Why Am I Not Surprised?

War Crimes Committed by the Israel Army

I came across this video about a news report done by The Guardian of the U.K. on war crimes committed by the Israeli Army during the latest offensive in Gaza. It is truly heartbreaking.

I cannot embed the video. Here is a link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLZgNy46aTQ

Here is the article on the Guardian website.

What Happens When a Fiat Currency Collapses

Quoted from Wikipedia

Fiat currency (fiat money) is money that exists because an authority or custom declares it to be money. (From the Latin fiat, which means "let it be done"). It achieves value because a government requires it in payment of taxes and says it can be used to pay debt or buy goods and services and because people trust that the value of the currency will be reasonably stable.

What happens when a fiat currency collapses? Watch this video first before continuing. Sorry, embedding has been disabled.

Obviously, I am not basing my conclusions on economic studies and/or theories, but on real life events and a current situation which has clearly become a humanitarian crisis. When money that is only as valuable as it is declared to be collapses, people will turn to what has real value. And we should realize, especially in these hard economic times, that what we choose to represent value should itself be backed by something of undeniable value, whatever it may be. I think the lesson is simple, clear and demonstrated for all to see in this video. I just hope we take heed and make amends before we are in a situation as desperate as the Zimbabweans.

The Obama Deception

The Obama deception is a new movie by Alex Jones that claims reveal a sinister conspiracy that put Barack Obama in the Oval Office and continues to control him for the good of their agenda. I do not want to impress an opinion on you... watch it for yourself and make up your own mind.

Tidbit: Creating a Good Password

In the latest Linux Mint Newsletter, Husse linked to an article which suggests that the weakest link in online security is weak passwords. I have seen this myself in the passwords my friends use. But it is possible to create a strong password that is also easy to remember. Here is how I generally go about it.

Pick your root words

This is what will make your password easy to remember for you. Choose two short words that you won't forget - two words because two words are harder to guess than one for a cracker. Example:
'dogs' and 'linux'.

Swap in some numbers

Now swap some letters for numbers that look like the letters. For example: 1 = I, 3 = E, 4 = A, 5 = S, 7 = T, 8 = B, 0 = O. You can use whatever substitutions you like as long as you remember them. Now our root words are:
'd0g5' and 'l1nux'

Mix up the words

Alternate the letters of the root words but you can mix them up in a way that suits you. Now we have:
dl01gn5ux

Use uppercase letters

Using at least one uppercase letter immediately increases the strength of the password because the cracker must now account for 26 more characters. Let us make the first and last letters uppercase:
Dl01gn5uX

Add a special character

To increase the number of characters in the mix, add a special character if it is allowed. These can be punctuation marks or symbols. Just keep it easy to remember
Dl01gn5uX!

Add site specific changes

It is not a good idea to use the same password on multiple sites because if one is cracked, they all are. And this is more important with more and more of our personal information going online. But still nobody likes remembering a different password for every site, if that is even possible. What we can do is make site specific changes (that are easy to remember) to our already strong password. For example, add the first letter of the site on which this password will be used. If it is on gmail, our password is now:
Dl01gn5uX!g

Shhh!

Now we have an awesome password that will take even the fastest brute force attack a long time to crack! And yet it is easy to work through the steps from our ultra-easy-to-remember root words to our awesome password should you forget it. After a while, this complex sequence becomes second nature even with site specific modifications.

But the weakest link still remains. And that is you! It goes without saying... do not tell anyone, do not write it down, do not save it in a file, etc. There really is no need to if your root words are easy to remember. And even if someone who knows you well can guess the root words, it will still be hard to guess your password.

Take the above process, change it to what suits you best, make your own rules, and most importantly, use it!

You can check the strength of your password at http://www.passwordmeter.com/. Our password here rates as 'Very Strong'!

Tulips > 1637 > Holland > Orphans > Economic Crisis - Logical Really!

You just gotta love The Gradual Report... "Where we gradually report!"

Linus Torvalds Switches to Gnome?

For years the fanatic battle of which desktop environment is better on a Linux desktop has raged on. But the KDE folks always had a trump card - Linus Torvalds prefers KDE over Gnome. But With the advent of KDE 4, which I like a lot, has the situation remained the same? Apparently not!

I used to be a KDE user. I thought KDE 4.0 was such a disaster, I switched to GNOME. I hate the fact that my right button doesn't do what I want it to do. But the whole "break everything" model is painful for users, and they can choose to use something else.

Read more...

What is the conclusion? We on the the open side of the software world all have one thing in common - Choice! Use what works for you!

Symphony of the Global Economy