The BBC will obviously put up the argument that 'everyone speaks English and not everyone speaks French or German, hence their audience is bigger and thus the market is skewed'. And while their may be some truth in that, the British tax-payer will not pay a penny more or less if half Europe watches their shows, since the cost is in creating them, not in distributing.
If the BBC opened up all their content online and then instead of using geoblocking, used geotargetted ads, so in germany you could still watch it but it had german ads, i think they would come out ahead revenue wise.
The key problem with this vaccine is that it only reduces a child's chance of getting malaria by one-third.
What strain is it targetting? Is it possible that it's highy effective against one strain but not a different strain. If that's the case then a couple more targetted vaccines and you could have complete broad coverage.
Malaria in humans is caused by five different species of plasmodium parasites. That they could get a vaccination at all effective is wonderful and surprising.
5 is a very managable number. The yearly flu vaccine is, I believe, a mix of the top 3 strains from the previous year. Also, it looks like it might only be targetting one of the strains as it cut cases by only 1/3 so the other 2/3s might have been caused by a non-targetted strain.
Confusing butt-dialed with booty call would be like confusing ladies' man with ladyboy.
While in college, a friend of mine had rounded up a group of about a dozen or so guys to go to the local strip joint for "playgirl" night. They were about to head out when someone happened to point out that it was "playgirl" night not "playboy" night. I think it would have been more fun if they would have just kept quiet and let them go ahead and go.
Skype would become the world leader in calls if and when these bugs are worked out by them before another service leapfrogs them. This will be a wonderful technology to commonly use someday.
I agree that this has the potential to be awesome and skype is great for remote communication but they need a way to use it in person locally. If I'm having lunch with someone, we don't want to have to have 2 ipads and communicate over skype when we're sitting right next to each other.
They also neglect to mention that the more studied the pathway the more likely a cure will be found. Maybe the drug, used to reproduce the genetic effects of the drug, needs an antidote that will work as a cure for current sufferers. If I had one of these diseases I would welcome this news because before it really was hopeless for a cure to try to treat a dozen people.
Exactly. While they are trying to block a particular protein, it's very possible that they also figure out how to synthesize it. Or in the reverse case, while they are trying to sythesize it, they might figure out how to block it or they might even need to figure out how to block it in a mouse first so that they have a way to test if their drug is working. Before, with only a few dozen people on earth, noone on earth was even looking at that area so the chance of a cure was nil. This way the chance of a cure goes up exponentially. Not to mention that if you get a relationship with a scientist who is studying your disease that they will likely take a personal interest in your case and you're much more likely to get access to experimental procedures.
I find these kinds of replies often. However I always wonder: did your parents try and get you to learn how to code or was that something you did yourself? Perhaps the whole premise of "getting kids to code" is a faulty one. The kids that WANT to code will do so on their own. Many of us started coding and it's not like we had a massive amount of push to do it. It was fascinating, empowering, and an interesting challenge. Also there's the whole idea that parents are lame and their ideas of fun are lame. Perhaps we could just let kids do what we all did: discover the real magic behind computers on our own and THEN seek out guidance versus having it thrust at us like it's a job?
My point was not to try to push kids to code but give them a carrot so they want to code. I installed kodable on my ipad several years ago and just left it there for them to discover and they only recently took an interest in it. I also have scratch and a few other games installed that they dabble with but haven't really got in to. Many of the apps my kids like are things that let them create. Kids like to create and show you what they created. Programming is a great way to create but one issue I see today is that it is harder to create cool stuff in most programming apps today than it is to create cool stuff in other non-programming apps.
Growing up in the early 80s on an apple II, one of the things that helped me learn to code was that I could edit and modify existing code like Oregon Trail to cheat. It also helped that there was a limited amount of other things. We didn't have 24 hour kid cable channels so once I got bored then I needed something else to do. I see the same things in my kids. They love kodable on the ipad because it gives them a new character every time they completed a level. A similiar game cargobot they aren't interested in at all because it doesn't have any rewards. I also notice that when they are grounded from their playstation is when they immediately start reading more books, playing the piano more, exploring new apps on my ipad, going outside more, etc... Just like adults, kids are going to gravitate towards what is most enjoyable at the moment and unlike adults they have very little concept of delayed gratification so doing something for their future self is not on their radar. The best way to get kids to want to code is give them something they can do with it whether it is control a robot, create a webpage to show off to their friends, etc... When I was in school alot of kids knew basic javascript and html because that was the only way to have a geocity webpage. Facebook and the likes have allowed kids to have a presence on the web without any need to code. It's still possible to get kids interested in coding if you can show them "cool to them" stuff they can do with it.
This only holds true if the stand of living and the level of consumption per individual remains constant. It is easy to look around your house and see that that isn't the case. Today we have far more stuff then our parents ever did. Our houses have been getting bigger and there is a much more disposable attitude.
I'm also starting to see a lot more people going the other way with tiny homes, downsizing, the "sharing economy" and even nomadic living. If people in mass start deciding that they need less stuff then it might be problematic for all these factories churning out excess stuff.
Raising productivity makes goods cost less, which makes people buy more goods, which makes more jobs.
This might work for a while but certain segments of society are already getting to the "no more stuff" stage. You are starting to see alot of talk of tiny homes, downsizing, and even nomadic lifestyles. If people started consuming significantly less or just stopped consuming more and more and more then these more jobs would never appear. Luckily, the rest of the world has a lot of catchup to do and we'll probably all be dead one way or another before everyone on the planet owns 2 cars.
I don't completely agree that project needs to be widely used to pose a high risk. There are certain applications which are not installed on many machines, but which security is extremely critical for the internet in whole. Two very good examples would be Quagga & BIRD. You can find one of them from very large number of core network deployments. They may not always be the ones that pass actual traffic, but they might be the ones that receive routing tables and pass them to other routers after modifying them as they allow you to modify them to fit your needs better.
It depends on how you define "wide usage". If wide usage is defined as total number of servers then even something like DNS might not make the cut. On the other hand if it's defined as needed infrastructure where it either dominates its market or there is no other reasonable alternative then certain programs only used for backbones or ISPs would definitely make the cut.
especially since the law gives their parasitic load - the shareholders - control over their actions.
I'm not sure you know the definition of a parasite. A parasite can't survive without its host. The shareholders are the investors and can survive just fine without the company but the company wouldn't even exist without it's shareholders/investors. Calling the shareholders/investors parasites is like calling the leaves on a tree parasites. Without the leaves, the tree has no energy(money) and dies.
It's not a solved problem or they wouldn't be having all the robots fall down. And if it IS a solved problem then give every team a good robot to program (or a robot simulator if the physical robot is too expensive). The point is to solve one problem at a time. We know how to make cars, bulldozers, etc... Make the autonomous robot control one of those, don't try to add intelligence to untested and unreliable hardware, get the hardware working right first. If a human can't do that task via wire then you're asking a robot to basically be more intelligence than a person. I would say the same of most other AI projects that I see. If a human can't manually control the robot to fold towels in near real time then why should we expect an AI to be able to do it?
Walking is not one of the necessary things for robots to do.
Crawling more than suffices. In fact, having wheels is a feature, not a bug.
I would go one step further and at this point split the competition into two parts. Step 1 should be to have a remote controlled robot that can complete a series of complex tasks. At this point why should a robot have to be autonomous and work with degraded communication? The goal is to go into places like a nuclear meltdown where a human can't go. I see no reason why it can't be controlled remotely by a competent human. Get the platform down, get it working great, get it rock solid, then add the AI to a platform that already works great with a human controller. I see no reason to try to solve 2 separate complex problems at once. Just solving the first problem would benefit everyone greatly and make the 2nd problem much easier not to mention that mechanical engineering and AI programming are different domains with different experts and you could let the different experts work on what they are good at.
Yes, we expect Google to respond, but we expect Google to give us the results drawn from the whole web using their search algorithm, not just from Google+.
I think you're missing the point. The point is that if I don't like google's results then I will go elsewhere. If google stops showing me all the nearby restaurants then I stop trusting google and move on. People expect complete and accurate results and will quickly look elsewhere if a search engine stops providing this.
I don't think you understand what the study is about. It is not about sponsored and unsponsored. RTFA, or at least the abstract. Type "Where is the best burger near me" and you get google + results mapped, along with other hits using Google's algorithm. None of these results are sponsored. Google's algorithmic results, the study says (and this is true in my rudimentary testing), are NOT mapped. Consumers (and businesses) are hurt by this behavior.
If I ask GOOGLE where the best burger joint is then I expect GOOGLE to respond. Same as if I asked YELP where the best burger joint is then I expect YELP to respond. I don't see the problem here. I have an iphone and I many times have tried to ask siri questions and get a stupid response. I immediately switch and ask google. I have actually gotten to the point that although it is easier to ask siri a question I find myself taking the extra step to ask google first because google is much more likely to give me a good response to my query.
Rundown, overcrowded, with severely stripped-down course offerings.
They can use the resources of public libraries.
Sure, if they want to take a long bus ride to a nicer part of the city where the libraries have not been closed.
This might be the case in larger cities, but in most small to medium sized towns, this isn't the case. In the small town I grew up in of 15k and the town I live in now with 120k people, it's a single school district and the public library is downtown. The town I live in now, the public library is in the poorest part of town, so the poor actually have easier access to it than the middle class living on the outskirts of town. If walking 5 blocks to the library is too much work, my town also has a bookmobile that drives around and comes to you.
But back on topic, how is this facebook or google's problem? Facebook can't hire people that don't exist. If you want more diversity in tech then you need to start at college, highschool, or even grade school. Reprimanding facebook and google for not hiring a certain class of people when those people aren't applying because they don't have the qualifications is rediculous.
As much as I'd like to see drone operators exercise some responsibility, the system is completely broken if you can turn a state into a firestorm with a minor act of arson and some auto-loitering drones.
Step 1. Start fire Step 2. Set drone to loiter over areas with the most fire, at about 1500 feet Step 3. The world ends in fire.
If we cannot create firefighting craft which can tolerate drone strikes, then we're completely fucked, because any enemy can utterly destroy our country with nothing but a few container-loads of drones.
If we have the technology to shoot a mosquito out of the air with a laser then surely we have the ability to down a small drone.
Public votes on the issue never seem to mirror opinion polls, nowhere near.
The question is why do public votes not mirror opinion polls and which more accurately reflects reality? Are people lying to opinion polls or hiding their real opinion for some reason? Are the people who actually vote a different subset of the population than the ones being surveyed? Are there certain issues like drug use or sexual issues that have more distortion than say whether or not to build a new road?
To take my personal experience, although my facebook friends are a pretty even 50/50 split on gay marriage, I find that my friends who are supportive of gay marriage tend to post on facebook a lot more than my friends against gay marriage. Today for instance I see tons of posts saying how great it is while most of my friends who I know are against it are completely silent.
A constitutional amendment just isn't going to happen and they are just blowing air (the same thing they've been doing for the past few years fighting Obamacare when they know nothing they pass stands a chance of making it into law). They simply don't have enough public support; MAYBE they did 20 years ago but the public is now in favor of equal rights for gay people. It would be easier to elect a Republican president who could appoint a more conservative judge when one of the current liberal judges dies/retires and then get the Supreme Court to reverse its narrow 5-4 decision.
I agree that a constitutional amendment is probably not going to happen as I don't think they can get a 2/3 vote but there is still plenty of public support for a ban of gay marriage. Almost every time that there has been a public vote to legalize gay marriage in the general election, it has failed. Even in CA, when it was last voted on in 2008, a majority of people voted FOR banning gay marriage. If less than 7 years ago the majority of people in CA (a state generally considered more liberal) didn't even support gay marriage then there are still a lot of people against it even if they are too scared to speak out publicly. The court has voted in support of gay marriage a lot more often than the general population has.
Shooting lithium batteries in a dry forest does not seem like a good solution to the problem.
1) The forest is already on fire 2) I doubt a shotgun would cause it to explode 3) Even if it did, it would most likely extinguish itself before it reaches the ground 4) If a shotgun really is unreasonable then maybe something like foam, a net, and
electrical surge, or even just using a high powered stream of water would probably
work just as good.
Basically, treat it the same way you would treat any other unauthorized airplane with the exception that you know that it's unmanned so destroying it also becomes a legitimate option.
Most towns already have free internet access at the local libraries
But do they have sensible hours for both the local libraries and public transportation thereto and therefrom?
I'll use Fort Wayne, Indiana (pop. 200K), as an example. Citilink buses are closed at night, on Saturday evenings, and all day Sunday, and the "Flexlink" lines that go to the far west and north sides of town are additionally closed all day Saturday. Allen County Public Library is closed at night, on Friday and Saturday evenings, and on Sundays during the summer. Branches other than downtown are additionally closed Sundays all year, Saturdays during the summer, and on Thursday evenings. This effectively leaves Monday through Wednesday for the working poor.
While I won't argue with this or that it's possible that many poor live in "internet deserts", I still say that it would be considerably cheaper to provide extended hours or additional internet cafes than it would be to provide broadband to the poor many of which still won't have the money to buy and maintain a computer.
We enjoy work, too, but we also have lives outside of work, and expect any encroachment into those lives to be suitably compensated.
There are plenty of jobs where employees are being exploited by rich companies, but in many cases, some of the most overworked people in the USA are people who love their job and are working for an organization where there is no extra money to compensate them more financially and they are getting compensated by the feeling that they are helping others. I know a lot of people that work for non-profits that have extremely long hours, extremely poor pay, but that's what they want to do because they enjoy helping other people. This is also one reason that the gender pay gap exists. The majority of the people I know working for low pay for a non-profit because they enjoy it are women.
It was exploitation and the teachers went along with it pretending enthusiasm because dissent is the first step to open rebellion and is thus punished.
Except that most the teachers I know could quit tomorrow if they wanted. Most don't even need the money. It's hard to exploit someone who doesn't have to work. Yes, teachers (and the principal) are being exploited in some way by society with low pay but that doesn't mean there aren't a large number of teachers who still want the job even though they can make higher pay working elsewhere. They want to be there, they want to work, they want to do whatever they can to help their students. There is no fear of punishment in any of the teachers that I know.
One day, the principal gathered all the teachers and said:
"We have decided to help our students by giving them one hour more of tutoring classes after your (very long) school hours. These additional hours are strictly voluntary and they won't be paid. But please do it for the kids!"
Being a foreigner, I thought that everybody was going to reject such a clear exploitation.
Your assumption is that everyone else thought it was exploitation. This is probably not the case. Most teachers in the USA do it because they like teaching. The pay in the USA for teachers can be quite poor and a lot of teachers have a spouse that is a doctor or a business owner that actually supports the family. My mom was a teacher for many years making a small fraction of the money that my dad made. She did it solely for the enjoyment not for the money. She routinely worked extra hours many times tutoring kids for free or planning extra activities for the kids that was above and beyond what she was required or even expected to do. She was under no obligation to do it and would not have lost her job if she didn't do it. In many cases, the extra stuff was her own initiative. I had many teachers like that and my kids now have many teachers like that where they will create elaborate presents for the kids around the holidays just because they actually like their students and they will tutor and help their students for free because they actually care about their students and want their students to excel.
Slashdot Mirror
The BBC will obviously put up the argument that 'everyone speaks English and not everyone speaks French or German, hence their audience is bigger and thus the market is skewed'. And while their may be some truth in that, the British tax-payer will not pay a penny more or less if half Europe watches their shows, since the cost is in creating them, not in distributing.
If the BBC opened up all their content online and then instead of using geoblocking, used geotargetted ads, so in germany you could still watch it but it had german ads, i think they would come out ahead revenue wise.
The key problem with this vaccine is that it only reduces a child's chance of getting malaria by one-third.
What strain is it targetting? Is it possible that it's highy effective against one strain but not a different strain. If that's the case then a couple more targetted vaccines and you could have complete broad coverage.
Malaria in humans is caused by five different species of plasmodium parasites. That they could get a vaccination at all effective is wonderful and surprising.
5 is a very managable number. The yearly flu vaccine is, I believe, a mix of the top 3 strains from the previous year. Also, it looks like it might only be targetting one of the strains as it cut cases by only 1/3 so the other 2/3s might have been caused by a non-targetted strain.
Confusing butt-dialed with booty call would be like confusing ladies' man with ladyboy.
While in college, a friend of mine had rounded up a group of about a dozen or so guys to go to the local strip joint for "playgirl" night.
They were about to head out when someone happened to point out that it was "playgirl" night not "playboy" night. I think it would
have been more fun if they would have just kept quiet and let them go ahead and go.
Skype would become the world leader in calls if and when these bugs are worked out by them before another service leapfrogs them. This will be a wonderful technology to commonly use someday.
I agree that this has the potential to be awesome and skype is great for remote communication but they need a way to use it in person locally.
If I'm having lunch with someone, we don't want to have to have 2 ipads and communicate over skype when we're sitting right next to each other.
They also neglect to mention that the more studied the pathway the more likely a cure will be found. Maybe the drug, used to reproduce the genetic effects of the drug, needs an antidote that will work as a cure for current sufferers. If I had one of these diseases I would welcome this news because before it really was hopeless for a cure to try to treat a dozen people.
Exactly. While they are trying to block a particular protein, it's very possible that they also figure out how to synthesize it. Or in the reverse case, while they are trying to sythesize it, they might figure out how to block it or they might even need to figure out how to block it in a mouse first so that they have a way to test if their drug is working. Before, with only a few dozen people on earth, noone on earth was even looking at that area so the chance of a cure was nil. This way the chance of a cure goes up exponentially. Not to mention that if you get a relationship with a scientist who is studying your disease that they will likely take a personal interest in your case and you're much more likely to get access to experimental procedures.
I find these kinds of replies often. However I always wonder: did your parents try and get you to learn how to code or was that something you did yourself? Perhaps the whole premise of "getting kids to code" is a faulty one. The kids that WANT to code will do so on their own. Many of us started coding and it's not like we had a massive amount of push to do it. It was fascinating, empowering, and an interesting challenge. Also there's the whole idea that parents are lame and their ideas of fun are lame. Perhaps we could just let kids do what we all did: discover the real magic behind computers on our own and THEN seek out guidance versus having it thrust at us like it's a job?
My point was not to try to push kids to code but give them a carrot so they want to code. I installed kodable on my ipad several years ago and just left it there for them to discover and they only recently took an interest in it. I also have scratch and a few other games installed that they dabble with but haven't really got in to. Many of the apps my kids like are things that let them create. Kids like to create and show you what they created. Programming is a great way to create but one issue I see today is that it is harder to create cool stuff in most programming apps today than it is to create cool stuff in other non-programming apps.
Growing up in the early 80s on an apple II, one of the things that helped me learn to code was that I could edit and modify existing code like Oregon Trail to cheat. It also helped that there was a limited amount of other things. We didn't have 24 hour kid cable channels so once I got bored then I needed something else to do. I see the same things in my kids. They love kodable on the ipad because it gives them a new character every time they completed a level. A similiar game cargobot they aren't interested in at all because it doesn't have any rewards. I also notice that when they are grounded from their playstation is when they immediately start reading more books, playing the piano more, exploring new apps on my ipad, going outside more, etc... Just like adults, kids are going to gravitate towards what is most enjoyable at the moment and unlike adults they have very little concept of delayed gratification so doing something for their future self is not on their radar. The best way to get kids to want to code is give them something they can do with it whether it is control a robot, create a webpage to show off to their friends, etc... When I was in school alot of kids knew basic javascript and html because that was the only way to have a geocity webpage. Facebook and the likes have allowed kids to have a presence on the web without any need to code. It's still possible to get kids interested in coding if you can show them "cool to them" stuff they can do with it.
This only holds true if the stand of living and the level of consumption per individual remains constant. It is easy to look around your house and see that that isn't the case. Today we have far more stuff then our parents ever did. Our houses have been getting bigger and there is a much more disposable attitude.
I'm also starting to see a lot more people going the other way with tiny homes, downsizing, the "sharing economy" and even nomadic living.
If people in mass start deciding that they need less stuff then it might be problematic for all these factories churning out excess stuff.
Raising productivity makes goods cost less, which makes people buy more goods, which makes more jobs.
This might work for a while but certain segments of society are already getting to the "no more stuff" stage.
You are starting to see alot of talk of tiny homes, downsizing, and even nomadic lifestyles. If people started
consuming significantly less or just stopped consuming more and more and more then these more jobs would
never appear. Luckily, the rest of the world has a lot of catchup to do and we'll probably all be dead one way
or another before everyone on the planet owns 2 cars.
I don't completely agree that project needs to be widely used to pose a high risk. There are certain applications which are not installed on many machines, but which security is extremely critical for the internet in whole. Two very good examples would be Quagga & BIRD. You can find one of them from very large number of core network deployments. They may not always be the ones that pass actual traffic, but they might be the ones that receive routing tables and pass them to other routers after modifying them as they allow you to modify them to fit your needs better.
It depends on how you define "wide usage". If wide usage is defined as total number of servers then even something like DNS might not make the cut.
On the other hand if it's defined as needed infrastructure where it either dominates its market or there is no other reasonable alternative then certain
programs only used for backbones or ISPs would definitely make the cut.
especially since the law gives their parasitic load - the shareholders - control over their actions.
I'm not sure you know the definition of a parasite. A parasite can't survive without its host. The shareholders are the investors and can survive just fine without the company but the company wouldn't even exist without it's shareholders/investors. Calling the shareholders/investors parasites is like calling the leaves on a tree parasites. Without the leaves, the tree has no energy(money) and dies.
It's not a solved problem or they wouldn't be having all the robots fall down. And if it IS a solved problem then give every team a good robot to program (or a robot simulator if the physical robot is too expensive). The point is to solve one problem at a time. We know how to make cars, bulldozers, etc... Make the autonomous robot control one of those, don't try to add intelligence to untested and unreliable hardware, get the hardware working right first. If a human can't do that task via wire then you're asking a robot to basically be more intelligence than a person. I would say the same of most other AI projects that I see. If a human can't manually control the robot to fold towels in near real time then why should we expect an AI to be able to do it?
Walking is not one of the necessary things for robots to do.
Crawling more than suffices. In fact, having wheels is a feature, not a bug.
I would go one step further and at this point split the competition into two parts. Step 1 should be to have a remote controlled robot that can complete a series of complex tasks. At this point why should a robot have to be autonomous and work with degraded communication? The goal is to go into places like a nuclear meltdown where a human can't go. I see no reason why it can't be controlled remotely by a competent human. Get the platform down, get it working great, get it rock solid, then add the AI to a platform that already works great with a human controller. I see no reason to try to solve 2 separate complex problems at once. Just solving the first problem would benefit everyone greatly and make the 2nd problem much easier not to mention that mechanical engineering and AI programming are different domains with different experts and you could let the different experts work on what they are good at.
You're missing the point, again read the article.
Yes, we expect Google to respond, but we expect Google to give us the results drawn from the whole web using their search algorithm, not just from Google+.
I think you're missing the point. The point is that if I don't like google's results then I will
go elsewhere. If google stops showing me all the nearby restaurants then I stop trusting
google and move on. People expect complete and accurate results and will quickly look
elsewhere if a search engine stops providing this.
I don't think you understand what the study is about. It is not about sponsored and unsponsored. RTFA, or at least the abstract.
Type "Where is the best burger near me" and you get google + results mapped, along with other hits using Google's algorithm. None of these results are sponsored. Google's algorithmic results, the study says (and this is true in my rudimentary testing), are NOT mapped. Consumers (and businesses) are hurt by this behavior.
If I ask GOOGLE where the best burger joint is then I expect GOOGLE to respond.
Same as if I asked YELP where the best burger joint is then I expect YELP to respond.
I don't see the problem here.
I have an iphone and I many times have tried to ask siri questions and get a stupid response.
I immediately switch and ask google. I have actually gotten to the point that although it
is easier to ask siri a question I find myself taking the extra step to ask google first because
google is much more likely to give me a good response to my query.
They can attend public school.
Rundown, overcrowded, with severely stripped-down course offerings.
They can use the resources of public libraries.
Sure, if they want to take a long bus ride to a nicer part of the city where the libraries have not been closed.
This might be the case in larger cities, but in most small to medium sized towns, this isn't the case. In the small town I grew up in of 15k and the town I live in now with 120k people, it's a single school district and the public library is downtown. The town I live in now, the public library is in the poorest part of town, so the poor actually have easier access to it than the middle class living on the outskirts of town. If walking 5 blocks to the library is too much work, my town also has a bookmobile that drives around and comes to you.
But back on topic, how is this facebook or google's problem? Facebook can't hire people that don't exist. If you want more diversity in tech then you need to start at college, highschool, or even grade school. Reprimanding facebook and google for not hiring a certain class of people when those people aren't applying because they don't have the qualifications is rediculous.
As much as I'd like to see drone operators exercise some responsibility, the system is completely broken if you can turn a state into a firestorm with a minor act of arson and some auto-loitering drones.
Step 1. Start fire
Step 2. Set drone to loiter over areas with the most fire, at about 1500 feet
Step 3. The world ends in fire.
If we cannot create firefighting craft which can tolerate drone strikes, then we're completely fucked, because any enemy can utterly destroy our country with nothing but a few container-loads of drones.
If we have the technology to shoot a mosquito out of the air with a laser then surely we have the ability to down a small drone.
Public votes on the issue never seem to mirror opinion polls, nowhere near.
The question is why do public votes not mirror opinion polls and which more accurately reflects reality? Are people lying to opinion polls or hiding their real opinion for some reason? Are the people who actually vote a different subset of the population than the ones being surveyed? Are there certain issues like drug use or sexual issues that have more distortion than say whether or not to build a new road?
To take my personal experience, although my facebook friends are a pretty even 50/50 split on gay marriage, I find that my friends who are supportive of gay marriage tend to post on facebook a lot more than my friends against gay marriage. Today for instance I see tons of posts saying how great it is while most of my friends who I know are against it are completely silent.
A constitutional amendment just isn't going to happen and they are just blowing air (the same thing they've been doing for the past few years fighting Obamacare when they know nothing they pass stands a chance of making it into law). They simply don't have enough public support; MAYBE they did 20 years ago but the public is now in favor of equal rights for gay people. It would be easier to elect a Republican president who could appoint a more conservative judge when one of the current liberal judges dies/retires and then get the Supreme Court to reverse its narrow 5-4 decision.
I agree that a constitutional amendment is probably not going to happen as I don't think they can get a 2/3 vote but there is still plenty of public support for a ban of gay marriage. Almost every time that there has been a public vote to legalize gay marriage in the general election, it has failed. Even in CA, when it was last voted on in 2008, a majority of people voted FOR banning gay marriage. If less than 7 years ago the majority of people in CA (a state generally considered more liberal) didn't even support gay marriage then there are still a lot of people against it even if they are too scared to speak out publicly. The court has voted in support of gay marriage a lot more often than the general population has.
Shooting lithium batteries in a dry forest does not seem like a good solution to the problem.
1) The forest is already on fire
2) I doubt a shotgun would cause it to explode
3) Even if it did, it would most likely extinguish itself before it reaches the ground
4) If a shotgun really is unreasonable then maybe something like foam, a net, and
electrical surge, or even just using a high powered stream of water would probably
work just as good.
Basically, treat it the same way you would treat any other unauthorized airplane with the exception that you
know that it's unmanned so destroying it also becomes a legitimate option.
Most towns already have free internet access at the local libraries
But do they have sensible hours for both the local libraries and public transportation thereto and therefrom?
I'll use Fort Wayne, Indiana (pop. 200K), as an example. Citilink buses are closed at night, on Saturday evenings, and all day Sunday, and the "Flexlink" lines that go to the far west and north sides of town are additionally closed all day Saturday. Allen County Public Library is closed at night, on Friday and Saturday evenings, and on Sundays during the summer. Branches other than downtown are additionally closed Sundays all year, Saturdays during the summer, and on Thursday evenings. This effectively leaves Monday through Wednesday for the working poor.
While I won't argue with this or that it's possible that many poor live in "internet deserts", I still say
that it would be considerably cheaper to provide extended hours or additional internet cafes than it
would be to provide broadband to the poor many of which still won't have the money to buy and
maintain a computer.
We enjoy work, too, but we also have lives outside of work, and expect any encroachment into those lives to be suitably compensated.
There are plenty of jobs where employees are being exploited by rich companies, but in many cases, some of the most overworked people in the USA are people who love their job and are working for an organization where there is no extra money to compensate them more financially and they are getting compensated by the feeling that they are helping others. I know a lot of people that work for non-profits that have extremely long hours, extremely poor pay, but that's what they want to do because they enjoy helping other people. This is also one reason that the gender pay gap exists. The majority of the people I know working for low pay for a non-profit because they enjoy it are women.
It was exploitation and the teachers went along with it pretending enthusiasm because dissent is the first step to open rebellion and is thus punished.
Except that most the teachers I know could quit tomorrow if they wanted. Most don't even need the money. It's hard to exploit someone who doesn't have to work. Yes, teachers (and the principal) are being exploited in some way by society with low pay but that doesn't mean there aren't a large number of teachers who still want the job even though they can make higher pay working elsewhere. They want to be there, they want to work, they want to do whatever they can to help their students. There is no fear of punishment in any of the teachers that I know.
One day, the principal gathered all the teachers and said:
"We have decided to help our students by giving them one hour more of tutoring classes after your (very long) school hours. These additional hours are strictly voluntary and they won't be paid. But please do it for the kids!"
Being a foreigner, I thought that everybody was going to reject such a clear exploitation.
Your assumption is that everyone else thought it was exploitation. This is probably not the case. Most teachers in the USA do it because they like teaching. The pay in the USA for teachers can be quite poor and a lot of teachers have a spouse that is a doctor or a business owner that actually supports the family. My mom was a teacher for many years making a small fraction of the money that my dad made. She did it solely for the enjoyment not for the money. She routinely worked extra hours many times tutoring kids for free or planning extra activities for the kids that was above and beyond what she was required or even expected to do. She was under no obligation to do it and would not have lost her job if she didn't do it. In many cases, the extra stuff was her own initiative. I had many teachers like that and my kids now have many teachers like that where they will create elaborate presents for the kids around the holidays just because they actually like their students and they will tutor and help their students for free because they actually care about their students and want their students to excel.