[new mac] using it, it watches me

Oh I just love this one about a burglary of an apartment in New York, including a Mac owned by an Apple employee:

While police in White Plains, N.Y., were coming up empty with their investigation, Duplaga learned that her computer was being used on the Internet and turned on the Back to My Mac feature installed on her Mac from another Mac, according to the report.

The feature allowed Duplaga to see immediately how the computer was being used at the time, as well as operate it remotely. Recalling that she had a camera installed on the computer, the fast-thinking Duplaga snapped images of one of the burglary suspects before he realized what was happening, according to the Times.

Duplaga showed the image to friends who recognized the suspect as someone who attended a party at the apartment.

The longer I use my Mac, admittedly a 17" Tiger, the better it gets. For goodness sake, it even self-repairs. Together with the camera feature, Little Snitch and other goodies, it is constantly updating and the system is so easy to use.

The downside is that one needs to switch off voice control when there's a lady in your arms because sometimes the sounds are picked up by the green flashing receptor and tend to turn on a film or dance music or whatever.

Once the computer even took a snap unasked for. Need to adjust the controls methinks.

[strange] the adventure of the high diving scissors

Just had a more than strange experience.

We all misplace things and under pressure of time the brain does weird things. You know it - you could have sworn you'd done this or that when you hadn't, as subsequent events proved.


An example

Years ago, in Melbourne, I went to buy a fishtank in a street called Chapel Street. Parking the Honda hatchback just down from the shop, I had my things on the passenger seat as the tray near the window is useless when the car is moving.

As I often did, I took the bag and packets and all, went round to the hatch and deposited them in the "boot" under the cover, closed the hatch and went into the shop. Found a tank I liked and went back out to the hatch to get my credit card.

It wasn't there - neither in the bag or in any other place in the boot. Dismantled the boot, took everything out, searched near the spare wheel and so on.

Nope.

OK - closed the hatch, went back to the front and looked everywhere on the passenger side, on my side, under the seat, down the sides etc.

Nothing ... and so on ... and so on ...

Tried to think out some of the stupid things I'd done in the past to see if they'd shed a light on it.

No.

Went back to the driver's seat to collapse for a few minutes, glanced over and there it was - sitting on the tray nearest the window, the one I never used.


Today

Well, this starts months ago.

Lost a pair of black handled scissors at that time - simply couldn't see them anywhere in the kitchen where they live and assumed I'd taken them through to the other room. Drew a blank and wasn't particularly concerned - I had another pair.

Time passed, the cleaning girls hadn't seemed to have found them and I'd forgotten about the incident. Twenty minutes ago now I was in the kitchen getting coffee when I heard a slide down the side of the benchtop unit, glanced across and was stopped in my tracks.

Now this gets complicated.

On the bench, at that end, I have an open mug with tablets in foil for headaches, stomach or whatever. Above is the end of the shelving unit on the wall.

Sitting bolt upright in the mug were the missing scissors.

Had the scissors been perched on the shelving unit, fallen off, hit the side, done a reverse pike and softly landed in the thin china mug, moving the tablets aside and creating a space to reside?

And why now? There'd been no disturbance, no vibration. Plus those scissors could not have been up on the shlving unit as they'd last been used for cutting paper.

Also, the sound I'd heard was something going down the side of the bench unit, not from above.

I've just looked now and something had indeed slipped down - a tablet packet which had been sitting 10cm from the mug, which itself hasn't moved from its place.

Hmmm. Now that is more than weird.

[blasphemy] disestablishment and oppression

Gerald Howarth MP

Tiberius Gracchus has replied to this first post of mine which quoted Ginro who quoted Cranmer and he replied thusly:

Two questions James:

* what is blasphemy and when would you prosecute it?

** how can you be in favour of a law that makes it illegal to say various things- and still say you support free speech and freedom?

The short answers are:

* It would be prosecuted only if it was a state level case of another religion attempting to supplant the first - including Marxism. Co-existing, yes but not supplanting the country's traditional faith. In a country like Libya, for example, the same rule would apply to the other religion.

** This can't be given a short answer because it is the crux of the matter.

When it was pointed out, by commenters, what this bill really meant, your reply, Tiberius, was:

Apparently I was wrong - I apologise for not realising that we should all be living in a truly Christian state where blasphemy was punished by boring a hole through someone's tongue (as in seventeenth Century Protestant England) or burning them at the stake (sixteenth century Catholic England).

Is that a measured and reasoned answer, Tiberius, taking into account the historical context of those things?

As was pointed out by all from Ann Widdecombe to Cherie [in "Above and Beyond the Call of Duty"] - two ends of the political spectrum - this is not a religious but a political question and a lot rides on it.

Do you know of or have you heard of anyone prosecuted under the blasphemy act in the last 50 years? So it sits in there dormant. It was dormant legislation and would only ever be invoked under the circumstances in * above.

Ann Widdecombe MP

Brown's government does not do things on spec - it does them as part of a cynical agenda and the agenda, somewhere down the line, is going to involve coming up against the charge of blasphemy and treason - a double whammy. He knows this is an obstacle so the way must be cleared, with no comeback from conservatives.

The first stage of the draconian agenda is already in place - a Big Brother state which few now have any illusions is becoming a reality - and the next stage is to disestablish the Church.

Now in principle and in a perfect world, I agree that Christianity is a matter between the individual and his Maker in the true protestant manner.

However, the full implications of this bill, who is introducing it and for what long term purpose, must be opposed with vigour, even if one doesn't exactly hold with blasphemy laws as a concept, which one doesn't.

The entry point of this bill is Christianity because that's the sole area today where no one is going to raise a fuss, as almost no one has - it's now a safe move for Brown to disestablish a Church which successive archbishops have already termited, to the point where the message is largely irrelevant in most people's eyes.

But as Cherie says, it is the thin edge of the wedge and even with her political bent, it's as plain as day where this is going. Cherie says:

Gracchi, freedom of speech is one of those values with which I whole heartedly agree! But this bill means that I and my UK countrymen can't express our opinion about what we value, it is the thin end of the wedge!

Ignore the religion aspect and see what this really means for our country! If you check out my blog you will see I don't go along with anything in your last paragraph ;-)

The CofE [of which I'm a non-practising member, being over in Russia] and Catholicism before it, has been Britain's bulwark against the encroachment of far more aggressive, far more coercive ideologies and you, Tiberius, as a historian, are either wilfully ignoring this or else you really don't see it, through some idealized notion of how free the new society is going to be.

It is a delusion, a blind. Historical precedent and current history show an entirely different scenario. As Gerald Howarth said:

[A] Jewish headmistress, whom I was sitting next to at a lunch ... said, “It is very important to our school that there continues to be an established Church, because it provides some protection to us in the practising of our religion.”

There are three choices in the move towards the New Feudalism:

1. Leave a largely anachronistic Church [in most people's eyes] in place as the established faith, with the effect that all other faiths are free to practise, as well as protecting the freedoms of speech and association - was this not so up to the Nu-Lab era?

This also leaves the country's "oneness" intact, its traditional base in place and its history therefore a continuum.

What this also does is prevent 2 and 3 below, by the simple expedient of leaving them technically treasonable.

2. Remove the blasphemy law which, as Ann Widdecombe, Gerald Howarth, Ginro, Cherie and many others have noted, now gives the government carte blanche to disestablish the church, thereby removing the last obstacle to the Big Brother state which the EU has already enacted and is waiting patiently in the wings to implement.

Make no mistake - the vacuum left by the removal of a largely shell like church would be filled very quickly by a different ideology - there would be no freedom of worship at all but the criminalization of the ordinary citizen [see Cherie's post] - that's where this thing is headed.

The EU monolith is socialist in conception and its modus operandi is compliance. It foresees collapse and war [read Miliband's comments on the EU army].

3. The only other force with the power to fill the vacuum is Islam and it is making huge inroads in the country. Rowan Williams' comments about Sharia Law are instructive.

Given that you only really have these three choices - the ideal of a happy, tolerant society not being one which the current state is going to allow to occur - which of the three variants would you choose?

Because if you sit back under the mistaken impression that saying good riddance to an established church you despise is going to lead you to an illumined nirvana, it's going to lead you to the exact opposite.

A state very, very un-British in nature.


David Miliband, Minister for the EU


Let the last words be your own, Tiberius - do you really want to groan under the yoke of a state such as in 2 or 3 above?

I appeal from Tiberius the Lion Feeder of Christians to Tiberius the Rational, who states:

Put simply in a totalitarian state like North Korea, you can't live a life based on Wensleydale and tea - you can't just decide to build a rocket to go to the moon (theoretically you could in the West) and you can't be madly, loveably, endeeringly and frustratingly often eccentric.

That's the reason its important to be free - its so Wallaces and Gromits continue to flourish in our society.

[cultures meet] heartstopping moment

Really fascinating little piece on a Californian finding himself in the Emirates and asked two simple questions in the street - where are you from and what is your religion.

Gulp. My heart was in my mouth. Read it here.

[thought for the day] sunday evening

"In order to keep a true perspective of one’s importance, everyone should have a dog that will worship him and a cat that will ignore him."

[Dereke Bruce]

[country quiz] five more to send you mental

1. More women than men are currently enrolled in the universities, it's slightly more than twice the size of Oregon, accepting a second serving is one of the best ways to show appreciation to the cook, was under Muslim domination from 711 to the mid 11th century, introduced the batata.

2. The country's name means "big village", the head of the government was born in Port-au-Prince and worked with shelters for battered women, there was a controversy in 2005 over a visit to one of its sikh gurdwaras, it's third language is Chinese.

3. It's largest city has dengue fever, it has four time zones, a lawless tri-border area, the world largest hydroelectric power plant by energy generation, high mortality, the German speakers are largely the Hunsrückisch, has only 150 000 Jews but the largest Japanese population outside Japan.

4. Average area of home 97.6 sq. m, 74 times smaller than the USA, its top university once had rules that specifically forbade students from bringing bows and arrows to class. Appearing in the shape of horses, mules, or dogs, the Gytrash haunt solitary ways and lead people astray in the north of the country.

5. Not strictly a country, it once formed a part of Raetia. In 1806 it threw off its feudal lord, it has one of the world's highest standards of living, in 2007 Dr. Bruce S. Allen and Mr. Leodis C. Matthews were appointed its first two consuls and it is a double landlocked country.


Answers

Spain, Canada, Brazil, England, Liechtenstein