Monthly Archives: July 2015

Chaos Manor View, Saturday, July 04, 2015

This morning Precious, the Surface Pro 3, said she had another update, but it was dated from long ago (March or so) and had to do with firmware; why it had never asked for this update may have to do with experimental Windows 10. It may not. Anyway I told it to go ahead, and as always it took a while, the percentage done estimate sitting unmoved and no indication other than its existence that anything was going on; then the percentage would jump and we’d have another wait. Eventually it was all downloaded and I was told that a reset would happen at 3 AM unless rescheduled. I told it to do it now, and some minutes later I had new wallpaper, but still Build 10159. A quick check showed I could log on to Swan, a Windows 8.1 system, and Bette, my Windows 7 former main machine; but it could not see Alien Artifact, the current Windows 7 main machine. I experimented and made sure I could transfer files to and from the machines I could see, and went back to work on the substantial amount of text Steve Barnes sent last night: essentially Part One of the new novel, along with an even larger “Encyclopedia Avolonia”, the story bible. I did some adjustments to the bible, and went to bed. It’s good stuff, and I feel like writer again, adding some details and generally having fun before plunging into the real work of contributing to the text; it’s character development time.

But while doing that I had the nagging feeling that it all needs backup, and Precious is one logical place for backups; so this morning when Precious said she wanted a long overdue update, it seemed reasonable to see if that changed Alien Artifact’s visibility. But nothing changed: Precious could see several machines including the ThinkPad portable, and had mapped drives to several of them, and that all worked; but not a sign of Alien Artifact, alas.

Next step: can Alien Artifact see Precious? And indeed he could, and clicking on Precious in My Computer on Alien Artifact immediately gave me access to Precious, root and branch. I could transfer files from Precious to Alien Artifact, and I could create Folders on Precious, so I did so, making a Master folder with sub folders for the each project I’m working onto Precious. I used Norton Commander as a file manager, and all worked perfectly. Well, perhaps not perfectly because the default library system of Windows has been a bit of a mystery ever since my brain cancer nearly a decade ago: but I was able to create a system I can find easily, so it doesn’t matter. I’ll use Commander to straighten it all out and put Mamelukes on Precious as well. Time to work on that also, but it’s in a master folder called WinWord, which has a hundred folders of all my projects including some I haven’t worked for years, and yes, even though disk space is cheap and redundancy is good, I admit I have about three incompatible organization schemes, and it’s getting absurd. But that’s for another time.

Meanwhile, I had established that Alien Artifact could see Precious; he couldn’t, last night before the update. That’s progress. Now I went to Precious, hit Winkey e, open This Computer, and Lo! I could see Alien Artifact. I tried to map Alien Artifact D Drive to Precious, and two things happened: suddenly I could see that Precious drive Z was already mapped to Alien Artifact D – and Precious wanted a password for Alien Artifact. And when I gave it, it was rejected. Now clearly it must have accepted it in the past, but not now.

Still, if Precious can see Alien Artifact, and receive files from him, eventually Eric or Alex or I will figure out what to do next; it’s already possible to back up everything one way or another, and transfer files (with an intermediary copy to either Swan or Bette) so everything I need to do is possible. What Microsoft needs to do is make their new security system usable by users. Now it’s only useful to hackers, which someone at Microsoft will eventually is not the goal.

Now back to work on the new text. Progress is being made, and it’s good stuff. If you liked Beowulf’s Children, you will love this.

1515 I find that Build 10162 is now available, and I am downloading it now. Perhaps this will take care of the situation. I continue to this stuff so you don’t have to.

This update was available earlier – by Thursday night – but for some reason my visit to updates today didn’t see it until I had downloaded the hardware stuff, which was a month old. But we’re 90% done with the update to a new build.

1730 The new build has downloaded and I am resetting. Eric warns me to be sure that network discovery is turned on, but I can’t see why that would change what it would see if it could be seen at all, or see anything at all. But we’ll find out. The installation is taking considerable time so I can’t test anything. Precious is resetting as I write this…  ah, 60% done. More later.

Ah.  I now have Build 10162, but it says it needs some new installation and it’s updating again.  Fortunately I don’t use that machine (Precious) for anything critical although I want to; I make no doubt that there’s a stable operating system out there that can wait for Windows 10. All the Microsoft gurus are using the Surface Pro 3, so there’s an incentive.  Me. I keep doing the experimental OS because that’s sort of what I do.  And updates are installing as I write this; whether it’s yet another build I don’t know. Fun, ain’t it?

1830: Well,  I have build 10162 and it no longer wants updating. Everything seems to work but I do not have the “credentials” to allow Precious to connect to Alien Artifact; the problem is the user name, which wants some domain name rather than just the login name.  I’m sure this is solvable, but Microsoft just improved things when we didn’t ask for the improvement, and made it unusable.

Eric reminds me that we will shortly have a raid backup system that should solve all the backup problems,

I will shortly have more to say about the Register article, but it is getting to dinner time.

win10 wifi access sharing thought

Jerry,

So apparently win10 isn’t going to share a plaintext wifi password.  Instead, it will be sharing what is effectively a magic spell, unpronounceable to mortal humans, that does the EXACT SAME THING as the password, namely getting access into a password protected system.

And somehow this is more OK than just giving out the password instead of a “hash” (i.e.. Magic spell) that does the same dang thing that the password does.

Nope, still not ok.  I put passwords on things that I don’t want to share.  I’m totally not ok with my OS sharing magic spells (hash, whatever) that bypass my password security.

It’s a bit like selling a car that would automatically unlock all its doors on the command of any other person who doesn’t have an actual key, as a default behavior.  Why would anyone want such a thing?

Sean

I asked for the source and got

win10 wifi access sharing thought

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/06/30/windows_10_wi_fi_sense/

There is some discussion on a handful of tech forums as well.

Sean

And then turned to my advisors.

Peter Glaskowsky says

It’s a real feature. It’s been in Windows Phone 8.1 since last year.

It’s described on Microsoft’s own Windows Phone website:

https://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/how-to/wp8/connectivity/wi-fi-sense-faq

And it’s been covered by reasonably responsible industry websites, for example:

http://www.windowscentral.com/wi-fi-sense-windows-phone-81

As well as the article Mr. Long mentions from the infamous scare-mongers at the Register.

As Microsoft says, it’s basically a way to “crowdsource” access to Wi-Fi to help more people get on Wi-Fi more easily. It helps access public Wi-Fi hotspots, as well as privately managed ones, and it’s those privately managed hotspots that are the only issue being raised here.

It’s opt-in on a per-user, per-network basis. There’s also a terribly awkward opt-out option that protects you even if someone else who has your Wi-Fi password decides to share it using Wi-Fi Sense. (That, to me, is the worst problem, but it’s unavoidable in any shared-password system.)

I’m a bit curious about some of the limitations they say they can impose on the Wi-Fi network, such as limiting guests using shared passwords to Internet access only, preventing them from accessing LAN resources like printers or webcams. I don’t think there’s any way to do that with older Wi-Fi access points that have an all-or-nothing security model, so maybe Wi-Fi Sense only works with newer routers. I’d like to get that answer, at least.

I have no idea what the underlying security model is, so I don’t trust it, and I wouldn’t use it, but it’s hardly evil for a “deal killer.” Just another misguided Microsoft attempt to make their ecosystem more attractive to users.

.                png

I should have known that, I expect, but I don’t keep up as much as I would like.

Peter adds

As a postscript, btw, I got into a long email bickering contest with an editor at The Register over that original misleading article. I got them to make two sets of changes during our exchange (which I documented by saving PDFs), but he wouldn’t yield on the deceptive headline. Even the changes in the body were basically minimal and inadequate.

He wanted to hide behind an assertion that “All the facts are in the article,” so a person could figure out what was actually going on by carefully reading the article and the Microsoft pages it links to.

I tried to explain that this wasn’t good enough since most people, reading articles the way they usually do, would come away with the wrong impression. At that point he just stopped responding.

A big change from the old days under Mike Magee, who enjoyed such verbal fencing but was reasonably good at fixing anything that was actually wrong.

I suppose any publication that makes Mike Magee look relatively responsible must be doing something wrong…

.              png

As Peter says, bottom line, Microsoft isn’t always as good at explaining what they are doing as they would like to be. My own observation is that without Bill Gates there’s no one in charge to set goals, so different parts of Microsoft set off in different directions; and if it takes a while to turn big ships, it takes longer to redirect a fleet of big ships…

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Chaos Manor View, Thursday, July 02, 2015

1746

Exhausting day at Kaiser; all routine maintenance, but also an unexpected new immunization. Before I left I noticed that the Surface Pro 3 had overnight downloaded a new build for Windows 10 and had scheduled a reset for 3 AM for installing it. I told it to go ahead and do it now. That was at 10 this morning. I returned to find Build 10159 installed and waiting for my login. I logged in. There’s also a new Home picture.

I checked Network.

Precious sees some of my local network, including Swan, a Windows 8 machine that resides upstairs, but not Alien Artifact, the Windows 7 machine that functions as my main machine down here; and Alien Artifact does not see Precious, although he sees Swan. Last night with the old build, Precious saw and was seen by Alien Artifact, and they could connect to each other although they have different User Names and passwords. Now they can’t. Nothing has changed except the build.

Clearly we will need to work on this, but there is something wrong here.

I’m going out tonight and I’m exhausted now, so this wii be brief.

Protecting Humanity from Ice Ages.

<http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/07/protecting_humanity_from_ice_ages.html>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

Miles thick ice is a far more dangerous threat to civilization than 6 tenths of a degree temperature rise; which is more likely, and do we have plans in case the models are wrong and the ice returns?

Palestinians: More Missed Opportunities

by Bassam Tawil  •  July 2, 2015 at 5:00 am

• It was Palestinian who hurt themselves: When Israelis were not able to hire Palestinian workers, they simply turned to foreign workers, prefabricated construction and other industrial innovations.
• If the boycott of goods made in the settlements is successful, thousands, if not tens of thousands of Palestinians will find themselves unemployed, hungry, and ripe for radicalization.
• The world will never give up its computing, medical, agricultural and start-up products for us. The Israelis will continue to prosper. They have already found other markets

Gatestone Institute

Windows 10 Updates 
Jerry,
As a long-time PC enthusiast, I have been following your work with Precious, the Surface Pro 3. I’m curious about the Win 10 frequent builds you’ve been installing. Why are you bothering since Win 10 will be officially released and downloaded to all users on July 29th? I personally would prefer to work with an official final release, as it is easier on my stress level and blood pressure.
But if you’re helping Microsoft with bug fixes that’s a different issue.
In any case, I enjoy reading about your struggles. Live long and prosper!

Brian E Claypool

Ah but hope springs eternal, and I do these silly thing so that you won’t have to.

Start menu

I’m not personally using Win 8, 8.1, nor 10 on any of my machines, yet.  I haven’t decided which machine I’ll test with when Win 10 officially releases.  I do have a couple of friends who I support who are on Win 8.1, so I do use that occasionally.

When I do update to Win 10, I will probably install one of the third party apps to emulate the Win 7 Start Menu.  A site I’ve been following for a couple of years recommends Classic Shell.  I’ve seen it mentioned on several sites around the ‘Net, when I’ve been searching for other Win 8+ info for other people.  It has several skins to choose from.

The Gizmo site aka techsupportalert.com routinely runs every download they recommend through a couple of different major virus/malware/adware testing sites before posting.  So, any program mentioned there is as safe as anything one downloads.

Drake Christensen

I’m hoping Microsoft catches on and makes 10 the best Windows yet. There’s no reason why it can’t be. The networking problems aren’t encouraging, though.

Coming Soon

Broadband a major factor in real estate value.

on.wsj.com/1IqW9Ub
Ties in perfectly with our conversation at Niven’s house yesterday.
Home buyers are choosing where they live based on access to broadband
Tom Cairns and real estate agent Carla Ness tour a home in western
Massachusetts. Mr. Cairns has been looking for a home and one requirement is
it have high speed Internet access. Photo: Michelle McLoughlin for The Wall
Street Journal
By Ryan Knutson Updated June 30, 2015 6:35 p.m. ET 0 COMMENTS
In May, Kara Burke and Tom Cairns thought they had found their ideal house:
a nicely-updated older three-bedroom home in Worthington, Mass.
But they didn’t make an offer because it didn’t have high speed Internet.
“We wouldn’t choose a house that didn’t have electricity,” Ms. Burke, 26
years old, said as she explained why. “It’s right on par with those things.”
As the Internet becomes central to the way Americans work and live, the
digital divide is taking on greater economic significance. Students without
Internet access at home may struggle to keep up with school assignments.
Towns with less access find themselves falling behind economically,
researchers say. Now, the availability of speedy Internet service is
starting to affect Americans’ biggest purchase: their homes.
Real-estate agents across the country say more buyers like Ms. Burke and Mr.
Cairns are turning their noses up at homes without fast Web access. Some
studies suggest those buyers are having a keen effect on home prices. A
nationwide study released on Monday by researchers at the University of
Colorado and Carnegie Mellon University finds fiber-optic connections, the
fastest type of high speed Internet available, can add $5,437 to the price
of a $175,000 home—about as much as a fireplace, or half the value of a
bathroom.
David Mans, a real-estate agent outside Boulder, Colo., said after he
started noting in his online listings whether properties had Internet
availability, he got fewer calls about properties that didn’t have it. “I
have situations where people won’t even look at it if it doesn’t have
broadband,” Mr. Mans said.
What people want in a home can vary a lot, and values can depend heavily on
broader market forces. But real estate professionals say there are certain
features that can be a deciding factor—like an extra bathroom or pool. And
broadband is starting to figure into that same calculus.
Telecom companies by law are required to make telephone service available to
every residence in their service areas, but the same isn’t true for all high
speed Internet providers. Phone lines can deliver DSL service, typically
slower than 10 megabits a second. Satellite service is usually even slower.
Fiber and some cable can deliver speeds of up to 1,000 megabits a second.
University of Colorado researchers compared more than 520,000 home sales
between 2011 and 2013 against government data on the type of Internet access
available. It built on a 2013 study by the same researchers that found a
similar effect on home prices in New York state. The researchers expanded
their study with funding from The Fiber to the Home Council Americas, a
group made up of municipalities, small telecom companies, and others like
Google Inc. that support the expansion of fiber networks.
The results mirrored the findings of a 2014 study by the University of
Wisconsin at Whitewater that found access to the Internet could add $11,815
to the value of a $439,000 vacation house in Door County, Wis.
The impact is most acute in rural areas, where Internet speeds tend to drop
dramatically. As of 2013, 92% of urban areas had high speed Internet,
compared with 47% of rural areas, according to the most recent data from the
Federal Communications Commission. The FCC defines high speed as 25 megabits
per second or more.
John Wilczak was getting wireless high speed Internet via Verizon ’s cell
towers at his home in Santa Ynez, Calif., a town of about 4,400 near Santa
Barbara. Cable and phone companies sell high speed Internet downtown, but
they hadn’t built along his street. Mr. Wilczak’s Verizon service worked
like a cellphone plan. Once when friends brought their children for a
week-long visit, the children blew past his 50 gigabyte monthly cap and he
was hit with a more than $900 bill.
Mr. Wilczak recently moved to a new house and dropped Verizon in favor of a
local wireless Internet company without data caps. He said at least half of
the 40 people who considered buying his old house weren’t interested in part
because it lacked reliable Internet
Unreliable Internet almost derailed Adam Frost’s online business selling
wooden toys made in European workshops. Mr. Frost tried using satellite
Internet when he first moved to New Salem, Mass., about seven years ago from
a New York City suburb, where he was paying about $60 a month for high speed
Internet.
“We were told there was adequate Internet access when we got up here, and
then discovered there really isn’t,” Mr. Frost said. The satellite service
would go down during bad weather, and he consistently went over his monthly
data limit.
‘We’re already feeling the negative impacts of not having adequate
broadband.’
—Monica Webb, WiredWest cooperative
Mr. Frost decided to pay Verizon $600 a month to install a dedicated copper
wire to his house for more reliable service. But it still isn’t fast enough,
especially as online services grow more data intensive. Last year it took
him 24 hours to download a software update for his computer, and just as the
download was nearly finished, his connection crashed and he had to start all
over.
In Western Massachusetts, where Mr. Frost lives, local officials are trying
to solve the problem by building their own high speed networks. To
accomplish that they’re borrowing a tactic developed a century ago when the
region was struggling to gain access to electricity. More than 40 towns have
formed a cooperative of Municipal Lighting Plants, a type of public utility
first invented to build electricity infrastructure, and are raising funds to
build out fiber connections.
Monica Webb is the chairwoman of the cooperative, called WiredWest. So far
this year, 19 of those towns have passed bond measures to fund construction.
More than 40% of residents in 14 of those towns have already paid a deposit
for service.
“Some might call us a coalition of the desperate,” Ms. Webb said. “We’re
already feeling the negative impacts of not having adequate broadband.”
Ms. Burke and Mr. Cairns, who passed on the yellow three-bedroom house in
May, decided not to make any offers until they see which towns commit to the
project.
“After we looked at I think maybe 10 houses we were like, ‘It doesn’t really
matter. We can’t pick a house because we don’t know which towns are doing
this,’ ” Ms. Burke said. “The towns that don’t pass it we absolutely will
rule out. It’s not a question.”

Getting truly high speed Wi-Fi to Niven’s house will be a feat, but Alex and Eric have a method. They’ll tell you about it when it’s done.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/mit-uses-artificial-intelligence-to-predict-online-learning-drop-outs/

MIT uses artificial intelligence to predict online learning drop outs (ZD)

MIT is trying to figure out which students will thrive in massive open online courses as well as the ones that’ll drop out.

By Larry Dignan for Between the Lines | July 1, 2015 — 16:12 GMT (09:12 PDT) |

MIT said it has begun using artificial intelligence and big data techniques to better predict which students will drop out from open online courses.

The news, which was detailed at a conference on artificial intelligence in education last week, is notable for a few reasons. First, online education is promising, but recent surveys have indicated that there are cultural issues at universities hampering online enrollment. The other issue is that some students simply aren’t disciplined enough for online learning.

MIT’s techniques touch on that latter point a bit.

Also see: Online education: Higher ed faculty won’t buy in

For massive open online courses, MOOCs for short, it’s unclear how many people are there to listen to lectures only and what percentage will actually do the homework. Other students may intend to do the homework, but be distracted by other events.

MIT is interested in that latter group that may miss a few deadlines and miss the benefits of the class. These students are deemed stopped out of the class. MIT researchers’ predictive model revolved around the following:

• A set of variables around courses such as time spent per homework problem or time spent on video lectures.
• Normalized variables compared against class averages.
• An algorithm that finds correlations between variables and a stopout. The algorithm looks at courses as well as its parts.

MIT’s model turned out to be accurate, but researchers also sampled importance based on weightings from similar students in courses as well as new variables. One variable could include time spent on a course on the weekend. That variable indicates motivation as well how busy a person is.

But Paul Horst’s University of Washington grade prediction program did that; the courts held that was racist although race was never recorded and was not an element; the very fact that black students had lower grades predicted than the average was deemed sufficient. It must be racist. It is likely that this will get the same result.

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Chaos Manor View, Wednesday, July 01, 2015

A very good day so far. Niven and Barnes were over for the morning and lunch. Story conference went well, although we were unable to SKYPE Dr Cohen; not sure why.

Eric tells me there is yet another Windows 10 Build; I’ll install it on Precious, the Microsoft Surface Pro 3, in a few minutes.

Build-a-mania!

    There is yet another build released inside of 24 hours from 10158. The newest is 10159.

http://winsupersite.com/windows-10/two-builds-two-days-microsoft-releases-windows-10-build-10159

    I guess the pace is really picking up now they’re in the home stretch and the broadband world allows them to make this happen.

Eric

For a longer explanation see the link.

1600 Just went to update on Precious. It sees the update, but has not started downloading. This is Time Warner glitch time for the next half hour.

1610 Still shows no download. There seems to be no way to induce it to start; I’m on automatic update, and this has a mind of its own.

1625 Details on the Update page tells me that the update is downloading and the machine is waiting to install. The Update page shows 0% downloaded. I can use Precious for anything else, so it’s merely minorly irritating for it to say it’s downloading and do nothing, but patience is a virtue that often needs relearning.

!655 Still at 0% downloaded; I’ll leave it for the evening. I did check to see that the internet connection is working.

2105  Had dinner and watched bad TV.  Came back here and it says 47% downloaded. I did nothing: it downloaded when it thought it was unused.  It now seems to be stuck on 47% so I expect I can’t use the system for several hours; but by morning it may be done.  HooRay.

2200: 60%  It sure seems to be in no hurry…

2230: 82% and I’m off to the bedroom for the night.

0930 2 June: I have medical appointments all day.  The update has down;loaded and is installing.  I’ll see if it finishes before I go out for the day.

Windows Explorer

    The Explorer icon may not have been visible because of the number of items you have pinned to the task bar on the Surface. This is why the Up and Down arrows appeared in the row. Also, that number of items makes the icons tiny and hard to discern. There may be a setting to enlarge them but then you’d need to use the arrows even more often, which in turn kid of negates the value of having the icons pinned to the task bar. The other option is to pull the task bar up a bit to enlarge its display area. You may have to right-click on it first to unlock it.

    The Windows key shortcut has been there since Windows 95. You possibly never got it hardwired in your head due to your attachment to Norton Commander. The brain cancer and stroke surely didn’t help but I suspect the habit was never formed in the first place.

Eric

Not only not formed, never even thought about wanting it. I am sure I have never used WINKEY E before in my life – my main machine keyboard didn’t even have a Win Key, and I never missed it; ctl-esc was good enough if I needed it, and I never knew that WINKEY plus various letters did anything. It’s good to know. For those who don’t already know – probably not many of you — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_key#Windows_10 tells a lot more.

I suspect my addiction to my older keyboards which didn’t have a Win key, plus my long experience with getting Windows to do what I wanted – all the way from pre-Windows 3 to Windows 7 – plus, as Eric notes, my love of old Norton Commander as a file Manager – prevented me from ever needing to know about this; once Microsoft removed the START button – no doubt believing that everyone knew about Win Key E, I really needed to know this but didn’t know to ask. I now see why earlier builds on Precious seemed so frustrating; I really wanted some way to start from scratch, and it was not only there all the time, but Microsoft and everybody else assumed I knew it.

OPM hack consequences

Dear Jerry,

A commenter to Charlie Martin’s article on the hack at PJMedia

(http://pjmedia.com/blog/read-how-and-why-the-office-of-personnel-management-opm-got-hit-with-maybe-the-most-damaging-hack-of-all-time/)

pointed out something that has NOT yet been trumpeted by the news media.

Since the hackers had root access, they could do more than just read the data. They could alter it, or even insert phony data (like, say, “trusted” Federal personnel who are actually Chicom agents). When this sort of thing happens to anyone in the real world, the most common solutions are “take it down to bare metal, then restore from

(old) backups or from paper”. But I’m sure neither solution will be

applied to the OPM computers and databases, so we can only wonder what was deliberately corrupted by the Chinese, and hope we catch those “trusted” agents by other means.

Sincerely,

Calvin Dodge

: Brick-laying robot can build a full-sized house in two days

I can see how laying pavers would be well executed and a good use case but I wonder how it handles complex structures like soldier courses and water bands?

http://www.gizmag.com/hadrian-brick-laying-robot-fastbrick/38239/?utm_source=Gizmag+Subscribers&utm_campaign=dab09564e5-UA-2235360-4&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_65b67362bd-dab09564e5-88920025

John Harlow

Dubai Says Plans World’s First 3D Printed Office Building    (nyt)

By REUTERSJUNE 30, 2015, 9:04 A.M. E.D.T.

DUBAI — Dubai said it would construct a small office building using a 3D printer for the first time, in a drive to develop technology that would cut costs and save time as the city grows.

3D printing, which uses a printer to make three-dimensional objects from a digital design, is taking off in manufacturing industries around the world but has so far been used little in construction.

Dubai’s one-storey prototype building, with about 2,000 square feet (185 square meters) of floor space, will be printed layer-by-layer using a 20-foot tall printer, Mohamed Al Gergawi, the United Arab Emirates Minister of Cabinet Affairs, said on Tuesday.

It would then be assembled on site within a few weeks. Interior furniture and structural components would also be built through 3D printing with reinforced concrete, gypsum reinforced with glass fiber, and plastic.

The project is a tie-up between Dubai and Winsun, a Chinese company that has been pioneering the use of 3D printers to build houses. Gergawi cited studies estimating the technique could cut building time by 50-70 percent and labor costs by 50-80 percent.

(Reporting by Andrew Torchia, editing by David Evans)

– self-driving cars will suppress human drivers

Guess who was 1st slave owner

That didn’t match my understanding of history, but it largely matches the account presently on Wikipedia…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_States#Colonial_America

The first 19 or so Africans to reach the English colonies arrived in Jamestown, Virginia in 1619, brought by Dutch traders who had seized them from a captured Spanish slave ship. The Spanish usually baptized slaves in Africa before embarking them. As English law then considered baptized Christians exempt from slavery, these Africans were treated as indentured servants, and they joined about 1,000 English indentured servants already in the colony. The Africans were freed after a prescribed period and given the use of land and supplies by their former masters.

There were no laws regarding slavery early in Virginia’s history. But, in 1640, a Virginia court sentenced John Punch to slavery after he attempted to flee his service.^[5] The two whites with whom he fled were only sentenced to an additional year of their indenture, and three years’ service to the colony.^[6] This marked the first legal sanctioning of slavery in the English colonies and was one of the first legal distinctions made between Europeans and Africans.^[5][7]

In 1654, John Casor, a black indentured servant, was the first man to be declared a slave in a civil case. He had claimed to an officer that his owner, free black colonist Anthony Johnson, had held him past his indenture term. A neighbor, Robert Parker told Johnson that if he did not release Casor, Parker would testify in court to this fact; which under local laws, may have resulted in Johnson losing some of his headright lands. Under duress, Johnson freed Casor, who entered into a seven years’ indenture with Parker. Feeling cheated, Johnson sued Parker to repossess Casor. A Northampton County court ruled for Johnson, declaring that Parker illegally was detaining Casor from his rightful master who legally held him “for the duration of his life”.^[10]

In a message dated 6/30/2015 8:42:27 A.M. Central Daylight Time,

http://www.tpnn.com/2015/04/30/guess-who-the-1st-legal-slave-owner-in-america-was-dont-expect-the-media-to-report-this/

“It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.” – Voltaire

Enumerations and the ninth amendment

Hi Jerry,

Hal O’Brien wrote, “What the Ninth Amendment explicitly says is, as you learn that meaning of liberty over time, the Bill of Rights should not be construed as a comprehensive limiting list, denying and disparaging what you find in addition through the years.”

I’m unsure how he gets this meaning from the Ninth Amendment; which only limits the use of enumerated rights to suppress rights not mentioned. It in no way hints at discovering or finding new “rights” as he suggests. Only if one assumes that rights spring from the Constitution or from judicial/legislative decree can this be seen as true. It also absolutely negates any and all protections given by a constitution since all a judge has to do is pronounce a new “right” and none of the protections in the Constitution would limit the government from implementing this new “right”. For example, the Right to Zero Violence could be proclaimed and all the protections of the 2nd Amendment would vanish as this newly discovered “right” combined with the Ninth Amendment would supercede the 2nd. SImilarly, the Right to Zero Insults would destroy 1st Amendment protections as government moved to ensure no one spoke an insulting word.

In all deference to the opinion of Mr. O’Brien, the Bill of Rights are not a minumum nor are they a maximum. Each is unique and each is aimed at the federal government, not the people. I would even go so far as Alexander Hamilton who famously wrote, “For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do? Why, for instance, should it be said that the liberty of the press shall not be restrained, when no power is given by which restrictions may be imposed?” This notion of a severely limited government was at the very heart of its creation.

The federal government was not given the authority to define marriage in any way. This limitation exists for all branches of the federal government including the Supreme Court. State constitutions provide this authority for individual states and it is at the state level that the decision for what constitutes and does not constitute a marriage contract reside. Based on the current SCOTUS ruling, however, I see no recourse for states but to refuse to recognize all forms of legal marriage. This would certainly free up some state resources and divorce settlements could then be handled quickly by the priest, minister, or individual who sanctioned the marriage to start with.

r/s

Braxton S. Cook

Thank you.

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.