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Just what the tech sector needs, more layoffs and lower wages. 100,000 layoffs is (100,000/301,763,559) 0.0331% of the US population (according to: http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html). That sucks.

The government getting involved specifically caused the medical expenses to skyrockets. But aside from that, what you linked to does not present the entire picture. Even the footnotes call into question the merits of the numbers. The author is claimed to be the source of the numbers but they lack any perceptual understanding.

First, The images list the medium income of the bankruptcies as $25000 the year before. This is hardly middle class for a family. In 2001, a family with 4 kids and 2 adults is considered in poverty at $25000 annual income. And It doesn't get much better if you reduce the kids. I hardly think that a person living without a thousand dollar of the federal poverty threshold is middle class. Now if each and every one of these cases were single people, Then I could agree with this statement. Hell, there are even situations were making $40,000 a year doesn't bring you out of poverty.

Another Issue I take is the supposed reason for bankruptcy. It measure the medical qualifications as a reason by including the loss of work for 2 weeks or more because of medical, $1000 or more in uncovered medical bills or having to mortgage your house. If losing two weeks of work sends you into bankruptcy, or having a $1000 bill that can be payed over time sends you into bankruptcy, the My point is proved. I would like to see the entire paper so I could get a feel of exactly what the author of those images was trying to present.

But more importantly, you need a reason to file bankruptcy. Simply stating because I lost my ass during poker night or I drank too much at the bar last month won't get it done. These reasons are going to be inflated because you need a valid reason. And I bet with 9/11 and the slowdown of the economy coming from the 2000 recession these cases being filed are exaggerated from the norm still. But it doesn't show anything about middle class nor does it show anything about people being covered and not able to afford medical.

It's a freaking myspace page. Of his 160,000 "friends," how many are over 18? Perhaps 25%? Of those 40,000, how many are registered? Even a quarter of those? I doubt it. Maybe an eighth. So of those 5,000, how many actually care enough to vote? Probably half.

It's a freaking myspace page. Of his 160,000 "friends," how many are over 18? Perhaps 25%? Of those 40,000, how many are registered? Even a quarter of those? I doubt it. Maybe an eighth. So of those 5,000, how many actually care enough to vote? Probably half.

Are you sure about that?

365 hecters = 39.3 million square feet. The average size of new homes are ~2.4k square feet each, or 24 million square feet total. This doesn't count roof space though, as a two story house will have half the roof expected.

It's close, but not a match.

Hmm... 40MW over 10k homes only leaves 4kw average draw per house, or 16 amps of 240 during the day. Figure a 50% load factor(High end), that's 1,440 kw/h per house. At my local price of $.08/kwh $115.20 of electricity. I saw that Canada's subsidizing solar to the tune of $.24/kwh, so it'd end up being $345.60 of electricity.

This is considered good how?

Unemployment statistics are not calculated from unemployment benefits. You should look it up at the Census Department and how they calculate it. Try again please.

Firstly, if you're trying to say that food should not be dangerous, why are you assigning death into food? I made a coding funny! You wrote Food = DEATH instead of food == DEATH. HA! Ho... hum... Probably shoulda kept that myself...

But more seriously, you have to be SO rich to say FOOD==DEATH. It's ridiculous. Please watch the episode of Penn and Teller's Bullshit entitled "Eat This."

...The quality of food and drink in the US has been going steadily down since, well since forever. There are more chemicals (MSG, Aspertame, Preservatives), cheap semi-toxic fillers (Any partially hydrogenated oil), and re-used byproducts in our food than there has ever been. The FDA is basically a rubber stamp for a few corporations who prey on the masses inability to find food sources that are anything but super convenient...

And yet lifespan keeps going up! Which seems so contrary to us eating more and more POISON Your anti-government chanting might play well here on /. but your anti-science stance will not. If it weren't for agricultural science, GM crops and preservatives, the earth would not be supporting 6.5 Billion.

Do I approve of standards in food control? Of course. Do I think that there is a potential threat in the food supply? Surely. Do I think your hyperbole HURTS the cause? yes. When you say food == DEATH, you come across as a well fed jerk who doesn't care. In the Asian, African and Latin American countries, well over 500 million people are living in what the World Bank has called "absolute poverty", and every year 15 million children die of hunger..

Where this gets sad is when anti-science, anti-progress nuts have convinced countries which have FAMINES that the GM food that Americans eat EVERY DAY will poison their people and ruin their crops. When you convince starving people to refuse food that causes the starvation death of MILLIONS -- how evil is that?

You say FOOD = DEATH?

Just the opposite is true my rich friend. No food == DEATH. Food == life

You have a good point. One that needs to be carefully illustrated because people like to make this confusing. As a starting point, look for official government sources rather than Nader.org and make a clear distinction between wealth and income.

So, if you want to talk about money income, you can look at Table 676 or 678 of the 2007 U.S. Statistical Abstract. It presents a good trend line. If you want more detail, you could use the Money Income of Households.

The main point from this source is that from 1980-2004, if you use constant dollars, the only group making more money are those making $100,000 or more. Everyone else is earning less.

For changes in wealth, the Federal Reserve has a good piece linked from the Wikipedia article on the topic of Welath Distrubtion in the United States, but it undermines your argument somewhat because I think you have overstated the case a bit:

A key stylized fact is that during this period, the division of wealth observed in the SCF attributes roughly a third each to the wealthiest 1 percent, the next wealthiest 9 percent, and the remainder of the population.

Although the wealth distribution generally rose over the 1989 to 2001 period, simple measures of wealth concentration fail to show consistent patterns. Moreover, few changes in groups' shares are statistically significant. For example, the wealth share of the top 1 percent of the wealth distribution moved from about 30 percent in both 1989 and 1992 to about 35 percent in 1995 and it tapered down to 33 percent by 2001; none of the changes are statistically significant according to the estimation methodology used to compute standard errors for the SCF.

I think the Federal Reserve is probably biased a bit downward...but I don't think you can claim the top 1% controls 95% of wealth. Still, I think your point is a good one. You just need to use a more accurate statistical formulation - say that the bottom 50% only has 3% of all wealth.

You have a good point. One that needs to be carefully illustrated because people like to make this confusing. As a starting point, look for official government sources rather than Nader.org and make a clear distinction between wealth and income.

So, if you want to talk about money income, you can look at Table 676 or 678 of the 2007 U.S. Statistical Abstract. It presents a good trend line. If you want more detail, you could use the Money Income of Households.

The main point from this source is that from 1980-2004, if you use constant dollars, the only group making more money are those making $100,000 or more. Everyone else is earning less.

For changes in wealth, the Federal Reserve has a good piece linked from the Wikipedia article on the topic of Welath Distrubtion in the United States, but it undermines your argument somewhat because I think you have overstated the case a bit:

A key stylized fact is that during this period, the division of wealth observed in the SCF attributes roughly a third each to the wealthiest 1 percent, the next wealthiest 9 percent, and the remainder of the population.

Although the wealth distribution generally rose over the 1989 to 2001 period, simple measures of wealth concentration fail to show consistent patterns. Moreover, few changes in groups' shares are statistically significant. For example, the wealth share of the top 1 percent of the wealth distribution moved from about 30 percent in both 1989 and 1992 to about 35 percent in 1995 and it tapered down to 33 percent by 2001; none of the changes are statistically significant according to the estimation methodology used to compute standard errors for the SCF.

I think the Federal Reserve is probably biased a bit downward...but I don't think you can claim the top 1% controls 95% of wealth. Still, I think your point is a good one. You just need to use a more accurate statistical formulation - say that the bottom 50% only has 3% of all wealth.

Let's assume that the idiom is talking only about male masturbation. Let's further assume, highly conservatively, that males do not start masturbating until they reach age 15. Of the total U.S. male population, 107,199,356 would then be masturbation-age males. Again, let's conservatively estimate that teenagers masturbate no more frequently than adults, and that all men masturbate an average of 20 times each month or 240 times per year. This means that each man in the United States masturbates approximately every 1.5 days. It also means that there are approximately 25,727,845,440 male masturbation sessions in the United States each year.

There are nearly 26 billion male masturbation sessions in the U.S., yet there are fewer than five million kitten deaths annually. Far from a one-to-one correlation, there are 5401.5 masturbation sessions for every single kitten death. This means that the average American man can masturbate regularly for 22.5 years before he is responsible for the death of a single kitten. Indeed, with a life expectancy of less than 75 years, the average man will be responsible for only two or three kitten deaths in a lifetime of vigorous masturbation.

Yes I know it's a fantasy. Around 52% of the veterans are disabled or over the age of 70, leaving 12,679,627 who could fight. Assuming 50% are indifferent your down to 6,339,814 vets.

http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/c2kbr-22.pdf

Now-in England last year, they had fourteen deaths from handguns.

To be fair, there were 22 homicides involving handguns in England and Wales in 2005/06 (see http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs07/hosb0207.p df page 44). Based on a mid-2005 population of 50,431,700 for England and 2,958,600 for Wales (see http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?ID=6), that's 0.41 hangun homicides per million people.

In the United States, there were 8,299 handgun homicides in 2004 (see http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/tables/weapo nstab.htm). Based on a mid-2004 population of 293,638,158 (see http://www.census.gov/popest/national/files/NST_ES T2006_ALLDATA.csv), that's 28.26 handgun homicides per million people.

Therefore, the per capita handgun homicide rate is about 69 times higher in the US compared to England and Wales.

I think it's importaint to point out that according to the 2000 census there were slightly more women living in the US then men. Also in general men are slightly more likely to enlist in the US army, and since the country is at war then that would leave even more women outnumber men in internet use.

Once you've thought about that, think of all the initiatives trying to get women interested in computers and computer sciences:
http://www.ics.uci.edu/~wics/
http://www.cs.ubc.ca/wccce/program04/Papers/mark.h tml
http://math.rice.edu/~lanius/club/girls.html
http://www.awc-hq.org/

We're defiantly not doing those things for young men.

Then due to a natural progression, if you're going to use a computer at all you might as well be online. So of course there's more women using the internet than men.

And don't forget that population of young women addicted to those "women run alt-pornography sites" like the suicide girls and gods girls etc.

If i had one dollar for every brain you dont have, i would have $1.

I make it that you'd have more than 6,500,000,000 dollars. Unless you're counting all possible potential brains that I could have, in which case the sum would be astronomical.

Just follow the $$$.

Ignore the counterfeits for a moment. Every year for the last 22 years, the trade deficit with china has gone up. January alone was $25.6 BILLION http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700. html#2006, up from $21.4 billion the previous January. With those numbers, WalUSMart is looking at a $300 billion trade deficit this year, just with China.

This could be a way for BushCheneyHalliburton to lay the groundwork for further import duties. Even a 10% across-the-board surtax would generate $30 billion (and you're probably looking at a rate more like 33% to 50%). Thats so much money its hard for them to ignore. Of course, it means that all those cheap imports get more expensive, but that only hurts the poor (in both countries), and there's no evidence Bush even knows the poor exist, except as cannon fodder.

Don't worry, you're only off by more people than the entire population of, say, Germany...

http://www.census.gov/population/www/popclockus.ht ml

Just to prove my point, the U.S. Census Bureau explains how the median is more relevant than the mean in measuring U.S. household income, which is clearly not normally distributed:

http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/p70-88.pdf (Page 2)
"The distribution of wealth in the United States has a large positive skew, with relatively few households holding a large proportion of the wealth. For this type of distribution, the median is the preferred measure of central tendency because it is less sensitive than the average (mean) to extreme observations. The median is also considerably lower than the average, and provides a more accurate representation of the wealth and asset holdings of the typical household. For example, more households have a net worth near the median of $55,000 than near the average of $182,381."

The NEWSWEEK Poll, conducted March 28-March 29, has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points for questions based on all registered voters and plus or minus 6 percentage points for results based on registered Republicans and Republican leaners. In conducting the poll, Princeton Survey Research Associates International interviewed 1,004 adults aged 18 and older.

You're a few million short: http://www.census.gov/population/www/popclockus.ht ml

I'm curious though how many different movies were available on DVDs then compared to the number of movies on Blu-ray now. If there was a wider selection of movies on DVD then you'd expect it to take longer for one of those movies to sell 100,000 units. I'd guess that because the studios are split between blu-ray and hddvd that in itself should mean there'd be less movies on a particular format that when everyone was making dvds. So basically my point is that less range means that more people are going to buy the same movie basically because they want to try out the new system they just bought. It does not mean that blu-ray adoption is going faster than DVD adoption. For that you'd have to have a look at total units sold and total discs sold. But since you have PS3s thrown in there it makes it almost impossible to tell.

Here are the Census Bureau's lists of the most common first and last names.

It's fun to do the math. Remember when a "David Nelson"- one criminal of concern- was on the No Fly List (Perhaps he still is)? His being there put all the 5,000 other David Nelsons on the list. Assuming that each David Nelson flies just twice a year, then well over a year's worth of person-hours were wasted- each time they flew, over and over again- on confirming that the 5,000 weren't the one guy. Time lost to security, and time lost to the Nelsons- who also had the pleasure of being treated like a potential criminal in front of family, friends and fellow passengers.

But at least with flying there's a defined process known to the limited number of players (airlines, TSA) for dealing with a match. If the airline follows it, then they're clear, end of problem, no liability.

In contrast, with the Treasury list, if a match shows up, how can the business know it's really done everything it needs to do? The easy-out for 10's of millions of businesses might be to just not deal with the person at all.

So, this U.S. Treasury list:
"Maria Gonzalez"-- there's likely at least 4,000 in the US (probably far more- I used overall percentages multiplied rather than Prob(firstname) given (lastname))
"Jose Gonzalez" -- 3,200.
"Oscar Hernandez"--700
"Manual Diaz" or "Rosa Diaz" --500 each
And then the list seems to have plenty of the most common Chinese surnames.

If one cannot put 2000 calories (on average) in one's belly every day that is poverty. I've met many such people. I can introduce you to them if you think they don't exist. There are 28 million such people in the USA.

Actually, THIS is definition of poverty in the United States. No mention of caloric intake is provided, although the income thresholds are based on the food budget of the average American family. Since you mention hunger, this link provides some analysis of poverty with respect to hunger.

The Census Bureau reports that 35.9 million persons "lived in poverty" in 2003.

...

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, in 2002, 13 percent of poor families and 2.6 percent of poor children experienced hunger at some point during the year. In most cases, their hunger was short term. Eighty-nine percent of the poor reported that their families had "enough" food to eat, while only 2 percent said they "often" did not have enough to eat.

That's approximately 4.7 million who experienced hunger and 718,000 who experienced it frequently. Both those numbers are significantly lower than your claim of 28 million. It is regrettable that people go without adequate food in the United States, but in a population of 300 million, it is impossible to eliminate completely.

Sorry that was a joke. 18 months is what it takes to get a plant up to full production so if you are intent on rapid growths you can start you next plant at the time the revenue from the first plant is coming in full. It is a coincidence that this looks like the Moore's Law doubling time (or is it?). If you've demonstrated your market, there is no big problem building two new plants after the first plant, but you want to watch that you're not spreading the expertize too thin.

I don't think that black outs were a reason for reduced consumption in California for the most part. I don't think I've heard of that kind of thing since Enron went down. I looked quickly at this link http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06000.html and confirmed that per capita energy consumption went down between 2000 and 2005 using the last column of your link which matches what I remember from the meeting at the Dirksen Senate office building. So, that's not bad work. They are also increasing milage standards for cars. Guess California's population is going up faster than the rest of the country because they're making it a nicer place to live. When everyone else catches up perhaps there will be some flowback. They are also installing quite a lot of renerwable generation so I doubt we'll see much in the way of new coal there.

Perhaps it is a bit pertinent to get your facts straight. I apologize for my bluntness, but according to the US Census Bureau, NM has a population of a meager 1,928,384 people (2000 census). Certainly a great deal can happen in 7 years since the 2000 census, but as a resident of the State, I can vouch that the growth rate is quite low. The rest of your points are quite entertaining, facts notwithstanding. Here are some other demographics you might find useful, including the fact that NM has a higher-than-average percentage of people who stake no claim on any religion in particular. Okay, granted, perhaps your bias against the State comes from the unfortunate book burning that took place here in Alamogordo. Shameful actions, really, but I assure you they aren't representative of the population as a whole (though I'd assume I might be labeled a heretic should they read this particular post).

So, that brings me to a quote from your post:

Being enlightened slashdotters, most of us have little appreciation for how stupid people really are. I am here to say that yes, they are that stupid.

Enlightened, eh? Speak for yourself. For being clever enough to post on Slashdot, I'm rather appalled you didn't take the five minutes' time to seek out demographical facts. Shameful indeed.

No, it's not the competition. Not entirely at least. It's also not much about the net neutrality. Those things help prices, but not so much the speeds available. It's more about the population density. The regulations on communications in the US don't help either. Distance is the enemy when it comes to high-speed signals. The more land you have between people, the higher your fiber, wire, or radio costs for the same signal. The cost is not necessarily linear, either.

Japan's overall population density is 337/km or 873/sq mi. The US is 31/km or 80/sq mi.

It's much more expensive to wire Iowa for broadband for three million people than it is to wire Orange County, California to reach about the same number of people. Think of the cost of fiber, and of the signal attenuation on copper wire for sections that aren't optical. Part of every phone bill in the US has traditionally been to subsidize dialup in areas that make no economic sense to service on their own. The reason 56k analog modems were limited to 53k was that the line voltages needed for 56k were considered unreliable and possibly dangerous on the US's aging and sometimes very long phone circuits. It's not uncommon for a telephone office in lesser populated areas of the US to offer service to a ten to fifteen mile radius. I bet there's more than one CO in Yokohama, Japan.

Yokohoma Japan, Orange County California, and the state of Iowa all have around 3-4 million people.

Population densities for comparison:

Tokyo: between 5600 and 5900 people per square kilometer by most reports (about 14700/sq mi I figure)
Nakano-ku: ~20,000/sq km (over 50k/sq mi)
Yokohama: around 8,200/sq km (around 21k/sq mi by my own conversion)
Orange County: 1,392/km (3,606/mi)
Iowa: 20.22/sq km (52.4/sq mi)

And now the five largest cities in the US (as of 1990):
New York City: 23,705/sq mi
Los Angeles: 7,427/sq mi
Chicago: 12,252/sq mi
Houston TX: 3,020/sq mi
Philadelphia: 11,736/sq mi

There are about 15 cities in the US with over 10,000/sq mi population densities.

Now, per 3 million people, it's clearly most feasible and affordable to provide a high-speed connection across 169 square miles (437.35 km) of Yokohama compared to 9498 square miles (2,455 km) of Orange County or 56,272 sq mi (145,743 km) of Iowa.

One quarter of the US population live in what the Census Bureau considers rural areas. About 30% of Bronx County NY, 23% of Kings County NY, and 25% of Philadelphia County PA lived in poverty in 2004. These are not statistics which lead to major infrastructure projects nationwide being quick and cheap to undertake.

One could make all sorts of points about New York and New Jersey getting much faster connections than the rest of the US because they have much higher population densities than most states. However, Ma Bell pretty much has a mandate for that not to happen by her services. No one else seems to have stepped up and done it in those areas either. With the regulations stating who can do what with a wire, and the nature of negotiating licenses, rights of way, etc being so cumbersome it's no surprise that the people who don't already have cable runs don't want to lay their own. Cable vs. Phone only goes so far, and increased competition won't necessarily help if the natural features of the population and the regulations regarding telecom keep people charging about the same prices even once there are more competitors. Companies will use customer service and advertising to retain and gain customers long before price cuts.

I can tell you anecdotally it's cheaper for me in a town of 45,000 people to get 6Mbps DSL than for a friend of mine twenty miles from me to get 256kbps wireless. Any ideas why he hasn't ponied up the money? Maybe it's beca

No, it's not the competition. Not entirely at least. It's also not much about the net neutrality. Those things help prices, but not so much the speeds available. It's more about the population density. The regulations on communications in the US don't help either. Distance is the enemy when it comes to high-speed signals. The more land you have between people, the higher your fiber, wire, or radio costs for the same signal. The cost is not necessarily linear, either.

Japan's overall population density is 337/km or 873/sq mi. The US is 31/km or 80/sq mi.

It's much more expensive to wire Iowa for broadband for three million people than it is to wire Orange County, California to reach about the same number of people. Think of the cost of fiber, and of the signal attenuation on copper wire for sections that aren't optical. Part of every phone bill in the US has traditionally been to subsidize dialup in areas that make no economic sense to service on their own. The reason 56k analog modems were limited to 53k was that the line voltages needed for 56k were considered unreliable and possibly dangerous on the US's aging and sometimes very long phone circuits. It's not uncommon for a telephone office in lesser populated areas of the US to offer service to a ten to fifteen mile radius. I bet there's more than one CO in Yokohama, Japan.

Yokohoma Japan, Orange County California, and the state of Iowa all have around 3-4 million people.

Population densities for comparison:

Tokyo: between 5600 and 5900 people per square kilometer by most reports (about 14700/sq mi I figure)
Nakano-ku: ~20,000/sq km (over 50k/sq mi)
Yokohama: around 8,200/sq km (around 21k/sq mi by my own conversion)
Orange County: 1,392/km (3,606/mi)
Iowa: 20.22/sq km (52.4/sq mi)

And now the five largest cities in the US (as of 1990):
New York City: 23,705/sq mi
Los Angeles: 7,427/sq mi
Chicago: 12,252/sq mi
Houston TX: 3,020/sq mi
Philadelphia: 11,736/sq mi

There are about 15 cities in the US with over 10,000/sq mi population densities.

Now, per 3 million people, it's clearly most feasible and affordable to provide a high-speed connection across 169 square miles (437.35 km) of Yokohama compared to 9498 square miles (2,455 km) of Orange County or 56,272 sq mi (145,743 km) of Iowa.

One quarter of the US population live in what the Census Bureau considers rural areas. About 30% of Bronx County NY, 23% of Kings County NY, and 25% of Philadelphia County PA lived in poverty in 2004. These are not statistics which lead to major infrastructure projects nationwide being quick and cheap to undertake.

One could make all sorts of points about New York and New Jersey getting much faster connections than the rest of the US because they have much higher population densities than most states. However, Ma Bell pretty much has a mandate for that not to happen by her services. No one else seems to have stepped up and done it in those areas either. With the regulations stating who can do what with a wire, and the nature of negotiating licenses, rights of way, etc being so cumbersome it's no surprise that the people who don't already have cable runs don't want to lay their own. Cable vs. Phone only goes so far, and increased competition won't necessarily help if the natural features of the population and the regulations regarding telecom keep people charging about the same prices even once there are more competitors. Companies will use customer service and advertising to retain and gain customers long before price cuts.

I can tell you anecdotally it's cheaper for me in a town of 45,000 people to get 6Mbps DSL than for a friend of mine twenty miles from me to get 256kbps wireless. Any ideas why he hasn't ponied up the money? Maybe it's beca

http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/education/

"This section presents data primarily concerning formal education as a whole, at various levels, and for public and private schools. Data shown relate to the school-age population and school enrollment, educational attainment, education personnel, and financial aspects of education. In addition, data are shown for charter schools, computer usage in schools, distance education, and adult education."

This is the 2007 statistical abstract.

I wouldn't be surprised if Australia didn't have something similiar.

"are you concerned about the cost of the program"

Yes. $400/female. Is that the best use of health dollars? Let's do a little math:
    population of texas:
        22,859,968
    Percent Under 18:
          28%: 6,332,212
      Percent Female:
          50%: 3,178,770

Total Cost of Program:
      $1,271,507,996

http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/48000.html

Ongoing costs would be about 1/18th of that per year.

Is that the best use of that money for public health? In other words, if Texas spent $1.2B could they achieve better results in some other area of public health?

"or the risk of the vaccination process"

Of course. Since this hasn't been implemented very widely, we're not sure what will happen. It's terrific the vaccine will save lives. But if it kills your daughter because of an adverse reaction, are you going to shrug and say "the good of the many..."?

"the fact that your daughter will have sex"

I hope she does, or else I won't be a grandparent.

"or that you're simply being forced to do something, regardless of the advantages or disadvantages to your family"

If the advantage is so overwhelming, why not give people the option? If you have to coerce people to get the vaccine, then people don't see the wonderful benefits you do. Maybe they really aren't there?

I'm not saying the vaccine is bad. But look at what's happened. A big drug company lobbies hard in Texas and then the state passes a law that every eligible citizen must take this drug. What's next? Nike lobbies Texas to force everyone to get running shoes because it will force everyone to get into shape?

The vaccine looks like a good idea, but the way it's being pushed it stinks. If I lived in Texas, I'd be outraged.

it takes energy to set it in a meaningful pattern that enables all those free copies.

And that energy, when amortized over 6,578,462,507 people approaches zero, a fact that copyright fanatics like to ignore.

With copyright law as it currently stands the cost of pretty much any mass market information is orders of magnitude higher than the cost of production. In other words, highly inefficient production with massive losses in marketing, controlling distribution and policing.

I don't know what the complete answer is but I do know that the people who claim that copyright law as it is currently implemented is the only possible way information creators can benefit are fanatics, very likely entrenched interests and middlemen who know full well that they add no value. Parasites in other words.

Intellectual property law is a pure product of the mind and can be anything that we want it to be. Even something as simple as discussing what the correct copyright period should be, right down to zero, should be discussed and scientifically justified rather than the hand waving like "nobody will create without copyright" (that's nonsense) or "copyright is the only option" (that's also nonsense).

---

Like software, intellectual property law is a product of the mind, and can be anything we want it to be. Let's get it right.

If he's willing to relocate it's certainly possible to become a minority in short order just by changing your surroundings. For example: Non-hispanic whites are a minority in several U.S. Cities. - If that happens to be his situation.

According to this article the timing couldn't be better if we assume that China is actually a world power with the capability of projecting force. Politically they are quite happy with their relationship to the U.S. Militarily there isn't much of a chance that we'll be playing in the sandbox nicely together.

The majority of office software users are in large firms doing work in regulated industries.

I mentioned in another post that I work in banking. The stuff we use has to be deemed acceptable by external auditors and regulators. Do you think Google's servers live up to that level of scrutiny?

Current estimates are 6.6 billion. Where'd you get 8 from? And who's the dumbass?

Besides, we don't feel strongly enough about it to stop importing over a million barrels per day of Venezeulan oil at 70 bucks a pop. That's $25 billion dollars annually. As much as I love OSS I think $25BN might even be a little more valuable to them. Then again if national values had anything to do with money we wouldn't be sending $250BN/year to China.

I am talking about percentage of PEOPLE living in rural areas not the actual amount of non-paved area. Rural is Rural if PEOPLE LIVE THERE. The percentage of PEOPLE living in RURAL areas in Canada compared to URBAN areas in Canada IS similar to those of the US:

Canada is about 75% urban:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada

And the so is the U.S.:

http://www.census.gov/population/censusdata/urpop0 090.txt

With similar percentages you would expect similar uptake of HSI, but you don't have that because of various factors.

That's a strange definition of "decentralized".

Compare with: United States Population Density Map.

Canada is far more centralized than the United States.

The world population is projected to grow from 6 billion in 1999 to 9 billion by 2042, an increase of 50 percent that will require 43 years. http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/world.html

Human population growth is the real culprit and nations seem unwilling to accept that. Nations have too much at stake economically and politically. Nope, must be the boogey man of technology. And the US is, at the moment, at the head of that pack. So, the US is the "beast".

Calls for "carbon footprint" taxes, if enacted, ought to include a tax on EVERY human head. Rich and poor alike. They are ALL contributing to the unsustainable human population growth, overuse of resources, and ultimately the destruction of the environment.

The world population is projected to grow from 6 billion in 1999 to 9 billion by 2042, an increase of 50 percent that will require 43 years. http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/world.html

Human population growth is the real culprit and nations seem unwilling to accept that. Nations have too much at stake economically and politically. Nope, must be the boogey man of technology. And the US is, at the moment, at the head of that pack. So, the US is the "beast".

Calls for "carbon footprint" taxes, if enacted, ought to include a tax on EVERY human head. Rich and poor alike. They are ALL contributing to the unsustainable human population growth, overuse of resources, and ultimately the destruction of the environment.

But you see, here in The Land Of The Free (TM)*, the majority of the population see boobies and even sucks on nipples frequently for the first few months of their lives. Then they aren't allowed to see them again for 18 years.

Wrong; that's the minority. Sometime before hitting eighteen, the majority usually get their own personal set to play with — but the Religious Reich frown on it, and yet never forgive them if they ever try to suck on anyone else's boobies ever again.

Complaining about the ridiculousness of a pending patent *application* is about as useful as complaining about people spending time thinking of what they'd wish for if they found a bottle with a genie in it.

Given the ease with which the PTO issues silly patents and the sometimes ridiculuous cost of breaking patents to claim that questioning a patent application is not useful is disingenuous at best.

So someone thought they had a cool new idea because they hadn't ever seen anything like it and they were wrong... so what?

So these idiots could cost many other people doing nothing more than minding their own business a lot of money if this is not questioned before it's issued.

If the patent *issues* then there's something to complain about (though pointing the patent office at the prior art would be a useful public service, unlike whining on Slashdot).

The fact that the people making this patent application thought it might succeed says more about the technical ability of the PTO than anything else.

The entire idea that a small government department is capable of assessing all of technology created by 6,500,000,000+ people for prior art is silly. Only scientists working in very narrow fields for a lifetime can do that and even then they make mistakes. The assumption that in a population of billions of people most technological inventions are not going to be independently reinvented many times is also silly.

---

Scientific, evidence based IP law. Now there's a thought.

14460 Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH Metropolitan Statistical Area
14460 14484 Boston-Quincy, MA Metropolitan Division
14460 14484 25021 Norfolk County, MA
14460 14484 25023 Plymouth County, MA
14460 14484 25025 Suffolk County, MA
14460 15764 Cambridge-Newton-Framingham, MA Metropolitan Division
14460 15764 25017 Middlesex County, MA
14460 21604 Essex County, MA Metropolitan Division
14460 21604 25009 Essex County, MA
14460 40484 Rockingham County-Strafford County, NH Metropolitan Division
14460 40484 33015 Rockingham County, NH
14460 40484 33017 Strafford County, NH

Your comment made me curious about the population of Massachusetts outside the Boston Metropolitan Area, so I thought I'd look up the numbers quickly:

Population of Massachusetts in 2005: 6,433,367 (source)
Population of the Boston Metropolitan Statistical Area for those parts in Massachusetts in 2005: 3,997,744 (source)

So, over 60% of the people in Massachusetts are in or near Boston.

Your comment made me curious about the population of Massachusetts outside the Boston Metropolitan Area, so I thought I'd look up the numbers quickly:

Population of Massachusetts in 2005: 6,433,367 (source)
Population of the Boston Metropolitan Statistical Area for those parts in Massachusetts in 2005: 3,997,744 (source)

So, over 60% of the people in Massachusetts are in or near Boston.

Oh fuck off. 13th out of 50 isn't anywhere near the bottom. http://www.census.gov/statab/ranks/rank19.html

I can't attest for Oral Roberts, but I'd like to know what an institution of higher learning needs to accomplish to be counted.

You are ignoring the truth that markets can be manipulated with money as easily as with political power.

I disagree. First, markets are actually quite difficult to manipulate to a great degree (especially without the presence of some kind of government-granted monopoly). Only in those rare industries where few significant players exist is this feasible (and these usually, but not always, owe to government granted monopolies). Once you have more than a few significant players it's nearly impossible. Powerful politicians, on the other hand, are relatively few in number and they can be bought quite easily. Second, I never suggested that markets can't be manipulated or that there is no place for regulation. You seem to be under the impression that I'm a libertarian--I am not.

In a free market system wealth invariably concentrates in fewer and fewer hands. Even if you don't buy that, you must see that wealth is distributed so inequitably that there will exist some class of people for whom the only good economic alternative is to sell themselves into slavery.

We don't live in a zero sum world. The rich can get richer faster and the poor can (and generally do) get richer at the same time. Most of the country, even the poor, have enjoyed generally significantly higher incomes each year on average. Median family incomes have more than doubled since the 1940s and the similar number holds true for all economic quintiles (and if you look at, say, the 1800s several times more). Most people are living longer and are healthier. Roughly 70% of the country now owns their own homes.

What's more, the record is much more mixed (see pg 456) than you seem to believe -- in fact there is evidence to suggest that much the opposite has happened in the US over the past 100 years.

When all the world is owned, those who do not own the means of production become the slaves of those who do, as otherwise they have no means of supporting themselves. The owners are the wolves, the people who do not own and must sell themelves into slavery are the lambs. Get it?

The long term trend in the US is very much the opposite of what you suggest. You are too fixated on "the means of production" since you view everything in zero sum terms. Human capital is a very real form of production too. A skilled programmer, doctor, lawyer, etc, for instance, may own almost no property, but can still command a high salary (and eventually purchase property of their own). As our economy evolves towards more and more of a knowledge based system and as efficiency grows ever higher (thanks to capital investment, innovation, flexible labor markets, etc), individuals will have greater bargaining power to command higher salaries and higher standards of living will be obtained for most people. It may not always be perfectly smooth year to year, but that is the trend and that is reality.

In regards to free market types scaring the crap out of me, I am refering to people who think that the unregulated free market is a more equitable and fair way of excercising control than democracy. As in the ancient Greek kyklos, people in a Democracy are free to elect a tyrant, and often do. It makes no difference whether that is a political or economic tyrant.

Nonsense. Name the economic tyrant in the US and tell me how it compares to, say, Stalin, Hitler, etc? We do not effectively allow anyone to gather so much power that they can abuse anyone like this. If people don't like their employer, they will leave for another one (just talk to any employer/see turnover rates). If people don't like the services/products offered, they will (with few exceptions) go to another provider.

Syndicalism, as practised by the Mondragon Collective, a large gro

So, I'm not quite sure what you're trying to get across here. Do you feel that 30% of Americans must constitute a minority? Or, are you claiming that a non-devout Christian is not Christian?

First, the whole 'minority' thing, in terms of traditional racial majority/minority. According to the 2000 census (PDF):

Percentage of US population:
White - 75%
Hispanic or Latino - 12.5%
Black or African American - 12.3%

Now, a look at religious statistics. According to 1998 data (PDF) (couldn't find anything newer, and the Census Bureau doesn't typically collect religious data):

Percentage of US population:
Protestant - 59%
Catholic - 27%
None - 7%
Other - 5%
Jewish - 2%

If you're still hard set on only 30% of Americans being 'real Christians,' I'll point out that Wikipedia notes that "[a] sociological minority is not necessarily a numerical minority -- it may include any group that is disadvantaged with respect to a dominant group in terms of social status, education, employment, wealth and political power." In my opinion, I don't believe that describes the group of people you allude to.

Second, I'd get deeper into your insinuation that the not practicing one's religion to a full extent would invalidate their belief, but it appears that other posters have already responded regarding that. When it comes to defining a 'real Christian,' StoatBringer makes a good point:

it seems hard to find two Christians who could agree on what those rules actually are. The rulebook itself is not exactly clear on a number of issues."

So, I'm not quite sure what you're trying to get across here. Do you feel that 30% of Americans must constitute a minority? Or, are you claiming that a non-devout Christian is not Christian?

First, the whole 'minority' thing, in terms of traditional racial majority/minority. According to the 2000 census (PDF):

Percentage of US population:
White - 75%
Hispanic or Latino - 12.5%
Black or African American - 12.3%

Now, a look at religious statistics. According to 1998 data (PDF) (couldn't find anything newer, and the Census Bureau doesn't typically collect religious data):

Percentage of US population:
Protestant - 59%
Catholic - 27%
None - 7%
Other - 5%
Jewish - 2%

If you're still hard set on only 30% of Americans being 'real Christians,' I'll point out that Wikipedia notes that "[a] sociological minority is not necessarily a numerical minority -- it may include any group that is disadvantaged with respect to a dominant group in terms of social status, education, employment, wealth and political power." In my opinion, I don't believe that describes the group of people you allude to.

Second, I'd get deeper into your insinuation that the not practicing one's religion to a full extent would invalidate their belief, but it appears that other posters have already responded regarding that. When it comes to defining a 'real Christian,' StoatBringer makes a good point:

it seems hard to find two Christians who could agree on what those rules actually are. The rulebook itself is not exactly clear on a number of issues."

Interesting troll. The difference between the four regions the Census groups education in (NE, Midwest, South, West) for the "Bachelor's degree or higher" category is very small. Just 5% between the highest ranked and lowest ranked regions. The Midwest has the highest percentage of high school graduates. The Midwest also ranks higher than the Northeast in the "Some college" category. Basically, you're full of shit. http://www.census.gov/prod/2004pubs/p20-550.pdf

Jeez, of course AMD's right. Take a look:

Population of Barcelona: 1,673,075
Population of Clovertown: 5601 (or less)

Barcelona is vastly superior.

The general idea I have is to [...] allow people to vote on every issue if they wish [...] allow people to delegate their vote to anyone they trust [...] allow people to revoke their vote for a person any time they feel their values are being betrayed by those they elected [...]

This deals with the two major issues facing modern democratic process:

1) Sometimes there's no one to vote for that you trust but they get to speak for you anyways regardless of if you vote or not.

2) Sometimes the person you voted for betrays you and you have no way to remove from them the power of your support for several years without overthrowing the system.

I find your ideas interesting, but there exist other problems the current system tries to deal with, which your system might restore.

The Chartists called for several things (you can read the article yourself) and got all except one; they asked for annual elections. The problem with annual elections would be the government wouldn't have time to achieve anything that took longer than a year. Perhaps they need to cut jobs in a government department, causing unemployment and bad publicity, but in the long term the reforms will increase efficiency. Or perhaps it's a project like the 'new deal'. The point being: A constantly shifting government might make long term projects difficult.

Another problem would be media rule. In the UK, many elections have been won by candidates favoured by the widely read tabloid 'the sun'. It's open to debate whether the newspaper decides the election or if the newspaper just backs the person they think is likely to win. But it serves to illustrate a point: Taking power away from politicians might just put it into the hands of media owners like Rupert Murdoch.

One other problem might be education. Did you know Only 28% of people have bachelors degrees? Consider an example: Should the minimum wage be raised? (Or lowered, or abolished?) Many people have opinions on this, but most people are less informed than, say, Alan Greenspan. There would be wide-ranging economic impacts to any change to the minimum wage. Day-to-day economic issues like this are complicated and hard to understand - and if the majority of voters were uninformed, their decisions might be bad.

You might be interested in reading about Athenian democracy. FTA: "It remains a unique and intriguing experiment in direct democracy where the people do not elect representatives to vote on their behalf but vote on legislation and executive bills in their own right." - I'll let you read more about it yourself, but in short it had it's problems - some generals produced unsatisfactory results, and found themselves executed - and when the people later changed their minds, the people who advocated executing the generals were also executed.

Just my $0.02

Michael