Naw, its more like being sick of Linux gurus telling me _I'm_ stupid for wanting everything my own way. Well... that's how commerce works. Gotta satisfy the customer.
I'll never run Linux 'cuz it'll never be a matter of firing up the computer, placing my chosen software distribution in the CD reader, and installing it, 'cuz my chosen software is going to be written for Windows while the Linux-think is always gonna be, "Use this instead, its just as good," but it isn't. OpenOffice just as good as Microsoft Office? Well... then why does this statement always get followed by a disclaimer that all those functions the Microsoft has that OpenOffice doesn't, you wouldn't be using anyway. Oh yeah? How the heck do they know? I got into some pretty hinky stuff when writing the general and route instructions for a National rally 14 years ago, on the OLD Microsoft Office, and if some of those features are missing, then I couldn't do now what I was doing then. Well... that would suck. Lemme know when OpenOffice can match Microsoft Office, feature for feature, AND can accept my old documents from Microsoft Offics since I usually use them for a jumping off point for the next iteration - maybe a new rally.
There's a website that I (finally) found that claims that getting Call of Duty 4 to run on Linux under WINE is no harder than any other game - not sure that's a testament because I don't know how hard the other games are to get running, but then it goes on to say that if someone could get Punkbuster to work there could be a lot more games that work under WINE. That's 2 hassles in one - no Punkbuster, and a phalanx of games that don't run in online multiplayer in Linux under WINE because of it.
And _still_ nobody has gotten Eudora to work on Linux, at least not at any website I have found. The stated reason that Qualcomm didn't port it to Linux was that they perceived that Linux users expect their software for free, which is ANOTHER thing I dsagree with. If a person wants something of value to him, he should be willing to pay for it, while those that spend some significant chunk of their lives creating it, whether its a bridge or a simulation of one, deserves to be paid for their efforts. That includes artists, such as musicians, which is why I believe that downloading copyrited music for free is stealing. No, I don't care how many people agree about that... it is an absolute truth.
Its funny that any Linux discussion is always characterized by Linux gurus assuring me I don't "need" this or that.
Clue: It ain't about "need", its about "want." I _want_ to be able to run 1 operating system without having to fiddle with something called VMware, and I _want_ to be able to run Photoshop and I _want_ to be able to run games on a PC and not (buy) a console for gaming and I _want_ to be able to run Eudora and no, there is NO substitute for Microsoft Office with its VBA capability, and I just _want_ to do what I can do now in XP.
From everything I read about it, Vista sucks, so I'll try to keep myself satisfied with XP on my home computer here for another couple years 'til the Vista successor comes out - maybe it'll be better. If not, then maybe I have to replace this computer eventually with something I don't _want_, but it still won't be Linux.
You seem more interested in inflicting financial pain upon "rich" people than in boosting American industry and attenuating the advantages enjoyed by foreign industry. Promoting us and putting them at a lesser advantage is what a lot of this idea is all about.
As for labor costs going up, where do you get that? According to my pay stub, without the income tax, my take-home pay per month would go up $1080.84, the amount of my witholding. There's your pay increase. That will easily handle any small increase that may occur after the prices of American goods go down - what? - 20%, and then get taxed at, say, 28%. Under that scenario, American products go up in price 2.4%, and foreign stuff goes up 28%. Meanwhile, my personal take-home just increased more than 25%. Gonna buy a Ford or a Toyota next time? If you get a Toyota, it'll probably be because it was built in the USA...
As for rich people, every bizjet, yacht, and Ferrari would contribute handsomely to govt. revenue. And, of course, American citizens going abroad and bringing back stuff would have to pay a "duty" of... say 28%? So much for buying that Merceedes in Germany and getting around the sales tax.
But no, this is not a mechansim to declare people that make a lot of money to be evil and so punish them. This is a system for people to make a lot of money and enjoy it.
Yes, sales tax works differently. I'm going to have to have someone explain, tho, how tracking all business income and the incomes of maybe 200 million American workers and taxing it all is somehow cheaper than simply tracking the sales of just those same businesses.
I never meant to imply that the sales tax would eliminate the need for some government tax collectors. I just meant that the great expense to all that activity to track corporate and individual income tax would be saved - the phalanx of tax lawyers that each corporation has, all the CPAs that work 16 hours a day in April to do taxes, and the millions of people buying TurboTax and TaxCut would all save a lot of money. Of course, it should take a lot _less_ government guys to keep track of just sales tax than it does to keep track of all that income of all those extra people, too.
Regressive effects on the poor can be handled by not taxing the necessities of life - food/water, housing/rent, doctors/medicine.
Sure the price of American goods go down. This country has the 2nd highest corporate tax on the planet. That goes away, and the price of everything we build goes down - a lot. And then I said that the stuff would be (sales) taxed back up to what it was. The bid difference is that the foriegn stuff gets taxed up way more than it used to be. What a great way to say, "Buy American." Plus, the workers have all that extra money to pay for (American) stuff with...
Cheating? How do you hide the disappearance from the inventory of $30,000 worth of SUV? What happened - did the dealer give it away??? C'mon...
something to complain about, and act like we want US companies to be successful.
1) Completely eliminate the income tax, and, just to be clear, that means the corporate income tax, too.
2) Institute a National sales tax to run the country with.
In addition to the cessation of wasting all that money to collect the income tax, all American goods reduce in price dramatically from not having to pay income tax.
Imported goods stay the same price, since they weren't paying American income tax in all those Chinese and Korean factories anyway.
Then American goods get taxed back up to about what they were, while foreign goods increase maybe 23 - 28% or so.
Wonder if the WTO would have a hemmorhage, and what they could do about it.
I remember distinctly being in the Canal Zone with the US Air Force and getting all my LP's for $2.49 - $3.50 or so each mail order thru Record Club of America. In 1971. When gas was about $0.389 a gallon.
Now gas is about $3.299 a gallon. Proportionally, a 1971 record at $2.49 would be over $21 now, and there were fewer songs on an LP than there are on a CD.
Now, those were some darn good songs - Led Zep, CCR, etc. but... aren't CD's really a bargain at $16 now?
that it sucks to be an engineering student is the lack of a good future.
With people like the Beltway Boys on Fox News advocating completely lifting H1B visa restrictions, so that those that would have otherwise been your employers can hire Indians, Russians, and the like for 2/3rds what you'd have otherwise been able to demand, you're out on a limb for a decent life later on, unless you want to live 5 single guys to a house, like the H1B's do, and share expenses in order to have a fun amount of discretionary income.
I hate command lines. Command lines mean I have to remember command names and 47 different switches for each one. Can't even do that in DOS.
Tinkering is NOT fun. The computer's a tool. I just want it to work, do what I want, and don't want to have to * with it any more than I want to have to gap the plugs in my car before I start it.
There's an alternative - its called buying the DVD. There's no need to be downloading movies or even music. They're all available in stores and by mail order.
Enjoy being a criminal much?
By your logic, its OK to sneak into movie theaters, concerts, sporting events, etc. because it doesn't deprive anyone of anything material, but simply keeps those that produced the entertainment from getting paid for it. Great philosophy there, bucko.
Hey, maybe this will throttle the illegal downloading of movies over the internet. Would that it could be applied also to illegally downloaded music files. $10 a pop for illegally downloaded movies or songs would be a great thing.
STEALING is acquiring something that doesn't belong to you without the owner's permission. I actually fear for the future of the country because so many people do not know right from wrong any more.
People living off Caribou meat can jolly well change their diet so the rest of us, AND them, can get out from under the shadow of the middle eastern terrorists who want to destroy us.
How ridiculous is it that some people must be allowed to "live off the land" rather than getting into a 21st century economy and buying their food like everybody else? People have had to change how they live for centuries, and now its their turn.
I see it as more posible because nukes are existent, stealable or illicitly purchasable things now. Plus, there's an army of starving Russian nuke experts that are for hire to lesser-developed countries that are wanting nukes and hating the US.
No, I think there won't be a civil war, I think that the credible threat of one would keep the goverment in line so there wouldn't need to be one. As long as we have 250 million guns, and some decent number of patriots that would oppose totalitarianism, the country can be brought back to a constitutional form of government if it strays in a major way. I think that the knowledge of that would prevent the government from doing things that would bring about such a civil war.
I would say that the war on drugs has done far more damage to the constitution than has the war on terror.
I see the rampant fear of the government getting some sort of despotic control out of effort to protect the country to be more far-fetched than my fear of a nuke on Wall Street.
As for what makes the USA more immune to the idea of the government getting total control, I believe it is the 2nd amendment and the presence of over 250 million guns in American society. Yes, most gun owners won't get involved, but that simply clears the way for the few million that will. A government cannot defeat its own people when they are determined and they are armed.
Also, I have to wonder what will happen if a nuke does go off in downtown Manhattan. What will the reaction be? I think it will be a huge outcry of, "Why didn't the government protect us?" Well, it will be because every good idea that is ever proposed is slashed with the idea that it is somehow going to enslave us all. No, we are supposed to fight a totally defensive war (because nobody really wants to go and kill the bastards where they are, as seen by the whining about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan) but do so while blind and deaf, because to let the government watch or listen will surely enslave us all.
We're gonna screw around and lose this war yet. I think we ought to start acting like we're playing for keeps. The enemy definitely is.
All we would really have to do is make the law say that the government is not allowed to know the owner of the phone that is transmitting the data which they are receiving.
So, they know that phone serial number 12345678 has a usual itenerary of commuting from point A to point B in the morning between the hours of 8:20 and 9:00 AM, and the usual radiation receptions come from innocuous sources at these latitidues and longitudes.
Now, a new source not seen before could be coordinated to see if it is moving, how fast, and where it came from and what direction it's heading.
People are creatures of habit, so the speculation of a tritium watch carried on the sidewalk would likely keep reappearing at certain times traveling at the same speeds, etc. and, after pattern recognition software sorts this out, would be known to be innocuous also.
It would be a signficant software challenge, but reading all these sensors, knowing where the usual sources of innocuous radiation is, and thus being able to recognize a not-so-innocuous, never seen before source of radiation traveling at truck speeds on a major highway, for instance, should not be impossible. It might even be cheap if the SETI-At-Home approach to processing power were used.
The threat can be seen to be possible. While the liklihood of success for the enemy is low, the consequences of failure on our part are so horrific that I think this action is justifiable. I wouldn't necessarily be for it if we were just talking about a bio attack that might wipe out a few hundred thousand people, but a nuke in Manhattan on a Monday morning could see millions of people dead AND a really, really important set of infrastucture destroyed as well.
It is amazing, almost as if it was illegal to not oppose every new idea. Folks, this is a great step toward self-defense against the absolute worst sort of terrorism. Would it cost something? Sure. Is it worth paying for? Damned straight.
We have to start thinking like we're a society under attack, because we are. Just because the bastards haven't been able to mount a serious threat within the US borders since 9/11 doesn't mean they wouldn't like to. Its probably just a matter of time until these yahoos do get their hands on a nuke. This would be just the thing to stop them in their tracks.
Casting a ubiquitous network of cell phones throughout the land that can detect nuclear material on the move would be an extremely good thing. If it can be done for maybe $25 - $50 per cell, so much the better. Try imagining the alternative, such as maybe your own neigborhood looking like the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki all the way out to the horizon. If not your own neigborhood, how about your friend's neighborhood, or your relatives neigborhood? Is that OK? I say it is not.
I'm sitting in Kuwait on the way out of Iraq after working a science and tech advisor job to the US military in counter-IED work. Take my word, the enemy is smart, capable, and desireous of wiping us off the face of the earth if they can. They take the most innocuous materials and figure out ways to kill you with it. If they get their hands on a nuke, and we don't have proper countermeasures, a whale of a lot of Americans will die, and if not you, at least several people you know and some you care about.
Go ahead and whine about a few bucks extra for an unneeded device such as a cell phone. Cell phones are a luxury. Can't afford an extra $25 - $50 to keep America safe? Do without a cell then. I'm 60 years old and lived without cell phones for 50 years so I know it can be done. This only takes money from the monied, and is no burden on the poor. You couldn't want a better financing model.
Something is intrinsically wrong when it can be shown that innocent people get hurt as a result of the actions of another.
If someone is performing actions that hurt some innocent party, then they are wrong to perform those actions.
Stealing music, such that those people who spent a part of their lives creating and distributing it do not receive compensation for their efforts, then those people are being hurt. They are, as it turns out, innocent of any wrondoing.
Therefore, those people that are downloading music without compensating those people that created the music and promoted the music and distributed the music through legal channels are absolutely, positively, as a matter of absolute, "no relative morality applies" WRONG.
What the future holds is less people willing to produce music for the rest of us to enjoy. Better get happy with your old copies of the Beatles and Led Zep, 'cuz there's not going to be that sort of effort put forth by people working like slaves (the Beatles were some of the most hardworking musicians in history - and it shows) to bring us memorable music.
Yeah, OK, I can take my $300 / mo electric bill down to $200 a month, or even $150 a month, but that's not the same as _producing_ electricity. Saving electricity is great, but producing it, especially with tech that involves nothing coming from the middle east, and prefereably nothing even having to cross a US border unless its an export, would be far preferable.
Yes - family, exercise, and a plethora of things to know means that you would have to be studying 24/7/365 to learn C++ and Java and Python and SQL and Perl and HTML and (etc.... ad nauseum).
Its impossible to learn it all on the possibility of getting hired for knowing 1 or 2 of those things. You need to get hired, and _then_ you know what to study.
"I was dumbfounded many years ago when a coworker (fortunately on a different team) was hoping to be assigned to a particular project because he wanted to learn C++, the language that was to be used. He thought I was crazy when I suggested he get a compiler and learn the language on his own rather than wait for such an event."
Yep - sit in a cube and program all day, then come home and do the same thing. I got this line from someone interviewing me for a job just last spring. He said that's what he does. He weighed about 300 lbs.
When I get home, I'm here for maybe a couple hours, then its off to the gym. No gym, while sitting around all day keyboarding, I get to look like the Goodyear blimp. (It doesn't help that the gym is an hour's round trip, but I work at a defense job where they blow things up periodically, and fire big guns, so of course it's waaaaay out in the boonies of Virginia, and I'm halfway between work and the city / gym. Sucky situation, but not very curable.)
It doesn't take all that long to learn the alphabet in code, and you could also learn some radio prosigns or not, as required. What takes a while is getting faster at it. But with nothing much else to do, it might be just the thing, and sending is a lot easier to learn than receiving.
Sign language is great if you have a lot of hand mobility. If you don't, then running a morse key, or especially a set of dash and dot paddles connected to an electronic keyer, only requires the slightest of movements.
Yes, the code can be done with the feeblest of movements if you set a bencher paddle at her fingers. Learning the code isn't that hard, especially sending it. Receiving it would probably be best done with a computer, or whoever wants to hear what she's talking about _is_ in for a learning experience, which _is_ pretty darn time consuming. And of course she has to want to do it.
Not common sense. Sure you get to save a little gas, but the price is that you make a continuous task for yourself that increases your stress. IOW, you have to pay attention all that time while coasting, and hope everyone else pays attention to you too. You also have to hope that the person that is waiting for you to roll by so that they can get out of a sideroad pays attention, and doesn't feel like shooting you for the delay you're causing them.
Much better to get to the light and stop, and accept that 30 seconds of down time that takes the pressure off you. Additionally, any accident that happens while you're stopped is rarely your fault, but something that goes wrong while you're coasting may be blamed on you whether you did anything wrong or not.
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Naw, its more like being sick of Linux gurus telling me _I'm_ stupid for wanting everything my own way. Well... that's how commerce works. Gotta satisfy the customer. I'll never run Linux 'cuz it'll never be a matter of firing up the computer, placing my chosen software distribution in the CD reader, and installing it, 'cuz my chosen software is going to be written for Windows while the Linux-think is always gonna be, "Use this instead, its just as good," but it isn't. OpenOffice just as good as Microsoft Office? Well... then why does this statement always get followed by a disclaimer that all those functions the Microsoft has that OpenOffice doesn't, you wouldn't be using anyway. Oh yeah? How the heck do they know? I got into some pretty hinky stuff when writing the general and route instructions for a National rally 14 years ago, on the OLD Microsoft Office, and if some of those features are missing, then I couldn't do now what I was doing then. Well... that would suck. Lemme know when OpenOffice can match Microsoft Office, feature for feature, AND can accept my old documents from Microsoft Offics since I usually use them for a jumping off point for the next iteration - maybe a new rally. There's a website that I (finally) found that claims that getting Call of Duty 4 to run on Linux under WINE is no harder than any other game - not sure that's a testament because I don't know how hard the other games are to get running, but then it goes on to say that if someone could get Punkbuster to work there could be a lot more games that work under WINE. That's 2 hassles in one - no Punkbuster, and a phalanx of games that don't run in online multiplayer in Linux under WINE because of it. And _still_ nobody has gotten Eudora to work on Linux, at least not at any website I have found. The stated reason that Qualcomm didn't port it to Linux was that they perceived that Linux users expect their software for free, which is ANOTHER thing I dsagree with. If a person wants something of value to him, he should be willing to pay for it, while those that spend some significant chunk of their lives creating it, whether its a bridge or a simulation of one, deserves to be paid for their efforts. That includes artists, such as musicians, which is why I believe that downloading copyrited music for free is stealing. No, I don't care how many people agree about that... it is an absolute truth.
Its funny that any Linux discussion is always characterized by Linux gurus assuring me I don't "need" this or that. Clue: It ain't about "need", its about "want." I _want_ to be able to run 1 operating system without having to fiddle with something called VMware, and I _want_ to be able to run Photoshop and I _want_ to be able to run games on a PC and not (buy) a console for gaming and I _want_ to be able to run Eudora and no, there is NO substitute for Microsoft Office with its VBA capability, and I just _want_ to do what I can do now in XP. From everything I read about it, Vista sucks, so I'll try to keep myself satisfied with XP on my home computer here for another couple years 'til the Vista successor comes out - maybe it'll be better. If not, then maybe I have to replace this computer eventually with something I don't _want_, but it still won't be Linux.
You seem more interested in inflicting financial pain upon "rich" people than in boosting American industry and attenuating the advantages enjoyed by foreign industry. Promoting us and putting them at a lesser advantage is what a lot of this idea is all about. As for labor costs going up, where do you get that? According to my pay stub, without the income tax, my take-home pay per month would go up $1080.84, the amount of my witholding. There's your pay increase. That will easily handle any small increase that may occur after the prices of American goods go down - what? - 20%, and then get taxed at, say, 28%. Under that scenario, American products go up in price 2.4%, and foreign stuff goes up 28%. Meanwhile, my personal take-home just increased more than 25%. Gonna buy a Ford or a Toyota next time? If you get a Toyota, it'll probably be because it was built in the USA... As for rich people, every bizjet, yacht, and Ferrari would contribute handsomely to govt. revenue. And, of course, American citizens going abroad and bringing back stuff would have to pay a "duty" of... say 28%? So much for buying that Merceedes in Germany and getting around the sales tax. But no, this is not a mechansim to declare people that make a lot of money to be evil and so punish them. This is a system for people to make a lot of money and enjoy it.
Yes, sales tax works differently. I'm going to have to have someone explain, tho, how tracking all business income and the incomes of maybe 200 million American workers and taxing it all is somehow cheaper than simply tracking the sales of just those same businesses. I never meant to imply that the sales tax would eliminate the need for some government tax collectors. I just meant that the great expense to all that activity to track corporate and individual income tax would be saved - the phalanx of tax lawyers that each corporation has, all the CPAs that work 16 hours a day in April to do taxes, and the millions of people buying TurboTax and TaxCut would all save a lot of money. Of course, it should take a lot _less_ government guys to keep track of just sales tax than it does to keep track of all that income of all those extra people, too.
Regressive effects on the poor can be handled by not taxing the necessities of life - food/water, housing/rent, doctors/medicine. Sure the price of American goods go down. This country has the 2nd highest corporate tax on the planet. That goes away, and the price of everything we build goes down - a lot. And then I said that the stuff would be (sales) taxed back up to what it was. The bid difference is that the foriegn stuff gets taxed up way more than it used to be. What a great way to say, "Buy American." Plus, the workers have all that extra money to pay for (American) stuff with... Cheating? How do you hide the disappearance from the inventory of $30,000 worth of SUV? What happened - did the dealer give it away??? C'mon...
something to complain about, and act like we want US companies to be successful. 1) Completely eliminate the income tax, and, just to be clear, that means the corporate income tax, too. 2) Institute a National sales tax to run the country with. In addition to the cessation of wasting all that money to collect the income tax, all American goods reduce in price dramatically from not having to pay income tax. Imported goods stay the same price, since they weren't paying American income tax in all those Chinese and Korean factories anyway. Then American goods get taxed back up to about what they were, while foreign goods increase maybe 23 - 28% or so. Wonder if the WTO would have a hemmorhage, and what they could do about it.
I remember distinctly being in the Canal Zone with the US Air Force and getting all my LP's for $2.49 - $3.50 or so each mail order thru Record Club of America. In 1971. When gas was about $0.389 a gallon. Now gas is about $3.299 a gallon. Proportionally, a 1971 record at $2.49 would be over $21 now, and there were fewer songs on an LP than there are on a CD. Now, those were some darn good songs - Led Zep, CCR, etc. but... aren't CD's really a bargain at $16 now?
that it sucks to be an engineering student is the lack of a good future. With people like the Beltway Boys on Fox News advocating completely lifting H1B visa restrictions, so that those that would have otherwise been your employers can hire Indians, Russians, and the like for 2/3rds what you'd have otherwise been able to demand, you're out on a limb for a decent life later on, unless you want to live 5 single guys to a house, like the H1B's do, and share expenses in order to have a fun amount of discretionary income.
Because...
I hate command lines. Command lines mean I have to remember command names and 47 different switches for each one. Can't even do that in DOS.
Tinkering is NOT fun. The computer's a tool. I just want it to work, do what I want, and don't want to have to * with it any more than I want to have to gap the plugs in my car before I start it.
I want to use Eudora.
There's an alternative - its called buying the DVD. There's no need to be downloading movies or even music. They're all available in stores and by mail order.
Enjoy being a criminal much? By your logic, its OK to sneak into movie theaters, concerts, sporting events, etc. because it doesn't deprive anyone of anything material, but simply keeps those that produced the entertainment from getting paid for it. Great philosophy there, bucko.
Hey, maybe this will throttle the illegal downloading of movies over the internet. Would that it could be applied also to illegally downloaded music files. $10 a pop for illegally downloaded movies or songs would be a great thing.
STEALING is acquiring something that doesn't belong to you without the owner's permission. I actually fear for the future of the country because so many people do not know right from wrong any more.
People living off Caribou meat can jolly well change their diet so the rest of us, AND them, can get out from under the shadow of the middle eastern terrorists who want to destroy us. How ridiculous is it that some people must be allowed to "live off the land" rather than getting into a 21st century economy and buying their food like everybody else? People have had to change how they live for centuries, and now its their turn.
I see it as more posible because nukes are existent, stealable or illicitly purchasable things now. Plus, there's an army of starving Russian nuke experts that are for hire to lesser-developed countries that are wanting nukes and hating the US. No, I think there won't be a civil war, I think that the credible threat of one would keep the goverment in line so there wouldn't need to be one. As long as we have 250 million guns, and some decent number of patriots that would oppose totalitarianism, the country can be brought back to a constitutional form of government if it strays in a major way. I think that the knowledge of that would prevent the government from doing things that would bring about such a civil war.
I would say that the war on drugs has done far more damage to the constitution than has the war on terror. I see the rampant fear of the government getting some sort of despotic control out of effort to protect the country to be more far-fetched than my fear of a nuke on Wall Street. As for what makes the USA more immune to the idea of the government getting total control, I believe it is the 2nd amendment and the presence of over 250 million guns in American society. Yes, most gun owners won't get involved, but that simply clears the way for the few million that will. A government cannot defeat its own people when they are determined and they are armed.
Also, I have to wonder what will happen if a nuke does go off in downtown Manhattan. What will the reaction be? I think it will be a huge outcry of, "Why didn't the government protect us?" Well, it will be because every good idea that is ever proposed is slashed with the idea that it is somehow going to enslave us all. No, we are supposed to fight a totally defensive war (because nobody really wants to go and kill the bastards where they are, as seen by the whining about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan) but do so while blind and deaf, because to let the government watch or listen will surely enslave us all. We're gonna screw around and lose this war yet. I think we ought to start acting like we're playing for keeps. The enemy definitely is.
All we would really have to do is make the law say that the government is not allowed to know the owner of the phone that is transmitting the data which they are receiving. So, they know that phone serial number 12345678 has a usual itenerary of commuting from point A to point B in the morning between the hours of 8:20 and 9:00 AM, and the usual radiation receptions come from innocuous sources at these latitidues and longitudes. Now, a new source not seen before could be coordinated to see if it is moving, how fast, and where it came from and what direction it's heading. People are creatures of habit, so the speculation of a tritium watch carried on the sidewalk would likely keep reappearing at certain times traveling at the same speeds, etc. and, after pattern recognition software sorts this out, would be known to be innocuous also. It would be a signficant software challenge, but reading all these sensors, knowing where the usual sources of innocuous radiation is, and thus being able to recognize a not-so-innocuous, never seen before source of radiation traveling at truck speeds on a major highway, for instance, should not be impossible. It might even be cheap if the SETI-At-Home approach to processing power were used. The threat can be seen to be possible. While the liklihood of success for the enemy is low, the consequences of failure on our part are so horrific that I think this action is justifiable. I wouldn't necessarily be for it if we were just talking about a bio attack that might wipe out a few hundred thousand people, but a nuke in Manhattan on a Monday morning could see millions of people dead AND a really, really important set of infrastucture destroyed as well.
It is amazing, almost as if it was illegal to not oppose every new idea. Folks, this is a great step toward self-defense against the absolute worst sort of terrorism. Would it cost something? Sure. Is it worth paying for? Damned straight. We have to start thinking like we're a society under attack, because we are. Just because the bastards haven't been able to mount a serious threat within the US borders since 9/11 doesn't mean they wouldn't like to. Its probably just a matter of time until these yahoos do get their hands on a nuke. This would be just the thing to stop them in their tracks. Casting a ubiquitous network of cell phones throughout the land that can detect nuclear material on the move would be an extremely good thing. If it can be done for maybe $25 - $50 per cell, so much the better. Try imagining the alternative, such as maybe your own neigborhood looking like the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki all the way out to the horizon. If not your own neigborhood, how about your friend's neighborhood, or your relatives neigborhood? Is that OK? I say it is not. I'm sitting in Kuwait on the way out of Iraq after working a science and tech advisor job to the US military in counter-IED work. Take my word, the enemy is smart, capable, and desireous of wiping us off the face of the earth if they can. They take the most innocuous materials and figure out ways to kill you with it. If they get their hands on a nuke, and we don't have proper countermeasures, a whale of a lot of Americans will die, and if not you, at least several people you know and some you care about. Go ahead and whine about a few bucks extra for an unneeded device such as a cell phone. Cell phones are a luxury. Can't afford an extra $25 - $50 to keep America safe? Do without a cell then. I'm 60 years old and lived without cell phones for 50 years so I know it can be done. This only takes money from the monied, and is no burden on the poor. You couldn't want a better financing model.
Something is intrinsically wrong when it can be shown that innocent people get hurt as a result of the actions of another. If someone is performing actions that hurt some innocent party, then they are wrong to perform those actions. Stealing music, such that those people who spent a part of their lives creating and distributing it do not receive compensation for their efforts, then those people are being hurt. They are, as it turns out, innocent of any wrondoing. Therefore, those people that are downloading music without compensating those people that created the music and promoted the music and distributed the music through legal channels are absolutely, positively, as a matter of absolute, "no relative morality applies" WRONG. What the future holds is less people willing to produce music for the rest of us to enjoy. Better get happy with your old copies of the Beatles and Led Zep, 'cuz there's not going to be that sort of effort put forth by people working like slaves (the Beatles were some of the most hardworking musicians in history - and it shows) to bring us memorable music.
Yeah, OK, I can take my $300 / mo electric bill down to $200 a month, or even $150 a month, but that's not the same as _producing_ electricity. Saving electricity is great, but producing it, especially with tech that involves nothing coming from the middle east, and prefereably nothing even having to cross a US border unless its an export, would be far preferable.
Yes - family, exercise, and a plethora of things to know means that you would have to be studying 24/7/365 to learn C++ and Java and Python and SQL and Perl and HTML and (etc.... ad nauseum).
Its impossible to learn it all on the possibility of getting hired for knowing 1 or 2 of those things. You need to get hired, and _then_ you know what to study.
"I was dumbfounded many years ago when a coworker (fortunately on a different team) was hoping to be assigned to a particular project because he wanted to learn C++, the language that was to be used. He thought I was crazy when I suggested he get a compiler and learn the language on his own rather than wait for such an event." Yep - sit in a cube and program all day, then come home and do the same thing. I got this line from someone interviewing me for a job just last spring. He said that's what he does. He weighed about 300 lbs. When I get home, I'm here for maybe a couple hours, then its off to the gym. No gym, while sitting around all day keyboarding, I get to look like the Goodyear blimp. (It doesn't help that the gym is an hour's round trip, but I work at a defense job where they blow things up periodically, and fire big guns, so of course it's waaaaay out in the boonies of Virginia, and I'm halfway between work and the city / gym. Sucky situation, but not very curable.)
It doesn't take all that long to learn the alphabet in code, and you could also learn some radio prosigns or not, as required. What takes a while is getting faster at it. But with nothing much else to do, it might be just the thing, and sending is a lot easier to learn than receiving. Sign language is great if you have a lot of hand mobility. If you don't, then running a morse key, or especially a set of dash and dot paddles connected to an electronic keyer, only requires the slightest of movements.
Yes, the code can be done with the feeblest of movements if you set a bencher paddle at her fingers. Learning the code isn't that hard, especially sending it. Receiving it would probably be best done with a computer, or whoever wants to hear what she's talking about _is_ in for a learning experience, which _is_ pretty darn time consuming. And of course she has to want to do it.
Not common sense. Sure you get to save a little gas, but the price is that you make a continuous task for yourself that increases your stress. IOW, you have to pay attention all that time while coasting, and hope everyone else pays attention to you too. You also have to hope that the person that is waiting for you to roll by so that they can get out of a sideroad pays attention, and doesn't feel like shooting you for the delay you're causing them.
Much better to get to the light and stop, and accept that 30 seconds of down time that takes the pressure off you. Additionally, any accident that happens while you're stopped is rarely your fault, but something that goes wrong while you're coasting may be blamed on you whether you did anything wrong or not.