steem

Tuesday, December 31, 2019

Fancy New Terms, Same Old Backdoors: The Encryption Debate in 2019


Almost every week, we hear about another corporate data breach or government attack on privacy. For anyone who wants real privacy online, encryption is the essential component.

Governments around the world keep trying to break encryption, seeking to enhance the power of their law enforcement agencies. They’ve tried for years to require companies to build backdoors into encrypted software and devices, which would enable them to listen in on potentially any digital conversation. The FBI has coined a phrase, “going dark,” that it has used since the late '90s to describe their “problem”—the lack of an omnipresent, all-powerful surveillance tool.

But encryption with special access for a select group isn’t some kind of superpower—it’s just broken encryption. The same security flaws used by U.S. police will be used by oppressive regimes and criminal syndicates.

The only innovation in 2019 has been rhetorical—anti-encryption authorities are determined not to call a backdoor a backdoor. Instead, we saw a proposal from UK intelligence agency GCHQ to add “ghost” listeners to encrypted messaging applications. Later in the year, we saw a revival of the idea of “key escrow,” a discredited idea about how to square the circle on encryption.

Other approaches included ideas like “client-side scanning,” which is also sometimes called “endpoint filtering” or “local processing.” This array of terms describes a system where a messaging application maintains end-to-end encryption, but when users upload images or other content, it can be first checked locally against a set of “hashes” or fingerprints for contraband. These strategies have been proposed as solutions to the problem of child exploitation images, a problem that the DOJ highlighted frequently in the latter half of 2019, trying to reframe the use of encryption as enabling criminal behavior.

The promise of end-to-end encryption is, ultimately, a simple value proposition: it’s the idea that no one but you and your intended recipients can read your messages. There’s no amount of wordsmithing that can get around that. It’s high time to start convening conferences and panels of experts to research and publish ideas about how effective law enforcement can co-exist with tools for privacy and strong encryption, rather than trying to break them.

Keeping Promises on Encryption

Government pressure hasn’t caused tech companies to abandon encryption, at least not yet. In March, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg publicly embraced end-to-end encryption for all of Facebook’s messaging products. That sounds great, in theory, but the proof is in the pudding—we still don’t know how Facebook might seek to monetize an end-to-end encrypted service. There are also policy and competition concerns about the company’s intention to merge WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook Messenger.

But those policy concerns might be rendered moot if the company backpedals under the glare of increasing government demands. In October, top law enforcement officials in the U.S., U.K., and Australia called on Zuckerberg to simply stop his plan to encrypt the merged messenger products. Again waving the flag of child safety, law enforcement agencies in these three countries made clear their ultimate goal: access to every conversation, on every digital device. Civil society hasn’t been silent. We joined together with more than 100 other NGOs to write our own letter urging Facebook to proceed with its plans. In December, Facebook itself signaled it won’t bow to that pressure.

The stakes couldn’t be higher. Whichever way the social media giant moves on encryption, other companies are sure to follow.


Source: Fancy New Terms, Same Old Backdoors: The Encryption Debate in 2019 | Electronic Frontier Foundation

Monday, December 30, 2019

dna5 - D.N.A.^2





Super Play (September 1994)






Super Play (September 1994)



Super Play was a U.K. based magazine dedicated to the Super Nintendo that was published between 1992 and 1996. Issue Number 23 from September 1994 includes:
  • Regulars
    • Super Express - The world of Nintendo stretches from the Pacific right round the globe bck to the Pacific again. Find out what's in it with our great news page.

    • Gamefreak - You ask; we answer. Well, Jason Brookes, editor of Edge answers. And what a witty fellow he consistently turns out to be. His replies really do sparkle.

    • Mode 7 - Allen Brett, keeper of the Queen's Cheats and holder of the Royal Seal for getting past Bosses, leaves the Palace for a mo to share with us commoners his knowledge.

    • Supermarket - The vastly popular Supermarket pages are packed with things to buy. There is some real-life human interest, too, with the messages that some folk put in.

    • Play Back - Every day we pass round the letters that you send in. We laugh at the jokes, we weep at the sad bits and scratch our heads at some of the questions. But it's all good jolly fun, though.

    • What Cart? - Every game listed, cut out and stuck to a wall in Exeter. And then they're returned to the magazine. Marvelous.

    • Back Issues - More deals again this month. Order a back issue and win Steven Spielberg's beard-trimmer (unused, still boxed). Order two back issues and receive a deactivated Czechoslovakian tank!

    • Irresponsible Pictures - Films, films, films. They're all here. Well not all, actually. The cream of the crop of the latest releases are, though. So browse away and you'll learn something.

  • UK & Import Game Reviews
    • Beauty and the Beast
    • Hammerin' Harry
    • Jim Power
    • Kikikaikai 2
    • Populous 2
    • Smash Ball
    • Sonic Blast Man 2
    • Super Street Fighter II
    • The Jetsons

  • Squaresoft Interview - In a Fantasy Quest Special, Squaresoft's head cheese answers our questions and tells us about what we can exect from the prince of RPG companies.

  • Super Game Boy - You've got the hardware, now don't be soft and think hard about the software. Better still, follow our guide to the best games for the Super Game Boy.
...and more!

Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (561-564)

See the previous post in this series here. Feel free to skip the quoted intro text if you have read it before.

I had the opportunity to pick up a huge batch of slides recently. These are pictures spanning from as early as the late 1940s to as late as the early 1990s (maybe earlier and/or later but these are what I have sampled so far). These came to me second (third?) hand but the original source was a combination of estate sales and Goodwill. There are several thousand...maybe as many as 10,000. I will be scanning some from time to time and posting them here for posterity.
Apparently, getting your pictures processed as slides used to be a fairly common thing but it was a phenomenon I missed out on. However, my Grandfather had a few dozen slides (circa late 1950s) that I acquired after he died. That along with some negatives is what prompted me to buy a somewhat decent flatbed scanner that could handle slides and negatives (an Epson V600). That was the most money I was willing to spend on one anyway. It can scan up to four slides at a time with various post-processing options and does a decent enough job. The scanner has been mostly idle since finishing that task but now there is plenty for it to do.

This set continues a rather large batch of slides that originally came from an estate sale and appear to have belonged to a locally well known photographer from the Spokane Washington area and later Northern Idaho named Leo Oestreicher. He was known for his portrait and landscape photography and especially for post cards. He career started in the 1930s and he died in 1990. These slides (thousands of them) contain a lot of landscape and portrait photos but also a lot of photos from day to day life and various vacations around the world. Here's an article on him from 1997 which is the only info I have found on him: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/1997/jan/04/photos-of-a-lifetime-museum-acquisition-of-leo/

Many of these slides had the date they were processed (presumably) stamped or printed on them (month and year). I've found that in cases where I could verify the date, either because a more specific date was hand written or there was something to specifically date the photo in the photo itself, that this date has typically been the same month the photos were taken. In other words, I expect that in MOST cases these photos were taken relatively near the processing date. No doubt there are some exceptions.

An assortment of photos here. The first photo is not labeled but is of a sign at the location. It was taken at Lava Butte which is a cinder cone located in central Oregon. The last one is labeled and is of the American Consul in Bremen. That consul opened in 1956 and I'm guessing this photo was taken within a couple of years of that. The other two photos are not labeled but are of scenery probably in Oregon or somewhere relatively nearby in Canada.

Click on one of the images or the link below to also see higher resolution photos and also versions processed with color restoration and Digital ICE which is a hardware based dust and scratch remover, a feature of the Epson V600 scanner I am using. There are also versions processed with the simpler dust removal option along with color restoration.





Bremen - Am. Consul

The entire collection that has been scanned and uploaded so far can be found here.

Friday, December 27, 2019

Supra Corporation (Amiga)






Supra Corporation (Amiga)


For a number of years, Commodore's Amiga line of computers enjoyed wide third party support. In this ad from the December/January 1991 issue of Amiga Plus, Supra is advertising several Amiga compatible products.

The first item is an external floppy drive. The Amiga 500 (pictured) had one 3.5" disk drive built-in but a second drive was quite useful, especially given the cost of hard drives at the time. A (relatively) inexpensive floppy drive was a good way to add disk capacity and reduce disk swapping without breaking the bank. I suspect that Supra's choice was a little bit less expensive that Commodore's version.

The SupraDrive Removable was a SyqQuest cartridge system. These accepted disks that were like removable hard drives. I'm not sure which capacity this drive is but they were available in 44MB, 88MB and 200MB. They were sort of like an earlier version of zip drives and were common for shuffling files around, particular on Macintosh computers, related to desktop publishing. As this drive was SCSI based, it would work with most computers with a SCSI interface. These drives along with the cartridges they used were pretty expensive so this wasn't something you were likely to have unless you had a real need. Zip drives when they came along a few years later were much cheaper and CD-R followed quickly after that.

Finally, the SupraModem 2400 is listed. 2400bps was a pretty decent speed for 1991 though available modem speeds were rapidly increasing by this point. Within 4 or 5 years 56k modems would be arriving and broadband was right around the corner after that. Still, the SupraModem was a good and relatively inexpensive choice for getting online with BBSs or services like CompuServe at the time. The U.S. Robotics Courier line of modems was the luxury choice at the time but those were much more expensive.

dna4 - D.N.A.^2





MegaCon 2019: Q&A WITH KIEFER AND JASON





MegaCon 2019: Q&A WITH KIEFER AND JASON

Monday, December 23, 2019

Mr. Do!’s Castle (Atari 2600)






Mr. Do!’s Castle (Atari 2600)


Mr. Do! became quite the popular arcade character after the first game featuring him in 1982 simply titled Mr. Do! The game was popular enough that to speed along a sequel, an existing game in development was modified to be a Mr. Do! game by changing the graphics. The game was originally to be titled Knights vs. Unicorns. The Japanese version became Mr. Do! versus Unicorns and the U.S. release was called Mr. Do!'s Castle.
Mr. Do!'s Castle features Mr. Do! climbing up and down ladders in a castle. The goal is to collect cherries by using a hammer to knock out blocks that contain them. The holes left behind can then be used to trap the Unicorn monsters which can then be smashed with another block.
Mr. Do!'s Castle was released in 1982 and was ultimately ported to a wide variety of contemporary platforms including the Atari 2600. Unfortunately, the Atari 2600 version just isn't that good. The Atari 2600 was a limited platform anyway but during the 1982 and 1983 time period in general, many games were rushed to try to take advantage of the video game craze. The graphics were never going to be close to the arcade version but they are hardly even recognizable. The game play is not significantly better. While the arcade version is a fun game I would steer clear of the 2600 version and if you want a home version try one of the 8-bit computer versions such as the Commodore 64 port. Really though, you might as well emulate the original arcade version. Screen shots above are from the Atari 2600 version of Mr. Do's Castle.

Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (557-560)

See the previous post in this series here. Feel free to skip the quoted intro text if you have read it before.

I had the opportunity to pick up a huge batch of slides recently. These are pictures spanning from as early as the late 1940s to as late as the early 1990s (maybe earlier and/or later but these are what I have sampled so far). These came to me second (third?) hand but the original source was a combination of estate sales and Goodwill. There are several thousand...maybe as many as 10,000. I will be scanning some from time to time and posting them here for posterity.
Apparently, getting your pictures processed as slides used to be a fairly common thing but it was a phenomenon I missed out on. However, my Grandfather had a few dozen slides (circa late 1950s) that I acquired after he died. That along with some negatives is what prompted me to buy a somewhat decent flatbed scanner that could handle slides and negatives (an Epson V600). That was the most money I was willing to spend on one anyway. It can scan up to four slides at a time with various post-processing options and does a decent enough job. The scanner has been mostly idle since finishing that task but now there is plenty for it to do.

This set continues a rather large batch of slides that originally came from an estate sale and appear to have belonged to a locally well known photographer from the Spokane Washington area and later Northern Idaho named Leo Oestreicher. He was known for his portrait and landscape photography and especially for post cards. He career started in the 1930s and he died in 1990. These slides (thousands of them) contain a lot of landscape and portrait photos but also a lot of photos from day to day life and various vacations around the world. Here's an article on him from 1997 which is the only info I have found on him: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/1997/jan/04/photos-of-a-lifetime-museum-acquisition-of-leo/

Many of these slides had the date they were processed (presumably) stamped or printed on them (month and year). I've found that in cases where I could verify the date, either because a more specific date was hand written or there was something to specifically date the photo in the photo itself, that this date has typically been the same month the photos were taken. In other words, I expect that in MOST cases these photos were taken relatively near the processing date. No doubt there are some exceptions.

Most of the photos in this set appear to have been taken at Kootenay Lake in Nelson, British Columbia in 1957, including one of a new bridge being built. The last photo is of the sign at University Methodist Church which I think was in Columbus, Ohio. This one was probably also taken circa 1957. The Pastor listed on the sign died in 2014: https://www.snyderfuneralhomes.com/obituary/reverend-dr-dale-e-bichsel/

Click on one of the images or the link below to also see higher resolution photos and also versions processed with color restoration and Digital ICE which is a hardware based dust and scratch remover, a feature of the Epson V600 scanner I am using. There are also versions processed with the simpler dust removal option along with color restoration.


End of Kootenay Lake - 08/25/1956

New bridge being built at Nelson B.C. - 1957



https://supload.com/r1CsZodES

The entire collection that has been scanned and uploaded so far can be found here.

California’s War on Gig Work Falls Hardest on Women


This year, California’s progressives decided to wage war on the nightmare of being your own boss. A new state law aimed at limiting the gig economy has already cost hundreds of people their jobs—and had a seriously harmful impact on women’s earnings and long-term happiness.

Assembly Bill 5 curbs the ability of companies like Uber and Lyft to classify their workers as independent contractors. The law, which codifies the California Supreme Court’s Dynamex decision into law, means companies in the $1 trillion gig economy would have to hire freelancers as employees and give them benefits, including healthcare coverage. Governor Gavin Newsom signed the bill into law on September 18. It takes effect on January 1.
The companies say that kind of change threatens their business model and could mean bankruptcy. It also means their newly designated employees can be unionized, a boon for organized labor. Teamsters organizers have already begun laying the groundwork.

But the law contains a provision that limits freelance writers to submitting 35 articles per outlet each year. (The bill’s author admits the number is “arbitrary.”)

Media outlets that rely on independent content producers are scrambling to comply with the law before it takes effect in a few days—and one of them, Vox, announced it will engage in a round of mass firings.

The bill’s author, Democratic Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, said her goal is to “preserve good jobs,” but only those that pay “a livable, sustainable wage job.” Vox apparently did not fall into that category.

The hundreds of workers Vox laid off have the opportunity to apply for the new, full-time jobs the company just announced—20 of them.

Freelancers who love what they do can keep writing, explained John Ness, executive director of the Vox-owned website SB Nation, but they “need to understand they will not be paid for future contributions.”

Thanks to government intervention, hundreds or thousands of authors will lose their most viable source of income.
Freelance authors blame the law, not their employers, for turning their lives upside down. CNBC reports:
A writer named Rebecca Lawson, who covered the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks from San Diego, wrote a post on Monday titled, “California’s terrible AB5 came for me today, and I’m devastated.” Lawson, who was editor-in-chief of the blog Mavs Moneyball, said she would be forced to step down as of March 31.

“SB Nation has chosen to do the easiest thing they can to comply with California law — not work with California-based independent contractors, or any contractors elsewhere writing for California-based teams,” Lawson wrote. “I don’t blame them at all.”
The Hollywood Reporter shares the story of Arianna Jeret:
[Jeret], who contributes to relationship websites YourTango.com and The Good Men Project, says freelance writing has helped support her two children and handle their different school schedules. Her current gigs — covering mental health, lifestyle and entertainment — allow her to work from home, from the office and even from her children’s various appointments. “There were just all of these benefits for my ability to still be an active parent in my kids’ lives and also support us financially that I just couldn’t find anywhere in a steady job with anybody,” she says.
Similarly, author Kassy Dillon tweeted:

 

Not all those opposed to the new law are women, by any stretch of the imagination. Aaron Pruner, whose clients include The Washington Post, said, “Working with a baby at home is easier to do when I have my own schedule to work from, as opposed to a 9 to 5.”

But women bear the brunt of the government-imposed limit. Two-thirds of U.S. freelancers across industries are female, according to PayPal’s “U.S. Freelancer Insights Report.”

Curiously, the bill carved out vast exemptions. The San Francisco Chronicle revealed that lawmakers exempted a series of higher-paying professions including
doctors, psychologists, dentists, podiatrists, insurance agents, stock brokers, lawyers, accountants, engineers, veterinarians, direct sellers, real estate agents, hairstylists and barbers, aestheticians, commercial fishermen, marketing professionals, travel agents, graphic designers, grant writers, fine artists, enrolled agents, payment processing agents, repossession agents and human resources administrators.
But the politicians made no provision for freelance writers, despite months of heavy lobbying.
Freelance work empowers women to choose how they spend their time. Female workers have repeatedly told pollsters from across the globe—as far as Australia and Denmark—that their top workplace desire is the flexibility to create greater work-life balance. Some 40 percent of women say they would take a lower salary in exchange for more control over their schedule.

Freelancing lets women choose the hours they work and gives them control over their schedule. They may opt out of working altogether when someone gets ill, only to work night-and-day at other times, based on their needs and wishes. But the right to unionize Uber drivers has denied them that goal.

Employment is about more than a paycheck. Surveys show unemployment has a longer, more harmful impact on members of both sexes than any other adverse life effect, including divorce and widowhood. “For unemployment, there is a negative shock both in the short and long-run,” reports Our World in Data.

Unemployment also affects the human person in ways too profound to be measured by an earnings statement, poll, or survey. “Unemployment almost always wounds its victim’s dignity and threatens the equilibrium of his life,” says the Catechism of the Catholic Church. “Besides the harm done to him personally, it entails many risks for his family.” Pope Francis has been outspoken about the dangers of idleness. “There is no peace without employment,” he said on the sixtieth anniversary of the Treaty of Rome.

There is no peace for California’s freelance writers, approximately two-thirds of whom are women. This is yet another example of how economic interventionism destroys jobs, harms women, and leaves hundreds of families unable to support themselves and saddled with long-term psychological burdens.

This article is reprinted with permission from the Acton Institute.



Ben Johnson
Rev. Ben Johnson is a senior editor at the Acton Institute. His work focuses on the principles necessary to create a free and virtuous society in the transatlantic sphere (the U.S., Canada, and Europe).

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Yuri kei - Dirty Pair






Friday, December 20, 2019

Alpha Mission II (Neo Geo)






Alpha Mission II (Neo Geo)


Alpha Mission 2 is a 2D vertically scrolling shooter that was originally released in 1991 for the Neo Geo. The Neo Geo was an awesome system because it was essentially SNKs arcade hardware stuffed into a game console for the home. The upside was arcade perfect games (because they were the same games). The downside was that the system and the games were quite expensive.
Alpha Mission 2 is an excellent example of the genre. At the beginning you start with lasers and air to ground missiles. The game play is somewhat similar to Xevious in that you can only hit targets on the ground with missiles/bombs. Weapons have limited power that is reduced through use or damage to the ship. Weapons and armor can be recharged and upgraded in various ways throughout the game.
This game received generally good reviews and fortunately you don't have to drop a fortune for a Neo Geo and the game to play this as it has been re-released in various ways throughout the years. Alpha Mission II became available on the Neo Geo CD. CDs were a cheaper way to go originally though you paid for them with loading times. However, on the second hand market these days even the CD version is quite expensive. It was also later released as a digital download for the PSP and PS3. It was also released on the Wii Virtual Console but only in Japan and then even later in April 2017 as part of the Arcade Archives for the Switch internationally. Alpha Mission II is also currently available as a digital purchase for the Xbox One.
For 2D shooter fans, this is definitely one you should check out if you have never played it. If you want to play on the original system than it will be very costly but arcade perfect versions are currently available cheaply as digital downloads. The preview above is from the January 1993 issue of GameFan.

Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (553-556)

See the previous post in this series here. Feel free to skip the quoted intro text if you have read it before.

I had the opportunity to pick up a huge batch of slides recently. These are pictures spanning from as early as the late 1940s to as late as the early 1990s (maybe earlier and/or later but these are what I have sampled so far). These came to me second (third?) hand but the original source was a combination of estate sales and Goodwill. There are several thousand...maybe as many as 10,000. I will be scanning some from time to time and posting them here for posterity.
Apparently, getting your pictures processed as slides used to be a fairly common thing but it was a phenomenon I missed out on. However, my Grandfather had a few dozen slides (circa late 1950s) that I acquired after he died. That along with some negatives is what prompted me to buy a somewhat decent flatbed scanner that could handle slides and negatives (an Epson V600). That was the most money I was willing to spend on one anyway. It can scan up to four slides at a time with various post-processing options and does a decent enough job. The scanner has been mostly idle since finishing that task but now there is plenty for it to do.

This set continues a rather large batch of slides that originally came from an estate sale and appear to have belonged to a locally well known photographer from the Spokane Washington area and later Northern Idaho named Leo Oestreicher. He was known for his portrait and landscape photography and especially for post cards. He career started in the 1930s and he died in 1990. These slides (thousands of them) contain a lot of landscape and portrait photos but also a lot of photos from day to day life and various vacations around the world. Here's an article on him from 1997 which is the only info I have found on him: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/1997/jan/04/photos-of-a-lifetime-museum-acquisition-of-leo/

Many of these slides had the date they were processed (presumably) stamped or printed on them (month and year). I've found that in cases where I could verify the date, either because a more specific date was hand written or there was something to specifically date the photo in the photo itself, that this date has typically been the same month the photos were taken. In other words, I expect that in MOST cases these photos were taken relatively near the processing date. No doubt there are some exceptions.

More wedding photos and a couple of outdoor shots of people. These are from the late 1950s.

Click on one of the images or the link below to also see higher resolution photos and also versions processed with color restoration and Digital ICE which is a hardware based dust and scratch remover, a feature of the Epson V600 scanner I am using. There are also versions processed with the simpler dust removal option along with color restoration.



April 1957


Alice cutting the cake

The entire collection that has been scanned and uploaded so far can be found here.

Thursday, December 19, 2019

ST Format (August 1990)






ST Format (August 1990)


ST Format was a magazine published in the U.K. that was dedicated to the Atari ST. It started life as part of Amiga/ST Format but they split into their own individual publications shortly after introduction. The August 1990 issue of ST Format includes:
  • News - All you need to know about the month's ST activity
  • News from abroad - Releases and information from across Europe
  • Game Previews - A first look at Mag Scrolls' Wonderland and more
  • Inside Story: magic fly - FORMAT Graphics Editor recalls two years' work on the Electronic Arts extravaganza
  • Cover Disk Plus - Carefully crafted, lovingly compiled - a real stonker!
  • Games: screenplay - Damocles, Wipe Out, Flood, AMC, F-29, Midnight Resistance, Khalaan, Thunderstrike, Treasure Trap, Atomix, Rorke's Drift, Skidz, Prophecy
  • Gamebusters special - Coo! Not four, not five, not even seven but nine (count 'em) pages of top cheats for more than 100 ST games!
  • Adventure gamebusters - The A-to-Z of adventure cheats, hints and solutions
  • Special: The bullfrogs are back! - The team that brought the world Populous are back with a splash. Remember, you read it here first.
  • Desktop - How, you ask, can we cram so much info into four and a half pages? Don't know, we
  • Exclusive: Proxima - Now you can afford to get into DTP - with a package that costs just a third of the price of Calamus!
  • Subscriptions
  • Educations - FORMAT goes European with a range of foreign language tutorial programs. Roll on 1992!
  • Music tips - Welcome to a new section of help and problem-solving for all aspects of making
  • Music buyers guide - It's all very well of us telling you what your ST can do with MIDI. But what if you can't afford brand new kit?
  • Series: program in C - Master this powerful programming language
  • Feedback - Complaints, compliments and curious observations
  • Special Offers - Treat your ST - offers you can't refuse!
  • The back page - Devastatingly inaccurate guesses at what might
Cover Disk
  • Battlemaster - Fully playable demo of the latest PSS extravaganza
  • GFA Draft - realize your ST's CAD potential with this high-quality exclusive demo - power extreme!
  • FreeRAM - memory checker
  • Puzzle - complete word game
  • HRAMDisk - reset-proof RAMdisk
  • GEMPlus - brilliant Desktop editor
  • Command Line Interpreter - put your mouse of work with this feature-packed GEM alternative
  • Mouse Ka Mania - wacky mouse customizer
...and more!

Thursday, December 12, 2019

Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (549-552)

See the previous post in this series here. Feel free to skip the quoted intro text if you have read it before.

I had the opportunity to pick up a huge batch of slides recently. These are pictures spanning from as early as the late 1940s to as late as the early 1990s (maybe earlier and/or later but these are what I have sampled so far). These came to me second (third?) hand but the original source was a combination of estate sales and Goodwill. There are several thousand...maybe as many as 10,000. I will be scanning some from time to time and posting them here for posterity.
Apparently, getting your pictures processed as slides used to be a fairly common thing but it was a phenomenon I missed out on. However, my Grandfather had a few dozen slides (circa late 1950s) that I acquired after he died. That along with some negatives is what prompted me to buy a somewhat decent flatbed scanner that could handle slides and negatives (an Epson V600). That was the most money I was willing to spend on one anyway. It can scan up to four slides at a time with various post-processing options and does a decent enough job. The scanner has been mostly idle since finishing that task but now there is plenty for it to do.

This set continues a rather large batch of slides that originally came from an estate sale and appear to have belonged to a locally well known photographer from the Spokane Washington area and later Northern Idaho named Leo Oestreicher. He was known for his portrait and landscape photography and especially for post cards. He career started in the 1930s and he died in 1990. These slides (thousands of them) contain a lot of landscape and portrait photos but also a lot of photos from day to day life and various vacations around the world. Here's an article on him from 1997 which is the only info I have found on him: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/1997/jan/04/photos-of-a-lifetime-museum-acquisition-of-leo/

Many of these slides had the date they were processed (presumably) stamped or printed on them (month and year). I've found that in cases where I could verify the date, either because a more specific date was hand written or there was something to specifically date the photo in the photo itself, that this date has typically been the same month the photos were taken. In other words, I expect that in MOST cases these photos were taken relatively near the processing date. No doubt there are some exceptions.

There are no dates or labels on any of the slides from this set but they appear to be from a beach vacation, probably in the early 1960s.

Click on one of the images or the link below to also see higher resolution photos and also versions processed with color restoration and Digital ICE which is a hardware based dust and scratch remover, a feature of the Epson V600 scanner I am using. There are also versions processed with the simpler dust removal option along with color restoration.



0



The entire collection that has been scanned and uploaded so far can be found here.

My Response to Time Magazine’s Cover Story on Capitalism


[Editor’s note: The following is in response to the cover story, “How the Elites Lost Their Grip,” by Anand Giridharadas in the December 2-9, 2019 issue of Time magazine.]
The inventor of the now-famous “Overton Window,” the late Joseph P. Overton, was my best friend and a senior colleague at the Michigan organization I headed for nearly 21 years (1987-2008), the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. The Window postulates that at any given time, public policy options are framed by public opinion. Politicians who operate within it can get elected or re-elected, while those who offer proposals outside of it run the risk of public rejection. Move the Window by changing public opinion, and what was previously a losing proposition can then become politically possible.

The Overton Window concept is the springboard Anand Giridharadas uses in his recent Time article. He suggests that anti-capitalist candidates and proposals are now winning because the Window has shifted toward socialism.

While I appreciate the personal citations of both Joe Overton and me in Mr. Giridharadas’s article, I’m compelled to point out a few of its questionable assumptions. In doing so, I feel like the proverbial mosquito in a nudist camp: I know what I want to do, but it’s hard to decide where to begin.
Let’s start with the article’s assessment of the Democratic race for president. Polls showing that capitalist uber-critics Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are “top contenders” are proof, Mr. Giridharadas suggests, that his wishful thinking about socialism is valid. This is a “window” that seems to have shifted markedly in the short interval between when the article was written and when it was published.

Warren recently put a price tag on her Medicare-for-All fantasy, a policy that would ban private health insurance. Her support collapsed. Sanders is languishing in third or fourth place, nowhere near the support he had going into the last Democratic convention. All the talk now is about how the rank-and-file are fleeing to the center.

Mr. Giridharadas points to the rise in membership of the Democratic Socialists of America—from 5,000 members in 2016 to at least 50,000 today. But that’s still half the membership (113,000) the Socialist Party claimed at its all-time high, which was in 1912. The Libertarian Party’s membership today is 10 times larger.

Among young people, the story that Mr. Giridharadas completely misses is the explosion of membership and activity among groups friendly to liberty, private enterprise, and free markets—organizations like Young Americans for Liberty, Students for Liberty, Young Americans for Freedom, Young Americans Against Socialism, Turning Point USA, and the one where I serve as president emeritus, the Foundation for Economic Education. If Facebook following is any sign of relative popularity, it’s notable that the Democratic Socialists’ presence on that social media platform is a tiny fraction of that for those pro-capitalist youth organizations.

If I were a socialist, I’d be worried that these and similar organizations are where the genuine and lively intellectual ferment is. While the Left seems absorbed in suppressing debate, these groups are quietly broadening discussion and nurturing the next generation of thought leaders.
Meantime, reports the Pew Research Center, public trust in the government stands at historic lows. Pew finds that “Only 17% of Americans today say they can trust the government in Washington to do what is right ‘just about always’ (3%) or ‘most of the time’ (14%).” Mr. Giridharadas would do the American public a real service if he pointed out that this is the same government on which socialists want to bestow more power and money.

Socialist rhetoric always scores higher than socialist policies, and both score much better than socialist outcomes. Telling people they’re entitled to free stuff, or assailing the rich generally, appeals to a certain number, but those figures shift when rhetoric meets reality. This is one reason nobody—socialists, least of all—is conducting any polling in Venezuela.
The worst assumption in Mr. Giridharadas’s article, however, concerns what capitalism really is. Implicit throughout is his belief that capitalism is nothing more than cronyism, whereby the rich use political connections to line their pockets.

Mr. Giridharadas ignores the fact that those of us he would surely label as pro-capitalist are just as much against cronyism and corruption as anybody, and likely more so than any socialists are. We understand that the answer to cronyism and corruption is not to give government even more power and money. We support not some corrupted, capitalist straw man but genuinely free markets, limited government, private property, and the rule of law. When will mainstream media learn this distinction?

Moreover, to those of us who appreciate this distinction, the pursuit of money is not the principal objective in life. Critics of capitalism suggest endlessly that it is, but that’s infantile. The case for capitalism rests on something far more important than material wealth. It is not refuted by the occasional bad eggs who misbehave (socialism, by the way, produces bad eggs by the bushel and never creates anything resembling an omelet).

The case for true capitalism is a moral one that’s rooted in human nature and human rights. To create wealth and add value to society through invention, innovation, entrepreneurship, production, and trade is a birthright. One cannot be fully himself—or even fully human—if he must live his life and conduct his affairs according to the dictates of those with political power. It speaks volumes that capitalism is what happens when peaceful people are left alone; socialism, on the other hand, is a Rube Goldberg contrivance with a lousy track record fueled by envy and class warfare.

I’ve known a few business people who do indeed seem to worship “the almighty dollar” and will gladly cut corners or get in bed with government for money’s sake. For every one of those, I’ve known a hundred who are in business for the exhilarating fulfillment they derive from creating useful products, solving problems, and meeting the needs of happy customers.

The Overton Window is a remarkable tool for understanding the connections between ideas and political reality. But it matters that those who invoke it do so with clear thinking, proper definitions, and no axes to grind.

Lawrence W. Reed
Lawrence W. Reed is President Emeritus, Humphreys Family Senior Fellow, and Ron Manners Ambassador for Global Liberty at the Foundation for Economic Education. He is also author of Real Heroes: Incredible True Stories of Courage, Character, and Conviction and Excuse Me, Professor: Challenging the Myths of ProgressivismFollow on Twitter and Like on Facebook.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

VideoGames & Computer Entertainment (June 1992)





VideoGames & Computer Entertainment (June 1992)

VideoGames & Computer Entertainment was my favorite video games magazine of the late 1980s/early 1990s. The June 1992 issue featured the newly released Street Fighter II for the Super Nintendo on the cover and included: Features
  • The Conquest of Cron: A Player's Guide to Might & Magic, Part I - Might & Magic for the Genesis is one of the largest role-playing games on any game system. Our game guide will help you get over the worst hurdles, so you can get down to serious adventuring.


  • Superheroes on the Scrolling Screen - Comic-book heroes have long been the focus of some video-game related companies. Join us as we take a look at characters that have made the successful transition from comics to video games.


  • A.C.M.E. Show Report - Held once every year, the American Coin Machine Exposition exposes electronic gaming's latest entries in the coin-op division. This year's offerings in San Antonio won't disappoint you.


  • Bringing The Hardwood Home: Electronic Basketball - 1992 Style - The basketball season ran longer this year, giving software developers extra time to produce more entries. Join our expert as he surveys the best three-point games around.


  • Video-Game Reviews - Street Fighter II, The World Warrior, Splatterhouse 2, Defenders of Dynatron City, The Blues Brothers, Spanky's Quest, Gunbota, Raiden Trad, Ferrari Grand Prix Challenge, Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego?, Rival Turf and Stanley: The Search for Dr. Livingston.


  • Gaming on the Go - Crystal Warriors, Turn and Burn and Basketbrawl.


  • Computer-Game Previews - John Madden Football, A-Train and American Gladiators.


  • Computer-Game Reviews - The Taking of Beverly Hills, Populous II, The Simpsons: Bart's House of Weirdness, Elvira II: The Jaws of Cereberus, Flames of Freedom, Bush Buck Global Treasure Hunter, Bloodwych, Super Tetris, Out of This World, Conquests of the Longbow: The Legend of Robin Hood, Glider 4.0 and Falcon 3.0a.
Departments
  • Editor's Letter
  • Reader Mail
  • Tip Sheet
  • News Bits
  • Easter Egg Hunt
  • Inside Gaming
  • Game Doctor
  • Advertiser Index
  • Computer-Gaming Strategies
  • Fandango
...and more!

NewDP Kei Bazooka - Dirty Pair






Wednesday, December 11, 2019

Run For It (Apple II, Atari)





Run For It (Apple II, Atari)
Run For It seems to be one of those rare games that was released for the Apple II and Atari 8-bit computers but not the Commodore 64. At least that seemed pretty rare by 1985 when this game was released. In this game you control a robot as he progresses upwards through a maze. This game is a fixed/flip screen game which was a popular genre before side-scrolling platformers took over the world. In this type of game, all game play takes place on a single screen at a time. You must overcome enemies and obstacles in order to reach the exit, wherever on the screen that may be. In the case of this game the exit would be near the top of each screen. Simply progressing through a maze isn't challenging enough so you have a timer and enemies to destroy or avoid. Your robot has a gun to aid in that task. Time can be increased by collecting tokens or will be decreased when you contact enemies. Your goal is to reach the top of the building before time runs out.
This is an okay game if you like this sort of thing but it's nothing exceptional. Like the side-scrolling platformers that came later there were just so many games of this type that it is hard to stand-out. It won't be terribly easy to find an original copy of this one either as this wasn't exactly a game that took the world by storm. Fortunately, it's easy enough to play via emulation.
The ad above is from the January/February 1985 issue of Enter magazine. The screen shots are from the Atari 8-bit version of the game.

Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (545-548)

See the previous post in this series here. Feel free to skip the quoted intro text if you have read it before.

I had the opportunity to pick up a huge batch of slides recently. These are pictures spanning from as early as the late 1940s to as late as the early 1990s (maybe earlier and/or later but these are what I have sampled so far). These came to me second (third?) hand but the original source was a combination of estate sales and Goodwill. There are several thousand...maybe as many as 10,000. I will be scanning some from time to time and posting them here for posterity.
Apparently, getting your pictures processed as slides used to be a fairly common thing but it was a phenomenon I missed out on. However, my Grandfather had a few dozen slides (circa late 1950s) that I acquired after he died. That along with some negatives is what prompted me to buy a somewhat decent flatbed scanner that could handle slides and negatives (an Epson V600). That was the most money I was willing to spend on one anyway. It can scan up to four slides at a time with various post-processing options and does a decent enough job. The scanner has been mostly idle since finishing that task but now there is plenty for it to do.

This set continues a rather large batch of slides that originally came from an estate sale and appear to have belonged to a locally well known photographer from the Spokane Washington area and later Northern Idaho named Leo Oestreicher. He was known for his portrait and landscape photography and especially for post cards. He career started in the 1930s and he died in 1990. These slides (thousands of them) contain a lot of landscape and portrait photos but also a lot of photos from day to day life and various vacations around the world. Here's an article on him from 1997 which is the only info I have found on him: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/1997/jan/04/photos-of-a-lifetime-museum-acquisition-of-leo/

Many of these slides had the date they were processed (presumably) stamped or printed on them (month and year). I've found that in cases where I could verify the date, either because a more specific date was hand written or there was something to specifically date the photo in the photo itself, that this date has typically been the same month the photos were taken. In other words, I expect that in MOST cases these photos were taken relatively near the processing date. No doubt there are some exceptions.

A couple of these photos appear to be of remodeling projects while a couple of others just seem to be interior home shots, one of which shows a laundry area. Two of them have the date they were processed stamped in them and all of these are probably from sometimes in the 1960s.

Click on one of the images or the link below to also see higher resolution photos and also versions processed with color restoration and Digital ICE which is a hardware based dust and scratch remover, a feature of the Epson V600 scanner I am using. There are also versions processed with the simpler dust removal option along with color restoration.



0

processed September 1967

processed September 1965

The entire collection that has been scanned and uploaded so far can be found here.

MegaCon 2019 (Friday)





MegaCon 2019 (Friday) 

Tuesday, December 10, 2019

NewDP Flash OAV4 01 - Dirty Pair Flash






What High-Tax Europe Really Looks Like


Promises are mounting in the Democratic Party’s primary debates as contenders try to outbid one another on free health care, free public education, or, in the case of Andrew Yang, just free money. Senator Elizabeth Warren plans to make college free in addition to canceling student debt for millions of people at an estimated cost of $1.25 trillion over 10 years. Senator Bernie Sanders's "Medicare For All" bill would cost $34 trillion dollars over 10 years.

This bill alone would almost double the entire US government’s expenditures. Double! Current expenses include interest on the massive national debt, planes, aircraft carriers, tanks and missiles, numerous agencies, NASA and its contributions to the International Space Station, road construction, foreign aid, etc.

Sanders’s plan would essentially add a second US government on top of the existing one despite the fact that the current government already spends more than it takes in.

Pointing this out has been labeled a "Republican talking point" (as if the Republicans ever cared that much about balancing a budget). It is heartening, however, to see that journalists are willing to press Democrats on how they will actually pay for these extensive programs.

Both Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren suggest taxing the rich as a solution to the revenue problem their proposals would engender. They often liken their tax ambitions of making the rich "pay their fair share" to tax rates in Europe. A new report on marginal tax rates offers some perspective on that claim.
EPICENTER, the European Policy Information Center located in Brussels, just released its "Taxing High Incomes" report, written in cooperation with the Swedish free-market think tank Timbro and the Tax Foundation, which answers the most interesting questions on marginal tax rates.

The marginal tax rate is the rate that applies to the last unit earned. In a progressive tax system, this is the rate at which the last portion of a taxpayer's income is taxed, meaning how much you pay on every additional dollar. A distinction is made between the marginal tax rate and the marginal effective tax rate, which also takes into account the amounts paid by the state to the taxpayer (allowances, subsidies, etc.). Thus, answering the question as to how much the rich really pay in taxes is a complicated one.

This is why the EPICENTER report, comparing top effective marginal tax rates on labor income in 41 OECD (Office of Economic Cooperation and Development) and EU countries is so interesting. For instance, the report looks at social security contributions such as health care and pensions that are tied to previous income. As the authors explain, however, social insurance benefits are capped in most cases. Therefore, any social security contributions paid on high incomes can usually be regarded as pure taxes.

The report outlines how many taxes can hit high-income earners on every additional dollar. Nominally lower income tax rates do not equate to lower marginal rates. For example:
Hungary has a flat income tax of 15 percent while the United States has a progressive federal income tax with a top marginal tax rate of 37 percent. As payroll and consumption taxes are low in the United States, the effective marginal tax rate is not much higher, at 47 percent. In Hungary, on the other hand, substantial social security contributions are paid by both employers and employees. In addition, the country has the world’s highest VAT. The result is an effective tax rate of 57 percent—13 places higher than the United States in the country rankings.


The United States actually does not have low marginal tax rates, as they close in on 50 percent for the highest earners. A number of analyzed states, namely Cyprus, Switzerland, Turkey, Chile, Slovakia, Lithuania, New Zealand, Mexico, and Bulgaria all end up with lower marginal tax rates.

Is Sweden's 76 percent tax rate the end goal of the Democratic candidates? If so, they should tread carefully. The EPICENTER report outlines the conflict between efficiency and equity in tax systems and explains how in the long run, high marginal tax rates can affect career choices and migration decisions in addition to lowering returns on education and entrepreneurship.

As capital flight (people relocating due to high tax rates) increases and interest in investment and entrepreneurship diminishes, the question remains: who will pay for the programs Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are promising?



Bill Wirtz
Bill Wirtz is a Young Voices Advocate and a FEE Eugene S. Thorpe Fellow. His work has been featured in several outlets, including Newsweek, Rare, RealClear, CityAM, Le Monde and Le Figaro. He also works as a Policy Analyst for the Consumer Choice Center.

Learn more about him at his website.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.