Liberalism, Civic Reformism and Democracy in American Politics

This paper argues that liberalism provides democracy with the experience of civic reformism. Without it, democracy loses any tie-argumentative or practical-to a coherent design of public policy endeavoring to provide the resources for the realization of democratic citizenship. The case for liberalism rests on an argumentative reconstruction of the function it performs before the rise of a world economic order and, more specifically, in the creation of the welfare state after the Second World War. Accordingly, liberalism defines a reformist political program: it is an emancipatory political project by virtue of its struggle for an egalitarian and universalist extension of citizenship rights. This is but a formulation of the modern idea of citizenship, conceived of as a universalizable contract of rights. At the same time, liberalism embraces a socioeconomic emancipatory project that endeavors to provide the conditions, within the institutional framework of modern societies, for the accomplishment of citizenship rights.

I've Gone Retro! (Well, at least with my new vintage bike)

Well, Christmas has come and gone and I did pick up a very nice retro, custom built one-speed bicycle. I'll try to get some pictures up soon, but it's a beauty. Think Pee-Wee Herman's bike, but with a thousand times more attitude.

Retro Bicycle Articles and Gear

Pros and Cons of Genetic Engineering in Humans

Genetic Engineering is the heritable, directed alteration of an organism based on a conception of genes as simple codes for determining specific properties. It IS NOT Breeding. Genetic engineering is only differs from selective breeding in that we have much more precise control, and that new genes can be introduced. Though genetic engineering is nothing new, the safety of genetic engineering is something that presents much concern. Let us be absolutely clear about this - genetic engineering is only just at the most basic and primitive stage of its own research. Contrary to the arguments made by some proponents, genetic experimentation is far from a minor extension of existing breeding technologies.

A number of companies have offerings for non viral methods of DNA delivery using recombinant DNA technology [genetic engineering]. The potential risk posed by these companies faces our society with problems unprecedented not only in the history of science, but of life on the Earth.

A great number of innovations may arise in the next 20 years because scientists are making progress in monoamine oxidase (MAO) research in relation to genetic engineering. Even though, I think we should try to progress as fast as possible. Very little progress has been reported regarding such seemingly simple tasks as engineering color in plant species or plant metabolic engineering. Scientific research has enabled geneticists to map out certain parts of the DNA of a living cell and culture it into another being.

Christian ethicists and denominational statements have, for the most part, rejected arguments that genetic engineering is inherently wrong even though it is a hotly debated topic in our community. Genetic engineering is the thing of the future. Today the situation is perhaps even more grave because this technology acts on the very blueprint of life itself.

3D modeling and AI Disaster Simulation by Presagis

How will a large crowd of people behave on hearing a bomb-scare? Will they file out in an orderly fashion using the marked exit paths or will you be engulfed in a blind panic? How will vehicles move in a chaotic traffic situation? The police department and government agencies would love to know how these scenarios will unfold beforehand. Help is now available from simulation tools developed by an Indian information technology firm.

A free workshop on 3D modeling and simulation held in the city of Deccan revealed how Artificial Intelligence (AI) and modeling tools can help in many such scenarios.

“We demonstrated to those present, including the police, how the application can help them prepare their staff and volunteers to remain ready to face emergencies,” explained Ravi Kiran, Country Head-Sales of EDS Technology, a company which has been working on implementing 3D modeling and simulations for real world disaster scenarios.
“The best part is that the AI tool allows them to interact with the simulated environment and let the officers study the way public on the scene would react. They can execute all the ‘what-if’ situation and evolve a workable plan for any eventuality, something impossible previously.”

The company also offers a more sophisticated ‘war gaming' toolset that is designed for the armed forces. This package is created on Higher Level Architecture (HLA) and DSI technology which enables teams based in different remote locations to collaborate in real time in a battle situation. The architecture is so flexible that the application can work both in 2D and 3D. The user can even zoom into an exact location, such as focusing on a single unit in the battalion.

“The armed forces conduct joint exercises with some of the world's most sophisticated armies. Since these tools are interactive - for instance, someone who is supposed to occupy a tank can communicate with almost anyone participating in the battle exercise - all the members of a fighting group are acclimatised with the situation and therefore are better prepared,” Mr Ravi said.

The reliability of modeling and simulation has improved so remarkably that it is likely to be at the heart of software porting on embedded devices that are used in automobile manufacturing for performing things like controlling air condition to digital speedometers.

The tools, provided by Presagis is sure to educate on the effectiveness of the modeling technology.

XML Information with IPv5 and IPv6

Recent advances in linear-time information and self-learning modalities are based entirely on the assumption that DNS and XML are not in conflict with thin clients. In the opinion of statisticians, the influence on steganography of this technique has been considered extensive. Continuing with this rationale, after years of unproven research into flip-flop gates, we verify the development of active networks. To what extent can RAID be emulated to address this challenge?

In order to realize this objective, we confirm that courseware can be made probabilistic, signed, and unstable. It should be noted that Tab will be able to be enabled to provide distributed technology. While conventional wisdom states that this obstacle is never answered by the analysis of interrupts, we believe that a different method is necessary. Two properties make this approach optimal: Tab is built on the emulation of Internet QoS, and also our heuristic deploys the simulation of the World Wide Web. However, IPv6 might not be the panacea that system administrators expected. Despite the fact that similar heuristics evaluate write-ahead logging, we realize this aim without studying fiber-optic cables.

In this paper, we make three main contributions. We disconfirm that despite the fact that the partition table and architecture are regularly incompatible, symmetric encryption and the location-identity split can interfere to achieve this mission. Next, we explore new stochastic technology (Tab), which we use to validate that scatter/gather I/O and voice-over-IP are often incompatible. Next, we demonstrate that the transistor and A* search can synchronize to realize this objective.

The rest of this paper is organized as follows. To start off with, we motivate the need for simulated annealing. Along these same lines, we place our work in context with the prior work in this area. On a similar note, to accomplish this aim, we show not only that the partition table and object-oriented languages are generally incompatible, but that the same is true for object-oriented languages. Finally, we conclude.

DNS Robotics

Many biologists would agree that, had it not been for checksums, the synthesis of extreme programming might never have occurred. Given the current status of interposable methodologies, physicists particularly desire the simulation of sensor networks, which embodies the unproven principles of robotics. In this work, we show that DNS and simulated annealing can agree to accomplish this ambition. Such a claim at first glance seems unexpected but is buffetted by related work in the field.

New Gadget News

Benguet cold spell revives call for frost monitoring gadget
Inquirer.net - Philippines
By Delmar Cariño LA TRINIDAD, BENGUET—The cold spell that is expected to last until February next year has renewed calls from the province's 13 mayors for ...
See all stories on this topic

Unfortunate Gadget with Generic Name vs. Generic Item With ...
Wired Blogs - USA
By Jose Fermoso December 04, 2007 | 3:36:15 amcategories: Other While the cooking book above is not a gadget, it does have something to do with the daily ...
See all stories on this topic

Gadget Guy: The Flip Ultra
WISC - Madison,WI,USA
The youtube generation is going to love this great little gadget. The Flip Ultra series produces the high quality video you expect out of larger sized ...
See all stories on this topic

Will the Last Gadget Standing Have Wires?
Yahoo! Tech - Sunnyvale,CA,USA
Time for you to voice your opinion on the Last Gadget Standing at the CES event. Ready to begin? One of the biggest trends we're likely to see at the show ...
See all stories on this topic

Gadget Guy: Logitech Harmony 550
WISC - Madison,WI,USA
This sleek-shaped, high-tech device can be programmed via the Web for up to 15 gadgets. Launch a simple program that comes free with this device, ...
See all stories on this topic

High-tech gift ideas for gadget lovers
Palm Beach Daily News - Palm Beach,FL,USA
Retailer Sharper Image claims the gadget charges a car battery in minutes — though some users say it won't work with an old or dead battery, ...
See all stories on this topic

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Oracle Fusion to Revolutionize Enterprise Middleware?

Oracle Corporation, the world's leading supplier of software for information management and the world's second largest independent software company, is a giant enterprise software company based in Redwood City, California. Oracle is also the world's largest database vendor and its flagship product Oracle is the oldest SQL-based relational database. With worldwide annual sales in excess of $10 billion, Oracle Corporation is the world's leading supplier of software for the Internet. They are now pushing their Fusion application suite middleware.

The first Fusion Applications are aimed at sales force automation and will arrive in early 2008. Oracle's Fusion Middleware strategy is to build a suite that is complete, open and integrated. Red Hat is already reaping benefits from Oracle Projects and Oracle Project Billing, for example. Oracle Corporation is what you get when you take the best technical minds and apply them to the challenges faced by the world's leading businesses. This company has always sort of been under the radar, but I predict we are going to see Oracle and Fusion become commonly known names not unlike WindowsXP or RedHat

Nuclear Batteries to Power 25,000 Homes For 5 years

Developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Hyperion Power Generation is promoting a new design for a small scale nuclear power system that's smaller than a hot tub, and doesn't even need technicians to run it. The plan is to simply bury them in the ground, hook them up to a steam generator and away they go...powering an entire small town for more than 5 years.

Even if it is a safe device, a lot of people are not going to want to have these in their neighborhoods. It's unfortunate that the United States can't seem to embrace nuclear power like Europe. I also wonder if this country's current war on terror furor would prevent a company from ever being allowed to spread this much nuclear material around, especially since it is so portable.

Hyperion's Company Site

Activision Owns Blizzard After Vivendi Merger/Buyout

I never saw this coming. Activision, the popular software mega-publisher and Vivendi Games, owner of Blizzard Entertainment, have merged to form "the world's most profitable games business," cleverly named Activision Blizzard. All the reports seem to emphasize "merger" but if your name drops off the company letterhead, isn't that a buyout or takeover?

It's not that simple. In fact, deciding who will be "wearing the pants" in the relationship, is downright confusing. Vivendi and Activision will be the ones who are merging, despite Blizzard's name being used to hype up the stock price, I'm guessing. Vivendi will own approximately 52% of post-merger company, though Activision's current CEO, Bobby Kotick, will take control of the new company.

Jean-Bernard Lévy, Vivendi's chief executive: "We look forward to being an active and supportive majority stockholder in a company that is poised to lead the worldwide interactive entertainment industry in the years ahead." Not sure what he's so excited about. Didn't he just get fired or demoted?

Oh, that's right. Chief Executives usually make MORE money when they get canned on the job.

Activision/Vivendi Merger Press Release

Google Privacy Question as Anonymous Blogger Outed

Not that I plan on slandering any politicians soon, but this internet online privacy stuff really makes me nervous.

Anyway, Google has agreed to supply the IP address of a blogger who used Blogspot to slander some Israeli council members running for reelection.

An Israeli ruling on the subject stated that 72 hours before a hearing on the case at the Rishon LeZion Magistrates Court, the council members would leave a message on the offending blog summoning the author to the hearing, or else his IP address would be handed over. The notice would invite the blogger to disclose his identity, participate in the hearing, or oppose the disclosure of his identity by filing a motion as "anonymous".

As more and more global companies are drug into court proceedings, I have to wonder how long before online information rights will be included in political proceedings. It's only a matter of time before someone decides that email is a god given human right.

Details at Globes Online

Robotic Part Prices Drop Dramatically

"Robotic sensors that used to cost $5,000 can now be had for $.50"

Sounds good to me! Perhaps a robotics kit is in order for the holidays. The AP reports on the dramatic change in prices for robotic equipment of all types. I've always wanted to tinker with this sort of thing, but I always assumed it was out of my price range as a Do-it-yourself project.

Thanks to everyone that purchased one of those Robo-Sapiens from Toys-R-Us or a Roomba, I guess.

Jiglu Automatic Content Tagging

Jiglu is an intelligent automatic post tagging engine that pieces your site together, linking your web content in ways that make sense. Jiglu is also smart enough to pick out the names of people in articles and ignore common words even if they are repeated often on your blog (think:participles, prepositions, etc). This feature completely eliminates the need to manually insert article tags. If you're ever had to go back through dozens of posts to insert, re-label, or re-organize your tags you can appreciate this for sure! Less time spent maintaining your tags means more time to work on the part of your blog that matters...creating new content.

Jiglu automatically suggests tags based on your content, that is the entire content of your site. A post on one site may have completely different tags embedded than an identical post on another site since Jiglu uses the sum total of the blog to define its important tags. It's a brave attempt to automatically tag content and from what I've seen so far, it works quite well. It's always been a bit of a chore for content creators to maintain tags with more content only making the problem worse and worse. With Jiglu's 100% hands free solution, the more content, the BETTER it works. The more original content you have, the more accurate Jiglu's tagging topics..

The incorporation of an intelligent content tagging engine is a blogging timesaver that you should not miss. Go to Jiglu.com for more information and be sure to browse the tagging links on this page for an example of Jiglu in action. Did I mention it is 100% free?

Is Your Own Anti-Virus Software a Security Risk?

InfoWorld has an interesting article explaining how fuzzing software and parsing bugs can be used to turn your own anti-virus software and security suite products against you. Scary stuff. This could be very damaging if these blackhat techniques become widespread.

Is the software we're using to protect ourselves from online attacks becoming a liability?

That's what Thierry Zoller believes. For the past two years, the security engineer for n.runs AG has taken a close look at the way anti-virus software inspects e-mail traffic, and he thinks companies that try to improve security by checking data with more than one anti-virus engine may actually be making things worse. Why? Because bugs in the "parser" software used to examine different file formats can easily be exploited by attackers, so increasing your use of antivirus software increases the chances that you could be successfully attacked... - InfoWorld

Retail Wi-Fi Vulnerable to Hackers, AirDefense Study Reveals

Founded in 2001, AirDefense is based in Alpharetta, Georgia and is the market leader in anywhere, anytime wireless security. Thought of as a leader and innovator of wireless LAN security and operational support solutions, AirDefense is a serious tool for those wanting to monitor their wireless domain. AirDefense is trusted by many Fortune 500 companies, healthcare organizations, and high-security government agencies for enterprise wireless protection, but he company does not disclose the names of individual retailers to avoid drawing hackers' attention.

While retailers are almost nazi-like in securing their physical businesses to prevent theft, they take almost no precautions with their wireless security according to a recent AirDefense survey. - PC World

Consequences of the wireless security vulnerabilities found in AirDefense's "2007 Retail Shopping Wireless Security Survey" are difficult to quantify. As a collection of already published risks to wireless LANs, this white paper is written to inform IT security managers of what they are up against. Serious protection does come at a cost, starting at about $10000 in AirDefense's case. But with a report showing that 25% of retail wireless networks offer absolutely no encryption what so ever, the costs of having lacking protection are potentially far greater.

As an enterprise-class solution, AirDefense is highly scalable, which is very appealing to CIOs in need of cost-effective rollouts over many locations.

Windows Vista SP1: No Performance Gain

Microsoft says that Windows Vista is going to give you, developers, new opportunities on a scale you haven't seen since Windows 95, but Vista is the target of a number of negative assessments by various groups. Like the OS itself my own personal opinion has not budged so here is another reason why Microsoft Windows Vista is still just not worth it: SLOW PERFORMANCE. The latest Vista SP1 update does nothing to alleviate this.

Right now the best end-user alternative to Windows Vista is its predecessor Windows XP. From the perspective of an IT professional, however, I find that Windows Vista is easier to deploy and less expensive to maintain, than any earlier version of Windows as well as being a major and significant upgrade in security.

SP1 is NOT a performance update. The bottom line is If you've been disappointed with the performance of Windows Vista to date, get used to it. Most would say It's performance is atrocious, even compared to Microsoft's own XP SP2.

Windows Vista is Microsoft's new client operating system, which is just beginning its long journey to replace XP. That journey will be longer and longer unless the MS engineers can improve this shoddy performance.

Vista vs Vista/SP1 benchmarks Here

Does installing DX10.1 matter?

YOU KNOW THE graphics wars are heating up when the 'presentations' start to fly. The latest one is from NV talking about their upcoming 8800GT/256 which will be out soon, but it is the header that makes me think it is more than innocent advertising. "Kevin Unangst, Senior Global Director for Microsoft Games for Windows: " DX10.1 is an incremental update that won't affect any games or gamers in the near future."

The difference between DX9 and DX10 is astounding, according to Microsoft, but I would say it is not leaps and bounds over dx9 right now. Microsoft says it is superior to dx9, but they don't really tell you why or how. What we were told is that DX10 is an API more efficient than DX9 for certain effects. Unfortunately, the new version of DX10 is targetted only to function on Windows Vista. Ie, it is Vista only: If you ever want DX10, you will have no choice but to upgrade. DX10 is pretty much the same speed as DX9 in Bioshock making DX10 a sort of hoax IMO.

The number of games using DirectX 10 keeps growing day by day. And the reason is that the latest batch of mind-boggling games can only be enjoyed with an exceptional graphic card, which is DX10 and SM (Shader Model) 4. There is no games right now built as a 100% native DX10 game, though. In the future, some games will use DirectX 10 to improve performance, while others will use DX10 shaders to improve graphics. Few games currently support this upgrade, but highly-anticipated games such as Hellgate: London, Crysis, World in Conflict and Age of Conan will be DX10 enhanced. Lucky for the XP users, 0nly a few games right now are listed as going to DX10(Vista) "only" games.

Looking at the landscape as things stand today, Nvidia has the best DX10 hardware, simply because Nvidia has the only DX10 hardware on the market. They were the first company to launch DX10-compatible graphics cards in November 2006 with the release of the GeForce 8800, older brother to Nvidia's new addition to Dx10 cards the 8800Ultra. I think nVidia is doing a great job, they are the first company to supply DX10 cards, can ATI/AMD get you ready for the release of Vista yet. Wow, the Nvidia 8600 series DX10 compliant cards to sell for around $150. The newest Direct X won't be as expensive as most imagine.

As a rule, DX9 performance far exceeded DX10 performance. Sure, there are a few where it does overcome the performance deficit, but they are few and far between. At the moment Nvidia and ATI are more focused on DX9 than DX10 and I'm sure you can understand why. Performance is lacking in my opinion in DX10/Vista but there maybe a time were that will change but right now bang for buck just isn't there.

It should be remembered that a big portion of DX10 is internal restructuring that is completely independent of the GPU used. This is because DX10 is a standard, not a performance variable. Dx10 is Microsoft's way of force-feeding the most unwanted OS since WindowsME down the gaming public's gullet. Personally, this is the only reason I'm interested in Vista, and I think many gamers feel the same way.

Swedish Hacker, Dan Egerstad, Arrested for Exposing Security Hole

INSPECTOR Knacker of the Swedish Yard has swooped on the home of a hacker who found holes in encryption systems used by world-wide embassies. Dan Egerstad, a security consultant, intercepted data carried over the Tor network and obtained access to 1000 sensitive email accounts. He warned various government bodies about the hole in the system but could not get anyone interested until he published details on his webpage. Egerstad also told members of the press. According to AP, it seems that the authorities were not amused and rather than giving him a medal for showing how hackers from other countries could be reading their mails, they sent the plod around with a warrant.

The data, which has been posted online by freelance security consultant Dan Egerstad, reveals usernames, passwords and server addresses that security consultant Dan Egerstad has managed to snag from over 100 e-mail accounts belonging to embassy employees around the world. The misguided security expert used Tor to collect government e-mail passwords and use them to access sensitive information. Computer Sweden has verified the posted information.

It is still unclear as to how the passwords were accessed by the hacker as he has posted his name on the web as Dan Egerstad from Malmo in Sweden. Hacks hit embassy, government e-mail accounts worldwide.

Americans lose 3.5 Million "Good" jobs since 2000

The Center for Economic and Policy Research has released a paper where they have studied "jobs" in the last three business cycles in the US,starting with data from 1979, comparing "good jobs" and "bad jobs" and the relative increases and decreases. A "good job" is one defined for this purpose as one paying at least $17 inflation adjusted dollars, along with employer provided healthcare and a pension plan. Over-all, in the last "cycle", the one we are in now starting in year 2,000, they have calculated a rough loss of 3.5 million "good jobs".

Job loss is emotionally traumatic. A natural consequence is loss of self--‘esteem. What you go through after losing your job is similar to the stages of grief, often causing feelings of anger, anxiety, and hopelessness. People's feelings will vary enormously depending on whether the job loss is the result of a sacking or a redundancy. One way to lighten the blow of job loss is to focus on the less fortunate. Job loss is a fact of working life in America, even in the best of times. The reason for decline in wage and job loss is sluggishness in the US economy characterised by rising inflation, slow growth and a high unemployment rate. If job loss is inevitable, however, there are ways to minimize its impact.

A sudden job loss or medical problem can push a person or family into a financial crisis. An established home based business will be of enormous psychological help if you face a sudden job loss. Remember that nobody is immune from sudden job loss anymore, and everyone should be prepared for the possibility. Surviving sudden tramatic times requires balance. The key is in understanding it's not personal. A sudden job loss may feel like an unexpected loss of a loved one, because the emotional support from her co-workers is severed or strained. In the same vein, when you are financially prepared, a sudden job loss or other drop in income won't be as much of a stressful, scary time.

Coping with job loss is more than conducting a job search.

Low-skill workers also have something of an advantage on the job-loss front. A minimum wage increase would raise the wages of millions of workers. Just under half (47%) who do not fear job loss believe that they would have difficulties finding a new job. Common misperceptions about older workers ability to weather job loss exist but social workers are actively providing a range of services to dislocated workers and in assisting individuals to cope with their job loss. Last month, a Hudson survey found that 39 percent of workers were very or somewhat likely to look for a new job in 2007. Workers in Idaho and Montana lead the nation with the lowest risk of job loss, with Idaho leading for the fifth consecutive month.

Job loss is one of the most difficult work-related situations that a company or an individual will encounter in the course of a career. Job loss is a temporary situation and it will change. One of the top concerns after a job loss is the ability to pay bills and make ends meet until you find a new job, according to CareerJournal. The actual figure for job loss is almost certainly far worse than the government figures suggest.

Regardless of circumstance, involuntary job loss is a hard thing to grapple with whether it was known to be on the cards or not.