Slashdot Mirror

Try:
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2006/pulpit_20060330_000890.html

Its only spec at this point but google has said they intend to bid on this auction. Many changes could possibly happen for the good. An interesting read at http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070727_002573.html. I know he gets way out there sometimes but we can always hope

Evolution does not climb hills to reach a preferred state. Sometimes it backtracks downhill to find an old working state. It may climb to the other side of the hill, because that's where the sunshine is. Evolution means that a specific organism is fit to live under the current conditions.

Organisms aquire their specific survival skills by DNA mutation or recombination, or absorbing other organisms (see mitochodrion). Evolution theory does not explain why favorable changes happen; they are just "happy accidents".

People have been able to force DNA recombination through selective breeding. Darwin gave dogs as an example. Today, we might do the same to weaken diseases (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/10/4/l_104_01.htmlCholera: Domesticating Disease).

It's been a while, but I think it may still work (or even work better with new devices)
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2001/pulpit_20010712_000697.html

here's a link to an ebay sale of ten of the dishes i use - buy 'em now for $250! Ebay you could outfit two endpoints and four passive repeaters with that gear - surely enough to get up and over a mountain. here's cringely with his passive repeater: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2002/pulpit_20020207_000721.html you can see my 24db mounted on an antenna rotator in the last pic on this page: http://www.asecular.com/index.php?051105 and read about it here: http://www.asecular.com/index.php?050319

Bob Cringely used to have the same problem and wrote a bunch of columns about long range wifi while back. You have to have someone you can reach a decent connection you can reach but I've read about people reaching 10 miles using similar methods. Not for the faint of heart but this is slashdot.

Alternately COVAD (before they merged with sprint I think) used to sell DSL where they hung a booster half way between your house and the telco. I don't think they still do it as I'm pretty sure they lost money doing despite the fact that it was twice as expensive as telco dsl. While not super fast does work and is faster than dial-up. There may be a third party operator in your area who still offers this kind of service. Good luck!

Some description of methods: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2005/pulpit_20050414_000849.html
More details: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2001/pulpit_20010712_000697.html
A follow on : http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2001/pulpit_20010628_000421.html
His various ISPs http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2004/pulpit_20040708_000818.html

Bob Cringely used to have the same problem and wrote a bunch of columns about long range wifi while back. You have to have someone you can reach a decent connection you can reach but I've read about people reaching 10 miles using similar methods. Not for the faint of heart but this is slashdot.

Alternately COVAD (before they merged with sprint I think) used to sell DSL where they hung a booster half way between your house and the telco. I don't think they still do it as I'm pretty sure they lost money doing despite the fact that it was twice as expensive as telco dsl. While not super fast does work and is faster than dial-up. There may be a third party operator in your area who still offers this kind of service. Good luck!

Some description of methods: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2005/pulpit_20050414_000849.html
More details: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2001/pulpit_20010712_000697.html
A follow on : http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2001/pulpit_20010628_000421.html
His various ISPs http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2004/pulpit_20040708_000818.html

Bob Cringely used to have the same problem and wrote a bunch of columns about long range wifi while back. You have to have someone you can reach a decent connection you can reach but I've read about people reaching 10 miles using similar methods. Not for the faint of heart but this is slashdot.

Alternately COVAD (before they merged with sprint I think) used to sell DSL where they hung a booster half way between your house and the telco. I don't think they still do it as I'm pretty sure they lost money doing despite the fact that it was twice as expensive as telco dsl. While not super fast does work and is faster than dial-up. There may be a third party operator in your area who still offers this kind of service. Good luck!

Some description of methods: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2005/pulpit_20050414_000849.html
More details: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2001/pulpit_20010712_000697.html
A follow on : http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2001/pulpit_20010628_000421.html
His various ISPs http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2004/pulpit_20040708_000818.html

Bob Cringely used to have the same problem and wrote a bunch of columns about long range wifi while back. You have to have someone you can reach a decent connection you can reach but I've read about people reaching 10 miles using similar methods. Not for the faint of heart but this is slashdot.

Alternately COVAD (before they merged with sprint I think) used to sell DSL where they hung a booster half way between your house and the telco. I don't think they still do it as I'm pretty sure they lost money doing despite the fact that it was twice as expensive as telco dsl. While not super fast does work and is faster than dial-up. There may be a third party operator in your area who still offers this kind of service. Good luck!

Some description of methods: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2005/pulpit_20050414_000849.html
More details: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2001/pulpit_20010712_000697.html
A follow on : http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2001/pulpit_20010628_000421.html
His various ISPs http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2004/pulpit_20040708_000818.html

Robotics is hard. Landing on the moon is even harder.

Whittaker also has some previous experience with the DARPA Grand Challenge, the desert robotics race, which CMU (his team) lost both times. He obviously knows his stuff when it comes to mechanical engineering, and were it not for the Stanford team, CMU would have undoubtedly won. But the Stanford team showed that brainpower triumphed over the "brute force" methods that CMU used. Stanford tackled the "hard computer science" problem instead, and used a standard video camera instead of the laser rangefinders (and pre-computed waypoints) that CMU used. I would have liked to see the Challenge continue because I think that Stanford's surprise victory would have changed the race dramatically the following year.

There's a pretty entertaining NOVA documentary about it as well. My brother (an engineer) and I (a CS student) could help but laugh at and feel envy for the guy who built the self-guided motorcycle ("Ghost Rider").

So, yeah, CMU has Whittaker, and lots of money, but that almost doesn't matter.

Google is the #1 company that has been fighting AGAINST government intrusion into search.

Google Rebuffs Government Subpoena -- Google went to court many times to stop the government from getting search queries. Yahoo and MSN gave the government what it wanted almost immediately.

Think about it -- Google requires users' trust to create new services. You wouldn't use Google Mail if you knew Google would sell you up the river for nothing. Whatever new service comes next I'm sure the same thing will be true; their market is all about collecting data and interconnecting it, but you won't give them that data unless you trust them. They have every incentive in the world to fight the government on your behalf so that they can keep the trust of their users.

Except that smoke is usually the MAJOR CAUSE of death in airliner crashes!

Escape: Because Accidents Happen: Plane Crash

Except that smoke is usually the MAJOR CAUSE of death in airliner crashes!

PBS NOVA: 'Escape: Because Accidents Happen: Plane Crash'

Actually, the Classic was changed to use the same guts as the Nano, not the other way around. Some folks e.g. http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070914_002928.html are not very happy about it, either.

The Tacoma Narrows bridge apparently was not designed not to collapse - the designer failed to factor in the high wind speeds in the Tacoma Narrows and the resulting resonant effect on the structure into the bridge design.

Before you re-write history, check the news reports of the day. It wasn't a very windy day. The bridge was stable at much higher winds. The moderate wind and the direction was just right to produce a resonant feedback. It wasn't high winds that too the bridge down. It was steady mild wind that kept putting more motion into a resonant system.

References;

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/bridge/meetsusp.html
  At the time it opened for traffic in 1940, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge was the third longest suspension bridge in the world. It was promptly nicknamed "Galloping Gertie," due to its behavior in wind. Not only did the deck sway sideways, but vertical undulations also appeared in quite moderate winds. Drivers of cars reported that vehicles ahead of them would completely disappear and reappear from view several times as they crossed the bridge. Attempts were made to stabilize the structure with cables and hydraulic buffers, but they were unsuccessful. On November 7, 1940, only four months after it opened, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapsed in a wind of 42 mph--even though the structure was designed to withstand winds of up to 120 mph.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacoma_Narrows_Bridge
The wind-induced collapse occurred on November 7, 1940 at 11:00 AM(Pacific time), due partially to a physical phenomenon known as mechanical resonance. [4]

And for sake of balance here is a modern study stating it wasn't resonance but instead a negative feedback;
http://www.ketchum.org/wind.html
" . . . in many undergraduate physics texts the (1940 Tacoma Narrows bridge) disaster is presented as an example of elementary forced resonance . . . Engineers, on the other hand, have studied the phenomenon . . . and their current understanding differs fundamentally from the viewpoint expressed in most physics texts. In the present article the engineers' viewpoint is presented . . . It is then demonstrated that the ultimate failure of the bridge was in fact related to an aerodynamically induced condition of self-excitation or "negative damping" . . . This paper emphasizes the fact that. physically as well as mathematically, forced resonance and self- excitation are fundamentally different phenomena.

The one common thread in all the above is it was not a high wind that took the bridge down. It was the feedback pumping energy into the motion.

Im not sure an effect predicted with hundreds of years worth of data can be tested in the 10 years since anthropogenic global warming became fashionable.. I think this may be an excellent example of basic science tainted by obscene analysis.

U.S. National Academy of Sciences reports that global temperatures could rise 1.5 to 4.5 degrees Celsius if carbon dioxide levels double. "A wait-and-see policy may mean waiting until it is too late," the group warns.

Let the marketplace decide. People (and parents) are free to buy from whatever merchant they want. There probably is a market for this, since parents will support this philosophy.
There are parents who buy music from Wal-mart, censored lyrics and all
If he has a committed group of parents/customers, that's enough to set up his own shop. And I'll bet he's looking for investors

http://www.macintouch.com/readerreports/ipodclassic/
http://ilounge.com/index.php/news/comments/ipod-classic-tests-reveal-audio-problems

and the best list is here:

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070914_002928.html

Yes, let them have some. But if you just stop paying attention to them and giving them 100% free reign all the time, you end up with a messed up kid. It's been proven that teenagers don't have very good decision making skills. Being uninvolved and not providing consequences for bad decisions is not a good recipe for success in raising a child.

Building a *safe* nuclear plant is expensive

And since regulations require safe nuclear power plants, building *a* nuclear power plant is expensive.

The "economic" calculations do not factor the long term storage of Nuclear waste

Long-term storage of nuclear waste is not due to a lack of funding. A kilogram of *unenriched* uranium (like you'd burn in a CANDU) produces something like 10 million kWh of electricity (i.e., several hundred thousand dollars of income). For just a single kilogram. The funding is there. The reason for a lack of long-term storage of nuclear waste is due to NIMBYism and NIMBYism alone. Nobody wants a repository in their backyard.

the decommisioning of exising plants

This is one of the main "subsidies" in existence currently that the hope is will be able to be phased out.

or the poorly researched medical consequences of long term exposure to the elements that Nuclear plants vent (Noble gasses that decay into deadlier elements) as standard operating proceedure

In normal operation, a nuclear reactor releases less radioactivity, *including* releases from mining and processing, than burning coal. And we're talking only about *radioactive elements* here, which are not the prime threat from a coal power plant. Here's a guide to how much radiation you're exposed to by various sources.

Additionally alot of greenhouse gasses (as yet unfactored costs) are produced from mining the ore to refining the fuel.

What, you think they get fuel for free? Come on. You better believe it's factored into operating costs. The thing is that you need so darn little of the stuff that the marginal operating costs on a nuclear power plant are very low compared to fossil plants. A kilogram of coal will run a hundred watt lightbulb for 4 days or so. A kilogram of *unenriched* uranium, 200 years.
Carbon dioxide output used to power the enrichment process, CFC 114 (20000 times more potent than c02 as a greenhouse gas) and Uranium hexafluoride [wikipedia.org].

Yes, uranium processing is dirty (although they don't *vent* hex or CFC 114 in any significant quantities -- and CFC-114 is not universal, and is being phased out, just like other industrial CFCs, while hex is what they want to process (venting it would be wasting money)). No, it's not anywhere even remotely approaching as dirty as coal mining, nor anywhere remotely approaching as bad for the environment as coal usage.

Reflecting the true cost of of a well engineered plant and the cost of doing business even when subsidised by government. If nuclear power is so good, why should it need massive subsidies

I just explained why; go back and read my earlier post. Nobody wants to deal with the nightmare having a project that you can be sinking money into for decades only then to have a regulator say, "We've decided not to grant you an operating license". It was a regulatory nightmare. Not the safety regulations, which were quite reasonable -- the licensing procedure was the primary problem.

If you want to see how nuclear has become more economical even *ignoring* new designs, go back and look at the history of power generation in the US. Despite no new construction of nuclear power plants, nuclear has been holding steady as a percentage of US energy production. How? Improved efficiency of operation. In the 1970s, nuclear power plants spent nearly half their time as downtime -- very different from the present day. This extra power is nearly pure profit. Some modern reactors, like the CANDU, now are designed to have *no* downtime -- they can be refuelled while the reactor is running. It's a whole different ballgame. Combining this with the new regulatory environment, and the fact that now *coal* and other fossil fuels are an insurance liability (due t

Heh probably a coincidence resulting from him being put back into his cage but I found this bit funny:

ALAN ALDA: (Narration) Through that language he shows a grasp of abstract concepts like sameness, or the idea of combining qualities. But the big question for researchers is, do animals think conceptually without the help of human-taught languages?

ALEX: I'm sorry. You're a good boy.

ALAN ALDA: (Narration) That's what we'll explore next.

ALEX: I love you.

From the bit just above: http://www.pbs.org/saf/transcripts/transcript903.h tm#4

http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/vinge/longnow/

The truth of the matter is that man has this Power of Denial...

The Hindu Arabic Decimal system was denied for 300 years.
The observations of Galileo were denied for 350 years (by the catholic church until the early 1990s)
and I'm sure there are plenty more examples of human denial.

Ultimately Man will not, cannot invent a machine smarter than himself anymore than a theoretical one dimensional being can comprehend a two dimensional object or being ... nor can a theoretical two dimensional being comprehend a three dimensional object or being, etc...

Computers will never genuinely be anything more than an extension of man.

However, it is well within human deception to lead the masses to believing otherwise. Which would be very insulting and demeaning to those such a lie is imposed upon.

Hard reality.... http://threeseas.net/abstraction_physics.html

So called Artificial Intelligence is nothing more then the by-product illusion of automating enough to deceive those humans interacting to believe its not a machine or a machine better than man.

Genuine intelligence is built upon the progression of:
Gas, liquid, solid, single cell life, plant life, animal life, consciousness...intelligence

Just as there is a build up of things, structures, technology in society that are a prerequisite of what we have built upon our knowledge, so it is with what is required of genuine knowledge.

Besides, we have plenty enough artificially intelligent people fu&'in things up as it is, we don't need a machine built by faulty human intelligence to give us something worse then the calculation that resulted in the Trillion Dollar Bet and repercussions of dotcom boom and bust, worldcom, enron and 9/11....

And even if such a machine was built and gave us solid information, what makes anyone think we as a whole would believe it and act upon the information when we can't seem to even do what we know we can do To fix the genuine problems terrorist otherwise use to promote followers...????

Yep. First to file probably simplifys things for the one with fewer lawyers and less time/money. First invention is hard to prove. The laser and the radio are famous examples, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Gould http://www.pbs.org/tesla/ll/ll_whoradio.html First to file should be simple to decide - but since its a legal thing even that can probably become a thicket of annoyance to prove and defend.

Are these the same ISPs who also claim that YouTube and iPlayer are clogging the bandwidth? http://techdigest.tv/2007/08/uk_isps_send_bb.html It sounds like the ISPs have promised everyone "blazing fast internet" and can't make good on that promise because they misspent $200 billion that should have been building up internet infrastructure. http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_200 70810_002683.html Now they are just making excuses instead of product.

Since the Wikipedia link directs to Norway:

Norway has indeed come a long way since 1905.
Norway has its say somewhat socialist sides, but the socialist sides has often been
a restriction to development.
At times it was not unlike what you would find in Great Britain after WWII.
A welfare state certainly makes for better sleep if you truly cannot fend for yourself.
But the regulations on say telephone services experienced up until deregulation
were unneeded and costly to society and were a burden on economic development.
Norway has had and has a large merchant fleet and a very long coast.
Like England, Belgium and Netherlands the connection to the sea has been and is a blessing.
It facilitated trade and other interactions with other nations at an early time.
(Really early on not all these actions were seen as wholly blessed :-)
I would like to see Norway as having a social market economy of sorts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_economy
Not unlike many other nations.

For those who would like to study closely the practical sides of economy I would recommend
to have a look at Germany after WWII.

In the eastern part:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_German _Democratic_Republic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_economy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_G ermany

In the western part of Germany they had the fortune of brilliant economic leadership.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirtschaftswunder
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Erhard
Most notable was Ludwig Erhard.
"On June 20, 1948, the Deutsche Mark was introduced. Erhard abolished the price-fixing and production controls that had been enacted by the military administration. This exceeded his authority, but he succeeded with this courageous step."
The price controls remained for a while in the sectors controlled by France :-)
Ludwig Erhard was a Libertarian in a conservative party led by Konrad Adenauer.
He understood the limitations at hand in a war ravaged Europe.
It was not an easy task for an economist who was not a politician to fight for the free market.
When Erhard left office in 1965 unemployment was less than 1%.
I think that speaks for itself.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/lo/count ries/de/de_economic.html

http://www.ludwig-erhard-stiftung.de/
has a book in PDF format for those who understand German
http://www.ludwig-erhard-stiftung.de/ (Down on the page)
The title is: Prosperity through Competition (Wohlstand für alle)

Too bad that IRAQ has no such genius:
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0312d.asp
If you do not deregulate the poor will suffer the most.
Like it or not.

Planned Economy is a Prussian invention intended to be used at times of war only.
Communists, Fascist and Socialists like planned economy because it gives THEM more control.

Communism and fascism will always go bankrupt.
Socialism will have low growth and always balance on the edge of going bankrupt.
2 Democratic nations will never start war against each other.

And not to forget: www.mises.org.
Ludwig Erhard studied under one of the students of Ludwig von Mises.
Further read:
http://www.mises.org/TRTS/

BILL MOYERS: Critics point to September eight, 2002 and to your show in particular, as the classic case of how the press and the government became inseparable.

Someone in the administration plants a dramatic story in the NEW YORK TIMES And then the Vice President comes on your show and points to the NEW YORK TIMES. It's a circular, self-confirming leak.

TIM RUSSERT: I don't know how Judith Miller and Michael Gordon reported that story, who their sources were. It was a front-page story of the NEW YORK TIMES. When Secretary Rice and Vice President Cheney and others came up that Sunday morning on all the Sunday shows, they did exactly that.

TIM RUSSERT: What my concern was, is that there were concerns expressed by other government officials. And to this day, I wish my phone had rung, or I had access to them.

BILL MOYERS: Bob Simon didn't wait for the phone to ring.

maybe a few hundred billion tossed at the carriers will solve this, wait, we already did that didn't we.

200 Billion Dollar Rip off

Don't forget Clinton's Blunder in the Balkins!

We lost over.. zero troops there. And then we had a... lasting peace established. And we were noted, by both Muslim and European countries for... accomplishing such a difficult task so well, while earning world approbation from our leadership while working with NATO.

Of course, Clinton was responsible for reducing military readiness by... increasing military spending by 7% during his administration, and, then there was that nation building thing, using U.S. troops, that all right thinking people oppose.

But yeah, there was that lying under oath thing, that cost some many people their lives, shredded the Constitution and ruined U.S. reputation around the world.

Darn you Clinton. Darn you to heck!

Wow, that totally opened my eyes. Look at this damning summary of the evils Wal-Mart has perpetrated by intelligently using bar codes.

Enjoy a few pics here. Incidentally "Song airlines" were the first ones Delta put these on. Song went out of business (there's a Frontline episode you can watch about it) and the Song planes were turned back into Delta planes. Now all the Delta planes are scheduled to have the inflight video stuff too.

Frontline

at

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/walm art/

Yes, Frontline did a show about this a few years back.

On a related note, there's an old story on PBS about a Canadian who became his own cable company. FTFA:

Imagine of the FCC allowed people to be their own cable companies. At $.26 per channel per household, that's a hell of a steal. And that's also how you can see how much cable companies and DirectTV mark up their prices (don't forget, they also get advertising revenues.)

You should check out this Frontline piece on China. In it they manage to candidly interview a couple students from a top university there and showed them photos of "Tank Man", and they did not recognize the image. It seems as though any recorded history of the 1989 uprising ha been eliminated in China.

The only reason why I question this correlation is because I have heard that we only get 5% of our oil from the middle east.

I've seen numbers ranging from 12% to 20%, but since oil is a fungible commodity the political situation in the Middle East affects the price of oil worldwide.

Your post reminded me of a PBS Frontline episode called Tax me if you can, which was quite interesting. As you said, corporations aren't paying their fare share of taxes, and the middle class is left paying the difference.

Watch the episode "The NSA's Eavesdropping at AT&T" at this link:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/homefront/ view/

Any company that decides to cooperate with the NSA must keep extensive records and is forbidden by law from notifying anyone that they are keeping those records. Just a theory: if the company simply provides those [extensive] records to the individual then the individual is notified *and* the company has not violated the law.

Doctors, when faced with medical problems, strive to find solutions. Our initial knowledge of anatomy came from doctors disecting deceased people, to see how they tick. Some ... a VERY small percentage ... of this knowledge came from the battlefield. An overwhelming majority did NOT come from the battlefield, but from universities.

It's hard to find solutions when you don't have a fresh stream of people in the right place at the right time to try them out on. Certainly, you wouldn't argue that a 10 year old with a facial scar from a car accident when she was 3 is the person to do initial experiments with plastic surgery on. Guys who are missing half of their face from a shrapnel wound? Good choice.

Prior to the Civil War, armies didn't really try to set up field hospitals where they could perform on-site diagnosis, triage and surgery facing a wide array of potentially fatal, somewhat random wounds. They treated everything from burns to gangrene to shattered bones in those hospitals. Morbidity post-amputation was pretty high and that's where sterilization procedures started coming into play. Where do you think the system of roving medics who triage wounds and stabilize patients en-route to doctors (like EMTs/ambulances/helicopters rushing you to the hospital) comes from?

a mini PBS documentary of some of the history of medicine and the military. I've seen lots of stuff on the History Channel as well. There are a LOT of books and other information out there describing the advances made in medicine because of warfare. If you think we'd be where we are without those sacrifices, you'd be very mistaken. Pick up a book, pretty much any book on the subject, and educate yourself before you go off spouting that scientists/doctors will make advances at the rate they have without patients to work on.

Not at all. Capitalism, and in particular Imperialism is driving all the wars on the planet, in one form or another. Even the stupid tribal wars in Africa can be traced back to a bunch of capitalists who want to profit from selling arms and generally sticking their nose ( and capital ) where's it's not wanted. The Middle East is of course the most obvious example of imperialist meddling leading to wars. Individuals - even large groups of them - have no interest in war. People want to solve their problems in constructive ways, that benefit everyone. It's the capitalists who use massive armies and WOMD to enforce their will.

Check your history... Everyone has an ancestor who has been involved in war. It doesn't matter if they were from Athens, Egypt, Russia, Peru or Japan. Everyone fights at some time and you're ignorant if you think it's always pure capitalism at heart. My farm dries up while my neighbor has more water than he can use but refuses to share. It is capitalism for me to go steal his water to keep my family from dying? Only if that is the prism that you look at the entire world through. Wars were fought over the eye of a woman (see Helen of Troy... yes, mythology but mythology is often based in historical fact to convey a lesson). Siblings fight over the attention of their parents. Some people will kill each other still just because of the color of their skin.

Very few people actually like and support full scale war... but, it is the one thing guaranteed to provide a solution to a problem. Diplomacy can never work without a military to enforce it and if someone refuses diplomacy and keeps attacking you, you have no choice but to force them into surrender.

Now... since you seem to be in the camp that the US shouldn't stick its nose into other people's business, do you also agree we have no business going into Darfur, had no business in Kosovo, Somalia, etc? Or do you mean we have no business meddling in other people's affairs unless it is something you, in particular, approve of? I know quite a few people who have an inte

Unfortunately, the money was already spent. No new Internet for you. Make do with your old tubes. Nothing to see here - the bridge goes to nowhere. Leave Senator Stevens alone. Sorry.

No prob.

Did you read Cringley's articles about ISPs? He mentioned how in Japan they offer 100Mb for $30/mo (in a land where rent is easily twice my mortgage and I couldn't afford to play golf!).

Although it's worth taking his writing with a grain of salt. Contends that the problems get fixed by changing (or forcing legal changes) for ISP pricing.

Check it out.

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_200 70810_002683.html

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_200 70810_002683.html

Its accurate:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/homefront/ interviews/klein.html

"They get paid $0.60 an hour (a lot in China), but they also get to live rent free, their food is subsidized, and they have free health care. They also get overtime pay and actually do get raises. I wouldn't mind that deal, if I were just starting out of high school and needed to work."

You're an idiot. I hope whoever modded you informative was joking around. If you really want to find out what working in china is like, take a look here:

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/chinablue/

Here's a piece: http://youtube.com/watch?v=P0yfNOkBClI

What is happening over in china makes me absolutely sick. It can be said that their cost of living is lower, so they don't need to be paid as much. I call bullshit. These people are treated like shit. And for what, so some company can sell $50.00 jeans and make a $49 profit?
The people who are making these decisions are assholes. Pure and simple. People can trot out all the "it's a free market" and "supply and demand" or maybe "we have to be competetive" or whatever bullshit they say. There is no justification for what is happening. None.

Actually it was this that began the attacks on the World Trade Center.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2704stock market.html

other symptoms of this bet include the dot com boom and bust, easy come winners had to put there money somewhere so why not into that which had no product or service... easy come easy go..

Other include Worldcom, Enron etc as loosers.

and there's a bunch more to the mess that the media has never put together for the public...
As they have been threatened with anthrax...to keep quite about it, though Ted Turner (CNN) publicly stated that the WTC fall was an act of desperation.... later changing his mind, probably after an anthrax letter....

So yeah.... treating symptoms, not the cause, not the disease.....

I think I've seen an episode of this. Intergoogling the tubes just now I couldn't find any info on it though. Is it perhaps called "China from the Inside"? It ran as a four-part documentary on PBS. I saw the first episode, about how the Communist Party controls people even in remote areas. Didn't know it was a series.

This is true on the most primitive level. However, for a significant number of people "eating correctly" will mean a 1000 calorie-a-day diet of pure protein and in addition to not being obese they will be constantly hungry and lethargic, lose muscle mass and suffer from various diseases associated with malnutrition. They really need medication as well as medically designed diet/exercise program to take care of those genes and hormones.

Yes, 90% of fat people just need to lay off McDonald and other heavily processed food and throw away TVs.

uh, no. you've been given horrible, life ending dietary advice. the truth is a pure protein diet is sure to eventually kill you. you need to add essential fatty acids to your diet or you will DIE. your body is unable to create these fatty acids on its own, hence, the term "essential."

by far the best diet out there for the majority of people (i hesitate to say all people - biology is complex with significant variation) is a moderate diet that provides ample lean protein for one's lean body mass (no more, no less), provides moderate carbohydrate (sugar) to feed the brain and keep one's insulin response in a tight zone (to keep the brain fed for up to 5 hours)and provides essential fatty acids in the form of primarily mono-unsaturated fat.

i'm on this diet with the following typical results:

1. my energy level has skyrocketed - i'm working out 5+ times a week instead of the zero times a week on my prior "whatever" eating plan.
2. i feel great. my worst day on this moderate diet is significantly better than my best day on my prior diet.
3. i'm losing a pound of pure fat every week - i'm down 11.5 lbs total in 12 weeks.
4. i'm gaining muscle and getting significantly stronger. for every lb of muscle gained, i must've lost some fat or water weight to be down net 11.5 lbs.
5. my cardio has *dramatically* improved from exhaustion after 10 minutes on the elyptical to churning out 50 minutes last night with energy to spare.
6. i'm over 40 years old and i'm about 6 lbs of fat from a well defined 6 pack - something i worked hard to achieve as a teenager and *failed* because my diet wouldn't allow it (i didn't know this at the time). my stomach is flat now and my 4 pack is peeking through, but it isn't well defined yet.
7. my muscles are becoming much more defined - i am seeing muscle ridges in my calves i've never seen before in my life.
8. i didn't get the typical soreness after lifting weights to exhaustion - even though it was the first time i've lifted weights in 20 years. my body doesn't over produce lactic acid which causes that typical soreness feeling.
9. i'm not hungry on this diet. I'm not deprived on this moderate diet.
10. my blood work is excellent.
11.

these results are typical.

Robin was part of a PBS study on diets:
http://www.pbs.org/saf/1401/features/robin.htm

"What I really like is how good you feel when you are "in the Zone". You are rarely hungry, and you just feel really, really good - it has a tremendous impact on your mood - unlike other diets I've been on."

mind you, she didn't even mention she lost 45 lbs (almost 20% of her prior total weight) in a mere six months. rather, she felt tremendously good - and that is what she liked even more than the missing 45 lbs (go to the gym and pick up a 45 lb weight plate - that is significant weight loss)!

The former heaviest man in the world lost over 400 lbs in a single year on the zone diet:
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=2799700&page =1

he has turned down a FREE, FREE, FREE gastric bypass surgery because he's comfortable the zone is good enough to drop another 550+ lbs.

very few things in life are too good to be true, yet still true. i wouldn't have believed that this diet would have such a profound e

The problem is that the ISP's are trying to control the users. We, in the first place, pay for our bandwidth. It has always been like this. And companies have always gotten away with killing users with higher bandwidth. Just like AT&T has gotten away with cancelling users with numerous+ call-ins (complaints).

The ISP's deserve none of the money that independent companies make because they are not a part of it. They're only purpose is to PROVIDE BANDWIDTH FOR THE USER. This is not socialism. This is a capitalist country.

And it's not that they can't deliver it. They're greedy. You can get more than double what we get here, for half of what we pay here. So your "they can't deliver" objection/statement/rebuttal/opinion is VOID. They were given 200 billion dollars (the US) to invest in the new, next wave of internet technology (fiber networks).

Look here:
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_200 70810_002683.html

"Even personal reproductive history will be included, for enforcement of China's controversial "one child" policy."

This is creepy. In that documentary called China Blue, it was stated by one of the factory owners that most of it's workforce is ignorant and too stupid to think for themselves. They really regard people there as illiterate simpletons. I don't know how well educated the population is, but it's a pretty crappy attitude and kind of epitomizes the human rights problems in China.

I wonder how long the chinese people will put up with this. I wonder how long the rest of the world will put up with it when it comes comes to their back yard under the guise of "Think of the Children" or "War on Terror"