MORE ANCIENT ARISTO TACOMA ARCHIVES This yoga6d EcoNomy page was much-updated as a source of my reflections and tech advises until about 2013 then only occasionally as other projects came to fruition and dominance. Some structural thoughts on economy and some technical thoughts on Linux and the like which still have usefulness for those so lucky they're in possession of what I back then, and still do, call a Y2000-compliant Personal Computer, are left intact. This page is now linked to from the front page of Yoga4d.org under the 'ancient' heading on top right there. There is a whole lot of gold for Y2000-compliant computers in these two websites and associated websites and I have resisted the temptation of making it all uniform; instead it is like a palace with many hidden rooms, even hidden corridors and ballrooms ;) Aristo Tacoma The G15 PMN platform is of course always fresh and updated with new apps and with info about getting it to run on more and more devices: norskesites.org/fic3/fic3inf3.htm The world is full of proofread unwise texts. If there is any wisdom here, it isn't proofread. Just as any good painting isn't proofread either. ![]()
Vogue Paris October 2017 Fashionmodel Ulrikke Hoyer Archive page 1. Archive page 10. ********************A BIT MORE PRIVACY? HERE YOU ARE:********************** As the first head of the Norwegian State's Data Protection Agency --a sort of "Ombudsman for Privacy"--pointed out: one can be a completely respectable and law-abiding citizen and nevertheless not want the State to know everything about oneself. Privacy is a matter of quality of living. This is not just about the State; it's a matter also of not letting one's life be altogether dominated by large tech corporations and their spamming of the Internet experience with unesthetical advertisements. One can be in favour of general ad campaigns and advertisements shown, beside quality articles and quality photos, in a way that has been human edited so as to provide a good reading experience, and not approving of the hyper-targeted ads that appear all over the place by scripts operated by these companies. A newspaper can provide ads in its digital forms without engaging in hyper-targeting: simply by showing images and texts in the classic manner, so that everyone sees the same images and texts, both editorial content and advertisements. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ===========>Here you can YOGA6DORG SPARKLES PRODUCTION SUITE or certificates by getting the 7.5 GB .ova file we have prepared for you and start it within such as Oracle Virtualbox. Read on:==================== Here are 15 ca 500MB bundles for SPARKLES.OVA, which, when you have got it all, should combine to the exact size 7581443584 bytes. These are, in Linux, easily combined by a simple command as indicated here: readme.txt Further notes: installing_the_best_linux.txt Before you do this, note that this version of GNU/Linux of the Debian kind as our open source friendly and legal extension and modification of SparkyLinux to suit professional creative production purposes do require that the ground PC you run it on is lots and lots of times faster than a typical PC from the year it was made {we made this available Septemeber 18th 2015}. You should carefully read the installation document as for what to expect and what not to expect with this platform, which has an orientation more towards independent creative production than towards internet connectivity or such: it is a healthy desire to retain an 'imprint' of well-made programs before they are swept away by clumsy upgrades in the decades to come that led us to make it. sparkles.ova.001 sparkles.ova.002 sparkles.ova.003 sparkles.ova.004 sparkles.ova.005 sparkles.ova.006 sparkles.ova.007 sparkles.ova.008 sparkles.ova.009 sparkles.ova.010 sparkles.ova.011 sparkles.ova.012 sparkles.ova.013 sparkles.ova.014 sparkles.ova.015 The above installation info text also talks about this ca 1.5 GB LTFIRTH: ltfirth.ova Exact size: 1582907392 bytes. We appreciate that you make use of these links as an individual {ie, pls don't set up systems for massive loading of huge files, for we need to protect the servers against too much pressure}. For further extension of this platform you may also want to get the following OVA's, listed further on. The first, RH8, can be combined elegantly and fairly effortlessly with the Y6ALL.ZIP G15 PMN programming platform (linked to elsewhere in this page; the Y6ALL works in fullscreen mode in RH8) and which offer the possibility of running such as the 'toprinti' programs, the output of which you see the result of when you go to yoga6d.org/look.htm and select the 'Print weekplans' part. The Sparkles Linux works with the 'bnw' programs. Both of these are linked to at norskesites.org/fic3, the main location to get G15 PMN core works. SPARKLES, SPARKYLINUX AND SOME RELATED LINUX FORMS CAN MAKE USE OF SOME WORKAROUNDS--a handful of screenfuls further on in this page we give some. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ===========>Here you can get RH8. It has many features. It allows, if you wish, install of the Y6ALL.ZIP package for wholescreen G15 PMN performed elegantly and fast in a minimalistic linux. It can also run classic applets without signs or certificates. Do get the 2GB .ova file we have prepared for you and start it eg within Oracle Virtualbox. Read on:==================== YES TO RUNNING ALL CLASSIC JAVA APPLETS WITH GREAT EASE AND TO ALWAYS HAVING INTERNET OF THE HTTP NOT JUST HTTPS KIND The best of internet is free from meaninglessly overdone cryptisation efforts, certificates provided by conglomerates of companies, etc etc. Freedom is core to the internet. To this, http:// as prefix represents the best of the internet, with https:// as secondary class, but part of a whole package of securities which banks and such must provide. And free Java applets of the classic type, 1.1 and early 1.2 and so on,, unsigned and easy to write and without bother with certificates, is part of the natural anarchy of compassion of the internet. Is there a shortcut to running all the good ones of them without all the new cluttered arrangements, which is safe enough for people who have a good mind? There's a way to run all the world's unsigned Java applets as easy as in 2006 -- in fact, as easy as April 10, 2006 -- it's just to go back to that date. You have Virtualbox installed, then get this file (2GB) and select 'Import appliance', and you're up and running. {If you give this link to others, do it in a way that ensures moderate rather than massive use of this link to this giant file, spare our servers pressure. Tks.} So, what you fiind there, we've done, easily, by means of only free software, the RH8, the Konqueror, and such, from around that time, all GNU GPL and legal runtimes. Login-name and password and additional hints you'll find in the readme.txt for it. Note that we are in favour of meaningful security when using your PC. That meaningful security involves that you think through each step when you do these things, and not go to just any site with this type of "certification-less" approaches. Do use it with the attentiveness you should have when giving even an emulated part of your machine such freedom. By putting the Centos 5.5 into another virtual PC inside your PC you can get Firefox with javascript of the classic type, -- which constantly works, on all internet, and will do so, always. For this is the Web III. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ===========>Not enough with RH8? You can get C55DOS! Here are 8 parts of a 4GB .ova file we have prepared for you and start it within Virtualbox. Read on:==================== YES TO RUNNING CLASSIC MOZILLA WITH AN EASE OF TURNING JAVASCRIPT OFF, FREE FROM ANY TOO MUCH PLUGINS, AND FULLY IN SUPPORT OF http:// SITES NATURALLY The c55dos in the present form of VirtualBox offers only 800x600 window, not as big screen as the RH8 above, with the free open source CentOS 5.5 here included, and a library for DOS-enthusiasts as well. Read all about it before loading anything of this c55dos.ova here: readme.txt You have Virtualbox installed, and a program to merge these files into one -- example is given in readme.txt for a free such program for many linuxes -- and then get these 8 files each of 500 MB == made available this date: May 5, 2015: c55dos.ova.001 c55dos.ova.002 c55dos.ova.003 c55dos.ova.004 c55dos.ova.005 c55dos.ova.006 c55dos.ova.007 c55dos.ova.008 After you have got them, merge them, after that, select File->Import appliance in VirtualBox and you get a window where you can select between C55 and DOS. {As with the above link to rh8, if you provide links or info about these links to others, do it towards a moderate loading of these our files rather than a massive loading, to spare our servers pressure. Tks.} It is all legal free software, provided in a benefit-for-all sense, and to support good standards. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *OUR CURRENCY TRADING TUTORIAL MINI-ESSAY 1: STATISTICAL GRAPHING: If you're a norwegian-talking student who wants to acquire a greater capacity to think about numbers in terms of abstract patterns and plot these graphically e.g. in connection to a thesis, and who wants to get started with statistical programming, you may find the following educational notes useful: http://www.norskesites.org/r-programmering. To acquire such a sense of numbers is useful also to get going with interactive PMN programming in the new G15 platform. There is a vague inspiration of some aspects of R to some aspects of PMN, of course. THE EARLIER FIRTH: Existing since April 10 2006, and with occasional uses all over the world: www.yoga4d.org/firth.iso (6-700 MB!) The http://www.norskesites.org/firth-up.txt sets forth how to install it. Requires technical expertise. Firth has been brought into PCs of all sorts, it has the Manhattan Transformation, or MT, scifi erotic texts spread around in it in .txt form, it has earlier forms of the new programming language G15 PMN in it (and a version of G15 PMN has been made so as to be compatible with it, the G15SP_F, and is available at the link above), a number of originally made programs and loads of docs. By its DOS-compatible Firth234 operating approach, containing a modified extremely powerfully expanded GNU GPL FreeDOS with open source versions of Perl, Pascal, Lisp, Forth, APL and you name it included, alongside various freeware games and editors and what not, it sets the whole standard for the classical IBM PC area and those who are technically expert and enthusiastic are able to get many portions of this to work with modern PCs directly--or via some of the virtual solutions. The WHOLE Firth experience is however only available at hardware of the Y2000 kind with a 1024x768 sized analog monitor and the typical hardware which existed at that time including SoundBlaster16. Note that the word "Firth" as defined in the context of G15 PMN programming works refer to any G15 PMN extension in terms of hardware such as robotics or networking, whether as Linux or as our own intraplates Avenuege G15 PC. SOME EXTRA WORKAROUNDS FOR THE SPARKLES LINUX The Sparkles Linux is a package that either works enormously well for you--or you have to get another package altogether, because it has now existed for such a long time that there is no automatic way to install packages (ie, its inbuilt 'Synaptic' no longer connects to an active pool of updated packages, so in case they have to be assembled manually and that's usually something to be avoided). However, workarounds do exist. The first is for Gftp (included) which doesn't handle some newer popular servers as well as e.g. Filezilla (not included). But Gftp can be modified to work just as well, so it no longer reports 'stalling' when uploading to servers in case FileZilla just rolls on and does it fast. Here's how to modify it:
The next is about screensaver (not so much a workaround as how to get rid of it completely), the next is about the top menu line which may jump around, then about change of wallpaper, and finally a hint about linux printer use. The screensaver stuff found on most operating systems are typically displeasing to those of an advanced taste, because it's notoriously nerdy and if not nerdy, often made on the premise that it should satisfy everybody and that typically means it should look like plastic which is stretched or some obscene kind of seaanimal. The approach we take in G15 PMN is totally different and should be pleasing to those of an esthetically refined and girl-friendly taste in beauty. :) You see this eg in the Gem and B9edit startups, which can function as screensavers. Linux screensavers can usually be switched off somehow. When it's switched off within the screensaver program, then, in the case of 'xscreensaver', it may come up with a very annoying message when it isn't given regular updates. In Sparkles this is done via Synaptic. If you don't want to do this, you can remove the screensaver from the autostart. But then Xorg, which is the display driver, will blank the screen anyway after ten minutes or so. However we can still run G15 PMN continously, see next point after this. To remove xscreensaver from autostart: Move mouse pointer up to the top left and click on the menu button (there's a workaround if you have a screen-size with SparkyLinux/Sparkles where the top menu line jumps up and down on the screen, this is one of the workarounds after after the following): Select the following set of submenues: System Tools => Sparky Center => Defaults => Default applictions for LXSession => Autostart Click here on the "remove" to the right of xscreensaver, as shown on image, next:
As said, when xscreensaver doesn't startup, then after 10 minutes or so, the linux main desktop will blacken. To show G15 PMN continuously such as with the Goodtime Clock or the G15 PMN Gem or B9edit screensavers, you first put in the following change in the startup file of the graphics of the Linux (this may or may not be significant, as some of the data in this are set by other files deep into the Linux during startup, but I always do it anyway): Start up Terminal, go into Administrator mode, by typing sudo -i and type your password. Then type cd /etc/X11/xinit ls And you see listed some files including one called xserverrc (the display server is called X, this is resource for it). Bring it up in your favourite .txt simple editor, eg gedit. But first you backup it, and everything else on the PC, as it only starts normally if you do this right: cp xserverrc xserverrc.bkp Then gedit xserverrc and VERY precisely change the line in it that says exec /usr/bin/X -nolisten tcp "$@" into this: exec /usr/bin/X v -p 9999999 -s 9999999 -nolisten tcp "$@" Reboot. (If by any chance you didn't get it to start the graphics just log in as normal, do the sudo -i thing and the cd thing and then type the opposite cp, namely cp xserverrc.bkp xserverrc and it will be back to normal. Try it, it should work, then do it again with more attention to detail.) Then you can start the y6 version in fullscreen and it will be on continously, and if you removed the xscreensaver first, it won't be any annoying message during startup, and so all is fine. But always restart G15 PMN more than once pr day when you work much with it. Hint: for quicker startup of G15 PMN you can put the startup command you usually use to a one-letter form, eg y (or some other letter not in use by the command line already, try typing it first!), and put this one letter to /usr/bin. For instance, cp -i g15.sh /usr/bin/y should work, when ./g15.sh is the usual command to start it up. Then it'll be enough with command y, after the cd into the right folder (eg y6). More workarounds: On several screenformats, the topline with the menu and volume control flaps here and there and there's a workaround for that. Open such as a Terminal window. Move this Terminal window nearly to the top. This will 'push' the topline to the top where it belongs so it is easy to access. Another workaround: You may find that Synaptic or other programs requiring password suddenly won't accept the correct password, that you know in fact does work. The workaround for this is: Open the Terminal window. Type sudo -i and answer with the password that you know works. Type passwd And type in the same password. After this, the Synaptic Software center should agree to this password. Another workaround, which I think has been mentioned before in one form or another, but it's no harm in repeating it: after changing wallpaper, eg by right-click on mouse on a place of the desktop, start up Terminal, type wbar-config and click on the RELOAD button there, then click ESC. This saves you the trouble of rebooting when you often change wallpaper. That'll update also the part of the wallpaper that's behind the bottom-most menu area on the typical Sparkles screen. Be very sure that you do this from the Terminal that's freshly started, and which therefore refers to your local username, rather than after the 'sudo -i' command. The wallpaper must be changed without being in the administrator mode or else the graphics gets funny. Finally, a workaround or hint as regards printer for Linux in general: the image viewer, which in many GNU/Linuxes can be started by command eog in Terminal, may or may not print an image correctly. Typically, if it doesn't work with a .jpg, then a .gif of the same will work. This you can achieve by typing, in Terminal, convert imagename.jpg imagename.gif then eog imagename.gif with CTR-P should work. If not, take it up in Gimp, which has a better worked-through print module in it: gimp imagename.jpg or whatever. Most browsers don't print correctly, and so to print from a website, the foolproof solution is to take up Gimp at the same time and use the option to File->Create Screenshot, or use some other method of screenimage-making, and crop the image and print it via Gimp to the printer. OUR CURRENCY TRADING TUTORIAL MINI-ESSAY 2: DOING MULTIPLE CT BETS -- Some high-leverage, some low-leverage, and how to think about it Each bet you put in -- when YOU put it in, not an algorithm -- has a meaning, a mental content about it -- we can call it the 'semantics' of the bet. As those who have tried to bet by means of program doing the decisions knows, these programs may work for a period then fail miserable -- especially when more people catch up on using the same programs. For it is so in betting over currencies as in every other form of betting, that it is the bet that few has put in which is nevertheless right that gives the best yield. Programs can detect patterns of the near or distant past, and have a certain rule-bound action connected to these patterns. But it takes something more beautiful than that, and greater than that, to put in a good currency bet, speaking in general terms. Just as one can understand programs running trains on a railway which has no crossing lines, no visiting trains from an alternate railway path or anything like that, it makes no sense to give control over cars running on complex road patterns with complex car and people movements to a program. When it comes to betting, it is more like driving a car than a train. If you're not willing to engage the whole of your intuitive apparatus, alongside your analytical intellect, you might as well go in for massage or start a cafe. Currency trading isn't for train-thinkers; it is not for algorithmically inclined betters. A single bet is an expression of an idea, an intent, it has a meaning -- each bet has a semantics, we can say -- the word 'semantics' meaning here 'mental content'. The semantics of a long-term bet using a relatively low leverage (what 'relatively low leverage' means must be seen as relative to the degree of fluctuations that are found at present in the currency pairs you are considering), is that of your sense of the substance of the economies and the biggest factors in the currencies, and how they are likely to move over a longer period of time -- anywhere from say a month to maybe many months, or a couple of seasons. The semantics of a short-term bet using a relatively high leverage is that of rolling in a bet on a wave that you trust enough to want to make a quick gain on, you trust it enough that you consider the risk of a similar- sized loss small and that, as a result, the risk is a 'smart' risk, not a stupid one. You put on a high leverage, say, ten times more than on your low leverage bets, and so in a matter of minutes may get a result that the other type of bet can only give over a considerable longer time. In these minutes, you watch how it goes, while you partipate -- it's like jumping into seawater, you gotto swim until you get up. So you watch the trade until you close it. You watch it, and you're watching the money of your own account increasing, with luck, or decreasing, if not so lucky. With luck, you can build up considerable money with these short-term high-leverage bets. And by the notion of the 'semantics' of each bet, you don't touch the long-term bet or bets. These have a different semantics, a different role. These are set to be possible sources of some moderate income given enough time to mature. There is nothing at all wrong in betting against oneself, in a sense, in that a long-term low-leverage bet may go in one direction, while a short-term high-leverage bet may go in the exact opposite direction. These have different semantics, and the semantics don't compete; rather they complement each other. *Added notes: * about long-term currency transactions: In some contexts, for a long-term currency bet there will usually be a gradually more noticable interest-like amount called 'swap' (which can be an income for long trades, an expense for short sales_, which one should learn to take into account; the pricing of this type of interest rate is one of the things you should consider when choosing a forex trader * is there a value in doing CT work on a surplus amount of money one has without doing it with a rigid intent to earn money? For anyone who has a deep sense of participation in the flux of the world through its resonances and synchronicities, the answer is a vast, resounding YES. Engaging in a bet which has a small leverage {ie, using only a small portion of the maximum trading amount} can be done in order to 'put in a vote' on what is sensed to be the 'true momentum' of a certain world q-field pattern, in contrast to trends that are mechanically easier to cash in on but which are driven by some type of temporary folly, so to speak. There is a connectedness and a listening in at a q-field level by having a long-term bet going more or less constantly. * the relationship between news about a country, such as statistical data on jobs and national income and all sorts of things like that, and the fluctuations as for the currency most identified with this country, is complex. It is also not fixed, for -- as Mr G Soros, a thinker and a pioneer in making fortunes on currency trading often has pointed out, people's expectations ALSO WHEN FALSE HAVE TRUE EFFECTS. If a lot of people expect a currency to gain value relative to some other currencies when the nation data are good, and these people also possess an adequate amount of means, as well as swift tools for doing currency transactions with a leverage, obviously this theory will seem to be true, at least in the short term. But there are also other theories, which concern how people stack up money in banks when a nation isn't doing terribly well economically. And so, wealthy investors may come to buy up a lot of a nation's currency just when this nation has bad data, leading to an appreciation instead of a depreciation of the currency. Yet again, when there are many more opportunities for investment, across the planet, for just these wealthy investors, they may behave differently than before. So ONE MUST ALWAYS APPLY INTUITION and one cannot blame the markets for not behaving according to theory. An honest person twists theories to match with reality rather than confusing the perception of reality to match with subjective theories. Such honesty is a foundation for appropriate intuitions. * design a process for how to do CT. If you do consistently short-term CT's, find an appropriately high factor -- high leverage -- to work with; decide on an approximate amount of standard duration allotted to each trade. During the period, you may find it valuable to disconnect from the graphs showing the development of the trade. This will also enhance the likelihood that you are not stressing the servers for the trading program (such as MT) that you are using, for these servers sometimes have an internal log which delays those who try to use them the most. You may also find it valuable to work with art and erotic photography and porn, also by means of our search engine, in just that period. In that way, you deliberately go into a mood of trust and playfulness, and allow sexuality to up your income potential.
The image is a rework of an classic fashion photo of Candice
Swanepoel.
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Classic fashion photo of Hailey Clausson.
![]()
This is a sample from porn transformed to art.
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Classic fashion photo of Miranda Kerr.
Original rendering by Aristo Tacoma of a classic
photo "Queen of Hip Hop" -- with
acknowledgement for the ground photo behind this is to
V Magazine, model Chrishell Stubbs in www.models.com/work/v-magazine-the-queen-of-hip-hop/75062
Elsketch 'textual graphics' of an AM radio
pasted into this digital rework of a masterly cafe
photo of supermodel A. Stephens by B. Staub,
in this digital re-rendering done by A.T. for yoga6d.org,
with acknowledgement to www.fashiongonerogue.com
for use of their scanned archive photo.
In these images, the original setting and particular
colors are consciously transcended so as to fathom,
and affirm, a variety of good images of beautiful
situations -- cafe situations, in this case.
Digital transformation (rendering) by Aristo of
photo of Swedish supermodel Julia Hafstrom,
This image (museface.jpg) is, by means of computer programs,
re-transformed or rendered into something suggestive rather
than something photo-affirmative. It is derived from
a classic fashion photo of Lindsay Ellingson.
Orig.comp.rend. by Aristo Tacoma.
A re-rendering (by ATwLAH) of an excerpt of a photo of asian supermodel Tian Yi, photo: William Lords, Fusion Models.
___________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________Image above has come about after a strong rerender by srw from an anonymous photo somewhere cfr yoga6d.org/over18.htm
EcoNomy WINNING CHOICE VOCABULARY: 'realline': when you use a PC connected to the Internet, it can be said to be in the 'online' mode. When you use it creatively in independence form the net, it can be said to be in the REALLINE mode -- it is working relative to the reality around you and near you, instead of being hooked up into the virtual world of the net. We propose that the word 'offline' is not as suitable for this type of work with a PC: the word REALLINE is more to the point, and more positive. The word 'offline' still has a role: when a PC is sought to be connected to the net and this hasn't yet been achieved. 'permille', shortened into 'pmille' when natural: in all of 20th century, the idea of counting from one (or zero) to one hundred in terms also of what was called 'percentage' grew until it reached an absolute obsession with large swaths of the population in Europe and USA, and never more so than in those parts of the world dedicated to trying to increase their wealth by means of statistical manipulation of the masses also by means of computer-targeted advertisement. The idea of counting these little numbers carried into the obsession about grouping people into socalled age-groups, as if this could say anything significant about people. The materialistic faith of trying to conquer reality by means of modifying percentages and dividing people by income group and age group has to be abolished in favour of a more humane, more empathic, more real understanding both of people -- with all their infinities -- and of numbers. And numbers must be released from the trauma of percentage. In Europe, there has always been an alternative, but it was never entirely established in terms of a standard English convention -- but every dictionary with respect for itself will tell you that 'permille' -- the 'mille' the same root as in 'millenium', or a thousand years -- 'permille', these dictionaries say, means, 'per thousand', so that e.g. 500 permille means half, and 1500 permille means one and a half times as much. This is slightly more challenging for the human mind in just the right way. Abolish the reliance on percentage -- and age-groups --, and adopt permille -- and perception of the other person as she or he is --, and much good will happen! So, when we shorten the word 'permille', we can write 'pmille'. In both these cases, we avoid any confusion with an entirely different number word, namely, that of one million. The word 'permille' meaning 'pr one thousand' stands on its own without any association to 'million'. The abbrevation 'pmille' is natural. 500 pmille is a type of phrase that looks good in e.g. accounting.
/////Quote in the wind RECENTLY OVERHEARD There is an orientation towards thinness in the model industry. Quite apart from all the scientific research that indicates that being too thin is generally a more promising state of the body than being too fat, it stands to reason that thinness for many is associated with both pains and dangers. After all, it is only by accepting both pains and dangers that most people are able to get into touch with some elements of luxury and greatness in this world. If a model starts eating, and starts following the advices in the (generally left-wing) press, it's not as if she will be transported into a life of great beauty and happiness. Most likely, she'll become one of the millions on unemployment benefits who live by junk foods and whose main component in life is to watch TV. Because that's the type of world we have, and that's the type of thing that happens with the majority -- especially when they try to avoid pains and dangers. Also, there is no cure in drugs -- for or against eating, for or against fatness, for or against mental alertness, for or against trance-like dance and sex -- no cure in drugs, for drugs create twice the feature they were meant to cure when one has used them for a while, and three times more when one stops using them for maybe a very long time after. ***Rerender by srw of a stunning, classic photo by Yelena Yemchuk of danish model Josephine Skriver in Lulamag.com utilizing scan in thefashionspot FACTORS IN THE ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN SPECIES -- Reflections on what it takes to make human bodies from scratch, when one is a reflective computer programmer and scifi student As of 1::A::2013::4::28 Charles Darwin is noted for his proposal that a great deal of time, combined with a great deal of natural fluctuations or changes, lead to a natural selection such as by means of which offspring that survives so as to procreate more offspring. It takes but a sense of logic to see that natural selection is a factor in evolution, if we by the word "evolution" mean the changes that occur over large time spans so as to lead to changes in the living beings inhabiting such as a planet. One can elaborate on the natural selection principle such as on the level of genes, the level of bacteria, etc, and one can try and apply the notion in different fields as well (eg brain science). This is done by simple acts of logic. It would be unlogical to deny that natural selection, in various forms, is a factor in evolution. It is also easy to elaborate on natural selection by a number of other related concepts, such as interaction between inheritance and environment, interaction between the being shaped by genes and the situation in which the organism is growing up, and with whom one is growing up with, and so on. One can also, more abstractly perhaps, apply natural selection on larger configurations, such as groups to some extent. Would it be logical to equate (as some has been in the habit of doing) the notion of "evolution" with the concepts just mentioned? There is little doubt that Charles Darwin had a hope that something like that would be scientifically meaningful and that he himself would have had little against such a development. We are in a situation where, just like Albert Einstein have been wrongly ascribe to have the subconscious position of an Infallible God by many physicists, so has Charles Darwin equally had the subconscious position of an Infallible God by many biologists. And so it is not so strange that there are people who simply don't even consider it a worthwhile philosophical (let alone scientific) question whether "evolution" should or shouldn't be defined to be just the theory of such as natural selection. Somewhat confusingly, people whose main source of thinking has been such as the christian Bible, have quite often agreed in this, and thus the rather meaningless polarity of Evolutionists vs Creationists have arisen. A number of writers with a sympathy towards religion have pointed out that this particular polarity makes little sense. Let us just note that the word "evolve" is the verb root of the word "evolution" and especially the former, but also to some extent the latter, have had uses in the common English language before the use in connection with the theory of natural selection in the late 19th century. Let us also note that just as there is still a role to such as Newton's theory of physics even with centuries of further development where it is quite clear that this physics theory must be supplied with very different theories indeed, there may be a role of a theory in natural selection in which the theory of evolution has become very different indeed from what it has been -- biology is also a younger science than physics or 'natural philosophy'. In other words, having identified some patterns that can be confirmed, again and again, in a variety of contexts, can lead to an enthusiasm for these patterns so that one might prematurely assume that one has 'covered' an area with a 'complete' theory. So while it takes but a sense of logic to admit for a theory of natural selection as having a role in evolution, it takes something more than merely a sense of logic to evaluate whether there are other factors as well. The role of religion is often seen as at odds with that of science. Science claims to be wedded to empirics, but often is wedded to authorities who by human history writing have come to be called 'great scientists'. Religion claims to be wedded to the word of God, but often is, similarly, wedded to authorities who by human or local history or myth-weaving have come to represent 'channels of God's own words'. As Karl Popper pointed out, the ideal of checking relative to facts requires a great carefulness and there are many pitfalls; in particular, he voiced the opinion that a theory must be easy to see through, it must be transparent, and it must admit of the possibility of being rejected in one way or another, no matter how much it has been found to be right. In this sense, the ideal of science as an open-minded sceptisism or as a sceptical wonder (as also the philosopher Arne Naess called it) is something which often is found not to apply in the practise called "science" in humanity. Rather, what is often called "science" must be seen as a corruption of the ideal; and this is often the case where much is at stake emotionally or financially, and in terms of prestige; and so much bad or corrupt science has represented the side of "science" in the "creationism debates". One of the factors that have made it more complicated to have a calm-headed debate on the question of the origin of the human species is that many bible books operate with, or have been interpreted to imply, mere millenia, at most, as for the time allotted since the universe begun until we reach the present day, while apparently quite clear-minded studies of a variety of kinds in the areas of physics and physical geology and so forth indicate that even millions of years is not enough for the same; and by applying techniques of measurement with such as radioactive decay of a form of carbon -- with a range of assumptions added, we must say -- there has been a sense of mainstream pervasive view in amongst scientists that at any rate, the universe is much older than what the religious folks tend to say it is. Add to this the fact that these religious folks are often not at ease with such ideas as 'natural fluctuations' (in the sense of coincidence, chance or randomness of some kind), and we see how the polarities have been forming: on the one hand, those who speak of millions of years and factors involving fluctuations; and on the other hand, those who speak merely of such as millenia and of God's invisible hand steering all with absolute might and full determination. Now -- this has been pointed out by a number of philosophers with a kind leaning towards religions -- religious folks are not always as simple-minded as the most vocal of the lot. Let us for instance remember that, many centuries ago, Baruch de Spinoza offered a series of arguments why the experience of freedom (and quite possibly fluctuations and chance and such) in human beings may go along with a deep-structure of the universe which, when REALLY seen 'in the view of eternity', doesn't have any element of random fluctuation at all. Spinoza happened to be one of the influences of Einstein, who often wrote things to that extent: and Spinoza was very much a God-believer while Einstein very much a scientists and we see that both find it possible to accomodate a more nuanced view of the relationship of causality and chance -- necessity and freedom -- determinism and randomness. I merely mention this to indicate that while it should be fairly simple for all to agree that natural selection in some sense is obviously at work over time since some living beings have offspring that in some way make out better with reality than the rest and that the latter come to dominate in terms of genetic streaks, in a way that can be said to be an evolution, ALL OTHER QUESTIONS connected to evolution and such concepts as fluctuations, causality and the like require more than merely such a quick application of logic to penetrate. In other words, we must go to the realm of insight to see what else there can be about evolution than natural selection; but we should do this by agreeing on a moderate form of darwinism: not one that is megalomaniac and that claims to have a complete theory of everything, not even one that speaks of what durations of time are involved necessarily, but simply that in some sense, natural selection is at work, from day to day, right now. This is not much to start on, may some scientists feel, while some religioius folks may be at unease even with such a slight admission 'to the other side', and unsure of where it is leading. But by admitting to simple and rather observable facts of this non-megalomaniac kind, rather than sticking to a whole 'package of ideas', we have the advantage of being in contact with reality rather than with authorities of the past and conflicts in the present. So I submit that this is a good starting-point. Note that I didn't want to confine myself as to the time durations involved -- millenia or billions of years since creation begun, or has it always existed? For any research into the past has obvious challenges, whether done by means of words which may or may not be holy, or by the techniques available to empirical science. Fortunately, during the past decades, the notion of a program and of programming has become more part of mainstream human consciousness than ever before, due to a technological awareness of computers. There are all sorts of ways to create emulations and simulations by means of programs and these can be very advanced and have all the appearancies of 'causality' when seen from the user-perspective, but when seen from the programmer-perspective, a very different and much more nuanced description may arise. Indeed such notions are commonly used in computer games. So while there is little doubt that such as carbon dating is an empirical technique, it should be regarded as a question of interpretation what it says. One may drill holes in mountains and find that there are layers upon layers which seem to be made by millions of years of geological gradual change, and yet -- informed at a philosophical and meta-physical level by the notion of computer programs -- whether or not the experience of this is in some sense 'all inside a program', or whether it in some sense reflects 'actual fact', should be considered philosophically open. So, when we consider the ultimate questions, there are ways of re-interpreting the experienced reality so as to fit with myths that properly seem to belong to religions. The apparent irrationality of religion only becomes manifest irrationality when one tries to apply the notions of these myths in a simple-minded fashion to reality, in an attempt to override logic. What we need is the subtle mind, aware of the grander questions of metaphysics, -- aware, indeed, that these grander questions have never been concretely closed whether by science or by philosophy, nor by any bible-book. Having thus hopefully argued in favour of openness for other factors than natural selection in the theory of the origin of the human species, and having argued also for the temporary pushing aside of the question of the real interpretation of the appearance of a vast past, let us see more deeply at the notion of evolution of the various species, in particular the human body. Let us then be sure to note that as any well-informed honest scientists will admit, the construction of the whole human body and all its organs from scratch, without employing existing living materials and techniques of copying 'information elements' from some such material to other such material, is entirely and in a sense infinitely beyond what human laboratories can achieve. There is a possibility of replacing some bits -- a bone by some steel, say, or heart by a pump, or so -- and in so doing prolong the life or enhance the quality of life of a human being who has a problem here or there. But the human being as a construction is something altogether and entirely different than any machine that humanity is even slighty near being able to make. In that sense, therefore, there isn't a proper complete theory of the human being; and so any questions of digging into the question of the origins of the human species must by necessity be informed by such as philosophical intuition and a relaxed care with which we relate, also in awe, to grander questions. The absence of much of this attitude in what is called 'the medical profession' (although with important exceptions for some practioners in the field), makes me look with suspicion about the medical profession as a whole. I do not thereby run to astrology. I merely consider that the human body probably knows far more of itself and how to handle itself than any bit of mere human science. Before the advent of the personal computer, the understanding of fluctuations over a great period of time could mostly only take place by means of rough summaries of various kinds, such as that which is called 'statistics'. So, as a field, 'statistics' became full of heavily named algorithms for how to compute numbers summarising many factors -- numbers that nobody really could be sure really said much, but which were nonetheless complicated to compute and so the whole field of statistics became quite an important field of science for a while. With the presence of the personal computer, it is possible to introduce relatively free fluctuation generators (RFFG), that creates number sequencies that have some resemblance with the idea of 'chance' or 'a free sequence', while in actual fact they are made by means of such as the repeated application of an intentionally messy algorithm on the last number in the series. It is, then, given such an RFFG series, possible to try and apply such rather fluctuating numbers as input data for other programs. These programs are each 'causal', in that they act in a strict and defined manner, but they may call on such input data and more use of such 'RFFG' techniques so that the result is some kind of combination of a sense of chance with a sense of causality. What is startling about this, compared to such as the time of Spinoza, is that we can allow the computer to do many hundreds of thousands of such calculations while we lean back and study the result; then we can go back and do adjustments, and again lean back and compare the results. This, over time, gives to a normal human being doing such programming an entirely first-hand sense of understanding of fluctuations and of causality -- even at a philosophical level. And this is something, of course, that could be very strongly of value when speaking of evolution and of natural selection, in which just such interplays between fluctuations -- or, remembering Spinoza, what appears to be fluctuations -- interacts with more causal factors. For instance, it is possible to make the whole computer screen filled with pixels at intensities and positions chosen by such relatively free fluctuations. One of the perhaps surprising things is how messy and shapeless such screens then become. To go from such a shapeless mess of free fluctuations to such as a well-done photo of young girls in dancing movements seems to be requiring a transition of an infinite kind. To think of evolution in an abstract sense, beginning with just relatively free fluctuations and some causal factors, and coming onwards towards living beings, could learn from computer experiments of this kind, especially if one introduces the notion of some type of 'copulation' and some type of 'offspring-making' in the scheme. To introduce something that abstractly looks like this does indeed create more of a sense of shape and less of a sense of messiness. But how would one go from this to living human beings? We see, now, that we're in a region not as much of merely having a sense of logic, as asking for a sense of insight. Could there, amongst biologists of the type that has leaned towards the view that natural selection over fluctuations or some type of random mutations over a very long time can be the only factor in evolution, have been an overheated belief in what we in a programming context can call 'random generators' or RFFG (I prefer RFFG for it says 'relatively free' rather than random which is more exact what it is). Let us bear in mind that natural selection at the level of living organisms such as mammals requires transitions by means, not of miraculous changes of individual beings, but rather by means of the changes that occur from parent to child. This is a transition that, for mammals, occur relatively rarely compared to all the possible fluctuations, say, at the subatomic level, in reality. What is a mere million of years when it comes to parent-to- offspring fluctuations? If each mammal lives, say, five years, then we are having 200,000 such five-year-periods in a million years. Two hundred thousand fluctuations are the quantity of fluctuations that we as programmers can easily get the computer to exhibit for a range of patterns, -- depending on the program, it may take a minute. This type of instrument hasn't been available to scientists at large more than some decades. It is a unique new way of getting cool about quantities. And the coolness, the empirical sweat the programmer can easily get, will say: it is quite clear that a million years of natural selections are very, very little. Multiply it by a thousand, then. A billion years. Is that much? No, obviously not. That's also very, very little, if we speak of going from fluctuations amongst simple causal factors to dancing girls on a photo. I would submit that it takes tremendous luck and about a hundred trillion trillion trillion years to have the principle of natural selection operating on a soup of particules on a planet to come up with a human being. And by tremendous luck I mean that enormously more than 99 percent of all the activity of these hundred-tri-tri-tri would lead to no particular advanced life at all. Of course, given the range of vague facts and the necessity of making assumptions for which empirics can be rather scarce, it requires a sense of insight or philosophical intuition to ascertain the rightness or not of such a postulate as that which I came up with; but I'm not in doubt that clear-headed honest programmers have some to contribute with more than the ancient and somewhat forelorn branch of science called 'statistics'. Programmers know something for they have 'been there', in the area of permutations over fluctuations in vast quantities. Statistics is but an attempt to say something as by a form of imposed artificial intelligence over numbers. To summarise so far, I would say, then: It takes a sense of logic to see that natural selection is a factor in evolution, but it takes a sense of insight to see that natural selection cannot be the only factor in evolution. It is a sense of insight, then, that programmers can come up with more easily due to their first-hand contact with numbers undergoing regular changes in vast quantities. Agreeing on this, let's go then briefly into considering what useful questions can be asked so as to get more in contact with what other factors in evolution than natural selection there are. I would submit that there are two classes of additional factors -- one, the notion of more subtle types of causalities, touching perhaps on the nonlocal in physics; and two, the notion of a grander worldview in which the whole manifest universe is a 'package' that is 'delivered' then 'taken back and transformed' by a more subtle realm. An example of the first type approach comes when people are investigating whether what at first sight appears to be unrelated genetical mutations somehow can be connected by subtle factors, by analogy, at least, with how photons or electrons are connected in what sometimes has been called quantum entanglement and which is empirical fact in subatomic and atomic physics, although not empirically studied in mainstream biology. (The lack of study of nonlocality in mainstream biology has the support of some but not all physicists -- some physicists starting perhaps with Niels Bohr have tended to argue that such nonlocalities 'cancel out' in statistically large aggregates of particles such as those needed to compose a single chromosone; add to this the statistical nature of their equations and that these equations are not solvable for more than a handful of particles at a time if one desires exact results). The notion of the manifest universe as a wave upon a subtle universe, a wave that is transformed in each moment, has been expressed by a number of philosophers and thinkers in a variety of ways; the notion of 'Implicate Order' versus the universe as 'Explicate Order' by the greatest physicist I ever met, David Bohm, stands out as something which in abstract form is accepted by many even conventional physicists (also those who don't disagree with Bohr). It is also in a very dramatic way compatible with the views of the rather medieval-times philosopher bishop George Berkeley, who offered the point of view that all matter is composed of the mental substance of God; a viewpoint heard all around the globe for as long as there have been myths and religions -- and very explicitly in branches of yoga. The notion of the implicate order has a key point that what is 'near' in the implicate order may be far apart when this is unfolded into manifest reality; and so the nonlocality in manifest reality becomes a form of locality in the subtle reality. The interchange between the two forms of reality is then a key pulse, deeper than all other types of pulses and clocks. It follows that the time of carbon dating in the explicate reality need not match the time clicking in the implicate reality at all. This, the advanced programmer will know, is by analogy found in virtualisation: the PC which is emulated by a PC may have a clock time which hasn't got anything to with the the clock time of the PC that does the emulation. The grander PC, the implicate order, may have a clock that ticks in one way, while the emulated PC can be artificially rushed (or slowed down) compared to the 'real' clock. Metaphysically, therefore, such as carbon dating and study of geological sediments to get a sense of the millions of years of gradual change on a planet may make a certain narrow sense without providing conclusive proof of the duration in abstraction of anything at all. All the manifest reality, with all the clear-cut apparent evidences of very long-lasting duration, may be as an 'explicate package' which is unfolded 'sideways' from the implicate realm in one blink, and without any real past at all. Let me be a bit more personal about this also, just here: that was the point of view that, at the inception of the first public "Manhattan Transformation" scifi stories with a muse being I called there Athina Salinger, and her sisters Lisa and Helena Salinger, in the Firth platform in April 2006, I called the notion that 'past is a simulation', erected to give meaning to the present, amongst other things; this "Manhattan Transformation" I begun on in 1997 writings in notebooks and it has always gone on since, and this type of scifi is a kind of foundational meditation for all my more sober works. I would then suggest that not just computer programming and contact with such as Popper's views, or what I elsewhere called neopopperian science, are important to get a sense of what other factors there is in evolution than natural selection, but also a connection to philosophical grand views or metaphysical viewpoints (where the criticism of Kant's criticism of metaphysics is fairly easy and outlined also in writings at yoga4d.org/talks), coupled with the intellectual richness and stretch of perspectives that good scifi can give. One needs a well-honed mind to be able to penetrate the fallcies of sloppy views on evolution of life. It goes without saying that I regard some bits of religion as highly rational, then, and as inspirational sources for private investigations of both a logical and intuitive kind into the likely other factors in evolution than natural selection. ELEMENTS OF A THEORY OF DESIGN ACCORDING TO A FREE INTERPRETATION OF SUPERMODEL THEORY -- Beyond use, design (eg of computer content) must protect the wholeness of what is presented even at the risk of being somewhat disgusting to some As of 1::A::2013::4::19 BACKGROUND: NOTE ON SUPERMODEL THEORY (BY THIS AUTHOR, A.T.) What is supermodel theory? It is a complex -- but not needlessly complicated -- view of the possible underlaying processes of all energy in the universe, informed creatively by the most significant phenomena worked out by physicists but deliberately phrased in such informal terms as are not touched by the many inadequacies of physical mathematics. It is a theory which is -- compared to what mainstream journals announce to be 'physics' proper -- entirely a fringe notion; but it is faithful to the phenomena in a way that is not typical for 'fringe theories'. It presses the questions of what assumptions are natural, given exceptional freedom of thought, in order to account for the whole range of apparently conflicting results from the various branches of physics (including general relativity theory handling also gravitation, and quantum theory handling also the notion of the indivisible unit of energy transfer and its natural fluctuations). It leads to an understanding which is compatible with broad philosophies such as that of David Bohm (in his "Wholeness and the Implicate Order") and Alfred North Whitehead (in his "Process and Reality") to a certain extent, but it is far more concrete, yet not so concrete that it confines itself to equations. It is a theory deliberately phrased so as to be un-equation-able, if that is a word; this is a result that partially can be argued for by means of invoking the results of 'incompleteness' by Kurt Goedel, but more deeply by looking at the at-idea-level unresolved questions of infinite sets of finite numbers which underlies most of the forms of advanced calculus which is used in physics theories as of the 20th century and onwards. So the informality of supermodel theory is arguably a great asset, although it lends itself not so obviously to traditional 'popperian' criterions for being checked; and a reworking of the criterions by Karl Popper for good science has indeed led to a set of propositions for doing good science under the slogan of 'neopopperianism' -- again, we hastily add, something which must be regarded as 'fringe' compared to the present (dull) mainstream. BACKGROUND: TO WHAT EXTENT CAN THEORY OF DESIGN REALLY BE INFORMED BY MY SUPERMODEL THEORY? This is a theme that, while part of the whole praxis of this author, is a bit hard to argue for in strict terms. For in order to argue for the theory of design in strict terms, one would have to lay out the supermodel theory in equally strict terms, -- and in particular, in relation to how it is operational at the human level, not merely for more abstract energy transfers for minute particles and massive stars and so forth. I'm not saying I don't have thoughts on how to do this: far from it. But I value the statement of supermodel theory as a somewhat vague one, offering some open propositions, a free type of philosophy, and an open mode of checking. This understanding has evolved more and more since I published this theory some years ago in a private ISBN-listed book, and it is linked to at the yoga4d.org front page and has been so for years. This book contains a number of notions that are better evolved in other writings, a huge part of them are also freely available on links found at various places at yoga4d.org and yoga6d.org with norskesites.org/fic3 also. For let us be clear: biologists and to some extent chemicists have kept on relating to the energies of the human body more or less as in the 19th century as far as the underlaying concepts go, speaking now of the physics ideas; -- the 'magic' of modern physics is found in colliding galaxies and electrons leaping over space in nonlocal manners -- this 'magic' is not currently employed by mainstream biologists in looking at the operations of the human brain, the sensory organs, the muscles, the heart, the gut, the body as a whole, the organism as a whole. Nor, therefore, are those who study the psychological processes of the human body in mainstream terms much better prepared. They are all steeped in a mechanistic viewpoint which is entirely localist and their physical theory of why and how they can do so despite the fact that the body apparently is weaved out of the stuff that physics also talks about is -- in my opinion -- without any coherence at all. But one thing is to assert that the underlaying worldview is lacking in wholeness when biologists talk about life, or psychologists about the psyche, and another thing is to say: it ought to be so and so. And this I would prefer not to do, at any rate not too strong, at present. Rather, I would suggest that there are some notions that do make perhaps a lot more sense than what one is led to assume if one has merely read physics as according to mainstream physicists, and which speak directly into human psychology and design. SOME ELEMENTS OF A THEORY OF DESIGN In supermodel theory, while all reality is sought to be seen as an interwoven mesh of one and only one thing -- or process -- namely these 'models' which act on each other and organise each other -- thereby the word 'super', meaning that some stand above others and interact and organise and also rule them to some extent -- there is the attempt to summarise all, absolutely all movement (at any rate, that aspect or part of movement that isn't some kind of relatively free fluctuation, or RFFG), as dominated by one principle. This principles is called PMW, short for a Principle of a tendency of Movement towards Wholeness. Let us at once note that this wholeness isn't merely conformity; we're speaking of a creative wholeness, a wholeness of wholenesses, -- and with contrasts, not just similarities; and with a sense of rhythm and the arrythmic together. There is no doubt that some such experience of wholeness comes upon seeing a fresh young face on occasions -- and so while the notion of 'beauty' is typically more psychological and 'wholeness' is more wide and also physical, it must be brought into the mind of anyone who seeks to understand more of the PMW. These supermodels -- the active models -- the underlaying processes of all reality, also all space -- are 'super' relative to one another also in the sense that they perceive one another. So the theory of supermodels speak of all the universe as penetrated by some form of universal perception (this has been spoken about by several authors before the inception of supermodel theory, of course: indeed every element is found in one way or another somewhere in the history of ideas in humanity; it is merely the particular way they are fitted to each other, like notes in a symphony, that makes the unique whole called 'supermodel theory'). We see therefore that when we as creative human beings fashion anything which is presented to ourselves and in that sense call on a notion of design, we are engaging in shaping perceptive processes -- not as a human invention, but as something which is inherent in the very essence of how the universe unfolds. (In supermodel theory, this is suggested to happen at several levels, allowing also a 'multiverse' or several universes, all aligned in a grander cosmos or pre-universe, -- with the door open to religious interpretations along the lines of Berkeleyan worldviews.) It follows that when something is designed, it has to -- in one way or another, regardless of current trends in mainstream society and culture and such -- relate to the features of the supermodels, including the PMW fundamental principle. (This fundamental principle is by necessity an informal one, transcending all forms of equations, for it is nonmechanical and -- in accordance with supermodel theory -- in essence creative.) One may ask: why not simply break with any such universal principles, and do things as one likes? But the notion we here bring in then is: we are but such processes ourselves, and it affects our lives too deeply whether we like it or not, whether we try to disbelieve it or not; and so, we are led straight into ethics: what a design DOES to us. For instance, we must ask: does the design has wholeness? And we must be able to transfer this question to the particular domains. Let me now do the jumps I had in mind when starting this little essay, straight into the design of such as what happens on a computer monitor, or even of the computer monitor and its fundamental properties itself. A certain element of 'color theory' is then in place. For instance, if you surround a symbol, or a part of a machine, or any small object, or any visible item such as a text, by white light, you allow it to have maximal contrast and so to break with its boundaries the maximally. Give a strong color around the text, and it is a stronger whole: the text is packed in (or whatever it is that is packed in). Now somebody might say: but I don't simply like colors very much, I just want black and white, let white surround something clear-cut, that's a design that is useful, and simple, and less is more and other such things. But then we have to say: what you like or dislike, what you may be disgusted with or not -- it's really irrelevant, except possibly in some vital cases where nothing will work out without conforming to such likes. For this is a matter of ethics: unless what we produce has wholeness, it will tend to make 'as a mountain of sand' the activities of our lives, -- particles which go hither and tither (or as a mountain of sugar, sweet particles which go hither and tither) -- and this will disintegrate the lives of other people who confront this design. So even if they may like it, we must choose something else -- and this we must emphasize as right even if we find that popularity is decreased, and that people gets disgusted with the design. For the wholeness of the maker of the design is, by supermodel theory applied in a free way, tied up to the effects of what is done: does it actually spread beauty, enhance that essential flavour of wholeness that PMW speaks about? For this is then tied up to one's own essential sense of existence, one's authenticity. There are other aspects to this wholeness, of course. The 'packing' of content by having a background color must then relate to what types of effects various forms of color do have on us. The selection of spring-light green on the computer monitor is, in many circumstances, a necessity if we truly want to signal authentic wholeness; but some might have been conditioned to see such green light in ways not conducive to their immediate sense of harmony. However, according to supermodel theory we must suggest that this is miseducation, and that a self-re-education is called for; for these standards and norms are not subjective -- although subjectivity does exist as variations in intensity of likes and dislikes. Other ways of packing content in as presented on a computer is found e.g. in the search engine results at Yoga6d.org. If you don't pack the content inside a mass of text, they are easier available: but at the price, again, of having less a whole package, and therefore less wholeness. There are various ethical principles which are suggested, before and after; there are various rules of caution that really ought to go with any use of net; and so forth. Leave these out and again we have a 'mountain of sand' or a 'mountain of sugar', rather than the whole jewel, the whole sun, the whole organic aspect to it. One may say that in terms of ethics, it's enough to know where the text is, it doesn't have to come every time: but that's not nearly enough. The supermodel theory wants each presentation to have as much of proper wholeness with itself as possible. A tendency to divide up things in terms of useful and likable elements is leading to a corresponding anti-beautiful effect on our lives, and must be avoided. Such a division can be called on when there is vital need, but not in general work. And so one can generalise from these points of views to a number of other questions, and find suitable answers to these, in design -- of ANYTHING, just about. {Part of the Web III definition is also:} CAN CULTURE PERSIST WITHOUT THE TENDENCY TO LIVE BY QUOTES? -- To live by quotes -- whether they connect to clothing, music, fiction, art, or science -- is to live within a bubble; a bubble that is unnecessary As of 1::A::2013::4::7 I have nothing against quotes -- thrown in for the fun of it. But there's a tendency in some, connected to some areas, to clothe their experience in a series of quotes. The quoting need not be verbal. It can be in terms of how other people are dressing, how they dance, what types of stores are set up, how they make drawings, etc. Quoting, living by quotes -- in this extended sense of quoting -- may seem like a very advanced way to live, if one for the moment looks away from its two major disadvantages. But the disadvantages are so great as make any intelligent person, I feel, look for alternatives. The first of the two major disadvantages of living by quotes is that the mental energy it takes to think of who-said-what and who-did-what and to combine all this -- as if in a game -- is such as to make one too exhausted to think much of what of it makes sense, and what of it is plain illusion. The second of the two major disadvantages of living by quotes relates to the necessary illusions, or wrong-doings, which are in the first disadvantage. It is suggested by the notion of "living in a bubble". A bubble is something that will soon burst, and in the meantime it shields -- the person is simply not in touch with anything while it goes on, except the parameters of the game of the quoting. Looked at later, one will merely see it as a passing phase, where one didn't have the wisdom to go beyond an influence "of the times". But for every minute spent within the bubble of living by quotes, there are real and actual people and living nature and true deep possible experiences one turns away from; for one's mind is beset with the obsession of doing things right according to a scheme that has little to do with reality, and most to do only with its own little petty coherence. Real coherence means, for instance, that you can allow thought to have a pause at any moment, and reflect, go deeply, even if the person who triggered this moment's reflection was a little child, uneducated in the intricacies of the bubble, and innocent of the terror it is to break with the flock whose present little lives feed of the virus of the quoting industry. Real coherence means throwing the mind open to silence. It means asking questions and not look recklessly in the archive of what's good for the flock, what's good relative to one's memory of quotes, for the answer. It means, indeed, calling on intuition. It means calling, not on the little wholeness or petty coherence of the group sharing the quotes, but on the greater wholeness and coherence of life itself. Some might argue that it is too tough to work it out all by oneself, entirely freed from the tendency of living by quotes. But this might seem correct. The challenge is not to go to the opposite absolute of never touching quotes, of never relating to flocks at all. The challenge is to find the salient middle-ground between connecting to quotes and connecting to one's own sense of reality in this moment, in each moment. It's not an absolute quest -- let's be realistic and assert: people around in this world aren't gonna get absolute enlightened no matter their programme idea, to cease quoting or whatever. But surely, there's a great deal to be achieved by always maintaining a sense of the child's innocent outlook on life, even as one partakes in the best and most meaningful (and perhaps glamorous) parts of a culture of fashionable clothes, sayings and modes of entertaining one another. Will this not sometimes lead one into a situation of being seen as an outsider, a loner? Well, obviously, the question, or even the suggestion, will arise at times. But unless people live by drugs, there's a memory that keeps on affecting people long after any event: and the memory of somebody having the wisdom to listen a little more to reality and a little less to the group's mesmerising quotes will speak after the event. Later on, that person may shine with the power of having a deeper coherence within, while those most beset on living by a temporary form of hysterical quoting are -- if they are around at all -- at least marked by it. So, to answer the question in the heading of this little essay: surely it's possible for all to maintain some freedom from partaking in a climate of quotes, by realising the utter importance of doing so. In this way, we call in something meditative, something which goes beyond the shallow-minded materialism of the constantly chattering mind whose main energy is devoted to forcing things to fit within a human-made thought scheme. This meditative aspect, existing as it does in a way in all nature, may have its own startling ways of doing things; eventually, one may find that it is sometimes even much more 'effective' to go by it. Then one can relate to the available quotes in an eclectic sense: for instance, when it comes to clothing, to pick that which makes a sense that goes beyond any quasi-verification the quotes can bring. <<What Wodehouse writes is pure music. It matters not one whit that he writes endless variations on a theme of pig kidnappings, lofty butlers, and ludicrous impostures. He is the greatest musician of the English language. .. Shakespeare, when he wrote "A man may smile, and smile and be a villain" might have been at least as impressed by "Many a man may look respectable, and yet be able to hide at will behind a spiral staircase.">> -- comment on P.G.Wodehouse, the british comedy writer, once written by the author of "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" WHY A CULTURE WITHOUT PORN IS CULTURELESS -- From time to time, without real scientific support, and driven by well-meant but ill-adviced reasons, do-gooders with legal power seek to outlaw porn As of 1::A::2013::3::9 The culture of an area -- be it country, or continent or defined by other terms -- is one of the things that makes peace, prosperity, harmony and meaningful living for a vast number of human beings possible. Culture is not merely a by-product of society, but in some sense the glue of society. When there are situations of utter sparsity of vital components in daily life, culture may not be enough of a glue to prevent atrocities. In nearly all other situations, culture is one of the topmost ways in which any society works at all. In addition to culture, there are patterns of interaction of rewards and punishments, institgated by money aspects and by laws and by police, and as a deeper extension of culture there is the vast field of religious faith. Every culture that does exist, and every culture known to have ever existed, has in it, or has had in it, parts which are more explicit and easily available for all in daily life, and aspects which are more hidden, and the culture of sharing images of usually both healthy, young and happy human beings in nude display or engaged in some form of intercourse usually belongs to the more hidden parts of culture. The extent to which this is hidden has varied. The extent to which violence has been part of culture -- even family culture -- has also varied; it is said by some, although I haven't checked the historical facts myself, that at the time of Caesar, the tearing apart of gladiators by hungry, wild biests was a common family entertainment (when viewed at safe distance in large stone theatres), for young and old, child as adult. In India, carved in stone in a famous tantric temple are divine beings engaging in their acts of creation by means of also divine sexuality. In some religious cultures, there are strict limitations as to the display of women. Typically, this type of religious culture is often rife with militant extremists. There is a simple way to understand the relationship: the human brain has to have a balanced, whole-meal, unrefined type of "muesli" of all influences, and if any one of these influences are severely denied, then extremist and hysterical factions arise that promise unusual satisfactions -- to make up for the severe lack of culture, the severe lack of meaning. The powerful presence of pornography in today's very much youth-driven world wide web has been there from its very inception. It is part of its honest, strong energy. It is a factor enhancing the capacity of active people in getting along to do their meaningful jobs, in full business mode, for they know that their thirst to see something of that which usually only summer holidays at their very best, in the peak of a person's adult youth, can experience, is regularly satisfied to a fair extent and without any price of significance put on it. The mere knowing of the presence of porn of this type is enough for many people to sustain harmonious lives, doing good things in society, acting as righteous citizens, and being models for others growing up. Science exploring the growth of children's brain and bodies for the last decades have confirmed the notion that some researchers into child psychology tried to explore -- for instance Sigmund Freud -- namely that the child's conception of adult affairs is intense; it is naturally intelligent in adult ways even though it has long been assumed in some western societies that children's 'innocence' is to be preserved against the 'baseness of the flesh'. Far from viewing sexuality as a 'baseness', it is commonly found that those who have a natural relationship to sexuality even as kids, in which there's a licentious attitude to their activity on this level from caretakers, have a far greater chance of growing up in mature psychological ways. As a leading Norwegian expert on child psychology and freudian psychiatry, Mr T Langfeldt said to the newspaper Dagbladet (Dagbladet.no) some years ago, "children have always engaged in sexual games [..] we all know how those who didn't engage in such games [..] became when they grew up. [..they became] hysterical [..]." The notion of harmony coming through a balanced relationships to all things which belong also to the more hidden aspects of culture, and thinking it through, must not be prevented by immature law-makers. Rather, law-makers must contribute to ensuring the persistance of a new wisdom, a new free discourse over the reality of what it is to be a human being in its full freedom, in the new and enduring context of the presence of the world wide web. Seen in this way, porn or pornography is part of the fire of culture, while laws are parts of the stones of culture (cfr, if you like, a book by Mr N Hagger named about this, "The Fire and the Stones", referring to also spiritual aspects of culture). The stones must be laid out not so as to extinguish the fire, nor so that the fire spread recklessly elsewhere (extremism). Rather, the fire must be cultivated in a context that also allows for the presence of all other aspects of human culture, not so that there's a conflict between the two, but rather so that the openness and freedom of information sharing, and of honoring and respecting copyrights of artist's original contributions also, are all modulated in the context of a new form of widely awake and open-minded dialogue-as-child- education. This can be pushed one step further if we realise that the meaningfulness of culture is a key element in preventing reckless destruction of the last of the planet's resources. Such meaningfulness leads to a greater sense of gratefulness in the population towards the society at large, and this gratefulness, the laughter in the body, the smile in the body that good porn can be part of the source of -- alongside good dance, good painting, good music, good technology work (eg with first-hand programming or "coding"), good exercise etc -- all this can work to motivate both young and old to think in more grand terms about the future of humanity, and be less selfish. It is just the growth of unselfishness that comes from the experiences of intense beauty also in sex that is a key feature of that aspect of tantric religiosity (in a wide sense of 'tantric') that is found in branches of every major religion. Scientists could therefore, when scientists have an interest in questions of climate and planetary protection, enhance their work on the studies of the beneficial aspects of porn on people, and sort out the variables that makes for more human happiness. It is a particular challenge -- since we have mentioned activities in Rome at Ceasar's time already -- in the Italian branch of christianity to realise that too little good sensuality and too little good sexuality has been attributed to the teachings of Jesus Christ and too much of good sexuality has been alloted in the compartment of 'satan'. The strong, deep fascination that italians have for sexuality lends to a tendency for satanists to have an easier time selling their message; but satan -- as I see it -- is a misguided concept, a nonconcept, for it involves the proposal of a duality in this world which doesn't exist. No tomatoes are absolutely rotten, for then they are no longer tomatoes. The tomato may be rather fresh, very fresh, or hyper-fresh. So also with the force of life: existence depends on a goodness that is one with the natural deep order, and it can perfectly well be a God-order, but in any case it doesn't have a meaningful opposite. It is the fullness of understanding that any reference by Jesus to a 'devil' or the like is a mere manner of talking to make a point, rather than an understanding of a literal reference, that never quite came into the most dominating church fathers. And so one after another -- not Jesus, but mere human beings with their human errors, such as St Augustine and St Paul, put their words, not the words of God, into what became a dogma giving too much interesting features to the nonexisting element called 'the Devil', and removed many interesting sexual aspects from God, from Jesus. This is at the core of what the cardinals in Rome are struggling just these days. These cardinals, it appears, come in three brands: those who believe in the duality of God-Satan, those who only believe in God, and those who believe that Jesus was a nice socialist with enlightened views, a mere mortal with some interesting spiritual awakenings. The latter type is in favour of sexuality, the first type is absolutely against it but invite it in by the backdoor by their depiction of sex as belonging to satanism. So it is to be hoped that such as Catholic Christianity is able to say that sex belongs to God, all good sex belongs to God, and that duality is an illusion, and cast away the earlier dumb-mind understanding which has so many side-effects. So we see, the quest of getting porn right, also in child education, is a big quest. It has more potential now than anytime before in human history to be part of a truly enlightening new form of education, and a meaningful well- cultivated part of society. It is the responsibility of all thinking people to oppose, therefore, the reckless cutting away of porn whether from social medias or from wider medias; and it is also a challenge to refrain from the too-strong categorisation of porn into 'good' and 'perverse' kinds, and rather start waking up to the reality of what human life and good culture is all about. That good culture requires the fires of the bits of 'perversity' (if that's the word I want) that puts the mind to rest without having a sense of there being anything fundamentally wrong about it. It is part of the quest of a wholeness of culture. A PERHAPS NEW AND PERHAPS UNIQUE THEORY OF MODERN CIVILISATION AFTER 1953 -- In 1953, the Second Foundation by I. Asimov was published; who has recovered from the mesmerising effects of the Foundation books, up to, and including this? As of 1::B::2012::11::6 After the Second World War, for a while, all seemed well with science and the West, from a certain perspective. The quantum physicist David Bohm, who worked under Robert Oppenheimer on the Manhattan Project during the war, told me as much: as he started out with physics, he said, there was such a tremendous optimism connected to science and rationality, and to the child of science, modern technology. I asked him [in his office at Birkbeck College, Univ. of London, I made three such visits, and then also assisted in arranging a psychologically oriented "dialogue" seminar with him once, later, in Oslo], what is now the role of science? He said, the question isn't clear: do you mean science as it is, or science as it can be? For it CAN be fruitful, constructive; but often isn't. In the early 1950s, there was, indeed, a tremendous growth of a sense of new potential -- even as the cold war between USA and the Soviet Union grew to steadily more intense dimensions because of the same. But now behold the 1960s, and all is different. People have taken to the streets, and in the 1970s -- to put the very well-known story in utterly few words -- people stopped clipping their hairs. Only to find that the comforts of economy calls people back to some degree of conformity, and we got the superficiality of the 1980s, the vague new hopes as the millenium shifts was approached in the 1990s, the surprise that no deep changed occurred except the fabulous dominance of the internet in the beginning of the new millenium, and then the complexities of economies that no longer seems to be able to get out a groove of debt. Why did it all change? One can find a number of apparently logical descriptions. One is that the technology, the convenience of toasters and smarter cars and more visual mass media and all sorts of things made people spoiled and bored with going on along the same lines as before. One wanted to recover lost contact with nature and sensuality, and with a mind- fulness and religiosity that came on top of increased wealth in Northern America, Europe, Australia, Japan and elsewhere. There was the dangers of the atomic bombs in the global stalemate between the Soviet Union and the West. There was the key liberation of women that brought traditional family structures into a new, less predictable state. And so on and so forth. And perhaps ALL these theories, repeated endlessly and part of the more or less global cultural hypnosis, are entirely off the mark. Perhaps there was one thing -- one book series, more precisely, -- which so shocked humanity to the core that all that happened after that has been taking place in the slavery of that shock and its information content. This is a thought that sounds perhaps like a particularly implausible conspiracy theory, but hold on for a sec. Give it a slight chance, please. I have seen it said that the Foundation scifi book series, up to, at least, the Second Foundation, published in 1953, written by the russian-american scientist Isaac Asimov, is regarded as perhaps the greatest science fiction ever written. But if you know anything of this book series, has it occurred to you how little it is credited for being behind all sorts of developments since? It has the mutants of the X-Men in it; it has the imperial galactic civilisation clashing of the Star Wars in it; it has the miniatyrisation of modern microelectronics in it -- all the way up to, and infinitely beyond, the iPhone -- it has the power of capitalism in it, and much of the shakiness of capitalism as well, -- so much so that Chinese history of the past decade is more or less nothing but a chapter in one of his Foundation books. It has every form of conspiracy theory, even, in core form, epically expanded into a brilliant novel. It shakes quantum theory to pieces and puts its startships through a warping hyperspace; and the fact that the book misses badly on the reality of our manifest universe which has so very, very, very many galaxies than just one matters not at all -- it is just charming of a novel this size, like forgetting to to put a full stop somewhere, in an novel which otherwise can claim pretty much pure excellence. Still, nothing of what I said can justify the claim that it has mesmerized all humanity. Much go against this claim -- for instance, comparatively few people on the street, if they are asked, have read them, or even heard of them. Many books have had predictive elements in them without hypnotising all humanity -- Arthur C Clarke's books, for instance, typically have a very large predictive value, but I make no such claims for his books. In order to see if there is anything to the idea I am putting forth, forgive me if you know the books well, but I must repeat some of its overall structure. The beginning of the Foundation book series starts with a civilisation that has developed and spread through all the galaxy, a human civilisation, with people like us, but a technology greatly beyond ours. It has existed in a stable form for dozens of millenia, and in the very core of that Galactic civilisation, indeed in the core of this universe's single galaxy itself, there is one planet, Trantor, which is practically devoid of Nature. It is the administrative center of the galaxy. In it, a scientist named Hari Seldon works out a certain type of science that predicts the irreversible fall of the whole galactic empire pretty soon, compared to its fabulously long past. In book after book, as the centuries roll on, the rational but somewhat incomprehensibly constructed science of the dead hand of Seldon seems to compell the galactic history as it then develops, often against great odds; but in a way that always looks perfectly logical when later on reflected upon. This is supposed to engender a Second Empire, and the germ of that new empire is the Foundation, a planet at the edges of the galaxy. Seldon mentions, before he dies, that the Foundation folks should not forget that there is another foundation, a Second Foundation, which is -- "At Star's End, at, let's say, the other end of the galaxy". This enigmatic phrase is used as the Foundation grows in strength and as various people, for various reasons, also grow in fear of this always unseen quiet force, emanating from this place nobody knows where is -- but which has a name, the Second Foundation. The Second Foundation, it appears, is a science meshed with psychology to a perfection that lends it features of what one might call telepathy; and it more and more emerges that the whole unfoldment of world history in the rational, technological, scientific and also sociological way predicted so clearly and rationally ONLY occurred because of the invisible hand not just of the long-dead Hari Seldon, but but of the invisible hands of highly living people who practise arts which over-rule all other arts of rulership. The young, brilliant author Isaac Asimov works towards this climax in several books, pulling, as it were, all sorts of people with him -- both marxist-oriented people, who looks to the force of history to overthrow the capitalists, and who wants history to have its own logic, and technological rationalists who hopes to see science as the salvation of humankind -- the latter being an attitude my late physicist friend Bohm hinted on as predominant when Bohm was young. The prophet-like status of Hari Seldon also echoes romantic spiritual inclinations in many people who want to see reality as coming together towards some spiritual wholeness not as yet found in the past. I choose now, in the completion of this argument that I am putting forward, to ignore the last productions from Asimov after the Second Foundation had come forward in the war against the Mule, and then again come forward in the war waged by the First Foundation against the Second Foundation. The later ramblings from Asimov was on the level of infinitely many other low-quality scifi novels that the world has seen too many of. Do not let them disturb the picture, please, if I may point it out, of the Foundation trilogy up to and including these two galactic wars with the Second Foundation involved. The rational, scientifically educated, politically astute Asimov pulls people along who have just about ANY inclination, gives them trust in a certain approach to rationality, and -- gradually, but with an absolute firm hand -- shows them that there is a meta-science, in the people who manipulate mind, and who makes them match certain developments AS IF THESE WERE SCIENTIFIC. Those who at the beginning were already disposed to believe in direct mind-contact were perhaps the least shocked by this, but even they might be surprised after going through the galactic centuries, hand-in-hand with Asimov as he explains the wonders of the as-yet unmade Seldon science. They might be forgiven if they temporarily forget their normal worldview. But all the others, who are not disposed to handle themes of telepathy, were snared into it, and at no point was there ever a clear-cut conversion point stating: you have gotta believe in telepathy to read the next chapter. The Second Foundationers do their stuff by eye- contact, they do not read minds at a distance. That said, they do absolutely everything -- elegantly, surely, and with galactic, millenia- strong confidence in what they are doing, although there are questions they have to ponder over once in a while. But even their uncertainties they have calculated over, all the way to several decimal dots. Wedge the power of the mind of the young Asimov (again, please, ignore the contributions by Asimov that seeked to prolong the series beyond its natural point -- he was obsessed with writing and must be forgiven for not always producing such top quality, especially when the quality of what he first did was such that it perhaps could not be superceded) -- well, anyway, try and wedge the power of Asimov's mind against that of the rest of humanity, from World War II days up until the mid-1950s. In just those days, I dare say there was no influence stronger, speaking of deep-cultural influences. 1960s is an altogether different arena. Pre-WWII absolutely different also. Only Asimov smiled, spiritually; and folks like Tolkien, who went into purer realms of magic. But Asimov stayed with one foot in science, and let the other foot touch the stars; he had one foot in science, and let the other touch a mysticism he never expressed in those books -- but let everybody into. Everybody, because there was no alternative influence at that time to match the scope of Asimov. There was no scifi movies other than outragously silly ones. There was no epic-sized scifi novels doing anything comparative, though there were many much shorter scifi stories and some of them had potential or even hints of greatness; and even true literary greatness, but not greatness in terms of prolonged galactic scope and capacity to both embrace science AND negate it, seamlessly, and over many years of writing novels in sequel. The shock of Asimov must have worked its way through the minds of all the influential people who read these books, into a myriad technological and cultural developments as we saw the 1960s. Suddenly, with enhanced technology, mass media, women's liberation, all that, what he had worked out in the privacy of his psyche could be thrown around between people at large, and expanded upon, wildly, in all sorts of directions. And indeed, that is exactly what the 1960s are about, and in some sense, also the 1970s. Then, the weariness of this, not getting it right; and there is still weariness -- and, I propose, and submit, that to this day, the hypnosis has lasted. It had to be spelled out to be dis- spelled, no? For something new to come, we have got to go further, and we can only come further, but totally embracing the reality of the greatness of what he did. In the most non-humble opinion of this writer. Time to go on! And so, if I am right, there is ONLY one way to go beyond Isaac Asimov's absolutely brilliant and mesmerising Foundation books -- to read them again and again, marvel over them, and reflect over how important it is not to be in their grip, considering that perhaps humanity for more than half a century has been absolutely a slave to every comma in these books. As I see it, it is not an exaggeration. ONE DEFINITION OF (PART OF THE MEANING OF) FIRST-HAND ECONOMICS, WHICH CAN ALSO BE SPELLED ECO-NOMY (pronunciation: eco then a pause, then nomy, or eco-dash-nomy) -- LAWS OF SOCIETAL HOUSEHOLD Related concepts: analogous first-hand fields, incl. first-hand computing, first-hand electronics, first-hand chemistry, first-hand physics, and first- hand mechanics incl car mechanics. When I first defined the notion of first-hand 'relationship to data' in the area of computer programming, which then became part of a more general notion of 'first-hand programming', it was -- during the 1997-2006 development of the concepts and implementations of the Firth platform and that which eventually became the Lisa GJ2 Fic3 programming language -- all concerned with seeing the data rather than treating them by means of vague abstract ideas. I realised that much of what is taught as theory at the universities was not very much theory in the greek sense of the root of the word, theatre or 'theorein', meaning viewing, -- and that what Sherlock Holmes was made to say in the writings of Mr A C Doyle was not really taken any much seriously. 'It is a capital mistake,' said Holmes, 'to theorize before one has enough data. That leads one to twist data to fit theories, instead of theories to fit data.' -- or about those words, quoted by memory, from one of the audio recordings in excellent English found free from copyright at www.gutenberg.org. Instead, to prepare for university exams -- and this concerns exams in computing also -- theories with sparse support, at best, from real facts, real data in other words, are given funny abstract shapes and diagrams in order to faciliate memory. So much energy, in fact, goes into this funny- making over theories that data are all but lost in the efforts to memorise theories prior to exams. This also affects language strongly: the individual words and phrases and sentences become a means to enhance memory before exams, rather than part of a perceptive process over what we sense as clearly as possible. As a result thereof, few has the preparation to relate to ANY data first-hand, when all their background is the 20th century type of academic upbringing. In computer programming, this means that the numbers and matrices of numbers become mysterious 'objects', which have 'features' and even possibly, one imagines, 'behaviours'. This distance from what is computed over becomes accellerated when whole language structures, such as Python, is erected in honor of pure abstractions. In contrast, in order to connect to what is referred to of data, one must put strong boundaries on the allowed quantities of data, and on the allowed ways data can be formatted, and always preserve a sense in which free, meaningful viewing of the data can occur. This is realised throughout in the 32-bit Lisa GJ2 Fic3 programming language. A 32-bit approach to computing allows for a cultivation of meaning, whereas 64-bit or higher means that only a statistical distant relationship is possible to the computer's interior. (The hardware can be 64-bit such as when one runs Ubuntu 64-bit in order to have compatibility of various kinds.) What came out of these personal enquiries, where I had nothing to go on except some very loose remarks in the direction of meaning and away from meaningless abstractions in the talk by the author of Perl, Larry Wall, where he describes his education in chemistry, music and greek (from the 1990s or earlier, I think), was that MEANINGFULNESS is a suitable criterion for first-handedness in programming. I then extended this to what I had already been working on for much much longer in the area of physics, and eventually also shaped concepts such as first-hand mechanics -- with a car engine that makes sense in the sense also that you can work on its component first-hand -- rather as in Mr R M Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance -- which is really honoring just the same principle -- and, eventually, also in economics. In the branch of economics or interactivity economy (as I prefer to call it, after I coined the term in MYWEBOOK.TXT, see link in yoga4d.org frontpage [now in the part called 'ancient archives' of it] and in Firth platform, Firth is at norskesites.org/fic3 if you click at the image there) -- I first applied it with currency day-trading. You find on this page, the yoga6d.org/economy.htm page, a description of something of what it means to look at the currency data in a first-hand and also intuitive sense, aided by analysis but not limited to any analysis, so as to make decisions that properly come from a good hot feeling in the gut area -- reflecting the intelligence of the whole of the brain's and mind's perceptive processes as revealed through the harmonious, stamash- trained (a kind of yoga) body. Then visual curves can be of help, and certainly much concrete knowledge about the arithmetics of the numbers. In number theory, the meaningfulness criterion I had of course applied in order to look at the idea -- the coherence or lack thereof, of the idea -- of the collection of all whole positive numbers. The notion of the so-called 'limit', which aims to justify the existence of a finite set with a flexible type of limit, was found to be sneaking in the infinity notion without admitting to it -- in the very notion of 'arbitrary number' as necessarily applied when the limit notion is called for. In short, I realised that 20th century mathematics is NOT and CANNOT BE, seen as a whole, any first-hand enterprise at all! And this tied very nicely up with the apparent paradoxes that had been shown to arise with infinities due to the normalisation practises in conventional bohrian quantum theory when extended to become a more general physics theory. As a result, a proper physics of a first-hand kind, must, I realised, primarely be informal -- just as Mr K R Popper had maintained but on entirely different grounds. Then it can call on something formal but this must be honoring first-handedness and so the Lisa Gj2 Fic3, or F3 (also called F3V since F3V is the proper command to start up Firth F3) is proper as algorithm for some features of this -- for instance electronics. As for first-hand electronics and first-hand chemistry, or ATOMLITE.TXT, as we call it, see links to Stamash Educational CenterS, or S.E.C.S., from the F3 resource center page (norskesites.org/fic3). Here there are also texts indicating why the theories of electronics from the 20th century are not proper neither for the data of the physical hardware nor according to the larger context of a quantum-relevant understanding of e.g. transistors, -- so I summarise the most important phenomena of quantum and relativity kinds, both general and special, in what I informally has called, and published as part of the 2004 book in my pen name Stein von Reusch as found at Norwegian National Library cfr www.bibsys.no, as super-model theory. This has been part of the Firth platform since its release in 2006, where a metaphorical statement or theory of a very playful kind, connected to the beginnings of the universe, was published as part of the consciousness-stream Manhattan Transformation scifi writings, in which 'the author' of the writings were 'interviewed' by an 'interviewer' -- in some of the background .TXTs there -- as to whether it is seriously true that the past of the universe, up to a point, was a kind of simulation, erected to give meaning to just these unfolding processes and scifi babes, including Lisa, Athina and Helena Salinger, as there introduced as world-muses. This Firth platform was distributed in March 2006 to a number of friends in CD format, at the same time as it was uploaded to the Internet and has been available continously since then. Anyway, my unique and original idea of the past as a form of simulation was instantly recognised as interesting also by artists, and compared with other more general notions of simulation and of such as implicate generation according to the Implicate Order idea of Mr D Bohm from the 1970s; cfr also notes from 2008 about it at yoga4d.org front cover. However, a key point -- not always realised well in those who picked this up or who tried to compare it to earlier notions -- was that the point of the word 'simulation' is to imply something actual which then is a more real time process, now taking place, always. And so a change- over from simulation time to actuality time, or from simulation space to actuality space, or from a simulation universe to an actuality universe, is an absolute key point to understand this my original contribution (as also some of my friends elaborated on). Actuality is a question of meaning, a meaning that flows on and is never fully dechipered by any human technology NOR by any human being in full. A relative understanding of what is going on is however an appreciable goal, in each particular domain. Going then into the domain of interactivity economy, or economics, put more briefly, we find that first-hand economics means * Emphasizing meaningful, humane-verifiable transactions in a meaningful quantity * De-emphasizing any element of loan or any reliance of any instrument such as 'credit card' * Responsiveness. If an order is placed, there is a receipt that an order is placed, and no orders -- in the ultimate situation, where a 1-st hand economy is realised fully -- are placed automatically, with any automatic renewal. In this way, there is not the temptation to misuse a renewal option so as to pretend that sales were going on when they were not going on. * If an order is cancelled, then if the society allows for it and the type of transaction is such that it is called for, an instant and automatic receipt for the order cancellation is transmitted. Otherwise, a swift honest dignified generous response by the company to the customer person or customer company is given in due time. * If an order is placed, and there are reasons for delivery before payment, this is done on a meaningful trust-bond relationship between customer and company (or selling person), and this is done only when the selling company is at ease with the fact that not all delivered items will be paid for. In such cases, one must have the righteous approach to this, and regard the items sent out in this way as gifts, instead of sold items, and refrain from calling on distasteful approaches for getting one's payment. It is so that one will thereby have a component of spiritual faith in that what is fair is ultimately what happens in each case; and also, practically, psychologically, one will give energy to building up splendid customer-relations -- with objective messages that are given as early as one can, with politeness and as much completeness as is called for -- honoring good messaging principles -- and have a radiance that implies that one is entirely beyond running after lost goods or coming along with any petty threats to unpaying customers. Instead, one will strengthen the good customers, and those who turn out to be not worthy of trust at present, one will simply, gently, avoid. * In first-hand economy, we recognise that each human being can have a meaningful first-hand pride in work done, in feeling that one has a function in providing as much quality as one wants to, even if this quality is not dictated by a statistical investigation into what customers 'demand'. In this way, the first-hand entrepeneur engages in a sense of meaningful livelihood which goes beyond any such question as 'the bottom line' of the budget in monetary arithmetic terms. Original computer rendering by Aristo Tacoma (photo on top) of classical fashion photo (beneath this paragraph) of the italian model Vanessa Hessler, using the personal computer to modify an otherwise more static photo (however excellent, as in this case), into something which suggests a richer spectre of healthy movement along the lines which classical oil paintings inspire The point, then, is to contribute to healthy stimulation of the mind in a way which by deliberate impressionistic-like 'clutterings' of an otherwise pixel-perfect image of something nice, enforces the mind/brain of the observer the recreate a wide range of interesting possibilities both of postures and movements -- an approach which can also inspire a form of paintings quickly made along the lines indicated by spring/BI or BI Spring in the yoga4d.org/super dictionary, and developed by this author since 2003 at the yoga4d and yoga6d dot org sites (earlier, dot com). Mind experts advice such approaches rather than attempts to recreate by technological means an imitation/simulation of real life 3D, because it is more healthy for the mind to do more work.
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The first-hand elcars of the 21st century, simple to fix, with safe huge batteries, can be made, with ample sound generators, along the squarish symmetry lines -- such as in this original computer rendering of an image of a Lincoln Continental Mark IV from 1974, by Aristo Tacoma. These articles are made in the spirit of accomodating what is sensed to be a quest for first-hand eco-economy also.
Original computer rendering of classic HM fashion photo, by Aristo Tacoma
Original computer rendering of classic Vogue photo (November '08) with Natalia Vodianova, by Aristo Tacoma A TIP ON HOW TO PAY SAFELY ACROSS INTERNET: Use cash cards -- with impersonal data -- that you buy for each buy or round of buys, when the sum is moderate; and Swift bank transfer or another type of suitable bank transfer for higher sums and/or when cash cards aren't suitable. Use cash whenever possible for 1st hand connection to the transaction, and use personal credit or debet (debit) cards only when required. See also: http://yoga6d.org/a_tip_on_how_to_pay_safely.htm HOW TO CHOOSE BETWEEN LINXUXES [[[Note: the linux world has changed at several points and the updated information you find at, or linked to from, http://www.norskesites.org/fic3/fic3inf3.htm]]] FORMATTING A PENDISK THAT WON'T FORMAT IN THE UTILITY THAT COMES UP WHEN YOU WRITE 'DISK' AT UBUNTU DASH: ***Improved: SEE www.norskesites.org/fic3, where a link to a place shows the solution -- to use the program 'fdisk' prior to the use of mkfs, where all the partitions of the pendisk is deleted by using its command d, followed by the command w for write; it seems then that the umount command will be effective and mkfs will consistently work! *** If you have trouble with formatting the pendisk, and you have an Ubuntu (earlier version, perhaps) already running, do this: [1] click CTR-ALT-F3 to switch to a text mode linux. Type your user name, and your normal password. Then type sudo -i and again give your normal password. Be sure you have an empty directory named such as the letter a in the disk. If not, type mkdir /a [2] insert the pendisk that you wish to totally erase and prepare for being a startup pendisk. Be sure you really have backup of absolutely everything on this pendisk. If you are sure, note which letter series that comes up, such as sdb. It can be sdc etc. We need a number after this letter series. It may be 1, such as sdb1, or sdc1. We need this to be right so we erase the right disk. So try type mount /dev/sdb1 /a or whatever that comes up of letter sequence. Use number 2 or 3 if 1 doesn't work. Then type l /a (lowercase letter l) and you should get up a list of present content on the disk. If this is the pendisk, do the format, if not, try more or do umount /a and unplug the pendisk, then type exit and exit and press CTR-ALT-F7 to return to your normal graphics. When you know which letter sequence xxxx is the pendisk for sure (and not your harddisk!) then type umount /a unplug the pendisk, wait half a minute, insert it again, and type mkfs -t vfat xxxx where you substitute the letter sequence for xxxx so you format the right thing. Then unplug the pendisk, type exit and press lineshift, exit again, and press CTR-ALT-F7 to go back to main graphics screen. Some pendisks don't allow so easily the STARTUP DISK CREATOR (as the program is called if you search for it in the Dash in Ubuntu) to implant its startup .iso on it, when you have got the newest .iso from such as www.ubuntu.com. You may have to try it a bit back and forth, and see what happens: a trick can be to use an earlier version of the platform for some pendisks, or a different PC with the same version of the platform. ADJUSTING BIOS SETTINGS The easiest use of such as a laptop, maybe an ultra- light laptop (or notebook), is to clear away any residue of a commercial platform in it, and assert as much as possible of 'Legacy' book and legacy install and such in the System Setup that usually are available the first half-second after power-on by clicking ESC, F1, F2, DEL, INS or the like (it usually will say, very briefly at least). For good use of laptops and notebooks and ultralight PC's, you may want to ensure that the functionkeys have real F1..F12 functions, where that is possible. At the moment you have switched it on (click many times at ESC or F1 or F10 or F12 or DEL or INS to open BIOS) and inside BIOS SETUP you can select something about functionkeys ('Disable Action Keys' I think the phrase sometimes is). In this way, you will be able to get the functionkeys to function normally, while when you need to adjust e.g. screen intensity you will THEN use the Fn key. This is more pleasing for anyone who uses the computer in a naturally advanced way, where functionkeys can be actively used by a program. USING THE TEXT TERMINAL IN ADMINISTRATOR MODE * When you often need the sudo -i command typed, you can open the menu Edit -> Profile Preferences on top of the screen (moving mouse pointer there will show the menu line, usually). In there, select 'Title and Command', click on 'Run a custom command instead of my shell', and type the sudo -i in the line that is to right of 'Custom command.' * I suggest you use the sudo -i version also for the next work, but be aware that you should keep watch over how many licenses you are giving to programs to access your disk and your laptop and internet when you use the sudo -i a lot. On Fedora-like approaches, one must avoid this phrase sudo -i before one has typed su. When one types su, one will be prompted for root password. Then one types sudo -i to get the proper Terminal for it. To rinse a USB-flash-disk. Say, you have a 16 GB pendisk (shouldn't normally be bigger than 32 GB for these purposes, due to how it is supposed to be formatted!), and you have already downloaded the newest 32-bit (or, if you absolutely think it is necessary, 64-bit, but 64-bit is always more problematic in subtle ways and should be avoided unless there are strong reasons to use it -- in my own highly personal opinion!) .iso file, named ubuntu-something-something.iso You have also installed UNETBOOTIN eg from Ubuntu Software Center in a previous Ubuntu. This program was created by Geza Kovacs, released as open source under GNU GPL. You have a flashdisk, and you want it to be a tabula rasa, a blank open space, to be formatted by UNETBOOTIN. So, you plug it in, start up a terminal, type the sudo -i to get into Administrator mode, and type fdisk -l then it will probably show up on the list as having its code-name as /dev/sdb1. This you can test by unplugging it again (selecting eject of it), and doing a new fdisk -l. If /dev/sdb1 (or /dev/sdc1, or /dev/sdb2, or whatever it tells) then has vanished, and you are absolutely confident without the slightest doubt that this does indeed refer to that pendisk, then -- and don't do the next step unless you are sure, and only on your own responsiblity, you type, erasing all on the specified domain without any possibility of retrieving it back fdisk /dev/xxxx where instead of xxxx you type that code you just worked out with such certainty. Here, you delete all its partitions. Normally, for any flashdisk previously formatted by Unetbootin (e.g, last year), it will require these letter-commands and lineshift after each: d4 d3 d2 d w Then type, with equal care, as this does irreversible formatting of the disk specified umount /dev/xxxx mkfs -t vfat /dev/xxxx And unplug it, and reboot. Then you plug it in, and exit the window to it that automatically opens. Start up UNETBOOTIN. It took me a long time to discover that the word 'or' is in the toptext there. UNETBOOTIN says, then, that either you select which version you want to select, OR you specify that you have the iso already. So you go straight to selecting the iso that you have downloaded. Mozilla probably tucked it to /home/YOUR-USER-NAME/downloads and you have to click a little bit to find it in UNETBOOTIN. Also, specify 500MB (probably ten times too much, but that's fine) in the line that says something about 'Ubuntu only'. Check that UNETBOOTIN has recognised the existence of the /dev/sdb1 or whatever the name was of your pendisk. Then click ok and it will produce a workable pendisk which you next can boot a PC with, when you click e.g. ESC or something and select that it is to be booted with it. (If UNETBOOTIN gives mysterious messages, repeat the process but with greater attention to the fdisk and the mkfs process; and be again sure that you DO NOT answer the first question that UNETBOOTIN asks, namely which Linux and which version you wish to install -- ONLY specify your .iso file and you should be fine!) Exit the Terminal's administrator mode by typing exit and repeat by typing exit once more. If you are uncertain about the security of doing things this way with Ubuntu, type 'sudo' before each line instead, there will be some more password prompts then. (In some other Linux types you can log in as root instead or use the command su which works when the Linux is set up in a different way; this concerns eg OpenSuse and Fedora.) WHICH PC'S CAN RUN LINUX? Microsoft is constantly trying to prevent Linux, in their ignoble agenda to make computing less fun in the world. So DO NOT BUY A PC IN THE SHOP WITHOUT TAKING SUCH A PENDISK WITH YOU AND SEE THAT YOU CAN BOOT IT. In particular, you must check that you can, the moment after boot, e.g. by clicking ESC or something, get into the systems settings for the machine and switch on LEGACY BOOT. If you cannot, the machine is dirt, and go for a more well-made machine, perhaps a somewhat more expensive one. Ask for a PC with Ubuntu preinstalled, why not? More and more people prefer it and such magazines as PC World are recommending it, and the main alternative to Microsoft. However, if you have a dirty PC which cannot do legacy boot, and which has Windows on it, UBUNTU MAY BE ABLE TO RUN ON IT EVEN SO -- then one must use the 64-bit version, and perhaps install it by going via Windows, using an Ubuntu installer which you fetch via a Windows net browser. This is all due to intense work by Ubuntu, Debian and other folks in the Linux communities, so that hardware remains hardware and software remains software, despite the attempts, for narrow-minded self-centered commercial reasons by some companies to blur the distinction in such as the misnamed 'secure boot' element put into place on some PC's. If you very carefully consult all the links from Ubuntu's frontpage, you'll find ways to search up which laptops and such that give the best results. If you buy a laptop, buy a mouse and a keyboard inexpensively made, perhaps, for plugging into the machine via standard USB, so that you get real function key functionality and can do speed typing and have an easy time doing artistic and also technically precise use of a mouse. Tablets are not serious products in many people's opinions. As for mobile phone mini-mini-PC's, these are approaching normal PC standards and so serious people should program PC's and handle PC's because in the future, any mobile phone will be just a tiny PC without a proper screen and keyboard, with a phone-electronics device added to it. It is not worth learning Android/Java-nonsense or other such temporary approaches unless your job today is tied up to today's phone-computers, if you want to be in good control of the technology of tomorrow. That's all going to be PC and all going to be Linux, with a sprinkling of the jails-made-stylish called Apple (not my phrase). Both Apple and Android are forms of the very same platform Unix-style stuff, it is just that the coating is different, and there are more commercial parameters which make things less fun. By the way, laptops are typically very good choices when it comes to PC desktop solutions, when equipped with keyboard and mouse -- but remember that despite the name, they end their life if they are put on cozy places like sofa's or bed's, out of a heat that the CPU cannot stand. I always have something like an usused ashtrey or a stone or the like underneath the laptop to allow air to pass better through it, and try to avoid putting it on anything soft -- a hard table or at the floor (if you do futon-like zen programming ;), or something; and in some cases, the laptops have had it and can only keep on functioning, if at all, with a fan placed BESIDE (or under, in a laptop-fan-plate) them, while they are also raised up a little from the table. Take care of the heat issue, it is no joke: plenty of money to save in that way! WIRELESS OR CABLE? Always avoid wireless in every form unless you absolutely have to use it. It is insecure, doesn't have privacy, and, like any use of nano-technology and microfiber in clothing and cleanliness products, we need half a century more research on the actual effects on the health of human beings and on the environment before engaging in it. Always switch off Bluetooth on these machines; always use cables; refuse to approve of use of wireless in work situations; and build mobile as well as internet free zones in every house in order to have less distractions and more good work there. GETTING EG XUBUNTU TO WORK ON PC'S THAT DON'T QUITE SUPPORT IT -- Some well-known tricks, explained Xubuntu -- from www.xubuntu.org -- Where Microsoft and Google platforms resembles a stalinist soviet union with forms in quadruplicate and nothing taken for granted -- one must negotiate, even plead with the platform to change -- Xubuntu simply obeys. Like a tractor. Or a Formula One car. It also has niceties like the pavucontrol advanced volume interceptor needed by Audacity audio editing already as part of its neat light package -- as well as SDL. However, where Ubuntu works on just about anything, Xubuntu is sometimes more tricky to get to work. For instance, Ubuntu can overtake a mini-PC, the tinest notebook PCs, and do so quite well, where Xubuntu simply won't get anywhere near even a test-install. If it's that serious, then there aren't all that many tricks I know of, not simple ones anyhow. But sometimes, on the newest laptops, even the more expensive ones, there are some messing-about with things due to the infernal monstrous company Microsoft and their secret contracts with the hardware makers, aiming at preventing the computer being used as a computer, rather than as a slave to their mainframe clouds, -- and this might strike most Linux down, and leave Ubuntu the sole winner, if even Ubuntu can master it. Usually, Ubuntu gets it going first, then others gradually pick up the idea of how to rule over these Microsoft-infested beasts. Xubuntu might not work in a test-install, but it might appear to install well -- if you choose, e.g. in Unetbootin, the option of Installing Without Testing First. On powerful laptops a year or, better, three years old, it will usually give a sure feeling of success at once. But on some PCs, it may not work at all, even if you start it with Internet cable connected and assert that you want it to bring all the extra software along with it at once. Number one trick: see if it works if you choose Advanced Options --> Recover mode, and it may indeed work with correct 1366 x 768 on a widescreen laptop, for instance, even if higher resolution is gone. For those who are interested in Deep and True Coolness, they don't want higher resolution than that, however. Number two trick: supposing it does start up that way, get all the updates you can, and Xubuntu extensions, and try again. Number three trick: if you have to make the Rescue Mode the standard option there's a really bad, but fully good working way, to do that. Get the gedit editor into it from the Ubuntu Software Center. Open a terminal. Do this nonsense, and don't tell anybody, after you type sudo -i and type your password. And, by the way, be sure you have backup for the PC is only moderately likely to boot at all after this neat change: cd /boot/grub cp *.cfg original-config.txt gedit *.cfg Here you get up a big file called DO NOT EDIT. You begin, arrogantly, by taking out that line. It is now editable. Next, somewhere it says ...default="0"... on a line. This number is the number of the menu that is the standard startup option, if you don't press on lineshift. 0 means the first item, 1 the second, and so on. If you have nothing but Xubuntu on a machine, you will have four lines and we're gonna make a fifth, and that corresponds to number 4. So put it to 4 instead of 0. If you have, as you should, Firth prior installed, then this will stand there as the option number 5. It may be called something different {if so, now you have the opportunity to get the menu text for Firth right, it is right in this file}, but it will, at any rate as version 14.04 of Xubuntu goes, 32-bit, which is the best, always performing more fluidly than 64-bit in ANY platform type, in our opinion -- it will stand there as the fifth. Now we're going to add then in case a sixth option, which means that you can set default="5". You work it out. Then you find the texts, quoted in 'single quotes' for the first two menu options -- these we ditch, put in 'aaa' and 'aaaaa' there. Next we're gonna trash that submenu and make it go straight to the Recovery mode option. This is the trashy way of trashing it: Copy the line that begins with sth like this: menuentry 'Ubuntu .. -generic (recovery mode)' and the next dozen lines until you see something like this initrd /boot/.. and be sure to get the completing } also. All those dozen lines you copy -- ctr-c will do. Move onwards in the list, which I'm sure includes your Firth partition, all the way until you see this stuff -- talking now of version 14.04 of Xubuntu: set timeout_style=menu and simply paste it right before that line. Fix on the text so it says menuentry 'Xubuntu' instead. Save it if you have as much spunk as I think you have. This is such a lovely bad of messing about with the code -- replete with neat errormessages during pre-startup -- that either the PC won't start anything at all before you reformat the disk, or it will start beautifully -- just two simple lineshifts are required after you switch it on and let it get into its new standard option, and the Xubuntu is working. Could it be easier? It could. That's why Xubuntu has the Wow!-factor resident in itself. It is what it is, damn it. P.S. Did it work? If so, you can improve it, by ditching the rest of the Recover menu which requires the two extra lineshifts this way: cd /lib/recovery-mode gedit recovery-menu These two commands (as before within text terminal after the normal sudo -i which gives you administrator rights in a relaxed way) gives you option to change the recovery menu. Here's how to change it: At line two in the menu, put in the word exit and there won't be any recovery menu. It will continue straight away resuming full boot, but with the feature of loading a more generally compatible video driver approach rather than any specialised video drive attempt. *****The open source Gimp program was good in Red Hat 8.0, it is different, better in some ways, worse in some ways, in Centos 5.5 -- both these free versions of early Linuxes are still freely available at our Yoga6dOrg set of sites -- but after this, Gimp got the good stuff cleansed more and more out of it. Why? Probably because they got too greedy, they wanted to outmaneuver commercial alternatives like the shoddy Photoshop. As a result, Gimp's file conversion capacities became degenerated, and things which ought to have become simpler was made sometimes even more complicated. While in the earliest forms of Gimp, we have had much use of Gimp, we have had to stop any much use of it and stop advising people to use it except as a stepstone away from Photoshop; and when we use it, we try to go for only the earliest versions. Fortunately, unlike the case for browsers, there can be no hotheaded argument in favour of only using the latest versions. The G15 Gem for small-size monochrome images should do. *****The Wine Windows program performer package is having inside it packages to log all activity that goes on. As often has been pointed out by R Stallmann and others, open source can be tailor-made to provide a viewing of what people is doing. Google's open source is often like this also. The main reason is, of course, that open source, like any thick book, may be full of things that aren't easily decoded. They are decodable, for sure, but they may be too opaque that this is done in praxis by most. CONVERTING .WMA TO .MP3 AND STARTING USING WINE * When you have .wma or other MsWindows audio files (or stuff like that) to be converted into the far more standard audio types like .wav or .mp3, then you can in Ubuntu go to Software Center (on the launchpad), type Wine and install the Microsoft Windows Compatibility Layer -- it takes time so have a good internet line -- and then you go to e.g. nch.com.au/switch if it is .wma => .mp3 conversion you seek, or some other software like that at e.g. download.com or at sourceforge.net which is for (a not too recent version of) Windows. You then open up Terminal, type wine whatever.exe where 'whatever' is replaced with the proper program name. The conversion program will then install, with a lot of waiting and a lot of messages that you can ignore from the Wine background package. You can then convert the files, also expect a lot of waiting and a lot of background messages that can be ignored. When you did this by sudo -i you will find that /root has the resulting .mp3 files if you didn't change the storing location, and that the program itself is stored at, so you can start the properly installed version, around here: cd /root/.wine l cd drive_c l cd P* This gives you Program Files directory in 32-bit Linux. If you have 64-bit Linux there are two Program Files folders, one for the classical 32-bit, marked (x86), and another. You will have to type dir or ll and work it out. In order to quickly switch to a directory with x86 inside its name, you can type something like cd *86* For the NCH program switch.exe, you will then type something like this to start it later on: cd NCH* cd Switch wine switch.exe * Important, as for Wine: make a note of what folder you have a program in, and check whether it has an uninstall option -- like 'uninst.exe' or the like, because some Windows programs get confused by being performed within Wine, and they may have to be uninstalled and reinstalled in order to clear up their stuff and get'em working again. This might be the case for MetaTrader4.exe. It might, in some cases, not be enough to uninstall the program, if it stores some cache data in other places than that which is uninstalled. Be sure, after uninstall, to delete the correct program folder if it is not already deleted; then try reinstall and be tolerant of Wine, tks!!! PRINTERS IN LINUX * As for printers, Brother printers -- but I think some HP printers are getting on well, also -- have always had maximum Linux compatibility. With luck, you don't even have to do any install of extra drivers, as Ubuntu folks have done good works -- just plug it in, look for messages. E.g. HL5250DN from Brother is like this. Note that the most cheap printers may be the least cross-platform compatible, sometimes. * Plugging in such as USB pendisks usually gives you the option of accessing them by text terminal, if you type l /media/USERNAME you may find there the disk name of the USB pendisk. On some Linux you drop the /USERNAME thing. This really refers to another more peculiar-named part of Linux, such as /dev/sda1 or /dev/sdb1. But suppose the /media/USERNAME thingy works, and that the first letter of your pendisk of it is P, and that nothing else is plugged in. Then you can e.g. look into the files of a subfolder named newest_updates by such a command as this, and then you can safely un-mount the pendrive by the following command -- here, username is patricia: l /media/patricia/P*/newest_updates umount /media/patricia/P* Be sure you don't use umount together with an asterix if you have more things plugged into the machine, unless you are sure that you specify an unambigious reference to just the device you seek to unmount -- so you don't get more unplugged than that which you want to. * Most webcams can be activated by Webcam programs such as -- a particularly compatible one at present -- "Cheese"; explore this in the shopping-bag like icon which is the Ubuntu Software Center for also free programs. * On many touchpads as part of laptop keyboards, go a.f.a.p. into the Settings menu and select to get away the option of 'switching off touchpad while typing', as this switching off may lead some laptops not to get the touchpad reactivated again. * On Mini-PC's go into Settings and ensure that "Workspaces" or what it is called is enabled; this allows access to the bottom part of the screen when the screen is too short to reach the "OK" button and similar important stuff in some contexts, by means of a four-screen selection icon in the left-side menu bar. * The program Audacious and also Rhythmbox make sense after you have installed the Ubuntu mp3 extra stuff, to give playing of such as .mp3 files. (There are various ways of getting the mp3 extras; the way that involves the least IcedTea Java, so as to preserve compatibilities for some bank account login sites with Oracle Java when Oracle Java has been installed -- elsewhere on this page -- is to go to a page which plays mp3 with Mozilla and let Mozilla install that single plugin.) * The program Audacity enables recording of what takes place in your loadspeaker at your Linux computer. Go to the Terminal (also ctr-altgr-T) and type pavucontrol and get that extra sound-preferences panel going. If it is not installed, and you have something like an up-to-date Xubuntu or a flavour of it, up will come a text you can type to get it installed. When run together with the Audacity installed by the Ubuntu Software Center, you can eg record house or chill out at radio.de played by Mozilla to mp3 and also edit sound files with great ease (honor copyrights when you do). Start recording (or activate monitor of input by clicking once on the volume control for input at Audacity and adjust the pavucontrol so that it allows 'monitor of pc speakers' (note that there is a similar-named option that doesn't provide input for Audacity, so you sometimes have to experiment a little with pavucontrol to get it right). Then start recording and export it as .mp3 or what you want. Do a test, first, though, to check quality. If there isn't proper recording all of a sudden, but a crappy sound, you can reset Audacity by this trick when in Terminal in administrator mode: cd /home/your-user-name rm .audacity-data -fr Then reboot. Next time you start up Audacity it will usually be as first time install; but be sure that microphones are not active in the recording as we want no interference from them when recording straight from the pc speaker into sth like Audacity. Sound editing is after all complex for any PC because it must handle things relative to milliseconds clock all the time, and it isn't always easy for the software and the sound chips to collaborate. Be sure that you start each recording only after doing several tests. Be sure also that you switch off microphone input -- volume of microphone input to zero, for instance -- and that you don't have too many programs open at one time. Be ready to reboot in order to refresh soundcards and software properly before each recording effort, and adjust carefully the available volume controls and such. Sometimes there are a bit hidden errors in some parts of the software relative to the hardware of the PC or relative to the platform, whether it's a commercial or a free platform, and you must experiment with getting it right. * You can start a blending of sound file playing by typing audacious & at Terminal. Such blending is mind-stimulating when done well. However doing this may easily, after several hours at least, cause the computer to slow maybe stop with over-loaded things, esp if you also run e.g. Mozilla at the same time. To reboot: CTR-ALT-F3 and hold then CTR-ALT-DEL in for a good good while (or log in there and type reboot or type shutdown -h now and it will reboot nicely). Or else, press on-off button for 10 seconds or more, but that's not leading to a full clean-up of partially saved files. Theorem (cfr MYWEBOOK.TXT linked to at yoga4d.org frontpage by this author created in 2003 and formally delievered then, discussed also in News Archive pages and in several other publications; MYWEBOOK.TXT is printed verbatim and published, also for sales, in 2011): The collection of all numbers beginning with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and continuing indefinitely has a quantity shown by the vertical size of this diagram next, and each member has a size shown by the horisontal size of each line in this diagram as it grows -- in a symmetry which is perfectly aligned. This is the diagram: . . . ****** ***** **** *** ** * The members of this group -- once you grant that this group is entirely and clearly and in a key important sense infinite in its quantity, and that you also realise the full and undimished extent of the above-mentioned fact of symmetry between the two aspects of the horisontal and the vertical -- includes, in a way which cannot be excluded though in a way which has to be looked at, infinite members. This group, in particular those infinite members, was named by this writer in 2003 as "the essence numbers". (In addition to my MYWEBOOK, consult also text about essence numbers inside one of the booklets linked to at yoga4d.org/talks, from before 2010.) This is stated here because though apparently simple, it bears repetition for this proof and its implications have so much beautiful subtlety in it.
THE FUTURE OF CURRENCY TRADING -- An attempt to teach it to beginners, and to make a worthwhile prediction In healthy economical circumstances, if you swap something like one hundred aussie dollars, AUD$100 into e.g. swiss franc, also denoted CHF, and then swap it back, you get approximately the same amount back, minus the exchange fees -- which are big percentages when it comes to paper cash. Let us imagine a situation where you have hardly any exchange fees to speak of. That is realistic -- you get it with most currency trading (CT, as I call it) institutions for popular currencies. There is a little bit difference in price each time which means that a fraction of a percentage goes to the broker, or bank, or whatever the institution is called. A bank is more heavily regulated and must live up to a number of state-set criterions. Banks are sometimes offering CT but brokers are typically the way in today's world. So, in any case, if we disregard that minimalistic fee a good CT broker charges you, by going AUD => CHF => AUD you get, if you start with $100, either a little more or little less than $100 after this piece of work, which we broadly can call a 'CT transaction'. In healthy economical circumstances, it is typically so that after a couple of minutes, the changes are quite minute. After a couple of days, however, it may be that the changes are starting to get a bit bigger. Imagine that you start with $1000 and that after some days you have either $984.2 or $1015.8. Okay, that's maybe not so much of increase of your prosperity, but if you were able to get a AVERAGE PROFIT of $15.8 out of your $1000 on the average something like 20 weeks pr year (this average meaning that we calculate in losses so as to nullify a certain amount of the profit CTs), we are talking 20 times 15.8 or $316 in increase, meaning that by this simplest, purest currency trading transaction entirely without any much "leverage" (which is to get a temporary loan from the broker to scale up the income or scale up the loss -- remember it can go both ways) -- by this very simple, pure CT action, we are talking of possibilities of getting an increase of $1000 to $1316 during 12 months. This is to say, above 30 percent gain. This 30 percent gain would also be 30 percent if you traded with $10,000 or $100,000. Take into consideration that intuitive action is not a matter of hours of contemplation and hard work. Doing a CT can take very much less than five minutes. It is zen. You log in, click it, look at the sum -- that it fits with what you intuitively worked out, and with the analysis of how much of your account you should trade with these days, and that the pair selected is the right one and that you are doing the 'buy' or 'sell' that you wanted and not the other way around -- and then you click the accept button. Then you check once in a while the prices in the upcoming days. When it is time to reap in the cash to your account, or cut the losses, you log in and click on the completion of the trade button. Then your CT account will EITHER have more money in it OR less, and this is the whole CT transaction completed. If you like, you can then order a motion of some of the money to a regular bank account, from which you can cash it out. This is perhaps done professionally though only seasonwise, and then only after you have had some seasons doing the a bit of clumsy stuff before you straightened the dance steps out. I'd say a week gets more fun for KNOWING that you are doing CT in it. It is an enhanced state of awareness and I'm not kidding. Now, the first thing any earthian 20-century bound stock trader would rush to tell you is that it is simply no way to tell whatever way a currency goes, relative to another. But a safe bet as for stocks is that they ain't gonna go much up except in some phases -- just look at the averages over the past couple of years -- and that it may be preferrable to stick to gigantic curves dominating the foundation of the world's trade -- namely the very value of money units relative to one another -- rather than trying to bet on largerly gossip-driven stock values. Also, I would say that it is an item of good luck to engage in trading which is consistently nondestructive. All the time the world's exchange of money between the main money units the world has is vastly greater, in sum, than the sums you are trading with, you are ethically like a swimmer relative to the ocean. However an affluent person can easily wreck a company by buying most of it, if that person is wrong for the company. So stock trading is something a wise world will do fantastically well without. Those who work in a company are its natural owners, nobody else. However, trading -- day-trading, week-trading, minute-trading, or a bit longer -- month-trading -- with currencies is a fun option for everyone. Done with surplus money only, one might loose but one might gain, and it is a way to test one's intuition and a very pure way at that. If you have leverage 50 set on a CT account, trade with a fiftieth part of the sum you have put into it, in order to nullify the effect of the leverage, if you want that.
However much you trade with, the quest is to find a balance between how much is in your account and how much of it you trade with so that you can handle fluctuations. Perhaps your intuition that such and such going to happen entirely right -- say, on the scale of five days. You may be so right it would do your CT account good to go for the bet. If you bet that CHF is going up as seen from the foundation of AUD dollars, then you are doing a kind of AUD=>CHF movement, which is called 'doing a buy or a long bet on CHFAUD pair' or 'doing a sell or a short bet on AUDCHF pair'. For many practical CT purposes you can treat them as symmetrical. You have to remember that "buy"="long" whereas "sell"= "short" and essentially regard them as mere conventions (whereas in stock trading, they aren't as symmetrical). When you see CHFAUD you see the price of CHF written in terms of AUD. If CHFAUD goes up, then buy it. If CHFAUD goes the other way, then sell it. So, put simply, the digital question, you must put to your intuition, is whether the ideal thing is to go such as CHF => AUD or AUD => CHF. One or the other way. There is a slight extra margin (called 'swap') which is noticable when trade positions are kept open for a good while and which relates to the swinging of the currency graphs. To memorise such peculiar economical jargon is only possible by staring it it, playing with it, writing it backwards and forwards and making your own mnemonics, you way of dramatising it, perhaps by sexual metaphors. This is best done in connection with an actual trading program that uses imagined, or virtual money, a so-called 'praxis account' or 'game account'. This account may however use actual prices. These prices take a holiday when banks have a holiday. Learning all this may seem to some to be boring. But attempt to realise it is the start of a journey to be able to magically create movement in the direction of profit out of nothing but a pure sum as foundation money. Now, back to the intuition aspect, and fluctuations. Think of flirting with strangers at a cafe or flirting with an aim to sexual seduction direct at a fiest. You do something and it has an intent towards, say, a beauty profit, a social profit, a sexual profit. If you have any stamina and self-confidence at all, you pick up the signs but you are not getting at once all goomy and desolate even if it doesn't look like working at all. Rather, you have the smile and dance within and remember that anything that comes too easily, may not come as well when it does come. It is about mutuality, and timing -- duration -- and also, naturally, teasing. To indicate one thing while intending, maybe, another thing. If you have made what you are comfortable about as a good bet, then in healthy economical circumstances and with a scaling of the trade sum relative to how much you have and how much leverage, if any, which is set on your CT account, then you can allow the curves to sway. Here, graphical curves are very helpful indeed. Also, instead of trying to memorise the exact price you were trading on, look for the first four digits of where you want, in rounded figures, the price of the trading pair to go. For one combination of currencies you may want it to 'go nearer to, or even above, 1500'. Perhaps eg you did a trading of the 'buy' type on a pair which had a price something like 1.419. Then you want to cash it in, submit a completition on the trade, when it is nearer 1.5 and less near 1.3. But 1.5 sounds so petty. Let us rather say nearer 1500. There are other ways of speaking about it -- points, pips, and such, but these are not entirely orderly, as they look like percentages while being something entirely different and they tell not the full story of the price development in terms of percentages at all. (For instance, the difference between 1.100 and 1.000 is 'one hundred points' but so is the difference between 8.100 and 8.000 but these 'points' in this case are vastly different in terms of percentage. {ercentage is what matters when it comes to making a profit on your account with currency trading. So never indulge in talking about such 'points' connected to CT.) Just how much you can trade with is of great importance. There may be a rule set by state or the broker as to automatically closing your trade if it has an overall loss of more than n (5?) percent. But if you are about to earn by waiting out a negative fluctuation, you certainly don't want to have it autoclosed on a bad price! And so you must scale the amount you trade with so that you can handle TYPICAL fluctuations really well. But what, indeed, is a typical fluctuation? That is where 'healthy economical circumstances' come in -- that the fluctuations from one week to the next have a bit of smoothness about them, and that the maximum differences between prices from one trading minute to the next and from one week, or so, to the next, are very stable indeed. In fact, this is the case only when we are talking currencies that are big and handled by a kind of dancing dynamics. In an economical environment where the distinction from one week to the next as to even the major currencies are so minute that the $1000 wouldn't change more than, say, a quarter of a dollar after a week, then you would naturally ask the broker to do leverage: which is to say, you are willing to risk that the loss is n times as high, because the profit also gets n times as high -- typically one shouldn't go higher than 50 and even that is very much -- and because the fluctuations from one week to the next are so extremely minute compared to the full hundred percent of money on your account that even with a multiplication factor, you will still easilly handle negative fluctuations (e.g., those that go in the 'long' direction when you have just done a 'short trade' or those that go in the 'short' direction when you have just done a 'long trade'). So leverage is to increase profit-potential but also risk-possibility. The wise person is willing to earn one percent during a week instead of ten percent during the same week because one doesn't want to risk an auto-close of the trade at a negative temporary five percent. Then, the prediction. I have already hinted at it. I write this in an economical climate where all the financial news agencies are regularly reporting turmoil, turmoil, turmoil, and every single CT for week after week after week I have done in the same period has been profit. The prediction is this: in every millenia in the future there will be CT, there will be currency pairs involving some four richly beautiful, greatly used currencies -- used in all senses, for all sorts of private enterprises, private buying, and so on, with all sorts of normal transactions for the purpose of buying and selling wares and services. These currencies will IN ADDITION be used for the benefit of individuals doing a moderate CT trading also as a fine-tuning of their intuitive capacities. CT also teaches human beings that their intuition is relative: that their understanding is never absolute. No human being can do CT without having a regular amount of loss-CTs. The challenge, which is entirely realistic, is to have a greater amount of gain-CTs than loss-CTs, and that the sizes of these gain-CTs are comparative to the less-CTs so that the overall account will show a gain, from month to month. It is EXACTLY the fact that intuition is so superbly and clearly called for in the land of lovely CT work that makes it such a laboratory for, indeed, also enlightenment, and freedom from overly much identification with the results of one's action. The very participation in the world of monetary energies is itself a peak of natural being. This, then, belongs to ALL the future. CT, certainly, is what any righteous person must consider as much blessed as wild beaches and dancing and flirting and sex and other things involving rich fluctuations. GOOD LUCK WITH CT!!! Note added ca. one month later: What we can define as "rapid CT" is the principle above engaged on a real strong leverage like 50 and on the premise of trading within something like half an hour. This is only advisable to those who have a particularly well-tuned intuition and then only with the most intense care and pre-meditation possible, knowing what one is doing and being already expert at this. When I did this on the above sum, the increases were, indeed, some thirty or fifty times bigger. Remember that when you get an income to your account, the next time you trade, the percentage earned will be a percentage of this new sum, meaning that in a sense it is not entirely impossible with exponential income. A small sum to begin with -- after a period of learning over some seasons, all the time with small sums, can then in principle give vast wealth -- whatever that means, within the context and regulations of our present society.
This and the similar matrix higher above are actual account summaries, unredacted, from Aristo Tacoma's experimentative CT account with a broker. To select a proper broker, you must find one that is intuitive- intellectually satisfying for your effortless needs in honest realtime price-flows: be aware that conscious or unintended 'noise' may creep into a broker's approach to currency day- and hour-trading in a variety of ways, -- some are very cunning. You have got to sleep on it, and see the statistics over how you are doing it -- not just with a practise account, but also with real money, where the prices do matter (that the prices are the same in the practise and real account is only a bit of the required proof to say of a broker that the broker represents an entirely honest business corporation as for CT). IMPORTANT ADDITION to the above currency trading info ===================================================== With yet more experience -- fortunately, consistently positive -- with CT or what some call FX or FOREX -- day-trading with fluctuations of currency pairs in order to increase the amount of money you have -- I have some important additions. These are founded on a combination of analysis and intuition as well as on coherent luck, earning on the average quite significantly, month by month: [1] In the above, not all types of programs and trading approaches were taken into consideration when speaking of leverage relative to what you trade with. In a typical approach (similar to the MT4 program, which runs well in linux Wine if you install it as indicated elsewhere on the page), which I have got much more experience with now, the relationship between leverage and what you trade with is simply this: the leverage multiplied by the amount dollars on your account sets the upper limit for what you can trade with. Since MT4 has an orientation towards "lots", where 1 standard lot (in the biggest account) is 100.000 of the first of the two in a currency pair XXXYYY, and its smallest size for trading is 0.01, it means that with leverage 50, you should have around $250 as a minimum to trade with a XXXYYY pair with the XXX circa equal to US dollars (but better start with $10.000 when you know your way around and have consistently had luck with demonstration account and small sum account also), in order to be free not only to put in a trade bet, but also have some extra on the account when it is done. You MUST have enough extra on the account that you can stand some sligthly stormy winds without having the account tip too much towards zero or anything like that. [2] After experience, my absolutely clear recommendation is that you use no app and no applet and no script-oriented approach but ONLY an installed application -- a real program -- on your own computer. This is enormously important and critical for your own intuition to have a chance to build up resonance with the whole. It can be MT performed under Wine. Wine is merely an access port from Linux to Windows programs, not really any emulator. And so the programs run in a very clean way, -- suitable for intuition also. [3] If possible to adjust colors, set it to green curves ('candelight' type or any type that shows broader lines when the ask/bid price difference is big) against black as this gives a peak of luck. [4] If possible to adjust positions of graphs, align all of the pairs that play on the currencies of your choice so that the program shows all of them at the same time rather than one by one, as soon as you start up the program -- but not necessarily strictly ordered, for you want to have a sense of the arrythmic into it perhaps. If you have good security on your computer, let the program store the user id and the password, so it goes straight in. This enables resonance- building for your intuition. Remember that there is always a necessary component of luck in any good trading and stay out from using copyist strategies. [5] Do the rapid CT like horse race betting: You plug in your bet and sixty minutes, plus minus one minute, you close the bet. You only do this on days when your intuition and analysis indicate that there is not stormy weather as for the graphs, but you do it from within, not really looking at the graphs while making up your mind -- this you do before you even start up the program, looking only at the abstract relationships eg on paper. You do this without any auto-adjustment of the trade. [6] Put in one or at most two trades each day within the three hour period that is most active as for currency trading on the planet, and only on days with normal full business activity. [7] Don't sneak-look at the trade. Don't even look at the value before you close it. Your intuition needs a fixed parameter -- a fixed method of trading -- in order to help you. [8] Trade with about four times the amount on your account. If you have 50000 then four times that is 2 lots. This presupposes what we can call a normal currency trading fluctuation level. If the fluctuations are bigger, use a smaller size. And learn to relish in the joy when you have done a bet that worked out right, and be relaxed and cool about it when it didn't work out -- looking then to the month's average instead. This joy, this self-congratulation, acts as a magnet for doing right decisions where you can have as it were a premonition of the joy you come into. And, one more thing: BEGIN the session by a meditation and prayer where you not only affirm noble generous deeds you want to spend the earnings on, but also that you clearly to yourself affirm the attention of big ct profits, blessing rapid ct. Psychologically, you will then be able to gather your intuitive powers connected to the relevant end-goal, rather than be frustrated or focussed too much on the pathway to the relevant end-goal. The pathway involves the dance of proper action in a good mood. If you wander in your mind and find that the meditation is not able to come up with its usual strength and coherence you will take that as a sign that the curves are too fluctuating (or too little fluctuating) to allow suitable trading just then. Not doing a trade is also part of trading, when it is a decision that comes from within, as instinct or hypnosis GOOD LUCK!!!! ! FINDING THE RIGHT CURRENCY TRADING BROKER FOR YOU AND AVOIDING COMPANIES THAT ARE FRAUDULENT Some people of a criminal bent can engage in any type of business, obviously, and they can be very clever, up to a point, as to concealing what they are up to. It is your own responsibility that you make the decisions that are right for you. Some points along the lines of 'rules of thumb' that we offer here are these: * Is the company saying that they have been offered medals, first prices and awards by prestigious institutions and journals? Well, then, EXPLORE. Is it really so? Is the institution or journal really existing? Is it really independent? Some companies sell awards, some companies make fake videos of 'being awarded such-and-such'. Some companies even make fake journals to give themselves words towards good credit. * Is the company owned in a big and robust and wealthy and democratic company, and is it so that the company, also its holding company, must answer to laws in such a big, robust, wealthy and democratic country? Find out; companies are rarely better than the judicial aspect of a country. Companies are rarely more stable that the average stability of the country. Nondemocracies are nearly always based on fakes -- that doesn't mean that every company in a nondemocracy is a fake, but on the average, it easily becomes so, for even the most robust of people may get overwhelmed by the corruption in a country. * Is the company offering an enormous variety of trading alternatives and platforms? Well, then, why? How come it is really possible to do so, and at the same time follow up all these approaches with the maximum possible integrity? * Is the company bad at emails then drop them no matter how convincing they sound at the phone or over the textual chatline or through a social website. For emails are stronger when it comes to presenting a case, an argument relative to the company years later. You are interested in earning considerable sums and that must be done on the foundation that the company is a high- integrity company that has the perhaps modest but real ambition to earn money WITH you, rather than OFF you. But then you must be able to build a trusting relationship by means of email before you even become a customer, where you save every email in an archive. Chatlines may be operated by other companies that merely access their FAQ's. Chatlines may not be valid documentation for a conversation with the company, where the company promised something. Chatlines may provide useful information about how big the leverage is set to as a standard, and such, but the person operating the chatline may have no powers at all to do anything concretely than affect your business with the company. Chatlines are merely informative. But even if you are able to carry out a good email conversation with the company, don't get hypnotised about it. After all, clever people with a cunning mind and a lot of starting money behind them can hire an email-answering staff that knows nothing of the deeper motives of the company. * Is the owner or owners of the company on an egotrip, boasting over their own prominence? Unlikely, then, that the company has high integrity in its software. * Is the company ONLY willing to use own software, or has it enrolled in the MT4 db also? If ONLY own software, perhaps this software is made so as to tweak money from rich customers at crucial moments by delaying sell/buy completions, or by subtle, not-easily-seen shifting of currency values. * Do the company connect only to other good companies on their website, or are all their comrades a sleezy group? * Are they profoundly in favour of credit cards? No high-integrity company is profoundly in favour of credit cards. They usually must collaborate with them. But they must ALWAYS allow bank wire and international money transfer by Swift bank wire. * Is the company website speaking more about your 'depositing' of money with them, than your 'withdrawal' of money from them? Is the company speaking more about how clever they are, and how fun it is to trade, rather than how significant it is that YOU earn money, you yourself? * Is the company asking you insulting questions when they want information from you concerning setting up an account? Suppose, for instance, a company asks you, 'What is your net worth?' THAT is insulting, in anyone's language, because it is coupling you-as-person with entirely monetary terms. Rather, if they don't have a sensitivity along the lines of asking instead, 'Could you indicate (optionally) what your net income was last year and/or what your net fortune is?', then considering seriously ditching them. * Is the company logo ugly? Is the company name evoking distasteful associations? Do you get a feeling that there is not really a person behind the emails answering you, but rather a wall of fear and uncertainty and premade speeches, with strange or fake names? Do you have to wait a long time for each email? Are there many different email addresses with no responsibility by the company to answer them all? Do they call you without asking for permission, in writing, to call you? DON'T BE FOOLED, PLEASE. Currency trading, and rapid CT as I call it, in the form described above, is a wonderful opportunity for earning money, possibly much money given a large startup sum, given hard work, very hard work indeed. You must find a partner company, not a company that works against you. You must try their virtual account for three months and print out the trading statistics and watch over it. You must PROVE to yourself that at least with virtual money you can make big bucks. Then you start moderately, opening a live account, and your luck is supposed to carry over. Only after such a very careful start, increase the foundational amount that you trade with, in successive steps. Regularly do some withdrawal of money, to keep the bank wire lines hot in both directions, and be familiar with the process, the fees, this and that. Be aware of possible changes in the company -- they may get bought by another company with an entirely different approach, or they may get a single powerful bad programmer where before there were only good programmers, or the leader may decline in integrity and start skewing things. You must have the right intuition about the company in order to have right intuitions about currencies.
H M M H M U S I C Put together for your own benefit by Aristo Tacoma. These are for private eductional use. Can be played at small loudspeakers without bass. harmony messy mix house dance HMMH #4 "fantast" harmony messy mix house dance HMMH #5 "cantast"