Pennslyvania Property Theft is Legal

My Uncle joined the national guard when he was 17 and then 6 years later he decided we wanted to do Masonary work(as its called around here). It took him over 20 years of monthly payments to purchase half a farm from a guy who inherited it. The property was partly used as a junkyard prior to my uncle living on it and had no real in road.

 My uncle went about a half mile in from the main road and set up a tent, he used a local gas station restroom to brush his teeth and cleanup before working from sunup to sundown. He quickly saved enough money for a trailer and utilities. It was tough getting the trailer back a road that had pits that could swallow a car. He used broken up concrete and junk brick and block from each days work to build the road up. As the road got better he was able to turn his attention to building his house because he could now drive any truck back the road. He built his home while living in it.

 After spending years on his house he decided to build a garage using a used steel building that a local demolition company razed. My uncle worked on his property and in his garage from the time he would wake until he went to bed. One day he found out what pain really meant when he got a herniated disc in his back. But after weeks of being couch ridden and still with much pain he knew he had payments to make.He went straight back to doing some of the hardest work known to man and hasn't stopped working since.

After spending many years building his house and garage he finally got the property paid off. To date he has paid more in property taxes than he did for the property itself. Then one day he got a letter saying that his property was sold at a tax sale all over about 250 dollars.

 A misunderstanding on the final due date of about two hundred and fifty dollars allowed a man who is in the business of buying these properties to sweep in and upset it. My uncle has had to sell off prized possessions just to make this thief a offer that he refused and now has to go to court for a final ruling.

Here is a letter that my uncle wrote and told me to pass out to people on the interwebs.

Survive

Well its been a little more than 4 years since I worked on any of my projects including this blog. I have started new projects but have finished very few. Reading over the posts on this blog makes me wonder what drove me to be interested in writing reveiws about software. Of course I have read thousands of reviews on video games,systems and other related subjects. But in the past few years I have been reading reviews of a different kind. Survival training and concepts of gear that is needed during such a situation. Whenever both sides "of the aisle" (as lamestream media would say) are no longer able to keep the peace or as nutnfancy puts it wrol(without rule of law) or a shtf (shit hits the fan) I don't think anyone would want to be around for that.



It is possible to get free training on the internet for budding survival enthusiasts. This isn't commercialized bulls*** this is good time spent learning important urban and jungle survival. Important points on gear selection and use. Technical explanations on individual experiences to catapult your skill-set. Guns and the passion that comes with the creation of such a fine tool that demands much respect. Love for shooting sports and practicing proper self defense techniques are the most important.

Handle all your instant messaging in one program

I was looking to start instant messaging again and I downloaded AIM and after I was using aim for a while I wanted to get in contact with people from each of the instant messengers. But I did not want all that memory being taken up on my machine so I began searching for an alternate way of doing so, and that was when I found Trillian.

After a fairly easy install I came to a screen where I entered a nickname to use on Trillian and then it gives you the option of what accounts you want to login to. You can easily manage your accounts from account management, allowing you disconnect,connect,add and remove accounts. Trillian allows you to connect to AIM,MSN Messenger,yahoo messenger and IRC.

Trillian is quite good at memory utilization, the picture below shows how much memory they are running on my machine.

The above shows them when they are minimized, ICQ should not even be on there I completely exited the program after I couldn't find any trace of my icq number. Yahoo is just unacceptable, AIM isn't too bad when it is collapsed or open. The sum of all the programs is where Trillian really comes in handy. I am sure anyone who has done any instant messaging knows whats its like and Trillian is the solution.

There are some quirks with trillian for one thing if someone sends you a link, you cannot click on it, you have to copy and paste, it does however copy and paste as soon as you highlight keeping you from needing to a right then left click. Also you can not send people messages when they are offline.

Trillian supports Microsoft Windows 98, 2000, ME, Windows XP or Windows Vista and If you upgrade to Trillian pro it also allows you to connect to Yahoo webcam. Cerulean Studios the creator of Trillian has released a new version called ASTRA that is in Alpha Stage right now and it is a private sign up for its testing



Check out ceruleanstudios.com to get Trillian

Cyc artifical intelligence, who is using it?

Cyc (pronounced psyche)

The Cyc project was founded in 1984, by Dr. Douglas Lenat at Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation (MCC). It was a lead project there with goal to create true artificial intelligence. They set out to create AI with a large amount of human knowledge, facts, commonsense and problem solving skills.CYC started out a as a dream when Alan Kay was at Atari’s research center and asked Lenat for something to add to his project. When Atari had financial problems Lenat moved the project to MCC.


Cycorp founded in 1994 was funded by many large corporations including Microsoft, Apple and the Department of Defense. The largest application that has spawned from the Cyc knowledge base is Cycsecure. Cycsecure gives a computer the ability to distinguish the difference between regular file use and file use that may affect the security of the systems. There are other features that Cycsecure has and they may seem about the same as modern applications created after 2003, but Cycsecure is for mission critical activities and of the highest regards when it comes to technology.


Today Cycsecure seems to have all the same attributes that common home and professional security applications have. The AI is what makes it possible for probing a computer for risk assessment and fixing it before a human can compromise security. That is one thing what AI makes possible, now although Cycsecure is not known to be available for purchase by the average person. Cyc does have a open source version of their technology. I have not been able to find any other program that is based on Cyc technology. The reason I became interested in Cyc is because I always wondered what would happen if a application was programmed to know everything that existed then it would be smarter than any human.


Cyc seems to have done that and people have been building a database of knowledge since the 80’s and I am sure that’s part of what makes computer so great today. But I wonder how many programs are written include or use this extensive knowledge base? Search engines seem to have a lot of knowledge information but in a much unorganized way with most of it obviously being input from people and not having a true standard to conform and the only AI implemented is to allow for the finding of your information. A program that has organized knowledge input, and what if statements, is common sense reasoning. That is where AI has been born and that is what many applications seem to have.


Video Games is where this is really noticeable for example a well known game like Grand Theft Auto. This can seem almost life like not meaning the graphics but the reactions to your actions in the game. The reason a video game is so limited in its reaction is because limited amounts of knowledge are input. A video game developer only has reason to create AI that will react according to the circumstances of the players action and the goal of the game.


There are many other places AI can be found like Microsoft Words’ spell checker. Actually anytime you are on a computer you are more than likely dealing with AI, but once again the applications build is limited to its purpose and intended use. I also know the amount of time it takes someone to build an application for a any specific use on a computer can be exhausting and only something being worked on for a long period of time could amount to something that could be human-like artificial intelligence.



I have not looked into the openCyc too much mostly because my programming skills are a skill that I do not pack. I do believe however that Human like AI is where the technology world is heading inevitability. I think any programmer could find openCyc a very interesting endeavor for them.

For tutorials and files visit these sites
http://www.opencyc.org/
http://www.cyc.com/cyc

Here is an essay and a bit of a history lesson and is cited as a source of some of my information. But not any direct quotes have been used.
http://www.itmweb.com/essay540.htm#1

Kompozer Free Web Authoring Tool

Kompozer has a very stable version of their WYSIWYG out. It does not come as an .exe file, it comes as .zip binary file. Just extract the file and your ready to being making your site in HTML,XML,CSS and Java Script. The Kompozer website claims it is "The easiest-to-use, most powerful Web Authoring System available for Desktop Linux, Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh users. "


Kompozer has a CSS editor, that allows you to create and manage your style sheets and view them live as you apply them to your page. Things like a mark up validator and spell check will keep you happy as will all the other features from Kompozer.


I noticed a simple looking GUI and tool setup,upon first glimpse I noticed all the important tools that are in Microsoft Frontpage and Adobe Dreamweaver, I don't think its features are as complex as Dreamweavers, but I'm sure it can hang with Microsoft's Frontpage and lame Web Publisher that comes with Office.


Kompozer is version 0.7.10 right now and its free as it probably always will be since it is from The Mozilla Foundation, and as you probably already know they created the popular FireFox and the not so famous Thunderbird that rival Microsofts Outlook. I would recommend giving Kompozer a try but not making it your sole Web Authoring Tool since it is not as featured as Dreamweaver is and differs greatly in layout.



Go to Kompozer.net to take a look.