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CD players take 45-200 Watts, and power supplies on PCs take 250-400 Watts (these are some numbers I got from Google - they could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure they're in the ballpark). That means if you're listening to your CD player while posting to Slashdot for, oh say, 24 hours in a row, you've consumed 86,400 seconds * 600 Joules/second = about 52 MJ. (A Watt is a Joule/second.)

OTOH, a gallon of gas has 125 MJ. The average daily commute (one-way) in the US is 24.3 minutes (2003 numbers). From what I can tell, the corresponding distance is 37 miles. So, someone in an SUV with 13 MPG will burn 37/13 * 125 MJ = 356 MJ. Driving a hybrid that gets 45 MPG (my recent MPG in a Civic Hybrid) for the same distance will use only 37/45 * 125 MJ = 103 MJ. That's a saving of 253 MJ - in one day of driving.

Keeping in mind that (almost) no one slashdots 24 hrs/day (while listening to their CD player), these are obviously quite different numbers we're talking about here.

*NOT* The place, and probably not the time.

Doesn't anyone realize that Mississippi and Louisiana are one of the two poorest states in the country? Who excactly would a next gen internet and cable be marketed to? There is also income data here and here. Let's not put our next gen tech. in an area that can't support it economically.

*NOT* The place, and probably not the time.

Doesn't anyone realize that Mississippi and Louisiana are one of the two poorest states in the country? Who excactly would a next gen internet and cable be marketed to? There is also income data here and here. Let's not put our next gen tech. in an area that can't support it economically.

When the baby boomers actually start to die off, you're going to see a LOT of empty houses.

The statistics in the Chinese article are questionable. According to the latest census, it appears that the mean income of whites is under $73,000 and of blacks just under $46k. That is far from a 15-fold difference as quoted in the article. I also noticed that it said there were 16.5 homocides in 2003. That is exactly what the FBI reported, and it's improtant to note that it's at its lowest value (per capita) in the last 20 years. So it's not like they're all bogus in that article, but just take it with a grain of salt.

This is off-topic, but Montana is less than 1 Million according to the Census

The interface is described in This thread in the Navicache forums. Just pass it the relevant information in the query and you get back an XML file with the data. When it first came out, I had to write a script to parse and import it, but it looks like the current GPSBabel understands the layout of the file natively, if you have space to dump the entire batch into your GPS unit. I grabbed the entire set some time ago, and now just periodically fetch "caches added or updated since" the last time I updated.

As for the GNIS reference data (the USGS-published database of populated places, natural features, radio towers, etc.), they can be downloaded state-by-state from here. For those living or just visiting outside of the US, another US agency also publishes a somewhat less comprehensive but still useful set of location data for various features downloadable from here, and, finally, if you want to play with street map data in the US, the US Census Bureau publishes the "TIGER/Line" data - at least when the census bureau site is accessible...

All of those latter data sources are in the public domain, being publications of the US Government, so they are Legally Free. (Perhaps an odd contrast for a government frequently accused of being bought-and-paid-for by wealthy corporations to the detriment of its citizens - whereas most countries thought of as less at the beck and call of businesses seem to all charge a fortune for this kind of data...) I find them handy for generating my own maps.

If people in the west stop dying and then our populations would start to add to the problem.

Without death we have no balance and without balance... well, we've all seen star wars

So out of all the money you earn each day you only keep $1 a day and you give the rest to charity? Or if you live in the US, I might rephrase and ask if you really only keep $9,827 of your annual salary and give the rest to charity?

I'm guessing you are either in high school or college and don't realize just how long it really takes to make $120,000.

Well, according to the US economic census the total revenue of all sorts of entertainment and recreation was about $142 billion. That includes live performing arts, bowling alleys, and a lot of other stuff you can't put on a website for download.

The total economy was over $18 trillion in 2002, so arts and entertainment represent about 0.7% of the total US economy in this census. I'd say the effectiveness of the tactic would be about nil.

The only smaller categories in the census were management companies (mutual funds and the like) and educational services (Princeton SAT prep, commercial trade schools like DeVry, corporate training outfits). Categories taking in over a trillion dollars include construction, manufacturing, wholesale trade, retail trade, finanace & insurance, and health care & social assistence. Hollywood is barely on the financial radar.

The state has had more Republican governors lately, but the legislature has has made the state's laws most definitely liberal.
Arnold's approval has declined to 30-something percent.
Califonia went to Gore in 2000.
The power companies illegally exploited the poor wording of CA's power deregulation.
CA didn't have a negative net domestic immigration rate until 1990. Frankly I think the influx of illegal immigrants has played a large part in causing that.

When BART struck and the trains stopped, traffic on the freeways became far worse. Rush hour started an hour earlier and stayed backed up or slow until an hour after it usually does. So the transit system most certainly does put a dent in the problem.

How did you manage to be wrong about so many points? Are you blinded by hate? Oh wait, you can't see up your own ass.

I know these are somewhat old numbers, but according to the census bureau in '01:

• 55.9% of computer uers play games (though that probably counts
  games like solitare and freecell as well as City of Heroes and
  Warcraft).
• 58.1% use it for word processing.
• 83.5% use it for email.
• 89.5% use it for the Internet.

So there are more popular uses.

Yes, but out of all their many products, they have only one major source of income, Adsense. Their entire business model is based on advertising. Remember how the dot-com boom in the late 90's turned out? And how many of their products work well with Adsense? While I occasionally find the ads coming off of search results useful, I've never seen anything in gmail that was remotely helpful.

"As for me, I'm convinced that if anyone will ever knock off Microsoft, it will be an OS that gets game developers behind them. I've said for years that as weird as it sounds, gamers drive the market. Not many people use computers at home or school for productive uses, most people use them for playing games."

I know these are somewhat old numbers, but according to the census bureau in '01:

• 55.9% of computer uers play games (though that probably counts games like solitare and freecell as well as City of Heroes and Warcraft).
• 58.1% use it for word processing.
• 83.5% use it for email.
• 89.5% use it for the Internet.

So there are more popular uses.

"If City of Heroes ran on Linux, I would probably go ahead to switch to a Linux-only system, if for no other reason than it's free and I don't have to buy a new version every few years."

Try Cedega, I've heard it works fine with that particular game. Not so sure about plain old wine though.

The poor probably are getting poorer as individuals. However poor households are getting richer. This is because the women in poor households are working more hours. I'll try to show that this is so, unfortunately the Census Bureau doesn't provide lal the necessary information.

Mean Household income for the bottom quintile in constant 2001 dollars:
2001 $10,136
1980 $9,122
http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/histinc/h03.html

Mean household income for single earner households constant in 2003 dollars:
2001 $50,064
1980 $38,043

Mean household income for dual earner households constant in 2003 dollars:
2001 $83,312
1980 $56,299
http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/histinc/h12ar.ht ml

Median income of men in 2003 dollars:
2001 $31,325
1980 $28,241

Median income of women in 2003 dollars:
2001 $17,793
1980 $11,065
http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/histinc/p13ar.ht ml

Ok, so working backwards we see that women are earning more on a relative to men in 2001 than they were in 1980. This is due largely to increases in average number of hours worked but also due to better pay equality.

Correspondingly dual earner homes have had a bigger increase in income gains.

Women's workforce participation rate has also increased significantly in this time frame (have to get that stat from DOL.)

The end result is that across quintile HOUSEHOLD income has risen. But is this a real gain if the households are putting more aggregate hours into working for the same money?

And finally, there are important questions as to how meaningful the chained CPI really is. It is a rather rough metric that captures some information about inflation but the increase in income for the lowest quentile is probably well below any meaningful qualitative uncertainty in the chained CPI over that period.

And finally, some stats on income inequality:
Gini index:
1980 - 0.403
2001 - 0.466
http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/histinc/ie6.html

Share of aggreate income by lowest quintile:
1980 - 4.3%
2001 - 3.4%
http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/histinc/h02ar.ht ml

The poor probably are getting poorer as individuals. However poor households are getting richer. This is because the women in poor households are working more hours. I'll try to show that this is so, unfortunately the Census Bureau doesn't provide lal the necessary information.

Mean Household income for the bottom quintile in constant 2001 dollars:
2001 $10,136
1980 $9,122
http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/histinc/h03.html

Mean household income for single earner households constant in 2003 dollars:
2001 $50,064
1980 $38,043

Mean household income for dual earner households constant in 2003 dollars:
2001 $83,312
1980 $56,299
http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/histinc/h12ar.ht ml

Median income of men in 2003 dollars:
2001 $31,325
1980 $28,241

Median income of women in 2003 dollars:
2001 $17,793
1980 $11,065
http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/histinc/p13ar.ht ml

Ok, so working backwards we see that women are earning more on a relative to men in 2001 than they were in 1980. This is due largely to increases in average number of hours worked but also due to better pay equality.

Correspondingly dual earner homes have had a bigger increase in income gains.

Women's workforce participation rate has also increased significantly in this time frame (have to get that stat from DOL.)

The end result is that across quintile HOUSEHOLD income has risen. But is this a real gain if the households are putting more aggregate hours into working for the same money?

And finally, there are important questions as to how meaningful the chained CPI really is. It is a rather rough metric that captures some information about inflation but the increase in income for the lowest quentile is probably well below any meaningful qualitative uncertainty in the chained CPI over that period.

And finally, some stats on income inequality:
Gini index:
1980 - 0.403
2001 - 0.466
http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/histinc/ie6.html

Share of aggreate income by lowest quintile:
1980 - 4.3%
2001 - 3.4%
http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/histinc/h02ar.ht ml

The poor probably are getting poorer as individuals. However poor households are getting richer. This is because the women in poor households are working more hours. I'll try to show that this is so, unfortunately the Census Bureau doesn't provide lal the necessary information.

Mean Household income for the bottom quintile in constant 2001 dollars:
2001 $10,136
1980 $9,122
http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/histinc/h03.html

Mean household income for single earner households constant in 2003 dollars:
2001 $50,064
1980 $38,043

Mean household income for dual earner households constant in 2003 dollars:
2001 $83,312
1980 $56,299
http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/histinc/h12ar.ht ml

Median income of men in 2003 dollars:
2001 $31,325
1980 $28,241

Median income of women in 2003 dollars:
2001 $17,793
1980 $11,065
http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/histinc/p13ar.ht ml

Ok, so working backwards we see that women are earning more on a relative to men in 2001 than they were in 1980. This is due largely to increases in average number of hours worked but also due to better pay equality.

Correspondingly dual earner homes have had a bigger increase in income gains.

Women's workforce participation rate has also increased significantly in this time frame (have to get that stat from DOL.)

The end result is that across quintile HOUSEHOLD income has risen. But is this a real gain if the households are putting more aggregate hours into working for the same money?

And finally, there are important questions as to how meaningful the chained CPI really is. It is a rather rough metric that captures some information about inflation but the increase in income for the lowest quentile is probably well below any meaningful qualitative uncertainty in the chained CPI over that period.

And finally, some stats on income inequality:
Gini index:
1980 - 0.403
2001 - 0.466
http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/histinc/ie6.html

Share of aggreate income by lowest quintile:
1980 - 4.3%
2001 - 3.4%
http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/histinc/h02ar.ht ml

The poor probably are getting poorer as individuals. However poor households are getting richer. This is because the women in poor households are working more hours. I'll try to show that this is so, unfortunately the Census Bureau doesn't provide lal the necessary information.

Mean Household income for the bottom quintile in constant 2001 dollars:
2001 $10,136
1980 $9,122
http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/histinc/h03.html

Mean household income for single earner households constant in 2003 dollars:
2001 $50,064
1980 $38,043

Mean household income for dual earner households constant in 2003 dollars:
2001 $83,312
1980 $56,299
http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/histinc/h12ar.ht ml

Median income of men in 2003 dollars:
2001 $31,325
1980 $28,241

Median income of women in 2003 dollars:
2001 $17,793
1980 $11,065
http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/histinc/p13ar.ht ml

Ok, so working backwards we see that women are earning more on a relative to men in 2001 than they were in 1980. This is due largely to increases in average number of hours worked but also due to better pay equality.

Correspondingly dual earner homes have had a bigger increase in income gains.

Women's workforce participation rate has also increased significantly in this time frame (have to get that stat from DOL.)

The end result is that across quintile HOUSEHOLD income has risen. But is this a real gain if the households are putting more aggregate hours into working for the same money?

And finally, there are important questions as to how meaningful the chained CPI really is. It is a rather rough metric that captures some information about inflation but the increase in income for the lowest quentile is probably well below any meaningful qualitative uncertainty in the chained CPI over that period.

And finally, some stats on income inequality:
Gini index:
1980 - 0.403
2001 - 0.466
http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/histinc/ie6.html

Share of aggreate income by lowest quintile:
1980 - 4.3%
2001 - 3.4%
http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/histinc/h02ar.ht ml

The poor probably are getting poorer as individuals. However poor households are getting richer. This is because the women in poor households are working more hours. I'll try to show that this is so, unfortunately the Census Bureau doesn't provide lal the necessary information.

Mean Household income for the bottom quintile in constant 2001 dollars:
2001 $10,136
1980 $9,122
http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/histinc/h03.html

Mean household income for single earner households constant in 2003 dollars:
2001 $50,064
1980 $38,043

Mean household income for dual earner households constant in 2003 dollars:
2001 $83,312
1980 $56,299
http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/histinc/h12ar.ht ml

Median income of men in 2003 dollars:
2001 $31,325
1980 $28,241

Median income of women in 2003 dollars:
2001 $17,793
1980 $11,065
http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/histinc/p13ar.ht ml

Ok, so working backwards we see that women are earning more on a relative to men in 2001 than they were in 1980. This is due largely to increases in average number of hours worked but also due to better pay equality.

Correspondingly dual earner homes have had a bigger increase in income gains.

Women's workforce participation rate has also increased significantly in this time frame (have to get that stat from DOL.)

The end result is that across quintile HOUSEHOLD income has risen. But is this a real gain if the households are putting more aggregate hours into working for the same money?

And finally, there are important questions as to how meaningful the chained CPI really is. It is a rather rough metric that captures some information about inflation but the increase in income for the lowest quentile is probably well below any meaningful qualitative uncertainty in the chained CPI over that period.

And finally, some stats on income inequality:
Gini index:
1980 - 0.403
2001 - 0.466
http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/histinc/ie6.html

Share of aggreate income by lowest quintile:
1980 - 4.3%
2001 - 3.4%
http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/histinc/h02ar.ht ml

Uh, sorry, but the actual population of the USA is only just below 300 million. See http://www.census.gov/population/www/popclockus.ht ml - the 500 million figure is from the last election :p
As if the US system is anywhere NEAR being a 'democracy'.

Last time I checked the Internet doesn't "flood [my] home" with ANY content. I get the content I seek out. I do occasionally get hit with a fake entry on Google that's a porn site instead of what it claimed to be when Google indexed it but a .xxx domain won't make that more common. In fact it'd make it _less_ common since you could see the URL in question was at a .xxx domain and therefore unlikely to have the info you were seeking (unless it was porn but then it'd be a valid search response anyway). Another Gem:

...

"The volume of correspondence opposed to creation of a .xxx (domain) is unprecedented," according to the Commerce Department's Gallagher.

According to the US Census Bureau's Population Clock there are currently 296,908,022 people in the US. Out of those 6000 wrote the Commerce Department to complain about the .xxx domain. That's around .003% of the population. If that's unprecedented then American's apathy about political issues is far worse than any of us thought! Brazil has a bit stronger argument:

While I'm sure different countries view pornography from different value standpoints, I fail to see why creating a top level domain for adult sites is a major problem. It's not like having a .xxx domain will suddenly open the floodgates of hell and every man, woman and child will be deluged with vast amounts of pornography. All it means is there's a different top level domain that adult sites can use (and I believe are encouraged to use, but I haven't checked). The porn sites will exist whether the .xxx TLD is created or not! And the final lunacy:

At the time, politicians lambasted ICANN's move. Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., demanded to know why ICANN didn't approve .xxx "as a means of protecting our kids from the awful, awful filth, which is sometimes widespread on the Internet." Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., told a federal commission that .xxx was necessary to force adult Webmasters to "abide by the same standard as the proprietor of an X-rated movie theater."

So 5 years ago the fact that ICANN didn't approve a .xxx TLD was a catastrophy but now that they HAVE approved it, it's also a catastrophy. Even for politics that's one hell of a flip-flop.

Getting people to Mars would solve the population problem for at least the next eon.

And how will sending people to Mars solve Earth's population problem?

There are more than 6.4 billion people in the world today. This year, the world population is expected to increase by roughly 75 million people. Granted, by 2050 the annual population growth rate is expected to drop to roughly 40 million people per year, but that's still alot.

That means that in 2050, if the assumptions behind the estimates above hold up, we would need to send 40 million people per year to Mars in order to keep zero-population growth on Earth. That's alot of people to be sending to a planet that currently cannot support human life. More to the point, even if we were to build spacecraft that could hold ~1000 (more people than are held by any passenger plane today), we'd need to build 40000 such craft to carry 40 million people. Unless there are major advances in propulsion technology, mower energy launch windows to Mars only occur once every 2 years, so you'd need to send 80 million people (or 80000 ships at 1000 person capacity) during that launch window.

I want to see humans settling Mars. However, the argument that martian settlement will solve population problems on Earth is fallacious.

Getting people to Mars would solve the population problem for at least the next eon.

And how will sending people to Mars solve Earth's population problem?

There are more than 6.4 billion people in the world today. This year, the world population is expected to increase by roughly 75 million people. Granted, by 2050 the annual population growth rate is expected to drop to roughly 40 million people per year, but that's still alot.

That means that in 2050, if the assumptions behind the estimates above hold up, we would need to send 40 million people per year to Mars in order to keep zero-population growth on Earth. That's alot of people to be sending to a planet that currently cannot support human life. More to the point, even if we were to build spacecraft that could hold ~1000 (more people than are held by any passenger plane today), we'd need to build 40000 such craft to carry 40 million people. Unless there are major advances in propulsion technology, mower energy launch windows to Mars only occur once every 2 years, so you'd need to send 80 million people (or 80000 ships at 1000 person capacity) during that launch window.

I want to see humans settling Mars. However, the argument that martian settlement will solve population problems on Earth is fallacious.

Anyhow, you can see the breakdown here. http://www.census.gov/prod/2001pubs/cenbr01-1.pdf

There are two things to consider and really several problems that this article does not exactly address.

• 1. Population composition.
• 2. Socio-economic concerns.

First of all, according to the U.S. census bereau, 76% of the population is white and 12% is black (census data). That is somewhat of a red herring, but playing a numbers game, 80% of the gaming population (depending on what nations that includes) might be an ok figure if it is a numbers game. But like I said, this is really irrelevant. Numbers like this are meaningless in many regards, because the real issue is somehwere else (I am liberal but I find affirmative action to be a patch as the other reply said).

The real issue is that motivation/education of children is the problem. I agree with you that urban schools are usually the worst and I sympathize with you. But, to be honest, suburban, middle class schools are not always better. I never got any such opportunity to really learn anything about software or computers in school. We had some Apple 2s, but my school (in Chicago) had no programming classes or anything. I only got interested in PCs through my father (an engineer). I don't think I am alone either, but suffice it to say, there are alot of schools that do not teach PC literacy skills/programming/or 3d animation. Lots. They are not just urban schools. It was not until I moved to Colorado and went to a high school that taught C and CAD. But I was a Senior in high school before that happened.

Schools, especially urban schools, need better computer/technology programs. (I mean that too, urban black schools are the worst all around and need the most help, don't get me wrong.) Kids also need to be better motivated to work in software/technology. That may not happen. What is more true is that in general, American kids don't want to work hard. They are lazy! In most big universities you should hear about then number of students that drop CS majors to do IS or something worse.

In grad school, it is about 50/50 between whites and minorities (in my program). That may not be typical. But more disturbing is the decreasing number of Engineering graduates in the US. All kids need to be motivated to work harder in school. I am more disturbed by the number of hours all of these kids spend playing video games.

Maybe some of it has to do with the way middle class kids (black and white, but more whites) are raised (sometimes, and I am not exactly siding with Bill Cosby, though he is right). In a way, because alot of "whites" don't really have a unified culture, they must forge their own identities and part of that has more to do with their career than culture. That is the problem with a melting pot. All of these mutt white people (Irish-german-scottish-jewish mixes) can't identify as being "white" so they identify as being a "developer" or whatever. Does that make sense? I think more and more middle class black kids fall into the same thing. I didn't mention Asians because in a way that has always been the work ethic of alot of Asian nations (work hard, please the company... ok that is Japan), so I think that is already part of their culture. That has alot to do with western corruption of Japanese politics and the surrogate nature of the company in Japan (instead of nationalism)... whatever.

Conclusion: this article is all wet, but we need to fix our schools and our culture. Put a period on that!

According to the 2000 US Census, America is 69.1% white non-hispanic, 12.1% black non-hispanic, and 12.5% hispanic.

The logistics of moving that many people isn't overwhelming. There are over 650 million "enplanements" per year in the United States alone. 10 years at that rate would move all of the people currently here. In 10 years time, by some projections, world population will be less than 1 billion more than it is now - so about 2 more years would finish the job off.

As far as energy required, it would be large, but (assuming perfect efficiency, and only talking about lifting ~180 lb people, not including luggage, supplies or vehicles) about 3% of current worldwide electrical energy generation capacity (3600 GW) would keep up with that rate (at 24 hours/day, 365 days/year). Obviously, we'd need a more efficient method than rockets to even approach that, but it means it isn't impossible.

Of course, to merely remove a "significant" number of people would take much less. The above was for 100% removal. 25% of that rate is still twice the current worldwide population growth rate, and it would still only take about 60 years to remove the entire population.

Doesn't mean its practical, or that it is desirable, but it certainly isn't impossible (given reasonable advances in technology over the next 50 years).

First off, neither your post nor mine was a troll, nor did either deserve a downmod. We just disagree. I wish that was tolerated more by slashdot moderators. That said, you were being a jerk about it.


I agree; Apology offered.

My reaction was fueled by what I saw (and see) as yet another unreasonable extension of Google's motto. I see 'don't be evil' as more of guideline for acceptable advertising mechanism and protection of private data than as one that mandates a more-than-passive response to foreign regimes with which they do business. It is more than that, but it doesn't make Google a 501(c)3 either.

Part of the problem is Google's arrogance. They think that they're so great that the harm done to the Chinese people by not having access to Google would exceed any potential political benefit.

This is a very surprising argument, one which I do not see. China is large expanding market, and Google is a large expanding company. What makes you think Google wants to be in China for any reason other than that it is the next big market? I really don't see the "people would be harmed without us" attitude..

The other argument being made here is the opposite--Google is nothing special and could just as well be replaced by a Chinese government-run search engine. Both of these arguments are wrong.

I think the recent (last week) US offering of Baidu provides the strongest evidence to the contrary; there are indeed organic rivals to Google in China. On that note, who is to say that political pressure on the Chinese regime must come from Google? If the Chinese people start asking for Baidu by name, and one day Baidu is disappeared for flexing its muscle.. who knows. One can daydream and wonder if a web site could topple a regime.

The ethical justification for allowing a free trade relationship with a repressive regime is to promote positive change. That will only happen if we grow a backbone.

Speaking for the US economy, growing a backbone is going to be difficult when you have a $161 BILLION trade deficit. One could argue a huge chinese Google success could put the tiniest of nicks in this number.

Why don't we try to actively subvert their "Great Firewall"? Imagine what the geniuses at Google could do if they put their minds and hearts into it...

My feeling is that it is only a matter of time, as services such as Google become available in China, that the Great Firewall becomes unmaintainable.

Indeed not even close to a majority of registered voters, and even further from a majority of eligible voters. According to census.gov data, there were 142,070 thousand registered voters for the 2004 election, so Bush secured an amazing 43.7% of the registered vote. More importantly, my book, there were 201,230 thousand eligible voters in 2003 according to this study, which means that Bush was supported by a commanding 30.83% of the people who had the opportunity to vote for him. (Of course, Kerry came off with 29.33%).

Indeed not even close to a majority of registered voters, and even further from a majority of eligible voters. According to census.gov data, there were 142,070 thousand registered voters for the 2004 election, so Bush secured an amazing 43.7% of the registered vote. More importantly, my book, there were 201,230 thousand eligible voters in 2003 according to this study, which means that Bush was supported by a commanding 30.83% of the people who had the opportunity to vote for him. (Of course, Kerry came off with 29.33%).

I seriously doubt this guy was killed just for spamming, but let's assume he was for discussion. While on the surface it may seem that the punishment (death) far exceeds the crime (spamming) let's do a little math.

Say I spend 10 seconds managing my spam every 2-3 days. That's 28 seconds a week. No big deal right?

Say I've been doing it for the last 5 years and will continue to for the next 55.

(5 + 55) * 52 weeks * 28 seconds a week = 87,360 seconds (24.266~ hours). Still not that bad, just one day.

Someone who lives 80 years only gets 700,800 hours to live.

That means spammers only have to annoy 28,879 people ( 700,800 / 24.266~ = 28,879 ) before they've wasted an entire (long) human lifetime worth of time. Now I know it's a bit of a stretch to equate a human lifetime worth of time to the life of an actual human being, but I begin to wonder. My time is very valuable to me and I'd rather not waste a single second of it deleting unwanted advertisements from my inbox.

But let's take it a little further. According to this there are 6,454,864,470 people on earth at the time of this writing. Say spammers only annoy 5% of them (a low estimate I would guess) for their entire lives. That's still 322,743,223 people who lost a day's time to spam.

24.266 hours per person * 322,743,223 people = 7831902223.6 hours wasted.

That's 11,175.66 human lifetimes!

If you want to equate those to actual deaths here are some comparisons:

"British Medial Journal indicating that passive smoking kills over 11,000 people in UK." (http://www.sdlp.ie/pr2march2005.shtm).

"To take prostate cancer as an example, although it kills over 11,000 men a year..." (http://www.icr.ac.uk/press/releases/cancerchip.ht ml)

"Gun violence kills over 11,000 Americans every year..." (http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2002/11 /08/opinion/6293.shtml)

These were extremely low estimates, the world's population is growing, and the amount of spam is growing.

Still think the punishment didn't fit the crime? I'm not sure anymore myself.

What if you think about the population of Los Angeles County? That's more than twice the population of Louisiana. I think most people lump the suburbs of Los Angeles in with the city. Especially when they say "LA city", it makes me think maybe they mean South Pasadena or something.

Estimating 131 billion gallons of gasoline used per year in the United States, a total cost of the Iraq war to date of $181 billion over two years--that comes out to $0.69 per gallon.

It might also help the U.S. trade deficit (just over just over $50 billion per month) if you weren't importing 2.4 million barrels of oil per day from the Middle East (at $50 per barrel, that's $3.6 billion per month).

Don't wager too much, LA (state) and (city)

So there's more greedy polititians in LA, and therefor more representation. It's also less likely they'd do anything useful in government though.

In 2001, over 30 percent of the Canadian population lived in predominantly rural regions. In the 2000 census, more than 20 percent of the US population lived in rural regions. I grew up in one of these regions. Our options for internet were dial-up, or none. Then came the advent of satellite internet, for which you required a giant, ugly dish in your backyard, as well as hundreds of dollars a year in fees.

Some people use dial-up through choice, and some use it through necessity. Similarly with analog television, out in the country, there is no way to get a digital signal. There will be no way to get a digital signal until tv stations start broadcasting them. The largest selection of channels will always be available in analog, UNTIL those analog broadcasts are shut down. That is why people are not buying digital sets. How would you feel if someone told you that you had to use Internet2, even though there are many fewer sites on it, but don't worry, in five years we're turning off Internet1, so your existing connection will be useless anyway.

According to the census bureau, it's 19,190,115 people.

According to the NYC dept of city planning the Census Bureau believes that there were in 8,104,079 people in the five boroughs of NYC as of July 2004.

there's over 8 million people in the area

According to the census bureau, it's 19,190,115 people. So, yeah, over 8 million.

I put this together last time, but by the time I had it done the story was gone off the front page.

A previous story here on /. commented on costs to provide wi-fi access to a 16-sq. mile area to be about $600,000. Based on that, as well as old Census data, I came up with a highly simplified cost chart for the major metropolitan areas in the U.S.

Based on that, there's no clear evidence that wi-fi is absolutely cost-effective or absolutely not cost effective. It really depends on your city and a lot of other factors. I would hazard a guess that low-density areas are not going to do well. (That's why Casper, Wymoing and Yuma, Arizona, and Bismarck, North Dakota all are at the bottom of the list).

If you have better cost info, you can always play with the data yourself.

There are seven states in the US with under 1 million people, according to the Census Bureau. Those 14 senators have no excuse. Though I would like to point out that some senators do send personalized letters. My wife got one from our senator regarding some healthcare legislation last year that she had requested support on.

Oh come on... Show me one person in the world who cannot install any retail application from a CD.

Well, we know you've never held a helpdesk job, and you've never done freelance/in store computer repair work either.
I for one, have. and believe you me, there are at least 6 billion human beings incapable of inserting a software cd into the computer, and then entering a 24 digit cd-key, to install said commercial software..

I'm being generous saying that 452,047,056 people globally are smart enough to be able to install software by themselves too. I'm a generous guy.

Note to moderators: This post while it may be funny, was entirely meant to be insighful or interesting.

Considering that there were fewer than 600 million people in the world in 1600, I'd assume fewer "developments per billion" today.

Sorry, I just don't see anything to be concerned about. The per capita rate of development may have gone down in the last 200 years, but the numbers have gone way up.

"And most of the poor people in this country happen to be guess what! NOT WHITE."

From 2003 census data:
http://www.census.gov/hhes/poverty/histpov/hstpov2 .html

Poverty percentages by race
white 10.5
black 24.5
hispanic 22.5
asian 10.2

And from http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0762156.html

Total Population 290,809,777
by race
White 234,196,357
Black 37,098,946
Hispanic 39,898,889
Asian 11,924,912

So the number in poverty by race:
White 24,590,617
Black 9,089,242
Hispanic 8,977,250
Asian 1,216,341

So, you are wrong. The majority of poor people in this country are without a doubt white.

Goddamnit, 12.5% of the country lives below the poverty line. The poor are a sizable minority, but don't have enough money to be a market for businesses. So they become disenfranchised.

Don't be naive. of the country lives below the poverty line. The poor are a sizable minority, but don't have enough money to be a market for businesses. So they become disenfranchised.

There isn't enough data here for me to claim that this 12% is nation's poorest, but I suggest that there is significant cross-over, as they've shown themselves to be either unwilling or unable to buy a new television.

Everyone could always get the layout of the entire country's road system by downloading the TIGER/Line data. I downloaded 5 counties' worth of road data just yesterday. It includes road names, lat/long coords, etc.

http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/

Context: http://www.bls.census.gov/cps/tp/tp63.htm

Go read. Be warned, it's not short.

By the way, I'm not the guy that posted the above comments.

I don't know where you are getting your data but Mexico has benefitted tremendously in trade with the US. According to our own government, there has been ZERO reciprocal trade with Mexico. It is nearly 100% flowing from them to us and they are the number 3 deficit trading partner with us.

http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c0005. html

That is untrue. Unemployment is calculated based on a household survey of thousands of people, not the number of people on unemployment insurance.

This can be confirmed in wiki and various gov sites.

Why don't you go look yourself. My count: 551 of 599 (92%) listed offenders were black. As of the 2000 census, DC is 60% black by population. I'll refrain from editorializing on this one, as it will most certainly degenerate into a racism flamefest.

Efficiency is not everything - which is why you cannot see the problem. Even if you do accept that fact, a monopoly on telephone service actually enabled a more efficient allocation of resources since there was no need to put up multiple telephone wires or lay miles of redundent fiber optic cable.

As for Health Care, you might actually get acquianted with the facts: "The number of people with health insurance coverage rose from 242.4 million in 2002 to 243.3 million in 2003. Nonetheless, the percentage with coverage dropped from 84.8 percent to 84.4 percent, mirroring a drop in the percentage of people covered by employment-based health insurance (61.3 percent in 2002 to 60.4 percent in 2003). This decline in employment-based health insurance coverage essentially explains the drop in total private health insurance coverage, from 69.6 percent in 2002 to 68.6 percent in 2003.

So, we have more than 15% without coverage and more than another 15% being covered by the state. Is this efficient? It probably seems like it is - so long as you are one of the 70% with coverage.

See Tigerline and GRASS for examples of data and software, respectively.