] SAN FRANCISCO -- Lots of people wish they could jack
] their brain directly to their computer and toss out those
] annoying keyboards and joysticks -- especially people who
] can't use keyboards or joysticks.
]
] Five quadriplegic patients might be months away from
] testing a brain-computer interface created by
] Cyberkinetics, a privately held company in Foxboro,
] Massachusetts. The company's system, called BrainGate,
] could help patients with no mobility to control a
] computer, a robot or eventually their own rewired
] muscles, using only their thoughts. If the trials go
] well, a product could be on the market by 2007.

{ insert something quasi-serious sounding here that uses the word "convergence" }

Wired News: Transforming Thoughts Into Deeds

] We would achieve this balance by issuing what I will call
] Import Certificates...

This was a lot of information to digest. I too, am not at all savvy with my knowledge of macroeconomics. The best I can say is that this sounds like a pretty reasonable method of constructing a tariff that is both country and product neutral. This would not have been a reasonable idea several years ago, but given electronic markets I could see lively trade of these ICs Buffet suggests creating.

Trade deficits are something to be worried about.. However, I also don't necessarily think everything we "export" is something that can be laid out in a spreadsheet.

Jeremy meme'd something recently about outsourcing where he made a suggestion that in come cases we are making the choice between wealth and security, and there is a balance. There are countries we may find desirable to have a deficit with in order to drive positive growth in their local economy, hence positive change in their society. We do export freedom and democracy, and it comes back in many forms. There is a degree to which this is a hard^Wimpossible thing to fully account for..

This also makes me think of another meme Jeremy recommended about counter-insurgency.. There is a degree to which we are spending our wealth to dry up support for ideals and groups which lead to our security problems. Our wealth is one of the few things we can toss around to confront these asymmetric threats.

Buffet: America's growing trade deficit is selling the nation out from under us.

] The weirdest part is that when I show this piece at art
] shows, people are strangely amazed by it, as if the idea
] is something in the universal unconsciousness, waiting to
] happpen in the future! I tell you it is just uncanny the
] way people react to it, I've never seen anything like it.
] I think it is a premonitory painting.

Balls Deep has this as his desktop background.. I love it, however when I scale it out it looks like shit. I'm picky. Damnit, I want a native high-res version.

San Francisco Tsunami

] Some pictures of Brad Blines (aka CrankyMessiah)

I've been working on something for Brad. It should be online soon..

Brad Blines Pictures

] O'Neill said his contention that President George W. Bush
] came to office fixated on ousting Saddam Hussein was
] really just a government policy of regime change in Iraq
] that he inherited from the preceding Bill Clinton
] administration.

More teeth to the O'Neil is full of shit side. Boy o boy is this guy starting to backtrack fast..

] The book is replete with stories of a president who
] appeared zoned out at meetings and said he operated
] on "instinct" and "gut," not briefing books.
]
] In the book, O'Neill laments the fact that as a 65-year-old
] man he had to be given a nickname, a Bush habit.
]
] The president immediately began calling him "Pablo."
] Later he started calling his treasury secretary "Big O."
]
] He said Bush called Secretary of State Colin Powell "Balloonfoot."

Take note.. This does not make Bush look smart or personable. It makes him look like a egotistical conceding asshole. I'm pretty damn sure that Bush is not referred to using nicknames by all his staff. I'm sure "Mister President" is the norm, as opposed to Shrub. Again, I still have no idea what perception I'm getting of Bush, or which parts of it are accurate.

There is a place for gut and instinct, but its in the hands of someone who has experience and skill. I'm not sold on Bush having any of it. Really, I still think the brains reside elsewhere.

I bet you Dick calls people by their names, shows respect, and goes on facts and analysis rather then instinct. That's my gut feeling, for what its worth.

] He said he regretted using some "vivid language" and
] seemed to distance himself from the book, reminding
] the audience "this is Ron Suskind's book, this is not my book."

Ok, at the very least O'Neil is an idiot also. That child with a loaded gun comment just got even more amusing.

TheStar.com - O'Neill backtracks on Bush broadside

] What is clear is that al Qaeda is at a crossroads and --
] like the United States in the spring of 2002 -- it does
] not have really good choices, and therefore, must choose
] the best of a bad lot. Al Qaeda's original war plan is
] obsolete. The straight line it drew from Sept. 11 to the
] Caliphate has hit a wall. Bin Laden knows it. He doesn't
] have a good Plan B, but he will have to cook one up
] anyway. The war is not over, but for the moment, it is al
] Qaeda's turn to sweat out a solution to a difficult
] strategic problem. If they can't do that, then the war
] could very well be over, at least for this generation.

If anyone ever wants to do anything blindly nice for me, get me a Stratfor Premium subscription. However, this might take MemeStreams development to a crawl.. No.. Don't do that.

Al Q might be cooked...

Elonka wrote:
] This CNN article seems to do a pretty good job (IMHO) of
] trying to look at both sides of the issue. I look forward to
] more analysis in the future.

His book just came out.. After few weeks have passed, people have read it, pondered on it, and done some fact checkin. It will be made apparent if this story has any teeth. It could go either way.

I will fully admit my bias.. Something just tells me that Bush is an idiot. Gut feeling. Its an easy sell. I and many other people will be easy to manipulate into that one. I'm pretty sure the brains in the current White House reside elsewhere. I'm sure Karl Rove is well aware of all this. Its going to be very hard to make Bush look smart. He just doesn't seem to do that, ever..

When is the last time we heard press about how Bush was not seeing eye-to-eye with someone? We don't really.. He directs the meetings, he is on time. That's what we hear. The President seems to get along great with all his staff, all the time.. His staff doesn't though, so we know we are seeing some of the human condition present over there. Rummy and Colin for instance. There are some brains in this administration, no doubt.. But I just picture Bush nodding a lot.

However, I will also put forward that this could be a product of what I've/We've been managed to perceive. In an ideal world Rummy and Colin get along great, Bush is always challenging everyone, and Karl is just PR'ing everything to all hell. But thats still not good, because I'm all about transparency in government. There really isn't a way this can be spun where I don't find something about it I seriously dislike.

O'Neil wouldn't have gotten whacked from his position without a number of people thinking he was a problem.. The child with the loaded gun comment was kind of amusing.. I remember a number of the foot in mouth episodes being recounted in the press when he got the boot. Its also important to remember that it doesn't necessarily mean that he is not being truthful when he recounts something. Let the court of public opinion take a few lessons from the court of law on that one.

... But this leads into another point that is just as important. Being the election is coming up, I keep finding myself steering all issues in that direction. This, brings up a very key one.

Who the hell are Dean's (or for that matter the Dem's) people? The President could be a Rhodes scholar and his staff is still going to matter just as much if not more then he does.. So who the hell is the oppositions staff? We already know all about Bush's staff, and have formed our opinions. Who is in the Dem's wing?

If there are real intentions of taking Bush down, not only is a president and vice president needed, but also a party and a team. As previously stated, I have a bias to dislike Bush. However, I want to vote for someone, rather then vote not-Bush.

RE: CNN: Just how bad were O'Neill's gaffes?

Every person who uses a Linux firewall/gw for their home network needs to know this.

Let me guess a problem you have.. Whenever someone is uploading on the network, TCP sessions seem to lose interactivity. The biggest display of this is ssh connections. Whenever someone is uploading, ssh connections all have that delay thing going on. You start off feeling like that machine in New York is right around the corner, even though you are in San Francisco. Start uploading something, BAM.. All of a sudden that unix box feels like its on the moon as you find yourself waiting 3 seconds to see your typing come back to you.

If you have a cable modem or DSL line, and a Linux box doing NAT, you likely are dealing with this problem.

Its your DSL/Cable modem's fault. Its got this really big buffer in it, and whoever fills it up wins. That's whoever is uploading, running BitTorrent, et cetra. In office environments, its almost constant.

There is an easy fix for this.. So easy, that you will spent more time reading this, and trying to understand it, then you will actually performing it.

] TBF is very precise, network- and processor friendly. It should
] be your first choice if you simply want to slow an interface down!

And there are a number of reasons you might want to slow down an interface. One very basic and important thing to remember about traffic control: You cannot control the way in which you receive data, but you can control the way you send it.

In the case of your home network, you don't want your firewall sending anything to the DSL/Cable device at a rate faster then it can pass on. Its a stupid device. A stupid device with a very big buffer in it. Its just going to let that buffer fill and send everything fifo (First In First Out). It does not know that you don't care about the BitTorrent as much as the SSH traffic. Its just going to let the buffer fill and send it in order.

Enter the Token Bucker Filter:

] # tc qdisc add dev ppp0 root tbf rate 220kbit latency 50ms burst 1540

] Change 220kbit to your uplink's *actual* speed, minus a few percent. If
] you have a really fast modem, raise 'burst' a bit.

And of course, substitute ppp0 for whatever your external interface is. Unless you are using PPPoE, its likely eth0 or eth1.

This way, once Linux starts to send packets to the DSL/Cable modem faster then it can send, Linux overlimits and starts dropping packets rather then telling them to all get in line and wait for their turn.. This results is TCP connections where interactivity matters (like ssh) no longer having issues. All your outbound traffic is still fighting for the same bandwidth, but whoever is speaking the loudest does not drown everyone else out.

For the record, this is the command I currently have in my security gateway's rc.local:

tc qdisc add dev eth3 root tbf rate 250kbit latency 50ms burst 1540

My max upstream seems to be about 260kbit and my external interface is eth3, because my gw has four ethernet interfaces.

This post links through to the appropriate page in the most excellent Linux Advanced Routing & Traffic Control HOWTO. It explains everything I have here, and more.

Route on!

How to make BitTorrent (or other uploading applications) stop crushing SSH sessions

But something equally important has happened in South Asia over the past 15 years. India has been transformed by a market revolution.

Fareed Zakaria sees opportunity in recent regional economic and political developments.

So, when the IBM engineers lose their jobs to the Indians, they might be saddened, but at least they should sleep well -- they're fighting terrorism!

Wealth, or safety? Choose wisely.

Opening in South Asia

] The day before yesterday, my wife came home with a new license
] plate frame for my car: "My other cars are on Mars."
. . .
] I just finished working the Martian night (which today happened
] to be daytime at JPL), planning Spirit's activities for Sol 5,
] the rover's fifth day on the surface. The uplink team is doing a
] great job of getting a lot done in a short amount of time. The
] rover seems to be getting more sleep than we do...
. . .
] I'll make additions to this site as often as living on
] Mars time and exploring an alien planet permit...

Andy Mishkin is an old childhood friend of Elonka, one of the users here on MemeStreams. Here Andy is blogging his day-to-day activities at JPL. Andy, rock on.

First off, I must state I'm in complete awe of all things Mars at the moment. I went to Space Camp when I was a kid.. Wanted to be an astronaut.. You know the story. Thumbs up guys. I'm loving every minute of this!

Mars Roving: Andy Mishkin's Blog