Monday, July 01, 2002

Monday Morning, I am pleased to announce that the Synergic Science Classic Full Circle: The Moral Force of Unified Science is now available online. This is the entire book with lots of drawings and schematics. Thanks Don Steehler. Also new at SynEARTH network: The Moral Force of Unified Science Along with Alfred Korzybski, R. Buckminster Fuller, Arthur Young and N. Arthur Coulter,  Edward Haskell was one of the leading pioneers of synergic science. His books have been out of print for many years. It is an honor to again make one of them available. The following is the first chapter from Full Circle: The Moral Force of Unified Science. Harold Cassidy writes: In my opinion, Haskell has discovered a scientifically-based pattern of a universal kind which is displayed in some respect by all of human knowledge and experience of Nature and Man. This is a large statement. Propositions of this kind have been advanced since the earliest days of philosophy, and in view of the signal lack of agreement among philosophers throughout the ages and today, it behooves us to be extremely wary of such statements. Yet strange things have been happening in science; and if I say that, in my opinion, this pattern that Haskell has discovered (and such discovery inevitably involves a degree of creative invention) constitutes an invariant-relation that enables translation between various developing fields of knowledge and experience, then at least metaphorically one can understand me to mean that like the Lorentz Transformations it makes the applicable relativity tolerable.  (07/01/02) Defying Corporations, Defining Democracy Robert Jensen writes: There is no alternative. Capitalism is the only future. Free markets are the essence of democracy. How do we know? Because we are told repeatedly by smart guys from corporations and government, and by the journalists and academics paid to explain why the smart guys are right. ...  At a time when most people accept the big lie that there is no future outside of capitalism, it's time to move forward with political strategies grounded in the recognition that there is no way to think about a decent future except outside of capitalism. (07/01/02) TCPA / Palladium Frequently Asked Questions The protocol that runs the Internet is called TCP/IP.  Now some of America's largest corporations are wanting to change things. Last August, Robert X. Cringely wrote of a rumor that Microsoft wanted to replace TCP/IP with a proprietary protocol -- a protocol owned by Microsoft -- that it would tout as being more secure. This week, Microsoft announced Palladium which is the code name for a Microsoft project to make all Internet communication safer by essentially pasting a digital certificate on every application, message, byte, and machine on the Net, then encrypting the data EVEN INSIDE YOUR COMPUTER PROCESSOR. Ross Anderson explains how this changing architecture might effect you. (07/01/02) Terror Threatens July 4 New York Times -- WASHINGTON, June 29 — Federal authorities have issued a secret alert to state and local law enforcement agencies warning them of the possibility of a terrorist attack in the United States around the Fourth of July holiday, senior government officials said. ... The intelligence reports related to the Fourth of July have been assembled from multiple sources, among them foreign security services, the electronic monitoring of suspected terrorists and interviews with Al Qaeda operatives arrested overseas in recent days and those in detention at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. "We're very concerned about July 4th," a senior government official said. "The lack of specificity increases the concern and anxiety that is there."  (07/01/02) Feds Get July 4 Nuclear Plant Threat ABC News -- WASHINGTON, May 13 — U.S. intelligence officials have received threats that terrorists will strike a U.S. nuclear power plant July 4, and are reviewing the information to determine whether it is reliable. The government is taking the threats seriously, though officials have preliminarily determined that the information is not credible enough to act upon, said a government official familiar with the investigation. (07/01/02) Russia Given $20 Billion to Dismantle Nukes! The Moscow Times -- KANANASKIS, Alberta -- The world's seven wealthiest countries agreed Thursday to spend $20 billion to help Russia dismantle stockpiled weapons. President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President George W. Bush sealed the 10-year pact on Russia in one-on-one talks as an economic summit of the world's industrial powers drew to a close. World leaders meeting at a remote Canadian Rockies resort said that the agreement to provide up to $20 billion in support for Russia's efforts to safeguard its weapons stockpiles was driven by concerns that the materials could fall into the hands of terrorists.  (07/01/02) Russian Scientists Out of Work The Moscow Times -- Hundreds of chemists, biologists and nuclear scientists, desperate to support their families and feeling forgotten by Russia's post-Soviet leadership, crowded at the government's headquarters Thursday to plead for better wages and research funding. Anis Gariyev once enjoyed a generous salary and the respect of his neighbors as a chemical engineer at the Pushchino Research Center in Pushchino outside Moscow. Now his 1,500 ruble ($48) monthly salary leaves him among the community's most destitute. ... The Soviet Union boasted having the largest number of scientists in the world, researchers responsible for the Soviet space program, advances in superconductor research and vaccines -- and its vast nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs. But the generous state support for science withered after 1991, prompting many researchers to seek jobs in the private sector or abroad. More than half a million scientists have left Russia since the Soviet Union collapsed, the chairman of the Russian Academy of Sciences' trade unions said last week. (07/01/02) Don't Trust Microsoft Dave Winer writes: I just read Cringeley's article about Microsoft, DRM and operating systems. There's no doubt that Cringe has the story. The key word is foreclosure. That's what MS is doing with everything we hold dear.  (06/30/02) Microsoft Versus The Internet The protocol that runs the Internet is called TCP/IP. These are the rules of the road for the information highway. Today, these rules are in the public domain. No individual, corporation or government owns the protocols or has the right to control them. Microsoft wants to change things. It would like to own the internet.  Robert X. Cringely  writes: Last August, I wrote of a rumor that Microsoft wanted to replace TCP/IP with a proprietary protocol -- a protocol owned by Microsoft -- that it would tout as being more secure. Actually, the new protocol would likely be TCP/IP with some of the reserved fields used as pointers to proprietary extensions, quite similar to Vines IP, if you remember that product from Banyan Systems. I called it TCP/MS in the column. How do you push for the acceptance of such a protocol? First, make the old one unworkable by placing millions of exploitable TCP/IP stacks out on the Net, ready-to-use by any teenage sociopath. When the Net slows or crashes, the blame would not be assigned to Microsoft. Then ship the new protocol with every new copy of Windows, and install it with every Windows Update over the Internet. Zero to 100 million copies could happen in less than a year. This week, Microsoft announced Palladium through an exclusive story in Newsweek written by Steven Levy, who ought to have known better. Palladium is the code name for a Microsoft project to make all Internet communication safer by essentially pasting a digital certificate on every application, message, byte, and machine on the Net, then encrypting the data EVEN INSIDE YOUR COMPUTER PROCESSOR. Palladium compatible hardware (presumably chipsets and motherboards) will come from both AMD and Intel, and the software will, of course, come from Microsoft. That software is what I had dubbed TCP/MS. (06/30/02) 6:24:24 AM

© TrustMark 2002 Timothy Wilken. Last update: 7/31/2002; 3:04:34 PM. This theme is based on the SoundWaves (blue) Manila theme.