Journal: Internet Archive in Sun Portable Data Center

03 Economy, 04 Education, Collective Intelligence, IO Sense-Making, Methods & Process
Full Story Online

Data Storage: Internet Archive Gets a Place in the Sun (Portable Data Center)

By Chris Preimesberger on 2009-03-26 eWeek.com

The Internet Archive, one of the fastest-growing digital libraries in the world, has migrated its massive amount of content into a new Sun Microsystems-built portable data center loaded with 60 Sun X4500 Thumper arrays that each have 48TB of storage capacity. Sun staged a launch event at its Santa Clara, Calif., headquarters on March 25.

“It's amazing to think that the whole Web collection, which is about 2PB compressed and from 4PB to 5PB uncompressed, can live in a 20-foot-by-8-foot-by-8-foot shipping container, which, from our standpoint, is a computer,” Brewster Kahle, digital librarian and founder of the Internet Archive, told eWEEK.

The archive, which employs the equivalent of only three system administrators, goes back to 1996 and stores more than 150 billion Web pages, Kahle said. It is accessed 500 times per second. Archive.org also houses the Wayback Machine, 1 million books, 100,000 movies and about 200,000 audio recordings, Kahle said. “It is a full-on library. This technology we see as another step toward a manageable system for dealing with enormous amounts of information safely.”

Phi Beta Iota: Don't miss the eight-shot slide show above.  Brewster spoke at OSS '92–we have wasted the past twenty years, he has not.  Now imagine this combined with the C Drives of participating members of the Global Game, and all the insurance data, and true cost information overlain on all credit purchases…..

Journal: Consortium Seeking Multilingual Web Standards

Collective Intelligence, Commercial Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Earth Intelligence, Standards

Full Story Online

Multilingual Web should be a priority for India: W3C chief

Six months into his new job, Jeffrey Jaffe, Chief Executive Officer of the World Wide Web Consortium has his work cut out

The World Wide Web Consortium or W3C, as it is better known, is where the industry meets to set standards for the Web. And Jeffery Jaffe – an IT industry veteran who held prominent positions at Bell Labs (Lucent Technologies), IBM, and more recently at Novell – as its CEO not only oversees the W3C's largest project in progress ( HTML5 standards group) but is also trying to ensure that the Consortium sharpens its focus on multilingual web standards for countries like India.

Tip of the Hat to Marjorie M K Hlava at LinkedIn.

Continue reading “Journal: Consortium Seeking Multilingual Web Standards”

Journal: Theater, Circus, or Politics?

09 Justice, 11 Society, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence

Full Story Online

Tea Partiers Bring Cause to Washington

KATE ZERNIKE September 12, 2010

Republicans in Tea Party Costumes

A crowd gathered around as a man dressed as George Washington read a passage from the Bible during the Tea Party Tax Payer March on Washington on Sunday.

. . . . . . .

“I believe we’ve got the Republican Party’s attention — we’ve been beating the establishment all over the country,” said Dick Armey, the former Republican House majority leader and the chairman of FreedomWorks, to a burst of cheering. “It’s time we give the same lesson to the other party.”

Mr. Pence taunted the Democratic leadership: “A recession is when you your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose your job. A recovery is when Nancy Pelosi loses her job.”

Phi Beta Iota: The Tea Party appears to have been captured by the Republicans.  This is one of the reasons we are taking an interest in the Coffee Party, which appears to be genuinely committed to non-partisan deliberative dialog and fact-based consensus.  We are still dismayed that Ralph Nader, Jackie Salit, Cynthia McKinney, Ron Paul, and Bob Barr, among others, cannot come together to lead a demand for Electoral Reform in two phases, half in 2010, half in 2012.  That would appear to be the single issue where most can agree, and the single reform that would restore the connection between the public, public revenue, and public spending.

Y Combinator Hacker News Community’s Model for Info-Sharing & Potential for Collective Intelligence

03 Economy, 04 Education, 11 Society, Academia, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Commerce, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Hacking, Law Enforcement, Media, Military, Mobile, Non-Governmental, Peace Intelligence, Technologies

Hacker News” has a welcome page and guidelines page offering an overview of what the organizers expect from those planning on posting comments and why it's good overall for the community.  I (Jason Liszkiewicz) was impressed with this. Hacker News has a solid number of participants and provides a simple and mature format for exploring and contributing thoughtful feedback, insight and resources.

It has a jobs link (mainly for engineers and programmers) and the “Ask Hacker News” link which enables the community to share information and reply to what is shared. Such a model (deemed an “experiment”) that provides mature and thoughtful information-sharing is something we need more of. Communities inter-linking with communities (or at least over-lapping) to spill over each others insights can be invaluable and potentially priceless.

Example: Ask HN: What do you perceive as worth spending money on?

This simple and useful model is something I hoped would emerge + converge from the SMS/text messaging developers at ChaCha.com (humans online responding to text messaged questions) or somewhere else. Converging multi-community info-sharing online, offline, and through the mobile world on a global scale is an exciting possibility.

The next level to all of this exists in the form of ideas or fragmented applications but it seems not beyond that, yet.

Email earthintelnet|at|gmail.com or post something at this new forum to discuss these ideas. Or, provide some mature and thoughtful feedback at the Hacker News community.

Sick Systems on a Micro to Macro Level; Not All Vampires Suck Blood; Psychopaths Among Us

04 Education, 07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, Academia, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Law Enforcement, Media

The following pieces are from June 2010 and 2001. They were found separately within the same day and provide inter-connected insights. Link to the full version..below is an extremely shortened version:

PSYCHOPATHS AMONG US

Dr. Robert Hare claims there are 300,000 psychopaths in Canada, but that only a tiny fraction are violent offenders like Paul Bernardo and Clifford Olsen. Who are the rest? Take a look around.
By Robert Hercz (2001)

(three highlights from the article)

+ Hare has said that if he couldn't study psychopaths in prisons, the Vancouver Stock Exchange would have been his second choice (Forbes magazine called the Vancouver Stock Exchange the scam capital of the world). This brings a whole other meaning to “psycho-geography.”

+ Soon after he delivered a keynote speech at a conference for homicide detectives and prosecuting attorneys in Seattle three years ago, Hare got a letter thanking him for helping solve a series of homicides. The police had a suspect nailed for a couple of murders, but believed he was responsible for others. They were using the usual strategy to get a confession, telling him, ‘Think how much better you'll feel, think of the families left behind,' and so on. After they'd heard Hare speak they realized they were dealing with a psychopath, someone who could feel neither guilt nor sorrow. They changed their interrogation tactic to, “So you murdered a couple of prostitutes. That's minor-league compared to Bundy or Gacy.” The appeal to the psychopath's grandiosity worked. He didn't just confess to his other crimes, he bragged about them.

+ Know your own weaknesses, they advise, because the psychopath will find and use them. Learn to recognize the psychopath, they tell us, before adding that even experts are regularly taken in.

How to keep someone with you forever (common enslavement tactics)

Jun. 9th, 2010

Rule 1: Keep them too busy to think. Thinking is dangerous. If people can stop and think about their situation logically, they might realize how crazy things are.

Rule 2: Keep them tired. Exhaustion is the perfect defense against any good thinking that might slip through. Fixing the system requires change, and change requires effort, and effort requires energy that just isn't there. No energy, and your lover's dangerous epiphany is converted into nothing but a couple of boring fights.

Continue reading “Sick Systems on a Micro to Macro Level; Not All Vampires Suck Blood; Psychopaths Among Us”

Journal: CIA Links to NYC Mosque Controversy

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Corruption, Government, Military, Officers Call

Untangling the Bizarre CIA Links to the Ground Zero Mosque

By Mark Ames

September 10, 2010 | 2:36 p.m

EXTRACT 1: Leslie Deak's resume also notes his role as “business consultant” for Patriot Defense Group, LLC, a private defense contractor with offices in Winter Park, Florida, and in Tucson. The only names listed on the firm's website are those of its three “strategic advisers.” These include retired four-star General Bryan “Doug” Brown, commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command until 2007, where he headed “all special operations forces, both active duty and reserve, leading the Global War On Terrorism,” and James Pavitt, former deputy director for operations at the Central Intelligence Agency, where he “managed the CIA's globally deployed personnel and nearly half of its multi-billion dollar budget” and “served as head of America's Clandestine Service, the CIA's operational response to the attacks of September 11, 2001.”

. . . . . . .

EXTRACT 2:  So, to recap: From 2006 to 2008, R. Leslie Deak worked as a “business consultant” to this super-secretive security contractor with ties to the CIA and counterterrorism forces, and in those same three years he also donated nearly $100,000 in seed money to the foundation now advocating the construction of the so-called Ground Zero Mosque.

. . . . . . .

EXTRACT 3:  Goldline is to Glenn Beck what General Electric was to Ronald Reagan: The company sponsors Beck's TV and radio shows as well as his touring act, and Beck is its public face. The Los Angeles County District Attorney's office, along with the Santa Monica City Attorney's office, are currently investigating Goldline for defrauding customers by railroading gullible customers into buying their most debased products.

Speaking of Glenn Beck, it has been reported that Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, the second-largest shareholder in News Corp., the parent company Fox News, which airs Beck's program, is also a major funder of Imam Rauf's projects, as Jon Stewart viewers heard all about last week.

. . . . . . .

EXTRACT 4: But add to this array of unexpected connections the work of Imam Rauf on behalf of the U.S. government—which includes serving as an FBI “consultant” and being recruited as a spokesperson by longtime George W. Bush confidante Karen Hughes, who headed up the administration's propaganda efforts in the Muslim world—and a compelling picture begins to emerge. Bush's favorite Imam, with backing from a funder with connections to the CIA, the Pentagon and the currency trading company that now sponsors rightwing firebrand Glenn Beck, proposes to build a mosque around the corner from the site of the most devastating terrorist attack ever visited on America. In the name of “[cultivating] understanding among all religions and cultures,” he puts forth a project that offends a majority of Americans and deals a significant setback to the broader acceptance of Muslim-Americans. It's a little like Billy “White Shoes” Johnson claiming the only reason he moonwalks after scoring a touchdown is to lower tensions on the football field and raise the other team's spirits.

Prison Planet Alternate View of Entire Piece

Tip of the Hat to Niels Groeneveld at LinkedIn.

Phi Beta Iota: It would appear that as the public is becoming more informed and more outraged, the military-intelligence complex on behalf of its global banking sponsors is becoming more brazen.  As it has with the Martin Luther King and JFK assassinations, the Tonkin Gulf and Iraq lies, and most recently with the 9-11 cover-up, the truth cannot be held back.  It has a way of reconnecting that is profoundly moving.

Journal: Who, Exactly, is Behind Burning Koran?

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Secrets, Media
TIME? or CIA?

Viewpoint

Christianophobia: The Lesson of Terry Jones

by Tim Padgett,  Friday, September 10, 2011

Christian Dupe

Pastor Terry Jones, right, of the Dove World Outreach Center speaks to the media in Gainesville, Fla., as Imam Muhammad Musri of the Islamic Society of Central Florida looks on. Phil Sandlin / AP

Even ogres can serve a purpose. The “Reverend” Terry Jones has at least shown us the ugly consequences of the Islamophobia that was this summer's political fad — by turning the tables. How does it feel to be caricatured as a nation of Koran-burning radicals? Americans were appalled to find that a solitary religious bigot and his tiny congregation of 50 pseudo Christians had hijacked our global image. We squirmed as a warped little corner of America's Judeo-Christian culture colored the entire country in the eyes of the world — the way Americans let a warped little corner of Islamic culture color all Muslims, even Muslim Americans.

Tip of the Hat to Rob Sentse at LinkedIn.

Phi Beta Iota: There are no coincidences within totalitarian corporate-controlled governments.  The combination of the Christian dupe calling for the burning of the Qu'an and the manufactured theater of the Muslim mosque with CIA funding at Ground Zero are all too reminiscent of the FBI-sponsored car bombing of the World Trade Center in the 1990's, and totally consistent with what Buckminster Fuller called “White House Theater” and Noam Chomsky calls “manufacturing consent.”  In light of this shallow and manipulative TIME story, the five “filters” that Chomsky and his co-author identified bear reiteration:

From Wikipedia “Propaganda Model:”

First presented in their 1988 book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, the “Propaganda model” views the private media as businesses interested in the sale of a product — readers and audiences — to other businesses (advertisers) rather than that of quality news to the public. Describing the media's “societal purpose”, Chomsky writes, “… the study of institutions and how they function must be scrupulously ignored, apart from fringe elements or a relatively obscure scholarly literature”.[1] The theory postulates five general classes of “filters” that determine the type of news that is presented in news media. These five classes are:

  1. Ownership of the medium
  2. Medium's funding sources
  3. Sourcing
  4. Flak
  5. Anti-communist ideology

Today anti-communism (which was nurtured in part by the CIA's importation of 100+ senior Nazis each year after the end of WWII) has been replaced by the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) and its occasional theatrics such as the “Underpants Bomber.”  The tragedy is that 80% of the US public has been so dumbed down and anesthitized as to take this garbage seriously, while the 20% that “get it” are marginalized, which is of course the point of it all.

See Also:

Review: Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle

Review: Grand Illusion–The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny

2008 ELECTION 2008: Lipstick on the Pig

Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Disinformation, Other Information Pathologies, & Repression

Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Empire as Cancer Including Betrayal & Deceit

Worth a Look: Impeachable Offenses, Modern & Historic

Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Institutionalized Ineptitude