Posted on 03/07/2009 4:01:51 PM PST by upchuck
Edited on 03/07/2009 4:07:17 PM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
Smart Grid is part of a global initiative to manage information, all information. This is not some dire fictional prediction; it exists right now, right here in the United States, and thanks to President Obama, the Secretary of the Treasury can lend the Western Area Power Administration (WAPA), a division of the Department of Energy, $3.25 billion to implement Smart Grid:
“(B) the Secretary shall, without further
appropriation and ‘without fiscal year limitation, loan to the Western Area Power Administration, on such terms as may be fixed by the Administrator and the Secretary, such sums (not to exceed, in the aggregate (including deferred interest),$3,250,000,000-in outstanding repayable balances at anyone time) as, in the judgment of the Administrator, are from time to time required for the purpose of [...] In carrying out the initiative, the Secretary shall provide financial support to smart grid demonstration projects in urban, suburban, tribal, and rural areas, including areas where electric system assets are controlled by nonprofit entities and areas where
electric system assets are controlled by investor- owned utilities.
Ostensibly, Smart Grid is about energy efficiency and climate change. This intelligent power grid gathers information about individual energy use via sensors embedded in the transmission lines and in homes and businesses. The government, via WAPA, will know what temperature you keep your home or business at. If you keep your domicile warmer or cooler than the temperature approved by the federal government, you pay more. To some, this is an acceptable arrangement, until they discover what else Smart Grid can do.
According to IBM, one of the two corporations which will receive most of the money (the other is GE),
The world is becoming instrumented. By 2010, there will be a billion transistors per human, each one costing one ten-millionth of a cent.
The world is becoming interconnected. With a trillion networked things—cars, roadways, pipelines, appliances, pharmaceuticals and even livestock—the amount of information created by those interactions grows exponentially.
All things are becoming intelligent. Algorithms and powerful systems can analyze and turn those mountains of data into actual decisions and actions that make the world work better. Smarter.
Did you catch that? Smart Grid will allow the government to collect information about you, your habits, and possessions. All they need are a few sensors to know what is in your refrigerator; how long you spend in the bathroom; if you smoke in your home; if you drink alcohol in your home; and how many people are in your home or business at any one time. Science fiction? Don’t bet on it. IBM knows different.
And if the above statements aren’t enough to get you thinking, how about this:
Nanotechnology e-textiles for biomonitoring and wearable electronics-
If current research is an indicator, wearable electronics will go far beyond just very small electronic devices or wearable, flexible computers. Not only will these devices be embedded in textile substrates but an electronics device or system could ultimately become the fabric itself. Electronic textiles (e-textiles) will allow the design and production of a new generation of garments with distributed sensors and electronic functions. Such e-textiles will have the revolutionary ability to sense, act, store, emit, and move – think biomedical monitoring functions or new man-machine interfaces – while ideally leveraging an existing low-cost textile manufacturing infrastructure.
Here’s the scenario: you buy a pair of socks, using your credit or debit card (cash is already being discouraged). Because of Smart Grid, your house will be able to read the bar code on those socks as you bring them through the door and add them to a list it keeps of your clothes; size, price, origin, when worn, etc. The computer that controls your home’s thermostat and lights also controls your wardrobe, budget, social habits, and even your eating habits. The refrigerator reads the bar codes on your food. Someone with access to that information knows when you eat, what you eat, what you paid for it, and how long something has been in the fridge.
If you’re like me, and do a lot of canning, you’re probably thinking, “so what?” That’s what my initial thought was. It can’t read a bar code if there isn’t one. Hmmm. What if your home’s computer believed that based on how many people live in the home there’s not enough food being purchased? How long do you think it would take the electronic nanny to notify child protective services or other authorities?
Again, this isn’t science fiction. It’s happening right now in South Bend, Indiana, and Florida and California. Now that President Obama’s spending package has been pushed down our windpipes, effectively choking off any opposition, look for development of an electronic super nanny by Big Brother. This is change we can believe in? It’s change alright rural America, and it’s coming for you. Notice on GE’s page there are no pictures of urban or suburban dwellings, only a rural home? An oversight? Not according to Alan Keyes.
I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Keyes in the summer of 2008. He told me then that rural people should understand that there is a concerted effort to remove all control from rural areas and concentrate it in Washington D.C. After reading about the billions of dollars the White House has allocated to watching its rural citizens, I’d say he hit the nail on the head. We are the targets; the lonely little home on GE’s website might as well have a bull’s eye on the roof. Dr. Keyes told me the Illuminati who are running D.C. are worried about rural people because we are exposed to less media than our urban counterparts: we’re harder to control.
One of the largest components of Smart Grid is already being implemented by the USDA; it’s called the National Animal Identification System (NAIS) it requires farmers to implant a RFID tag into the body of all of their livestock–cows, pigs, goats, chickens, sheep, all livestock. The NAIS threatens to destroy small-scale family farms. If you’re not familiar with the NAIS, here are a couple of resources: Downsize DC, NAIS: Too little too late? and NAIS: Let’s do some fuzzy math. Coupled with Smart Grid, the NAIS strengthens the ability of Government officials to control rural Americans as completely as they control people in the cities.
Remember, President Obama believes implementing Smart Grid is urgent. He wants the program to expand quickly, with all of us on the thinking grid by 2011. All of us. Resistance is futile.
From their own site... they speak of POTS OF MONEY and different ways to phrase it to get even more from other, generically labeled pots. And they speak of overriding state autonomy for control.
It just scares the crap out of me.
Yes, I still enjoy building electronic projects, but have had little time for them the past 10 years. Am still setup to screenprint & etch PC boards.
Is OpenBSD still based in Canada? Have not looked at it in about 8 years.
I might consider switching to something like OpenBSD for security reasons, but there are soooo many apps for Linux that it would be hard to make the switch. Of course most of them could be compiled from source on that OS.
The machine I am using tonight is my company computer, XP. I would not use windows at all if I could find a satisfactory replacement for Quark and my CAD program. Actually no more than I use my CAD program anymore, just Quark would get it done. I use a lot of Open Source apps in the Windows environment now. Every day I use FireFox, Gimp, Image Magick, VIM, Gnumeric, PDFTK, and there are others I less infrequently.
Have looked experimented with Scribus, and if I were a Python programmer I could probably write an import script for it to do what I do in Quark now. I would like that, but I am so busy composing our catalog (3000+ pages, and Promotions) that I have little time to spend on it.
Thanks again for the lengthy informative response.
Best regards,
Texas Fossil
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A composite - or a frame-by-frame?
The bar code gif is 4 frames. I composite it frame by frame in my Animation Shop, as I do my Logo.
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I thought “It is all done by machine!”
What are you talking about? You know I spend many hours making them.
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I know
But you have the software
I have to find other methods
Scribus is about it, AFAIK, for anything like Quark XPress. And QCAD Pro (little over $50 for that and the book, as there’s more to it than the free version of QCAD) is about as near as cheap software gets to AutoCAD. We’re using QCAD to design a little house, but we’re making some blocks and symbols in the process. Later on, we’ll design some steel parts with it. ...not recommended for architects who exchange files with other architects, until after the economy crashes real good. ;-)
My ‘software’ is the area where I do the work. If I put my name on a 15 frame gif I exactly position it 15 times. Image Magick does it in one step - but not as sharp and clear.
If I spend 15 hours on a gif I am using the paint brush, the eraser, the cropper appliances. I do all the positioning in each frame one by one, compositing and painting in areas by hand.
The software has the ‘tools’ just as online editors have tools, but online editors do it instantly - by themselves.
No fear. I am stocking up on aluminum foil.
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