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Hugo Elias
Chris Hecker
Jeff Lander

Henry

In the UK, the electoral register is a public document which is compiled by the local authority every year around this time. (The final version is supposed to be published on November 1st).

Anyone can inspect the electoral register, and copies are available (for a fee) for any company wanting it, in machine readable form, so that they can, for instance, check you are not giving them dud details on a credit application. It contains your full name, house address, and also date of birth for persons between 16 and 18 years of age.

As your date of birth is one of the standard security questions asked by credit card companies when calling in to their telephone service lines, that strikes me as a security risk.

Each voter gets a number in the register, such as J 4572. This is printed on your poll card which you take to the polling station to cast your vote (you don't need it, they have printed copies of the register there, and can look up your voter number there).

Most people assume that elections are private matters between the voters and the ballot box. The totals are obviously public information, but can you tell how a particular person voted?

The answer in most cases is no, however the polling station staff write on their register the number of the ballot paper you are given, which means it is, in theory atleast, possible to trace who voted for which candidate.

At this time it isn't a crime to vote for any candidate, and anyone who has sufficient support and pays their election deposit can be a candidate, hence the number of crazy candidates from parties such as The Official Monster Raving Loony Party and other less than serious candidates.

Kind of makes you wish there was an official monster raving loony running for the US presidency eh? [They are both fully paid up members - Ed]

""Just wanted to drop my 2 cents in and say that maybe those who are thinking of sitting out the election should vote Nader," e-mailed Wade."If enough people vote for another party, maybe, just maybe, someone might take notice, and in the next election things could be different"

Yes, they might just take enough notice to add some of his ideas to their future election manifestos. Great idea that.

Personally I think that American politics could do with a real national alternative... Britain's Monster Raving Loony Party springs to mind as a starting place. It's interesting how some of their ideas have actually been adopted in some form by the major parties. And... that they've had a couple of people voted into local government. Refreshing!

British politics is much more interesting to watch... The parties actually hate each other, and preach nailing members of the other parties to the wall with industrial bolters.

It also helps that we're the only country in the world without proportional representation of some kind but with a strong third party IIRC. This means that there's somewhat less of the polarisation that America suffers from.

That, and they had Screaming Lord Sooch (sp?), head of the Monster Raving Loony Party. Now, that was fun to watch.

Good old Screaming Lord Sutch. His manifesto was that he'd call another general election the day after he got into power :) He was actually a very smart guy though, he managed to predict a lot of policy some 20 years before it was actually introduced, but he was ignored at the time for being too "radical". Well, he was, but he was right a lot of the time.

For the official homepage of the OMRLP, see here. Worth a look :)

The engine was the Dynajet, which hasn't been manufactured for a long time. Some pictures of pulse jet powered model airplanes can be found here, including some using the Dynajet.

Regardless of incentive, it's obvious that current copyright laws are not resulting in good maintence of media.

Even at 100% efficiency, according to my calculations, you would need 62.5 million joules of energy per kilogram to reach Space from Earth. That's equivalent, per pound, to taking something that weighs a million pounds and lifting it twenty feet! And it's clear that perfect efficiency can never be reached, in fact, due to entropy, we won't even get close.

But perhaps a society of (probably necessarily genetically engineerd) people could exist in space permanently - always in space stations, and on (or in) asteroids and small moons. If fusion and He-3 ever become a reality, then such a society could live of the minerals in space debree, with the energy from fusion.

For those that are interested, Scientific American had a set of articles concerning new/alternative methods of space propulsion, also mentioning light sails.

While I'm at it, you might want to check out a fantastic (recreational) sf novel - The Reality Dysfunction by Peter F. Hamilton - any sf fan must read this (I think...:-) )!

Quotes are for those that don't know what to say... ;-)

--EMN

Even at 100% efficiency, according to my calculations, you would need 62.5 million joules of energy per kilogram to reach Space from Earth. That's equivalent, per pound, to taking something that weighs a million pounds and lifting it twenty feet! And it's clear that perfect efficiency can never be reached, in fact, due to entropy, we won't even get close.

But perhaps a society of (probably necessarily genetically engineerd) people could exist in space permanently - always in space stations, and on (or in) asteroids and small moons. If fusion and He-3 ever become a reality, then such a society could live of the minerals in space debree, with the energy from fusion.

For those that are interested, Scientific American had a set of articles concerning new/alternative methods of space propulsion, also mentioning light sails.

While I'm at it, you might want to check out a fantastic (recreational) sf novel - The Reality Dysfunction by Peter F. Hamilton - any sf fan must read this (I think...:-) )!

Quotes are for those that don't know what to say... ;-)

--EMN

We want to know how stable your chosen platform is!

OK. So "Sealand" is the former Roughs Tower naval fort off the Essex coast. This structure was erected in 1942 (and hey, let's slashdot someone: picture of this at http://freespace.virgin .net/line.design/forts/sea_forts.htm) and was not intended to be permanent. Tongue Sands Tower, a similar structure recently broke up and partially sank.

Some History:In the late sixties Roy Bates and his family occupied one of the forts and declared himself a soverign nation. This was upheld in British Court and the long bizarre history began. The tiny nation was attacked and captured by a German businessman and friends for several weeks until Roy could put a crew together to retake it by rappeling from helicopters. (There were no known fatalities from these actions.) Here are some fun links to learn more:

• The New York Times Article that started it all.
• What appears to be the official webisite:http://www.sealandgov.com/index.html
• The HavenCo homepage: http://www.havenco.com/
• A very nice article about the off-shore radio stations in England during the 1960's. http://fre\espace.virg in.net/line.design/forts/radioforts.htm. This includes a nice picture of the fort being installed: http://freespace.virgin .net/line.design/forts/sea_forts.htm.
• Some publicity shots of Sealand from their old (archived) website. http://www.fruitsofthese a.demon.co.uk/sealand/gallery.html.
• A Guardian Article about Sealand.
• A Sunday Telegraph Article.
• Dorothy Lerda at The National Geographic answers a question about Sealand. (Notice that she has what is likely to be the web address of the imposters responsible for selling passports.)
• A brief history of the forts with pictures and diagrams.

Some History:In the late sixties Roy Bates and his family occupied one of the forts and declared himself a soverign nation. This was upheld in British Court and the long bizarre history began. The tiny nation was attacked and captured by a German businessman and friends for several weeks until Roy could put a crew together to retake it by rappeling from helicopters. (There were no known fatalities from these actions.) Here are some fun links to learn more:

• The New York Times Article that started it all.
• What appears to be the official webisite:http://www.sealandgov.com/index.html
• The HavenCo homepage: http://www.havenco.com/
• A very nice article about the off-shore radio stations in England during the 1960's. http://fre\espace.virg in.net/line.design/forts/radioforts.htm. This includes a nice picture of the fort being installed: http://freespace.virgin .net/line.design/forts/sea_forts.htm.
• Some publicity shots of Sealand from their old (archived) website. http://www.fruitsofthese a.demon.co.uk/sealand/gallery.html.
• A Guardian Article about Sealand.
• A Sunday Telegraph Article.
• Dorothy Lerda at The National Geographic answers a question about Sealand. (Notice that she has what is likely to be the web address of the imposters responsible for selling passports.)
• A brief history of the forts with pictures and diagrams.

"...an oil-rig type structure in the sea". Pretty much. It's a "Maunsell fort", which is one of these. I'd be surprised if a mighty fleet were required to take it. There's more about sea forts here, and about unrecognised little island states, if you're interested.

Don't know about all of their bills but I think Virgin use a Google search engine on their home page. They paid for this but it's not branded as Google - just the technology underneath.

Screaming Lord Sutch recently passed away. I hope his message of liberation did not die with him.

Fancy, reading "Fanny Hill" on the radio to North Sea fishermen. And according to the headlines he made the Navy back off. So they pass another law to make all this illegal? What else is new?

I swear, that's right out of the Bastard Operator from Hell.


--

How much of the purchase price of a new CD do you think the artist gets? And how much goes to the record company and the various middle-men?

Not nearly enough. Something like 40-50 cents... I am acutely aware of this because nearly all of my favorite bands have been royally screwed by their record companies in the past few years. If you get bored, look up what EMI records did to Marillion just in time for their 1997 US tour...

But realize I am not defending the middlemen. I am defending my ability to have the kind of music I like, made and produced by the few people who can do it. I have demanding musical tastes; perhaps a hundred virtuoso musicians in the entire world meet my rigorous standards. But since I take music so seriously, since my musical collection makes such a significant contribution to my happiness, a lot would be missing from my life if John Petrucci had not bothered to learn to play the guitar. Even if he had, I would never have heard him if 'Pull Me Under' wasn't played on KSHE-95; and I am sure that KSHE would not have played them if they hadn't recieved a free cd from the record company.

Still, I realize that the RIAA is an evil organization. My fiance' was a radio DJ for (several) Colorado rock stations, and tells stories about being forced to play only songs on the official playlists; simply an example of the RIAA misusing its powers to crush non-member recording groups by not allowing them airtime. I remember one particular instance she was literally forced to recite a list of good things about the new Green Day single, even though she hated it, so that it would sell well. If she didn't, the record company would have refused to pay "maintenance fees" to the station, and she would have lost her job. Any organization that would cause Green Day and the Spice Girls to become cultural icons obviously has serious issues.

Because I enjoy music that is not exactly popular in this country, I usually have to order CD's directly from bands I find in obscure clubs by word of mouth. If I get really lucky, CDNOW will help me. I hate this! I hate walking down the aisles at Best Buy and finding nothing of enough merit to pay for. But killing copyright laws won't solve that; instead of being filled with crap, the shelves would become empty. Or, more likely, RIAA would find starving musicians of mediocre talent and use their music anyway, thereby achieving the same dominance as today except royalty-free.

In a perfect world, every penny I spend to get my latest fix would go straight to the musicians. People who made good music would be rich then whether they sold 50,000 copies or 6 million copies... but the solution articulated in the article is comparable to industrial murder, regardless of what 'philosophical' viewpoint you take. You have to be very naive to believe that people who are forced to work day jobs because they give away their music, will make the same quality music as people who are allowed to concentrate on their art by copyrighting it, selling it and becoming as wealthy as possible.

Scudder

PS. good web page Greg- you might want to check out The Gathering, a Dutch prog metal band. Their female lead vocalist is tremendous, with strong, ethereal vocals, and the band itself is reminiscent of Rush/Yes... very powerful and deft guitar work. Start with Nighttime Birds or Mandylion.

And to the fifty people who replied to tell me that eternal copyright laws were bad: notice I never said that. My post was simply directed at the particular section of the article that discussed "giving back to society". Directed at what looked to me like a blatant appeal to get something for nothing...

work has sucked for some but not all ppl's for some time.
this is why