d_rawk

The Disk Utility that comes with OSX can do some of this for you. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIKb4gCnQH4

Well, you certainly did act imprudently giving strangers access to your machine - but we all make mistakes, and particularly when you are on the spot and put into a panic, it is easy to make bad decisions. First off, do not have further engagement with these people. It does sound like a scam, however, on the other side of it your machine may well in fact be compromised and it is possible that it is being used for DDoS attacks or other nefarious things. Get Malware Bytes (http://www.malwarebytes.org/products/malwarebytes_free) and run that on your machine. Then run http://www.superantispyware.com/download.html Then grab something like the free version of AVG The unfortunate truth, though, is that once a system has been compromised, you can never be fully sure of its status again without doing a full and clean re-install. That's to say - the best thing to do is to back up your data (documents, music, etc..) and re-install Windows (I'm assuming you are on Windows) from the discs that should have been provided to you with your purchase. And then run *all* of the security updates.

She's super talented. Must be a band that actually plays shows, or has intentions to, and not just practice in a basement somewhere. PM me if so.

:laugh:

Or: "how I learned to stop caring, and just gave the middle finger to the world" USA Today headline (echoed by other publications): "Panel to postmenopausal women: Don't take vitamin D, calcium" If you read the actual study that they are discussing, you find out some interesting things. For one, it followed people taking 200 IU of vitamin D - the RDA for vitamin D was for a long time set at 400 IU, but after overwhelming evidence that this was inadequate for North Americans, was raised to 800 IU with a suggested upper tolerance of 4000 IU daily. What the headline should actually say is "Panel to postmenopausal women: you are probably taking a pussy amount of vitamin D, and it isn't doing dick. You need more - or get some sunshine, or something." I find it irritating when people talk about health news and accuse "they" of saying one thing, and then "they" turn around and say another. It presumes a single authority. There are lots of different people, with lots of different agendas, saying a lot of different things. There is no single "they". In this case, as in many, it is telling to read the actual study and its conclusions, and compare that to the sensationalist headline. "They" suck at journalism, full stop. I post this in the politics forum because it seems close enough to a politic rant to warrant it. Thank you for your time.

I'm not sure what you are implicating (well, I can guess, but then I remain uncertain as to why) I took umbrage with the idea that religious debate is irrelevant in a contemporary setting. I conceded my flexibility (quite probably justifiably better labelled 'waffling') of personal affiliation in these matters, emphasized that I think them still important regardless of my current standing, and offered one thread in the ongoing current debate that I find compelling and to which I am swayed as an example of present relevance. I think to be a phony, I would have to have one conviction and pretend another. My point is that my conviction, such as it exists, is in the relevance of oft repeating stories of human conflict between the spiritual and the base, and that I insist that these stories are exceedingly relevant for people of all times and will continue to recur despite our best efforts to escape them (because they don't need escape, they need exploration and celebration [ritual]). If I am the phony, I think that you have me unfairly pegged. If Jesus is the phony, I propose that Jesus is the imperfect telling of the perfect story. Hand me my phony, and I will eat it. Joseph Smith. Not what you were angling after ..

Is it possible that you are suggesting that I am a phony? Of what, I wonder? I was only arguing that I think religious debate - even religious *shudder* conviction - is probably healthier than this thread generally wants to concede. (So help me, I root for the underdog) I have no stake in the ground or territory to defend. Just ideas, that come, get adapted by better ideas, and go. I think so. This is why I say that I think the resurrection is of extreme importance, and why it crops up so readily. Don't let that happen. I gave up beer. Not for any religious reasons.

One thing that I love about you, Beats, is that you never fail to make my brain hurt I'm not one of those, though, am I? I have issues with the idea of a 'personal Jesus'. Rather serious ones, actually. But it gets down into the grit. Simon was one, to be sure. There were many. It was not an uncommon thing for a man to claim messiah-hood. Woot! Jesus did. Osiris, too .. had his lost years in the desert, born of a virgin in a cave/manger, son of God, resurrected after being killed, was the "KRST", was re-enacted in passion plays at easter time, the empty tomb, his coming was announced by three wise men, and proved by a burning star, water into wine, all of that. Not the first, and the story repeats itself everywhere. Where Christ doesn't exist, we invent it. Why? No.

Nobody wants to play with me ... and I'm never one to leave a good thing well enough. In conversation with someone just two days ago - a biker dude who proudly wears the self-designated label of 'true believer' - it was very apparent that his faith, in that contemporary sense of the word, was very much contingent on his understanding of things - in this case 'things' being Christian mythology - being rooted in historical events. I am a Jesus guy, to be sure. But I think that you would be hard pressed, no matter how well educated or devout, to find a historical basis for Jesus as we know him. Even if you could locate a Jesus of Nazareth - say through a time machine - I think you would be terribly disappointed to find that he resembled the Gospels but little. And of which of the contradicting four would he resemble, anyways? But Christ - ah, another matter entirely. Christ re-invents itself perpetually, and what is the story of Jesus as Christ but a re-telling of a familiar story for a new place and a new people? The resurrection is terribly important. Whether the resurrection has ever been a historical event, I'd wager not. I'm not sure that even comes close to the point, though. Was the historical resurrection of Osiris so terribly important to meaning? I openly show my colours - my sympathies have long been with Quakerism, which though founded by Christians, also found that it could not justify an exclusivity to that, and that the principles were universal. There are hindu quakers, muslim quakers, christian quakers, agnostic quakers. There are atheist Quakers ('Nontheist Friends') as well, but that is an interesting debate in itself that needs more room to breathe. But the debate - and I still think it an important one - gets closed down prematurely when we take the 'here is what I grew up with and I don't like it, so all must be similar' and cast that like Jackson Pollock paint over the entire cast of those involved in religious discourse. How would Martin Luther have happened, had he taken that approach? I think a good rule of thumb - and not just for religious matters, but generally - is that no-one is as crazy as your parents. And our children won't be as crazy as us. Dawkins basically choked on himself avoiding how to explain human kindness outside of the 'niceness' of biological nepotism. Rejoice?

"Religions are like wisdom teeth; even though they were crucial to our ancestors, today they are unnecessary and they bring nothing but frustration and pain. Also, they provide us with no wisdom." It has an allure, but falls short of measure. John Dominic Crossan once put it thus - "My point, once again, is not that those ancient people told literal stories and we are now smart enough to take them symbolically, but that they told them symbolically and we are now dumb enough to take them literally." The thrust of contemporary anger is against orthodoxy and literalism - why people want to concede that ground and pretend that it is valid, and expend energy inside that narrow battlefield, is troubling. You let the lunatics define the scope and try to argue with lunatics on their terms. Or discount them without reclaiming the territory (the entire wealth of spiritual being) that they took from you. Religions are like "wisdom teeth"? No they are like the philosophy of the spirit, which, like all philosophies has its fancy and flavour of the day and its dissenting voices that gain, or fail to gain, credence over time based on merit. They are like the politics of overwhelming human potential. The narrow debate, if you hand the terms to the present authority, is a dull debate. So take it back and deny that authority and put the lie to it. I concede that people raised by evangelicals may suffer from that misfortune in the way that people given to sexual abuse in their childhood suffer from all manner of darkness around sex. But it is tiresome to hear that sex is universally violent and disruptive, just as it is to hear that religious matters are necessarily unimaginative and fruitless. A dark encounter does not a universal darkness make. Just as I refuse to concede that sexual matters, as they exist broadly, can be defined wholly by the insecurity, perversity, and desire for control that characterizes sexual abuse, I refuse to concede that religious matters, as they exist broadly, can be defined wholly by the insecurity, perversity, and desire for control that characterizes spiritual abuse. Sex jumps out only because - maybe only slightly ahead of religion - it is prone to that conflation of trauma with essence among victims. I believe this to be because these are things that are so fundamental to our make-up that they are the most prone to hijack. It could be any number of things. Food. Religion, as far as I can tell, happens when the spirit of one man encounters the spirit of another, just as politics, as far as I can tell, happens when the freedom of one man encounters the freedom of another. For all of my life, I have not seen a desirable life in which other people were not present - nor can I conceive of a reason to pursue one. Mythology is the repository of man's most ancient science ... to deny that there is wisdom in what persists in poking its head up through every relevant human drama through all of our shared history is blindness, not insight. Where shall we deposit cosmic truth, then?

Quebec membership: from 1,695 to 12,266 (+600%). This without a provincial incarnation in that province. Ontario membership: from 22,225 to 36,760 since Oct. BC membership: from 30,000 to 38,735 since Oct. NS membership: from 1,300 to 3,844 since Oct. No commentary from me.

This. ... and this.

Fair enough - it seems a more meaningful measure. [color:purple]The "Progressive Conservative-Liberal Party of Canada" ? Could work. After all, the Cons were the "Liberal-Conservative Party" before merging with the Progressives, before merging with Reform.

Happy b-day dude

So do the Libs move right, or do they move left? I don't think the NDP is going to compromise with them. I still see a good fit with the Greens, but the Greens want to maintain their identity and maintain their part of the Green Party global movement. That doesn't leave the Libs with much of a home to go to. I don't think that there is much for them to stake out on the left, and I don't think that they have the type of people to occupy the left even if they wanted to. A rightward shift to poach the votes of those who are *c*onservative, but are uncomfortable with the *C*onservatives? Is the Liberal party the Progressive Conservatives reborn? They've always had those values, and everything since that day that McKay stabbed Orchard in the back, there has been a hole in that part of the spectrum that wants to be filled. So we would be left with: (NDP) Centre-left (LPC) Centre-right (GPC) Centre-? (CPC) Centre-right-right It all starts to break down. It isn't a particularly useful metric, I suppose.

This one is from today, in the Winnipeg FP --- OTTAWA - The New Democrats appear to have consolidated their support as official Opposition to the Harper Conservatives, a new poll suggests — particularly among women and urban voters. NDP Leader Jack Layton was still looking for his new House of Commons seat in the 41st Parliament on Thursday when The Canadian Press Harris-Decima survey indicated his party is on a roll. Support for the NDP among the poll's more than 2,000 respondents stood at 34 per cent, up from the 30.6 per cent of the popular vote New Democrats recorded in the May 2 election. Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservative party was picked by 37 per cent of respondents, down from 39.6 per cent on election day. The third-place Liberals slipped to 15 per cent in the survey, a loss of almost four percentage points from their voting day total. "What's happened is the loyalties of traditional Liberal voters continue to be transferred over to the New Democrats," said pollster Allan Gregg, the chairman of Harris-Decima. "We've got the New Democrats at an all-time high virtually everywhere except British Columbia right now." The two-week telephone survey found the Tories held a significant advantage among men, rural voters and people in the 905 area code ringing Toronto, with Conservative support above 40 per cent in all three categories. But NDP support among women actually surpassed that of the Conservatives — especially urban and suburban women, where the New Democrats enjoyed a six-point edge, 38 per cent to 32. Gregg said the reaction of women respondents best illustrates the "wholesale transfer of loyalty" taking place in federal politics. Liberals, who have traditionally polled in the mid 30s to low 40s among women, are down to 15 per cent, while the NDP is "now touching 40 among female voters." Gregg argues the Conservatives have always been known to have a "rock-ribbed kind of base" approaching 30 per cent of the electorate, "but they also had a fairly low ceiling." "In this last election they've cracked some of that ceiling with things like urban dwellers, females and certainly with new Canadians in a fairly significant way," said the pollster, "but that anti-Conservative vote or sentiment is out there ...." That centre-left sentiment appears to be moving behind the NDP, said Gregg, which suggests to him New Democrats "could become the natural opposition party." While some pundits have mused about a Liberal-NDP merger, Gregg quipped that "if things keep going like this, the merger will be de facto. There won't be a Liberal party any more." The NDP-Liberal divide was particularly striking in Quebec, where New Democrats won 59 of their record 103 seats on May 2. Harris-Decima put Quebec support for the NDP at 46 per cent, with the routed Bloc Quebecois at 21, the Conservatives at 18 and the Liberals at just 10 per cent. The poll, conducted May 19-30, has a margin of error on its national numbers of plus or minus 2.1 per cent, 19 times in 20, with larger margins on regional and voter subsets.

This one is from The Star. [edit to add: I think it is unfair to Rae] ---- Still sorting through the multiple meanings of the stunning federal election results — the regional, not national, trends that saw the NDP sweep Quebec and the Tories make inroads in Ontario, leaving the Maritimes and the West largely unchanged; the Tories making the most of their 2 per cent increase in popular vote; the hand-wringing over whether the Liberals should merge with the New Democrats — we have yet to fully absorb the emergence of the NDP as Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition for the first time in our history. The media have attributed this sea-change to Jack Layton’s cute moustache and his cane. The triviality fits the times in which the collective political memory extends to yesterday’s TV images. This does an injustice to the NDP’s long and distinguished track record as the single biggest intellectual and practical force for egalitarianism in Canada. It was Tommy Douglas’s NDP government in Saskatchewan that pioneered medicare. It was the NDP that put pensions and unemployment benefits on the national agenda. It was the NDP in Saskatchewan, Manitoba and British Columbia that ushered in affordable public auto insurance, which we could use in Ontario. The NDP also has had a solid track record of fiscal prudence. Allan Blakeney in Saskatchewan (1971-82) produced 12 balanced budgets. When his successor, Tory Grant Devine, left a huge deficit and a $14 billion debt, the NDP’s Roy Romanov (1991-2001) balanced the books. In Manitoba, Ed Schreyer (1969-77) produced surpluses in eight of his nine budgets. When his successor, the Conservative Sterling Lyon, racked up a deficit of $200 million within four years, his NDP successor Howard Pawley cleared it and created a surplus. (Pawley’s memoir, Keep True: A Life in Politics, published by the University of Manitoba Press, has just been released). Only Bob Rae in Ontario (1990-95) left a big deficit, a legacy of a debilitating recession as well as poor management. By contrast, look at the conservatives’ record — the deficits and debts created by Ronald Reagan, Brian Mulroney, Stephen Harper and Mike Harris. The NDP has had iconic leaders — quintessential Canadians: honest, principled and brave, wise and witty, amiable and approachable, averse to wedge politics. The most fun to be with was Douglas, who after being premier (1944-61), became federal leader (1961-71). The “the little Scot†always had a joke, sometimes at his expense. He was once debating a Tory at an outdoor event, using a manure spreader as a platform. He began: “This is the first time I’ve spoken from a Liberal platform.†To which a farmer sitting up front shot back: “Let her roll, Tommy. She ain’t had a bigger load yet.†His successor, David Lewis, also an immigrant (from what’s now Belarus), was so articulate that if you reproduced his extempore comments verbatim, you’d be reading perfect sentences and paragraphs. Remarkable, given that English was not his first language — he had learned it reading Charles Dickens with a Yiddish-English dictionary. His son, Stephen, who became leader of the Ontario NDP and has distinguished himself working on AIDS in Africa, is easily Canada’s most eloquent speaker today. It was David Lewis who forced Pierre Trudeau’s minority government (1972-74) to start Petro-Canada as a crown corporation. His successor, Ed Broadbent, (1975-89), proved one of our best parliamentarians. His successor, Audrey McLaughlin, was the first female leader of a national party. Her successor, Alexa McDonough, (1995-2003) courageously led a campaign to repatriate Maher Arar from the torture chambers of Syria. What can we expect from Layton? I spoke to Schreyer, Pawley, Romanow and Stephen Lewis. Here’s what they expect him and want him to do: • Restore civility to Parliament. • Put economic equality front and centre. “It’s in the economic realm that the body politic is hurting,†said Schreyer. After five decades of building an egalitarian society, “we are moving in the opposite direction, with 1 per cent of the population in North America controlling 26 per cent of the wealth, and with unconscionable levels of compensation for the executive echelon. Yet here’s Harper cutting taxes for those already enjoying a standard of living that’s beyond the wildest imagination of most Canadians.†• Define the NDP platform’s cap-and-trade proposal for climate change. Come to grips with a carbon tax. • Try to align Quebecers’ social democratic values more permanently with a federal, as opposed to a separatist, party. • Articulate a foreign policy that would restore Canada’s role in the world, not as a warmonger but as an advocate of peace, human rights and development. • Lead a values debate at home to help reverse the right-wing tilt of our public policy.

Can the center hold?

Jefferson memorial. The whole thing is much more ironic being the Jefferson memorial rather than the Lincoln memorial. D.C. Park Police: If you come out here and you demonstrate by dancing, you will be placed under arrest. Does everybody understand that? ... and you will spend the weekend in jail. Citizen: But sir, that's illegal. What would we be charged with? D.C. Park Police: You are too far away from the city to allow citation to reappear, therefore they lock you up and hold you. Citizen: What exactly would be the violation? D.C. Park Police: You'll find out. Citizen: What law is that? D.C. Park Police: I'm just giving you the warnings right now. Citizen: You're telling us you'll arrest us, but you're not telling us under what law or under what authority... D.C. Park Police: If you're dancing in here, we're gonna [unintelligible]... [walks away] It's not an altogether throwaway issue. The point of it is that Americans do not have a constitutional right to dance in public spaces, even if only dancing silently. The larger issue that this is being used to underline is the expansion of what many see as a police state. Dancing is just one way to call attention to it. RE: The Sun article, I think they were pretty aware of the title being innuendo. Cheeky buggers.

:laugh:

Originally – and before the debacle – Peter C. Newman was fashioning his biography of Michael Ignatieff on Theodore H. White’s series of books analyzing the American presidents, The Making of the President. Mr. Newman, the celebrated Canadian political author, planned to write about the making of the prime minister. He called it: Michael Ignatieff: the Man in Full. His research revealed the Liberal leader as a man who, having lived outside the country for half his life, had a confused view of patriotism. “He thought if he loved the country enough it would love him back, and it doesn’t work that way,†Mr. Newman observed. In addition, the author found a brilliant man so full of ideas that he was unfocused; he found someone bent on seeking redemption and a man who aspired to be a winning politician, having only ever led one revolution – a protest against a pajama party at Upper Canada College. “I have wonderful material,†said Mr. Newman. Several months ago, however, Mr. Newman, 82, realized he had to change course – and quickly. Mr. Ignatieff was not the “knight in shining amour and world intellectual†who he and his publishers expected to defeat Stephen Harper and become prime minister. And with that, the ever-so-nimble Mr. Newman began writing "When the Gods Changed; the Death of Liberal Canada." In it, Mr. Ignatieff still serves as the protagonist – “the unwilling agent of the Liberals’ self-destruction†and “the catalyst on the road to ruin.†“It’s not a happy ending,†said Mr. Newman. The book, out this fall, is modelled on U.S. author Michael Herr’s Dispatches – a non-fiction memoir of the Vietnam War, but written like a novel. “The Liberals were a state religion and now we’ve got a new god,†Mr. Newman said. “I want to have Ignatieff as the narrative arc because it’s his story, the rise and fall, but it’s more important than that. I believe it is the end of the Liberal Party. … I’m sorry to say it. But it’s not hard to document that this is the end of it.†Just after Mr. Ignatieff became Liberal leader in 2008, the two began to meet monthly for a debriefing – Mr. Newman lugging his big, bulky tape recorder to Mr. Ignatieff’s Toronto condo in Yorkville, his Ottawa office or to Stornoway, his official residence. They would chat about everything, and Mr. Newman came away admiring the man – realizing, however, that politics was “not his destiny.†He recalled at one point telling Mr. Ignatieff that he “was a swell bunch of guys.†“He didn’t like that at all,†said Mr. Newman, explaining that Mr. Ignatieff “knows so much about so many things that it doesn’t add up to very much because people need something more definitive.†At one point, Mr. Newman hired two psychologists to analyze Mr. Ignatieff’s public record. “I include their report in the book and it’s all about redemption,†Mr. Newman said. “He has a very, very strong thing about redemption – in other words, feeling guilty.†He feels guilty about being an observer of “some of the most ferocious genocide in modern history,†according to Mr. Newman. “He was there and he saw,†said the author, referring to Mr. Ignatieff’s experience, for example, in Kosovo. “He couldn’t do anything about it,†Mr. Newman said. “He was just watching it. And I think he felt guilty – instead of being a neutral observer he should be doing something.†And that something was politics. One problem, however, is that in addition to being unfocused, Mr. Ignatieiff was “all over the map ideologically,†Mr. Newman said. “Iraq is the most obvious example,†he said, referring to Mr. Ignatieff’s support of the 2003 U.S. invasion and his later recanting of it. Mr. Ignatieff, he believes, is not a strong leader – something that Canadians, living in such a vast country, crave. Being an intellectual doesn’t always make a good politician either, “because as an intellectual you are seeking truth and as a politician you are seeking power and those lines are still crossed,†he said. Last January or February – Mr. Newman can’t remember exactly – he left from one of his chats with Mr. Ignatieff asking himself, “why does he look so relieved? “He was in a very good mood, very happy as if a burden had been lifted from him,†Mr. Newman recalled. “I remember going home and writing a note to myself that he has made the decision, he’s going [to defeat the government] and he just wanted to get it over with.†Mr. Newman realized then that Mr. Ignatieff, having served in the thankless job of opposition leader, was finally seeking “a resolution.â€

Yeah, I think there is all sorts of media management stuff for it - I haven't really fooled around with that part of it.

The Navi-X plugin will get you the HBO shows, I think. I just tried streaming True Blood and Game of Thrones (first current HBO shows that came to mind) and they came through perfectly.

Haven't used fastpasstv, so not 100% sure if this will take its place for you, but I use xbmc with the Canada on Demand and Navi-X plugins and get pretty much everything that I am looking for.