/files/126/250px-FA-18_Hornet_breaking_sound_barrier_%25287_July_1999%2529.jpg" alt="250px-FA-18_Hornet_breaking_sound_barrier_%287_July_1999%29.jpg" /> Transonic Hyper-Dimensional jumps ~ cool

we prefer 'Coneheads'!! ~ lol