Sunday, December 09, 2012

Apparently this is the weekend everyone takes off for Christmas shopping – or perhaps nothing what-so-ever happened yesterday?


“I'm shocked, shocked I tell you...”
U.N. summit votes to support Internet eavesdropping
A United Nations summit has adopted confidential recommendations proposed by China that will help network providers target BitTorrent uploaders, detect trading of copyrighted MP3 files, [Flash! The RIAA speaks Chinese! Bob] and, critics say, accelerate Internet censorship in repressive nations.
Approval by the U.N.'s International Telecommunications Union came despite objections from Germany, which warned the organization must "not standardize any technical means that would increase the exercise of control over telecommunications content, could be used to empower any censorship of content, or could impede the free flow of information and ideas."


My first reaction is, “If not, why not?” Drones actually have military value. Sneaky drones, even more so. I worry about the drone that can be piloted from the Secretary of State's desktop, using a gameboy...
Air Force May Be Developing Stealth Drones in Secret
… Ace aviation reporter Bill Sweetman has gathered evidence of new stealth drones under development by Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman — the latter potentially armed, and both drawing on classified funds.
… To be clear, no one thinks unmanned aircraft are becoming any less vital to Washington’s shadowy counter-terrorism campaigns in Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen and, possibly soon, Mali. Missile-armed Predators, the larger Reapers carrying bombs and missiles, and stealthy, unarmed Sentinel spy drones, operated jointly by the CIA and the military, are still America’s weapon of choice for hunting terrorist leaders. Three years ago then-CIA director Leon Panetta, now the defense secretary, called UAVs the “only game in town” for disrupting the core of al-Qaida.


Everyone complains about PowerPoint, but no one does anything about it.
Microsoft Office’s PowerPoint is the most commonly used application for this task, but it’s not the only tool which can get the job done. In fact, some alternatives to PowerPoint might even be better, depending on which features you desire the most. Did I also mention that these tools are openly available on the web and entirely free? Plus you aren’t even required to be connected to the Internet when it’s presentation time!
Google Presentations. A part of the Google Drive suite of office applications, Google Presentation is meant to be an online PowerPoint replacement with a Google twist.
… Google Presentations makes it very easy to embed special items such as YouTube videos directly into your presentation, so you won’t ever have to click on a link to awkwardly open a browser ever again. You can also export your Google Presentation file into a PowerPoint file, PDF file, and many more. Finally, Google Presentations maintains the status quo by including all of PowerPoint’s core features, such as slides, transitions, offline presentation, and more.
Prezi. With Prezi, you’re given a single canvas which has infinite width and length. You are then free to put on it whatever you’d like, from text boxes to pictures to videos.
… Prezi is free so long as you keep your presentations public; otherwise, you’ll have to pay a fee to set it as private.
PhotoSnack If most of your presentations are simply a bunch of pictures that you want to show to friends and family, then PhotoSnack is the way to go.
… You can add pictures to the presentation from multiple sources, including your computer, Facebook, Picasa, Photobucket, flickr, SmugMug, and Instagram. Music may also be added to your presentation if you would like. You can then choose from different templates, and share with whomsoever you’d like! The presentations are shown using HTML5 instead of Flash, so as long as your recipients are running a modern browser, they should be good to go!


There are some things man was not meant to know...
… You’re probably familiar with tools like EVEREST, Speccy, and HWMonitor. They do a really great job at taking heaps of system information and pulling them together for the user to analyze. One of the best tools that you’ve probably never heard of in this same field is LookInMyPC, and I’d like to introduce that to you in this post.

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