Most large corporations rely on Political Action Committees to raise money which is then donated to one of two groups.
1) Politicians who support that business sector, geographical area, or tax breaks. I really don't have a huge problem with that, essentially this is individuals donating money to people who will work to improve conditions for the business they work for. Though I would prefer to see a system where you can only donate if you can vote in the election, with the current situation of national and multinational interests that may not be possible. For example, the company I work for has offices all over the US but the main office is in Iowa, if taxes go up in Iowa that would effect all the employees no matter where they work.
2) Politicians who are willing to grant 'favors' in exchange for contributions. This is where the real problems begin. Pork barrel spending, pet projects, and downright bribes. The only way I can foresee this going away is to make all campaign contributions anonymous which at best would be an accounting nightmare. Either that or outlaw PACs and other groups that pool contributions into a single fund, but there would be nothing to prevent an unofficial system from springing up to replace them.
So what you're basically saying is that the big developers will never produce anything that would be deemed obscene.
If developers produce it, that means there is a large market for it. If there is a large market for it, that market doesn't view the material as obscene. Actually, when you think about it, it seems kind of ridiculous that there was such an uproar about the GTA games. They were some of the highest selling games ever made, obviously a large portion of the population didn't find them obscene.
Funny, if I were to list my top 10 favorite games of all time, the vast majority would be what you consider to be inferior. And I'm only 25 for Christ sake.
In no particular order: Deus Ex Starcraft Nethack Earthbound Chrono Trigger FF VII Portal FF X Mario 64 Super Smash Bros. Melee
Of those, I would consider only Portal and FF X to be 'modern' games and neither one is really known for their amazing graphics. And no, it isn't just nostalgia that makes them good; I still break out nearly all of them from time to time and play. Earthbound is especially noteworthy because it had sub-par graphics even for the time it was released and what's more, the graphics were sub-par on purpose because the developers didn't want the graphics to distract from the game play.
That's handy from an *IAA fighting perspective, but kind of sucks from a general privacy perspective. This ruling is in reference to the later, specifically that companies can keep track of ip addresses and essentially use it to track your movements around the net if they want to.
When you think about it though, if the police suspect illegal activity at your address, you're probably going to be the one to get in some kind of trouble. At least questioned and detained for a while. I don't think "I leave my door unlocked, one of my neighbors must have broken in and built that meth lab in the basement" is going to cut it. Obviously, a meth lab is easier to notice than someone using your internet to download music, but the basic principle is the same.
Education isn't about learning every detail about the job you're going to do about graduation. At least a good education isn't. A good college will give you a strong background in an area you wish to pursue, a strong work ethic, but most importantly, it will teach you how to learn. A modern education's primary goal must be to teach the students how to look up and assimilate information on their own.
When you hit an issue at your job, you don't just run to a more experienced co-worker anymore (which was the standard behavior 20 years ago). You look it up online, you read and learn from what you find, then you make a simple project to test out what you've learned. Beyond the very basics of your profession, those are the skills that matter most because those are the skills that produce results when no one else has the answers.
Btw: The effects of a nuclear warhead decrease with the square of the distance (at best), or with the third power of the distance. A 100 megaton nuclear warhead only increases the destruction distance by a factor of 2. A 250 megaton warhead (the largest in existence) will only destroy a bunker when exploded less than 500 meters from it's walls. A 250 megaton warhead, will only destroy a modern office building at less than a kilometer.
That's exactly why the research was moved away from bigger explosions and towards multi-warhead devices. It might take a 100 Megaton bomb to destroy a small city, but ten much smaller, much simpler one megaton bombs deployed in a circle around the city will create a firestorm that will destroy it just as thoroughly. Modern deployment schemes take full advantage of the interactions between multiple warheads being detonated simultaneously. With relatively modern MIRV missiles, 20 launches can put 200 nuclear bombs into an area, all detonating within seconds of each other.
As for fallout, that would depend wildly on how the bombs were deployed. The most common deployment talked about is air burst, which are essentially self cleaning. The massive heat output sends the contaminated air high into the atmosphere where it is dispersed over a wide area diluting the effect considerably. Unless a truly massive (thousands of detonations) attack occurred there really wouldn't be much for long term effects from these detonations.
Where you get into problems with fallout is with surface and underwater detonations. This generally reduces the effectiveness of the explosion but greatly increases the problems with fallout since the irradiated material is solid matter and tends to stay where it is. This type of deployment could in theory be used to 'salt the Earth' in an ongoing conflict. It would deny the enemy the use of the area without producing huge loss of life. In theory, this would prevent escalation of the conflict (relative to an air burst producing many, many deaths) but in reality no country is going to stand still when a nuke has been detonated on their territory.
I've really got to love our society. A more than slightly crazy musician and probable child molester dies and it's all the news can talk about for three weeks as people cry in the streets and memorial concerts are held all over the country. A man who was partially responsible for guiding the world through the cold war without destroying modern civilization dies and no one even knows who he is.
Isn't it also possible that this is an example of convergent evolution? What if the family of chemicals these ants use to identify each other just happens to be the 'most efficient' one? What if it takes just a little bit less energy to produce it and it spreads just a little bit farther than chemicals that other ant families use? Isn't it at least possible that these ants aren't related to each other at all?
To be fair, that only prooves that we got 'something' to the moon, not that we landed human beings there and brought them back. NASA probably has the technology to put one of those reflectors on Phobos as well, but I don't think I'd be volounteering for the manned mission any time soon.
(Note: I am not a nutjob. The moonlanding happened, get over it. If you really don't believe it (and want to get punched in the face by an old man, go tell one of the Apollo astronauts that it never happened.)
An extention that pings a private website every few minutes whenever it has a connection, combined remember sites that I have identified as ok could lead to problems. It would take a bit of work, but if I were say a victim of domestic abuse married to a hacker, I might hesitate to bring the laptop with me when I finally took off.
The problem with that idea is that it cuts both ways. Someone could create a virus that uses those back doors to do anything the like. Normally that would be steal people's information, display pop-up ads, harass people into buying fake anti-virus software, etc. But there's nothing preventing a virus from (for example) routing all internet traffic through a proxy (bypassing both Green Dam and the great firewall), playing a video about Tiananmen square, display information about the private lives of the government leadership, etc.
I love jokes that are as insightful as they are funny. I'm surprised no one has pointed it out yet, but I was always told the rule was "don't post anything to a website you wouldn't mind showing up in the local paper". Seems appropriate in this case.
This is a tricky situation to me; while the newspaper obviously has some pretty extreme ethics problems, it's hard for me to argue that they don't have the right to report on what she said. But then, they passed off what she had said as a letter to the editor, which it most surely is not. I would understand their behavior better if they had published it as an editorial, even if they reproduced it in it's entirety. Basically, I feel that claiming it as a letter to the editor makes it seem like the girl went out of her way to insult the people of the town, posting it somewhere else would have gone a long way towards making it clear that it was just a random Internet rant.
I would think that suing for harassment would be a better way to go if she were really interested in pursuing it. Also, question for the armchair lawyers out there, can you sue someone for libel for taking your own words out of context? Not sure if it would apply here, but to me taking an informal My Space rant and passing it off as a formal letter to the editor should qualify.
On the other hand, I have Yellow Dog Linux and several open source emulators running on my PS3 at home all without even voiding the warranty, and Sony isn't exactly known for their openness. Hell, if I'm being honest it's probably even costing them money, I've been playing old school games for the past few of months and haven't bought a single new game in that time. But, come next generation, having the ability to instal Linux and run whatever software I want is going to be a major selling point for me. Assuming Sony keeps it up, they'll have my business again.
As to the value of so-called 'wonder weapons', you should really read Arthur C. Clark's short story 'Superiority'. And before everyone says "it's just a sci-fi story, it has no bearing on real life" you should keep in mind that this story has been required reading at the US military colleges for almost 40 years.
It's not just the time and effort that goes into R+D; it's building up a manufacturing base, getting the necessary raw materials, training your soldiers on new equipment, adapting strategies to the new technology (often a forgotten step), shipping the new technology out into the field. Then, you've got a new, fragile, and rushed technology being subjected to the worst conditions imaginable and having people's lives rely on it.
The only obvious exception is the A-bomb, and even that was a fluke. The US was safe from invasion and damage, didn't have to worry nearly as much as Germany about having the whole project ruined in a bombing raid. You only need a few A-bombs to make a huge difference in the war, not true of most Germany's pet projects (except, obviously, their own A-bomb research). Since you only need a few, it's much easier to training, deployment, and maintenance are much simpler than a mass produced weapon.
You beat me to it. A year ago he probably could have locked in a %3 rate on a CD, and I would say that on average that is a pretty reasonable number to assume for a no-risk investment. If we further assume that electricity prices will go up by about the same amount (3% annually) his break even point is about 15.5 years.
Of course, there's no telling what those rates are going to do over that kind of timeframe. Its also difficult to say what the performance of his solar panels will be over the entire lifecycle. I thought I remember reading that new panels will deteriorate by 50% over 25 years which is about 2.5% annually, assuming the degredation is linear. That is going to eat into his ROI quite a bit, and that doesn't take into account any costs to insure the panels against damage or the risk of damage if you leave them uninsured.
All that being said, the most important variable is also the one you have the least control over, the cost of electricity in your area. If they go up at 5%, you catch up with a no-risk CD in 12.5 years; at 1% it would take nearly 20.
(4) performance of a nondramatic literary or musical work otherwise than in a transmission to the public, without any purpose of direct or indirect commercial advantage and without payment of any fee or other compensation for the performance to any of its performers, promoters, or organizers, if --
(A) there is no direct or indirect admission charge; or
(B) the proceeds, after deducting the reasonable costs of producing the performance, are used exclusively for educational, religious, or charitable purposes and not for private financial gain, except where the copyright owner has served notice of objection to the performance under the following conditions:
You are 'performing' a song (nondramatic musical work) and not charging an admission. I don't see how that fails to qualify for exception #4, though of course, IANAL.
EVEN MORE IMPORTANT is why you care about Iran in the first place.
We the people, not saying anything about the government, care because the Iranians care. We care because the Iranians are pissed off enough at a sham election to demand real democracy. We see something of ourselves 200 years ago in what the Iranians are doing today, to the point that most don't know or even care about what the politics involved are. We simply like seeing people stand up for themselves against an oppressive government because the only effective way to get rid of oppression is from within.
Madison WI. No, seriously. Huge 'university culture', lots of middle/big town conveniences, a liberal city/county government and a moderate state government. I don't know about the broadband situation but I would imagine that with the number of students and young IT people in the area it's probably above average. I don't know what you call 'low' sales tax, but the state rate is 5%.
Using a Toyota as a unit of cost is quite possibly the stupidest thing I've ever heard of. At least there's only one Library of Congress. Toyotas range from $13500 for a base Yaris, all the way up to $42000 for a Highlander Hybrid.
It's confusing but correct. An unnamed official is saying that Napolitano reached her decision after hearing from Bratton that it isn't an urgent need.
The thing is, those jackasses don't cause accidents, they burn the yellow/red when the cross traffic isn't moving or is just starting to move. It's annoying and screws up the traffic flow, that much is true, but it doesn't cause accidents because it's pretty obvious when someone is going to do it (speeding up rather than hitting the brakes).
Now, people slamming on their brakes because the yellow lasts half as long as they expected has a good chance of causing an accident because it's unexpected. Also, slamming the brakes is a much more sudden change in velocity than hitting the gas to burn the yellow is. Finally, hitting the brakes relies on the person behind you noticing and taking action to avoid hitting you, when you hit the gas it is your responsibility to not run into the person in front of you.
Is an amnesiac still the same person? I guess you could argue that they subconsciously still have their memories but I would say its a valid comparison. For that matter, as time goes on what you do and don't remember is constantly changing. Events that were key in making you who you are today are often forgotten about years later.
I would say that events and memories shape your personality but the personality itself is separate. That being said, if a memory is continuously a part of you, such that you think about it everyday, then that memory is still affecting your personality every time you think about it. Taking that memory away could rapidly lead to a significantly different personality. Imagine soldiers suffering from PTSD and how much their personality would change if you could simply remove the dramatic memories.
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Most large corporations rely on Political Action Committees to raise money which is then donated to one of two groups.
1) Politicians who support that business sector, geographical area, or tax breaks. I really don't have a huge problem with that, essentially this is individuals donating money to people who will work to improve conditions for the business they work for. Though I would prefer to see a system where you can only donate if you can vote in the election, with the current situation of national and multinational interests that may not be possible. For example, the company I work for has offices all over the US but the main office is in Iowa, if taxes go up in Iowa that would effect all the employees no matter where they work.
2) Politicians who are willing to grant 'favors' in exchange for contributions. This is where the real problems begin. Pork barrel spending, pet projects, and downright bribes. The only way I can foresee this going away is to make all campaign contributions anonymous which at best would be an accounting nightmare. Either that or outlaw PACs and other groups that pool contributions into a single fund, but there would be nothing to prevent an unofficial system from springing up to replace them.
So what you're basically saying is that the big developers will never produce anything that would be deemed obscene.
If developers produce it, that means there is a large market for it. If there is a large market for it, that market doesn't view the material as obscene. Actually, when you think about it, it seems kind of ridiculous that there was such an uproar about the GTA games. They were some of the highest selling games ever made, obviously a large portion of the population didn't find them obscene.
Funny, if I were to list my top 10 favorite games of all time, the vast majority would be what you consider to be inferior. And I'm only 25 for Christ sake.
In no particular order:
Deus Ex
Starcraft
Nethack
Earthbound
Chrono Trigger
FF VII
Portal
FF X
Mario 64
Super Smash Bros. Melee
Of those, I would consider only Portal and FF X to be 'modern' games and neither one is really known for their amazing graphics. And no, it isn't just nostalgia that makes them good; I still break out nearly all of them from time to time and play. Earthbound is especially noteworthy because it had sub-par graphics even for the time it was released and what's more, the graphics were sub-par on purpose because the developers didn't want the graphics to distract from the game play.
why not this one?
Because NIMBY won out this time.
That's handy from an *IAA fighting perspective, but kind of sucks from a general privacy perspective. This ruling is in reference to the later, specifically that companies can keep track of ip addresses and essentially use it to track your movements around the net if they want to.
When you think about it though, if the police suspect illegal activity at your address, you're probably going to be the one to get in some kind of trouble. At least questioned and detained for a while. I don't think "I leave my door unlocked, one of my neighbors must have broken in and built that meth lab in the basement" is going to cut it. Obviously, a meth lab is easier to notice than someone using your internet to download music, but the basic principle is the same.
Education isn't about learning every detail about the job you're going to do about graduation. At least a good education isn't. A good college will give you a strong background in an area you wish to pursue, a strong work ethic, but most importantly, it will teach you how to learn. A modern education's primary goal must be to teach the students how to look up and assimilate information on their own.
When you hit an issue at your job, you don't just run to a more experienced co-worker anymore (which was the standard behavior 20 years ago). You look it up online, you read and learn from what you find, then you make a simple project to test out what you've learned. Beyond the very basics of your profession, those are the skills that matter most because those are the skills that produce results when no one else has the answers.
Btw: The effects of a nuclear warhead decrease with the square of the distance (at best), or with the third power of the distance. A 100 megaton nuclear warhead only increases the destruction distance by a factor of 2. A 250 megaton warhead (the largest in existence) will only destroy a bunker when exploded less than 500 meters from it's walls. A 250 megaton warhead, will only destroy a modern office building at less than a kilometer.
That's exactly why the research was moved away from bigger explosions and towards multi-warhead devices. It might take a 100 Megaton bomb to destroy a small city, but ten much smaller, much simpler one megaton bombs deployed in a circle around the city will create a firestorm that will destroy it just as thoroughly. Modern deployment schemes take full advantage of the interactions between multiple warheads being detonated simultaneously. With relatively modern MIRV missiles, 20 launches can put 200 nuclear bombs into an area, all detonating within seconds of each other.
As for fallout, that would depend wildly on how the bombs were deployed. The most common deployment talked about is air burst, which are essentially self cleaning. The massive heat output sends the contaminated air high into the atmosphere where it is dispersed over a wide area diluting the effect considerably. Unless a truly massive (thousands of detonations) attack occurred there really wouldn't be much for long term effects from these detonations.
Where you get into problems with fallout is with surface and underwater detonations. This generally reduces the effectiveness of the explosion but greatly increases the problems with fallout since the irradiated material is solid matter and tends to stay where it is. This type of deployment could in theory be used to 'salt the Earth' in an ongoing conflict. It would deny the enemy the use of the area without producing huge loss of life. In theory, this would prevent escalation of the conflict (relative to an air burst producing many, many deaths) but in reality no country is going to stand still when a nuke has been detonated on their territory.
I've really got to love our society. A more than slightly crazy musician and probable child molester dies and it's all the news can talk about for three weeks as people cry in the streets and memorial concerts are held all over the country. A man who was partially responsible for guiding the world through the cold war without destroying modern civilization dies and no one even knows who he is.
It would seem 1.7 million people on the internet would disagree with you.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1T5GGLL_enUS269US269&q=%22times+less%22&aq=f&oq=&aqi=g2/
Even more if you include other phrases such as "times lower" (3.8 million results), "times smaller" (800k), "times slower" 350k.
Isn't it also possible that this is an example of convergent evolution? What if the family of chemicals these ants use to identify each other just happens to be the 'most efficient' one? What if it takes just a little bit less energy to produce it and it spreads just a little bit farther than chemicals that other ant families use? Isn't it at least possible that these ants aren't related to each other at all?
To be fair, that only prooves that we got 'something' to the moon, not that we landed human beings there and brought them back. NASA probably has the technology to put one of those reflectors on Phobos as well, but I don't think I'd be volounteering for the manned mission any time soon.
(Note: I am not a nutjob. The moonlanding happened, get over it. If you really don't believe it (and want to get punched in the face by an old man, go tell one of the Apollo astronauts that it never happened.)
An extention that pings a private website every few minutes whenever it has a connection, combined remember sites that I have identified as ok could lead to problems. It would take a bit of work, but if I were say a victim of domestic abuse married to a hacker, I might hesitate to bring the laptop with me when I finally took off.
The problem with that idea is that it cuts both ways. Someone could create a virus that uses those back doors to do anything the like. Normally that would be steal people's information, display pop-up ads, harass people into buying fake anti-virus software, etc. But there's nothing preventing a virus from (for example) routing all internet traffic through a proxy (bypassing both Green Dam and the great firewall), playing a video about Tiananmen square, display information about the private lives of the government leadership, etc.
Reminds me of the people that try to ban "1984" and "Fahrenheit 451"
I love jokes that are as insightful as they are funny. I'm surprised no one has pointed it out yet, but I was always told the rule was "don't post anything to a website you wouldn't mind showing up in the local paper". Seems appropriate in this case.
This is a tricky situation to me; while the newspaper obviously has some pretty extreme ethics problems, it's hard for me to argue that they don't have the right to report on what she said. But then, they passed off what she had said as a letter to the editor, which it most surely is not. I would understand their behavior better if they had published it as an editorial, even if they reproduced it in it's entirety. Basically, I feel that claiming it as a letter to the editor makes it seem like the girl went out of her way to insult the people of the town, posting it somewhere else would have gone a long way towards making it clear that it was just a random Internet rant.
I would think that suing for harassment would be a better way to go if she were really interested in pursuing it. Also, question for the armchair lawyers out there, can you sue someone for libel for taking your own words out of context? Not sure if it would apply here, but to me taking an informal My Space rant and passing it off as a formal letter to the editor should qualify.
On the other hand, I have Yellow Dog Linux and several open source emulators running on my PS3 at home all without even voiding the warranty, and Sony isn't exactly known for their openness. Hell, if I'm being honest it's probably even costing them money, I've been playing old school games for the past few of months and haven't bought a single new game in that time. But, come next generation, having the ability to instal Linux and run whatever software I want is going to be a major selling point for me. Assuming Sony keeps it up, they'll have my business again.
As to the value of so-called 'wonder weapons', you should really read Arthur C. Clark's short story 'Superiority'. And before everyone says "it's just a sci-fi story, it has no bearing on real life" you should keep in mind that this story has been required reading at the US military colleges for almost 40 years.
It's not just the time and effort that goes into R+D; it's building up a manufacturing base, getting the necessary raw materials, training your soldiers on new equipment, adapting strategies to the new technology (often a forgotten step), shipping the new technology out into the field. Then, you've got a new, fragile, and rushed technology being subjected to the worst conditions imaginable and having people's lives rely on it.
The only obvious exception is the A-bomb, and even that was a fluke. The US was safe from invasion and damage, didn't have to worry nearly as much as Germany about having the whole project ruined in a bombing raid. You only need a few A-bombs to make a huge difference in the war, not true of most Germany's pet projects (except, obviously, their own A-bomb research). Since you only need a few, it's much easier to training, deployment, and maintenance are much simpler than a mass produced weapon.
You beat me to it. A year ago he probably could have locked in a %3 rate on a CD, and I would say that on average that is a pretty reasonable number to assume for a no-risk investment. If we further assume that electricity prices will go up by about the same amount (3% annually) his break even point is about 15.5 years.
Of course, there's no telling what those rates are going to do over that kind of timeframe. Its also difficult to say what the performance of his solar panels will be over the entire lifecycle. I thought I remember reading that new panels will deteriorate by 50% over 25 years which is about 2.5% annually, assuming the degredation is linear. That is going to eat into his ROI quite a bit, and that doesn't take into account any costs to insure the panels against damage or the risk of damage if you leave them uninsured.
All that being said, the most important variable is also the one you have the least control over, the cost of electricity in your area. If they go up at 5%, you catch up with a no-risk CD in 12.5 years; at 1% it would take nearly 20.
Which exception governs it?
(4) performance of a nondramatic literary or musical work otherwise than in a transmission to the public, without any purpose of direct or indirect commercial advantage and without payment of any fee or other compensation for the performance to any of its performers, promoters, or organizers, if --
(A) there is no direct or indirect admission charge; or
(B) the proceeds, after deducting the reasonable costs of producing the performance, are used exclusively for educational, religious, or charitable purposes and not for private financial gain, except where the copyright owner has served notice of objection to the performance under the following conditions:
You are 'performing' a song (nondramatic musical work) and not charging an admission. I don't see how that fails to qualify for exception #4, though of course, IANAL.
EVEN MORE IMPORTANT is why you care about Iran in the first place.
We the people, not saying anything about the government, care because the Iranians care. We care because the Iranians are pissed off enough at a sham election to demand real democracy. We see something of ourselves 200 years ago in what the Iranians are doing today, to the point that most don't know or even care about what the politics involved are. We simply like seeing people stand up for themselves against an oppressive government because the only effective way to get rid of oppression is from within.
Madison WI. No, seriously. Huge 'university culture', lots of middle/big town conveniences, a liberal city/county government and a moderate state government. I don't know about the broadband situation but I would imagine that with the number of students and young IT people in the area it's probably above average. I don't know what you call 'low' sales tax, but the state rate is 5%.
Using a Toyota as a unit of cost is quite possibly the stupidest thing I've ever heard of. At least there's only one Library of Congress. Toyotas range from $13500 for a base Yaris, all the way up to $42000 for a Highlander Hybrid.
It's confusing but correct. An unnamed official is saying that Napolitano reached her decision after hearing from Bratton that it isn't an urgent need.
Unnamed official != Bratton.
The thing is, those jackasses don't cause accidents, they burn the yellow/red when the cross traffic isn't moving or is just starting to move. It's annoying and screws up the traffic flow, that much is true, but it doesn't cause accidents because it's pretty obvious when someone is going to do it (speeding up rather than hitting the brakes).
Now, people slamming on their brakes because the yellow lasts half as long as they expected has a good chance of causing an accident because it's unexpected. Also, slamming the brakes is a much more sudden change in velocity than hitting the gas to burn the yellow is. Finally, hitting the brakes relies on the person behind you noticing and taking action to avoid hitting you, when you hit the gas it is your responsibility to not run into the person in front of you.
Is an amnesiac still the same person? I guess you could argue that they subconsciously still have their memories but I would say its a valid comparison. For that matter, as time goes on what you do and don't remember is constantly changing. Events that were key in making you who you are today are often forgotten about years later.
I would say that events and memories shape your personality but the personality itself is separate. That being said, if a memory is continuously a part of you, such that you think about it everyday, then that memory is still affecting your personality every time you think about it. Taking that memory away could rapidly lead to a significantly different personality. Imagine soldiers suffering from PTSD and how much their personality would change if you could simply remove the dramatic memories.