Mind you local laws vary and so this may not be true across the entire country, and you technically may be liable for the fair market value of the goods or services received as payment. However the IRS and many jurisdictions will exempt transactions below a certain amount from reporting or taxation requirements.
Bullshit, barter is perfectly legal as long as all applicable laws and regulations are followed.
In most parts of the country if the value of barter or cash transactions is less than a certain amount then you aren't obligated to report it or pay taxes on it.
In any case with barter it is pretty hard for the various levels of government to track since it doesn't really show up financial databases and the like.
Agreed. A true free trade agreement would be no more complicated than the arrangements any 2 US states have.
While some of the details are delt with by uniform Federal regulations it is still far less complicated than any so-called "Free trade" agreement.
The easy way out would be to say that goods and services have to meet local regulations to be sold in a particular country. You could even go a bit further and say that one country's regulations in a particular area are equivalent to anothers.
When, exactly, did you last see some dying in front of a hospital. If you get sick, you CAN get the help you need. Please provide links of those turned away.
The problem is your condition has to be life threatening before you can get treatment. Also many hospitals will refuse even emergency patients without insurance coverage, only treating them to the point they can be safely transfered to another hospital.
In addition I don't know if you've ever used the emergency room when you've not had health insurance (and no money to pay out of pocket), but you will get a bill. If you can't pay the bill you will end up with collection agencies after you. Given the cost of medical care these bills can be quite high.
Because you are not setting money aside to pay for health insurance or setting enough aside to pay the bills is not the government's concern.
It is the government's concern because many conditions that are relatively cheap to treat early on can become quite expensive later. Somebody still has to cover the cost of medical care for people who show up in the emergency room with life-threatening conditions. For example take diabeties. It is fairly cheap and easy to treat it in the early stages, however it becomes quite expensive when it advances to the point of causing serious health problems like kidney failure or gangrene.
Furthermore I don't know if you've priced individual health insurance policies lately, but they are quite expensive. For many the choice is eating and paying the rent or paying for health insurance. You can hardly set aside money you don't have. Furthermore given the cost of medical care to expect most people to be able to have anywhere from $10k to $100k set aside in a savings account for medical bills is unrealistic.
Please provide a link validating your 60% figure.
No link sorry, I'll go look for my source.
However if you think about it this really isn't that out of line, consider the following categories of health care spending by Government at all levels:
Typically most figures you see will include the following three categories: Federal Medicare spending Federal and State Medicaid spending (sometimes state spending is omitted) VA health care spending (sometimes this is omitted)
This category is sometimes omitted and sometimes included, occasionally it is lumped in with Federal employee benefits: DoD medical spending for active duty military, dependants, and retirees.
This category is sometimes omitted and sometimes included as well, especially since much of this isn't direct spending but is financing overhead and capital costs: Misc. Federal, State, and local health care spending (indigent care grants, trauma center funding, rural hospital grants, city hospitals, county hospitals, university hospitals, etc.)
Frequently this category is omitted because it uses private insurance, however the premiums are still paid by taxpayers: Federal, State, and local employee and retiree health insurance benefits.
This category is almost always omitted because it is an indirect subsidy, however it is a major factor in the health care market. Federal, State, and Local tax exemptions and credits for employer provided insurance, personal medical expenses, and the self-insured.
I don't believe that last category was included in the 60% figure I cited as I believe that only included direct budget outlays.
Frankly at this point I'll take even a crappy socialized system over no health insurance. If I get sick right now I'm screwed.
For that matter whenever anyone proposes any sort of insurance reform or subsidies in this country why does every single critic automaticly assume it means a system like the NHS in the UK?
First of all there are any number of ways of doing health care reform from having everything private including insurance companies but with subsidies for lower income folks (Australia), to a mix of public and private insurance (Germany), to single payer but private doctors (Canada), to doctors and hospitals all being run directly by a national agency (UK).
Typically the most extreme proposal I ever hear for the US is a single-payer system like Canada's. I will say I've some experience with the Canadian health care system and I don't see it being any worse than here. In fact in many ways it is better.
BTW the US health care system is already partially socialized. Roughly 60% of all health care spending in the US comes from taxpayer dollars.
I would also like to point out that according to the WHO the best medical system in the world is the French. They spend roughly the same percentage of GDP on health care as the government portion of health care spending in the US. They also spend less per-capita.
While Space Ship One doesn't really have enough of a track record to know for sure (nor does the Chinese vehicle), the Russians have a very impressive record with their Soyuz rockets.
If someone offered me a trip into space using any of the 4 vehicles capable of space flight I would take a Russian Soyuz hands down.
The Soyuz hasn't had a fatal launch or landing failure in a long time (20+ years). The Russians have done a lot of launches in that time period.
The Shuttle is just too complex and has just too many things that can go wrong on launch or re-entry. In addition I don't think the problems with the management culture at NASA that lead to the Challenger or Columbia accidents has been fixed. The only way this will be fixed is to put someone in charge who doesn't tolerate BS and give them the authority to fire anyone who won't get with the program. I'm thinking a former Military officer or Astronaut with a solid track record managing large organizations and an intrest in space flight and science.
Entirely different things. Burning Man is a private event and they have the right to ask people not do certain activities while attending just the same as if they invited people to their office or home.
If someone was videotaping at my office or house after I'd asked them not to and they posted that footage to the internet after I'd asked them not to do so I think very few people would consider it censorship if I threatened to sue them to get it taken down.
The fact is they've had problems in the past with porn video vendors taping footage at Burning Man. Many of the participants don't exactly want to appear in this kind of video. In addition there are people who don't really want their pictures taken at Burning Man at all. Some of the people who are running around painted blue and naked might have friends, family, or business associates who really wouldn't understand why they do this. I think they have a right to ensure that recognizable images of them at Burning Man not appear in a form availible to the public.
Several years ago there was serious discussion of banning cameras entirely from Burning Man, the current rules are a comprimize to still allow people to film while respecting the rights of those who may not want to be photographed.
If you really think there is NO situation where someone should have to ask permission to film then I guess I can come into your bedroom and photograph you having sex or photgraph you in the shower.
There is a certain irony to your post as Branson was seriously trying to get Air France and British Airways to sell him the remaining Concordes. I don't remember if the problem was that AF and BA refused, or if they demanded more than Branson was willing to pay, or if British Aerospace/EADS refusing to supply parts was the problem.
In any case even if Branson loses money on Virgin Glactic it will pay off for him and his companies in free advertising and PR. "Fly Virgin from London to New York and win a flight on the VSS Enterprise!"
At worst Virgin Glactic is a continuation of Branson's yachting, powerboat racing, and balloon stunts. Who knows he might even end up financing the next step to orbital flight.
Then again if anyone could make money on space tourism it would be Branson.
Another thought occurs to me perhaps Branson will have Rutan design a new SST for Virgin to fly? That would be quite a coup for both Rutan and Branson.
Be that as it may, Black Rock LLC has a right to control it's trademark use and has a right to control who may film at Burning Man.
They require everyone with a camera to sign their filming agreement. It only authorizes personal use of images taken at Burning Man. *Any* other use requires the permission of Black Rock LLC. This includes things such as art projects.
There are very good reasons for this, first and formost is to protect the trademark and copyright rights of Black Rock LLC and the artists who's work is on display at Burning Man. Second is to keep a ballance between those who want to film at Burning Man and those who would like to see cameras banned entirely.
Their current rules are an attempt to prevent problems they've encountered in the past. They have every right to put them in place and the rules are far looser than those in place at many concerts or art exibitions.
I have no idea what context Sean Kennedy's footage taken at Burning Man was used in. However I'm sure that if he had properly asked for permission it would have been granted. For that matter once the problem was brought to his attention I'm sure that if Sean's response was to ask for a permission grant he probably would have gotten it (assuming that not asking for it in the first place was an honest mistake).
Looks to me like he was filming commercially in Black Rock City without permission.
Wah... I feel really sorry for him, it's not like Burning Man doesn't warn people about the camera rules repeatedly.
For those of you who think this is "bad" and "censorship" remember that there are many people who would like to see cameras banned entirely from Black Rock City. The current rules are a ballance between privacy and artists reproduction rights and having the sleazoids who make "Girls Gone Wild" videos shove cameras in everyones face.
It is an all too common myth that solar doesn't work when there are clouds.
In fact photovoltaics and solar thermal systems like solar hot-water heaters work fine even with fairly heavy cloud cover.
I live in the very cloudy PNW and there are plenty of solar powered emergency phones and other various equipment all over the place. Those little solar powered path lights at home depot work just fine here too even when we're having one of our several week periods of overcast skies.
You do have to upsize your solar collectors somewhat around here though. For things like solar hot water or heat that really isn't much of a problem since you don't need much area in the first place. On the other hand it does make PV systems for home power around here a lot more expensive. But for something like a phone you don't need a lot of power in the first place.
If your servers are used in any sort of business environment I would reccomend rebooting them every 30 days even if it seems they don't need it.
Why? For one it's just good practice. Two you are much more likely to apply patches or fix wonky hardware if you know you are going to take the system down anyway. Three there are all sorts of problems that are likely to be prevented/spotted with frequent reboots. For example hardware self-tests don't get run if the system isn't cycled periodicly. Fourth it lets you verify that things like failover are working properly before it becomes a problem.
It doesn't matter what the OS is either, Windows, Novell, Linux, and commercial Unix servers all benefit from periodic reboots. Even Big Iron like IBM mainframes, AS/400's, HP/Tandem servers, and Unisis A-series usually will have occasional reboots as a part of scheduled maintenance.
I think most people would be appalled at how little testing goes on in the commercial world. Very often if the function isn't of intrest to the developers or testers it hasn't been tested.
In many cases the most common combinations of software and hardware don't get tested because the developers and testers are all using something "better".
Even more fun is the "not invented here" attitude many product development departments take toward their own IT and technical support staffs.
I have seen bugs that were known to technical support or IT take as much as a year to even be acknowledged by the development team. Then there is the case where our team had carefully documented all the symtoms to a major design flaw in our own company's product only to have the product manager claim to us that "there is no bug."
A far too common response by developers in the commercial world to bugs found by anyone other than another deveolper or the testing team is to point the finger at the user, other software, or other hardware. I have even seen the development team try to blame a very common software product for being incorrect instead of fixing our product to work with it.
These are all things I've personally witnessed at more than one company, and friends I know who work at other companies have seen similar behavior.
"It works on my box...bug must be fixed!" Who the hell says that? Oh right lone hacker of version.0002 of some small project who doesn't do OSS full time. Yep your right, that's the OSS mantra *rollseyes*
You'd think such things don't happen with commercial software but they do, and much more often than is commonly thought. I personally have witnessed a hotfix be rolled out to 50,000 customers with no more testing than the 5 minutes the developer spent on it. Unfortunately the fix also crashed the software after about 15 minutes of use.
There is an airline industry standard for the in-seat power connectors (I don't remember the trademark name at the moment).
Most newer aircraft particularly ones designed for longer flights have the outlets in all seat positions. However many airlines have retrofitted some or all seats in their older aircraft. I've seen the power outlets on Airbus, Boeing, Bombardier, and McDonald-Douglas planes. Delta had even managed to put some in a few of their L-1011's before they got rid of all of them.
The reason you are more likely to find the outlets in Airbus aircraft is that many of the Airbuses flying are newer than many of the Boeings flying.
Where is Ohio exactly. I'm not going to cheat and look at a map before i make my guess, but somewhere in the headwaters of the Missisippi? North of Tennesee to hazard a more specific guess.
Not too bad. Minnesota is where the headwaters of the Missisippi are located, but the Ohio river is a tributary of the Missisippi and forms the southern border of the state of Ohio. Lake Erie forms most of the northern border of Ohio. Ohio is north of Tennesee, but Kentucky is between the two.
States bordering Ohio: Pennsylvania to the East, West Virginia to the South East, Kentucky to the South West, Indiana to the West, and Michigan on the North West (the part of the Northern border that isn't Lake Erie)
Major cities: Cleveland is in the North East part of the state on Lake Erie. Cincinnati is in the South West on the Ohio River and Kentucky border. Columbus (the state capitol) is more or less in the center of the state. Dayton (home of the Wright brothers) is North of Cincinnati and West of Columbus. Toledo is in the North West of the state at the intersection of the Ohio/Michigan border and the shore of Lake Erie. Akron (home of Goodyear aka "rubbertown USA") is just south of Cleveland.
(for the record I live in Seattle, WA and have never been to Ohio, I'm just a bit of a geography nut)
Big office buildings become quite uncomfortable even when the outside temp is around 45F if the AC is off. It needs to get quite cold before a large building will switch from cooling the inside air to heating it.
military nuclear weapon industry != civilian nuclear power industry.
Unfortunately both sides of the issue have sought to confuse the two for their own reasons much to the detriment of the civilian nuclear power industry.
For example the opposition to fuel reprocessing and breeder reactors or the lack of a waste disposal site due to it being combined with a disposal site for military waste.
Although one "mixing" of the two that sounds promising would be to burn nuclear weapons "pits" in power reactors.
I agree completly. Also, I think that you should disregard about the first 30 years of nuclear operations, as it was a completely 'new' industry, and the risks were not known. It'd be like saying that flying is unsafe because of the crash rate for biplanes.
Three Mile Island and a few other isolated incidents aside the civilian nuclear power industry in Western nations is pretty damn good. Most of the really obnoxious stuff was done in the name of the military nuclear program. The huge environmental messes, the problems of "downwinders" from Hanford and the Nevada Test Site and other such horrors are all a result of the military programs.
Now we have a good handle on the requirements for safe nuclear power. It's generally safer for workers than coal, and has fewer negative enviromental effects. Go nuclear!
Sadly dispite the threat of global warming and the polution problems caused by coal fired powerplants mentioning support for nuclear power around most environmentalists is viewed about the same as farting in church. I hope that more come to the same realization as that British climate scientist did.
As a side note I consider myself an environmentalist and contribute money and time regularly to various environmental organizations. Unfortunately I find the anti-technology additude of most groups to be very frustrating at times. Perhaps it is time for a new organziation that isn't anti-technology and anti-free market while at the same time being pro-environment.
The waste at Hanford is primarily from nuclear weapons production in the 40's and 50's.
Don't confuse the huge environmental problems at Hanford and other weapons production sites such as Oak Ridge with the commercial nuclear power industry.
Just to be clear let me say I do happen to be pro-nuclear power, however I don't believe it does anyone any good to either confuse the environmental problems created by nuclear weapons production with environmental problems created by commercial nuclear power generation or to handwave over the concerns about some of the poluted sites as a bunch of anti-nuclear luddite worries.
Believe it or not some of the old copper up on the poles is actually in pretty good shape and well exceeds spec.
According to many phone company employees I've talked to a T1 or DSL are much more likely to work properly in an old pre-WWII cable if it is in good shape than in cables put up between the 40's and the 80's.
Premises wiring is a whole 'nother kettle of fish. In most cases you are better off ripping out everything up to the demarc and replacing it with cat5e. Of course let the in-building fiber "age" for 30 years and you will likely have a mess as well.
But the telco controled wiring plant typically is in good shape and well documented no matter how old it is.
Net-centric computing will have finally arrived, and it will no longer be worth saving video, music, or even your own spreadsheet and text files on your local hard drive as they can be instantly downloaded from a server somewhere that is getting backed up regularly. In other words, current hosting companies will have the chance to transition from points of presence to storage, archiving, and application server facilities.
This will all demand an end to the nonsense of operating systems which can be easily hacked into. Microsoft will replace the Windows underpinnings transparently with something that is standards based (probably BSD variant), but Linux will continue to thrive for those who want to have complete control over what they do with their own hardware.
I think the demands of content owners like the RIAA and MPAA for some sort of DRM and policing of copyright violations will keep this from taking off as you predict as well as give me an incentive to keep a local copy of all my files.
In addition there are the privacy concerns, I don't exactly want John Ashcroft to be doing fishing expeditions against data I choose to store simply becuase he feels like it. At least with data on my own hard drives I have a pretty good idea if the FBI has been by to have a look. If I store everything on google's "Gdrive" I may never know until I'm dissapeared to the Gitmo if somebody's been snooping.
Also there is a memory-hole problem. I often save local copies of news stories or other interesting web pages. All too often I will return to a story or site later and find it either gone or altered. My most recent encounter with this was the USGS high-resolution color aerial photograph database. Photos of the White House, US Naval Observatory (the VP's Residence), and US Capitol building are blurred. In addition many road and rail bridges have had small blacked out areas added along side them. Sometimes it is something as simple as someone taking down a personal page for whatever reason.
Thanks but I'll keep the master copy of my data local for now
I once had a store owner get all over my case for taking photos inside her store. Apparently, those were proprietary photons I was recording. What I wonder is, would she have had a leg to stand on if I had taken the same photos from right outside her doorway? At what point do you own a photon, and at what point do you not?
The store owner/management can prohibit you from taking pictures on their property.
On the other hand if you are on the public street taking pictures of what you can see from there they really can't do anything to stop you as long as what you are photographing is clearly visible to passerby.
The situation can get much more complicated if you are say using a zoom lens or climb a tree in a park next door to someones property. If there is a reasonable expectation of privacy on the part of the property owner you can violate anti-voyerism laws. In the case of a business, especially a retail business open to the public, this is far less likely than if the property you are taking pictures of is someones private residence.
Another can of worms gets opened depending on how you decide to use the photographs. If you keep them for strictly personal use, publish them as "news", or use them for commercial purposes such as advertizing different standards apply. It also matters if any recognizable people in the photographs are considered public or private individuals.
News gathering has the most protection, followed closely by personal use, commercial use has the least protection and generally requires model releases for any recognizable people.
In some cases the news gathering/public figure exemptions can get around things like anti-voyerism laws. For example if you photograph a US Senator buying drugs, taking a bribe, or having sex with a prostitute even if you are using a zoom lens to "intrude" where they might have an expectation of privacy you are probably in the clear since such an event is newsworthy, in the public intrest, and elected officials give up a certain amount of privacy by being well known figures and public servants.
In any case the above only describes US law as I understand it. I am not a lawyer and your milage may vary especially outside the US. Consult appropriate legal counsel before trying this at home.
Basically the point is, anything one might do with pasta, one can do with spaghetti squash, and end up with a healthier alternative.
Spaghetti squash is good but regular old pasta isn't all that bad for you especially compared to fast food or frozen dinners.
With a bread machine, I would advise premixing the loaves and storing in plastic baggies. Substitute dehydrated milk, and it is a matter of adding water butter and yeast. If one has bread pans or a baking brick, one could just use a mixer and bake in thier oven for nearly the same effect.
Pre-mixing large batches of dry ingredients can be a bit of a time saver if you like breads based on complicated recipies. Personally most of the breads I do have nothing more than flour, salt, yeast, and water so pre-mixing won't really save any steps.
And when you are cooking, use some good teflon coated pans. You use less oil and cleanup is a snap. And when cooking, use a flavorful oil, like olive or sesame. If you like high heat cooking, grapeseed oil is your friend. Many of my friends maintain that a smoke detector works better than any timer.
I find you really don't need to use non-stick pans in order to use little oil or to have quick cleanup. Using nice heavy cookware like cast iron or pans from a restaurant supply store seems to work as well and you will never have to worry about the teflon coating wearing out. The one downside is except for the cast iron good pans tend to be more expensive than non-stick you buy at Wal-Mart. On the other hand good pans will last you the rest of your life.
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Not true and not enforcable even if it was.
Mind you local laws vary and so this may not be true across the entire country, and you technically may be liable for the fair market value of the goods or services received as payment. However the IRS and many jurisdictions will exempt transactions below a certain amount from reporting or taxation requirements.
Bullshit, barter is perfectly legal as long as all applicable laws and regulations are followed.
In most parts of the country if the value of barter or cash transactions is less than a certain amount then you aren't obligated to report it or pay taxes on it.
In any case with barter it is pretty hard for the various levels of government to track since it doesn't really show up financial databases and the like.
How does this book compare to Tomcat: The Definitive Guide from O'Reilly?
I tend to be pretty skeptical of technical books from anyone other than O'Reilly, Addison-Wesley, or Prentice-Hall.
Agreed. A true free trade agreement would be no more complicated than the arrangements any 2 US states have.
While some of the details are delt with by uniform Federal regulations it is still far less complicated than any so-called "Free trade" agreement.
The easy way out would be to say that goods and services have to meet local regulations to be sold in a particular country. You could even go a bit further and say that one country's regulations in a particular area are equivalent to anothers.
When, exactly, did you last see some dying in front of a hospital. If you get sick, you CAN get the help you need. Please provide links of those turned away.
The problem is your condition has to be life threatening before you can get treatment. Also many hospitals will refuse even emergency patients without insurance coverage, only treating them to the point they can be safely transfered to another hospital.
In addition I don't know if you've ever used the emergency room when you've not had health insurance (and no money to pay out of pocket), but you will get a bill. If you can't pay the bill you will end up with collection agencies after you. Given the cost of medical care these bills can be quite high.
Because you are not setting money aside to pay for health insurance or setting enough aside to pay the bills is not the government's concern.
It is the government's concern because many conditions that are relatively cheap to treat early on can become quite expensive later. Somebody still has to cover the cost of medical care for people who show up in the emergency room with life-threatening conditions. For example take diabeties. It is fairly cheap and easy to treat it in the early stages, however it becomes quite expensive when it advances to the point of causing serious health problems like kidney failure or gangrene.
Furthermore I don't know if you've priced individual health insurance policies lately, but they are quite expensive. For many the choice is eating and paying the rent or paying for health insurance. You can hardly set aside money you don't have. Furthermore given the cost of medical care to expect most people to be able to have anywhere from $10k to $100k set aside in a savings account for medical bills is unrealistic.
Please provide a link validating your 60% figure.
No link sorry, I'll go look for my source.
However if you think about it this really isn't that out of line, consider the following categories of health care spending by Government at all levels:
Typically most figures you see will include the following three categories:
Federal Medicare spending
Federal and State Medicaid spending (sometimes state spending is omitted)
VA health care spending (sometimes this is omitted)
This category is sometimes omitted and sometimes included, occasionally it is lumped in with Federal employee benefits:
DoD medical spending for active duty military, dependants, and retirees.
This category is sometimes omitted and sometimes included as well, especially since much of this isn't direct spending but is financing overhead and capital costs:
Misc. Federal, State, and local health care spending (indigent care grants, trauma center funding, rural hospital grants, city hospitals, county hospitals, university hospitals, etc.)
Frequently this category is omitted because it uses private insurance, however the premiums are still paid by taxpayers:
Federal, State, and local employee and retiree health insurance benefits.
This category is almost always omitted because it is an indirect subsidy, however it is a major factor in the health care market.
Federal, State, and Local tax exemptions and credits for employer provided insurance, personal medical expenses, and the self-insured.
I don't believe that last category was included in the 60% figure I cited as I believe that only included direct budget outlays.
Frankly at this point I'll take even a crappy socialized system over no health insurance. If I get sick right now I'm screwed.
For that matter whenever anyone proposes any sort of insurance reform or subsidies in this country why does every single critic automaticly assume it means a system like the NHS in the UK?
First of all there are any number of ways of doing health care reform from having everything private including insurance companies but with subsidies for lower income folks (Australia), to a mix of public and private insurance (Germany), to single payer but private doctors (Canada), to doctors and hospitals all being run directly by a national agency (UK).
Typically the most extreme proposal I ever hear for the US is a single-payer system like Canada's. I will say I've some experience with the Canadian health care system and I don't see it being any worse than here. In fact in many ways it is better.
BTW the US health care system is already partially socialized. Roughly 60% of all health care spending in the US comes from taxpayer dollars.
I would also like to point out that according to the WHO the best medical system in the world is the French. They spend roughly the same percentage of GDP on health care as the government portion of health care spending in the US. They also spend less per-capita.
I don't know about that.
While Space Ship One doesn't really have enough of a track record to know for sure (nor does the Chinese vehicle), the Russians have a very impressive record with their Soyuz rockets.
If someone offered me a trip into space using any of the 4 vehicles capable of space flight I would take a Russian Soyuz hands down.
The Soyuz hasn't had a fatal launch or landing failure in a long time (20+ years). The Russians have done a lot of launches in that time period.
The Shuttle is just too complex and has just too many things that can go wrong on launch or re-entry. In addition I don't think the problems with the management culture at NASA that lead to the Challenger or Columbia accidents has been fixed. The only way this will be fixed is to put someone in charge who doesn't tolerate BS and give them the authority to fire anyone who won't get with the program. I'm thinking a former Military officer or Astronaut with a solid track record managing large organizations and an intrest in space flight and science.
Um, no.
Entirely different things. Burning Man is a private event and they have the right to ask people not do certain activities while attending just the same as if they invited people to their office or home.
If someone was videotaping at my office or house after I'd asked them not to and they posted that footage to the internet after I'd asked them not to do so I think very few people would consider it censorship if I threatened to sue them to get it taken down.
The fact is they've had problems in the past with porn video vendors taping footage at Burning Man. Many of the participants don't exactly want to appear in this kind of video. In addition there are people who don't really want their pictures taken at Burning Man at all. Some of the people who are running around painted blue and naked might have friends, family, or business associates who really wouldn't understand why they do this. I think they have a right to ensure that recognizable images of them at Burning Man not appear in a form availible to the public.
Several years ago there was serious discussion of banning cameras entirely from Burning Man, the current rules are a comprimize to still allow people to film while respecting the rights of those who may not want to be photographed.
If you really think there is NO situation where someone should have to ask permission to film then I guess I can come into your bedroom and photograph you having sex or photgraph you in the shower.
There is a certain irony to your post as Branson was seriously trying to get Air France and British Airways to sell him the remaining Concordes. I don't remember if the problem was that AF and BA refused, or if they demanded more than Branson was willing to pay, or if British Aerospace/EADS refusing to supply parts was the problem.
In any case even if Branson loses money on Virgin Glactic it will pay off for him and his companies in free advertising and PR. "Fly Virgin from London to New York and win a flight on the VSS Enterprise!"
At worst Virgin Glactic is a continuation of Branson's yachting, powerboat racing, and balloon stunts. Who knows he might even end up financing the next step to orbital flight.
Then again if anyone could make money on space tourism it would be Branson.
Another thought occurs to me perhaps Branson will have Rutan design a new SST for Virgin to fly? That would be quite a coup for both Rutan and Branson.
Be that as it may, Black Rock LLC has a right to control it's trademark use and has a right to control who may film at Burning Man.
They require everyone with a camera to sign their filming agreement. It only authorizes personal use of images taken at Burning Man. *Any* other use requires the permission of Black Rock LLC. This includes things such as art projects.
There are very good reasons for this, first and formost is to protect the trademark and copyright rights of Black Rock LLC and the artists who's work is on display at Burning Man. Second is to keep a ballance between those who want to film at Burning Man and those who would like to see cameras banned entirely.
Their current rules are an attempt to prevent problems they've encountered in the past. They have every right to put them in place and the rules are far looser than those in place at many concerts or art exibitions.
I have no idea what context Sean Kennedy's footage taken at Burning Man was used in. However I'm sure that if he had properly asked for permission it would have been granted. For that matter once the problem was brought to his attention I'm sure that if Sean's response was to ask for a permission grant he probably would have gotten it (assuming that not asking for it in the first place was an honest mistake).
Man ... that was art.
Looks to me like he was filming commercially in Black Rock City without permission.
... I feel really sorry for him, it's not like Burning Man doesn't warn people about the camera rules repeatedly.
Wah
For those of you who think this is "bad" and "censorship" remember that there are many people who would like to see cameras banned entirely from Black Rock City. The current rules are a ballance between privacy and artists reproduction rights and having the sleazoids who make "Girls Gone Wild" videos shove cameras in everyones face.
It is an all too common myth that solar doesn't work when there are clouds.
In fact photovoltaics and solar thermal systems like solar hot-water heaters work fine even with fairly heavy cloud cover.
I live in the very cloudy PNW and there are plenty of solar powered emergency phones and other various equipment all over the place. Those little solar powered path lights at home depot work just fine here too even when we're having one of our several week periods of overcast skies.
You do have to upsize your solar collectors somewhat around here though. For things like solar hot water or heat that really isn't much of a problem since you don't need much area in the first place. On the other hand it does make PV systems for home power around here a lot more expensive. But for something like a phone you don't need a lot of power in the first place.
If your servers are used in any sort of business environment I would reccomend rebooting them every 30 days even if it seems they don't need it.
Why? For one it's just good practice. Two you are much more likely to apply patches or fix wonky hardware if you know you are going to take the system down anyway. Three there are all sorts of problems that are likely to be prevented/spotted with frequent reboots. For example hardware self-tests don't get run if the system isn't cycled periodicly. Fourth it lets you verify that things like failover are working properly before it becomes a problem.
It doesn't matter what the OS is either, Windows, Novell, Linux, and commercial Unix servers all benefit from periodic reboots. Even Big Iron like IBM mainframes, AS/400's, HP/Tandem servers, and Unisis A-series usually will have occasional reboots as a part of scheduled maintenance.
I think most people would be appalled at how little testing goes on in the commercial world. Very often if the function isn't of intrest to the developers or testers it hasn't been tested.
.0002 of some small project who doesn't do OSS full time. Yep your right, that's the OSS mantra *rollseyes*
In many cases the most common combinations of software and hardware don't get tested because the developers and testers are all using something "better".
Even more fun is the "not invented here" attitude many product development departments take toward their own IT and technical support staffs.
I have seen bugs that were known to technical support or IT take as much as a year to even be acknowledged by the development team. Then there is the case where our team had carefully documented all the symtoms to a major design flaw in our own company's product only to have the product manager claim to us that "there is no bug."
A far too common response by developers in the commercial world to bugs found by anyone other than another deveolper or the testing team is to point the finger at the user, other software, or other hardware. I have even seen the development team try to blame a very common software product for being incorrect instead of fixing our product to work with it.
These are all things I've personally witnessed at more than one company, and friends I know who work at other companies have seen similar behavior.
"It works on my box...bug must be fixed!"
Who the hell says that? Oh right lone hacker of version
You'd think such things don't happen with commercial software but they do, and much more often than is commonly thought. I personally have witnessed a hotfix be rolled out to 50,000 customers with no more testing than the 5 minutes the developer spent on it. Unfortunately the fix also crashed the software after about 15 minutes of use.
It's not a per-manufactuer thing.
There is an airline industry standard for the in-seat power connectors (I don't remember the trademark name at the moment).
Most newer aircraft particularly ones designed for longer flights have the outlets in all seat positions. However many airlines have retrofitted some or all seats in their older aircraft. I've seen the power outlets on Airbus, Boeing, Bombardier, and McDonald-Douglas planes. Delta had even managed to put some in a few of their L-1011's before they got rid of all of them.
The reason you are more likely to find the outlets in Airbus aircraft is that many of the Airbuses flying are newer than many of the Boeings flying.
Where is Ohio exactly. I'm not going to cheat and look at a map before i make my guess, but somewhere in the headwaters of the Missisippi? North of Tennesee to hazard a more specific guess.
Not too bad. Minnesota is where the headwaters of the Missisippi are located, but the Ohio river is a tributary of the Missisippi and forms the southern border of the state of Ohio. Lake Erie forms most of the northern border of Ohio. Ohio is north of Tennesee, but Kentucky is between the two.
States bordering Ohio: Pennsylvania to the East, West Virginia to the South East, Kentucky to the South West, Indiana to the West, and Michigan on the North West (the part of the Northern border that isn't Lake Erie)
Major cities: Cleveland is in the North East part of the state on Lake Erie. Cincinnati is in the South West on the Ohio River and Kentucky border. Columbus (the state capitol) is more or less in the center of the state. Dayton (home of the Wright brothers) is North of Cincinnati and West of Columbus. Toledo is in the North West of the state at the intersection of the Ohio/Michigan border and the shore of Lake Erie. Akron (home of Goodyear aka "rubbertown USA") is just south of Cleveland.
(for the record I live in Seattle, WA and have never been to Ohio, I'm just a bit of a geography nut)
Big office buildings become quite uncomfortable even when the outside temp is around 45F if the AC is off. It needs to get quite cold before a large building will switch from cooling the inside air to heating it.
military nuclear weapon industry != civilian nuclear power industry.
Unfortunately both sides of the issue have sought to confuse the two for their own reasons much to the detriment of the civilian nuclear power industry.
For example the opposition to fuel reprocessing and breeder reactors or the lack of a waste disposal site due to it being combined with a disposal site for military waste.
Although one "mixing" of the two that sounds promising would be to burn nuclear weapons "pits" in power reactors.
I agree completly. Also, I think that you should disregard about the first 30 years of nuclear operations, as it was a completely 'new' industry, and the risks were not known. It'd be like saying that flying is unsafe because of the crash rate for biplanes.
Three Mile Island and a few other isolated incidents aside the civilian nuclear power industry in Western nations is pretty damn good. Most of the really obnoxious stuff was done in the name of the military nuclear program. The huge environmental messes, the problems of "downwinders" from Hanford and the Nevada Test Site and other such horrors are all a result of the military programs.
Now we have a good handle on the requirements for safe nuclear power. It's generally safer for workers than coal, and has fewer negative enviromental effects. Go nuclear!
Sadly dispite the threat of global warming and the polution problems caused by coal fired powerplants mentioning support for nuclear power around most environmentalists is viewed about the same as farting in church. I hope that more come to the same realization as that British climate scientist did.
As a side note I consider myself an environmentalist and contribute money and time regularly to various environmental organizations. Unfortunately I find the anti-technology additude of most groups to be very frustrating at times. Perhaps it is time for a new organziation that isn't anti-technology and anti-free market while at the same time being pro-environment.
The waste at Hanford is primarily from nuclear weapons production in the 40's and 50's.
Don't confuse the huge environmental problems at Hanford and other weapons production sites such as Oak Ridge with the commercial nuclear power industry.
Just to be clear let me say I do happen to be pro-nuclear power, however I don't believe it does anyone any good to either confuse the environmental problems created by nuclear weapons production with environmental problems created by commercial nuclear power generation or to handwave over the concerns about some of the poluted sites as a bunch of anti-nuclear luddite worries.
Believe it or not some of the old copper up on the poles is actually in pretty good shape and well exceeds spec.
According to many phone company employees I've talked to a T1 or DSL are much more likely to work properly in an old pre-WWII cable if it is in good shape than in cables put up between the 40's and the 80's.
Premises wiring is a whole 'nother kettle of fish. In most cases you are better off ripping out everything up to the demarc and replacing it with cat5e. Of course let the in-building fiber "age" for 30 years and you will likely have a mess as well.
But the telco controled wiring plant typically is in good shape and well documented no matter how old it is.
Net-centric computing will have finally arrived, and it will no longer be worth saving video, music, or even your own spreadsheet and text files on your local hard drive as they can be instantly downloaded from a server somewhere that is getting backed up regularly. In other words, current hosting companies will have the chance to transition from points of presence to storage, archiving, and application server facilities.
This will all demand an end to the nonsense of operating systems which can be easily hacked into. Microsoft will replace the Windows underpinnings transparently with something that is standards based (probably BSD variant), but Linux will continue to thrive for those who want to have complete control over what they do with their own hardware.
I think the demands of content owners like the RIAA and MPAA for some sort of DRM and policing of copyright violations will keep this from taking off as you predict as well as give me an incentive to keep a local copy of all my files.
In addition there are the privacy concerns, I don't exactly want John Ashcroft to be doing fishing expeditions against data I choose to store simply becuase he feels like it. At least with data on my own hard drives I have a pretty good idea if the FBI has been by to have a look. If I store everything on google's "Gdrive" I may never know until I'm dissapeared to the Gitmo if somebody's been snooping.
Also there is a memory-hole problem. I often save local copies of news stories or other interesting web pages. All too often I will return to a story or site later and find it either gone or altered. My most recent encounter with this was the USGS high-resolution color aerial photograph database. Photos of the White House, US Naval Observatory (the VP's Residence), and US Capitol building are blurred. In addition many road and rail bridges have had small blacked out areas added along side them. Sometimes it is something as simple as someone taking down a personal page for whatever reason.
Thanks but I'll keep the master copy of my data local for now
Not really a big deal. This stuff comes up all the time on almost any photography forum.
I once had a store owner get all over my case for taking photos inside her store. Apparently, those were proprietary photons I was recording. What I wonder is, would she have had a leg to stand on if I had taken the same photos from right outside her doorway? At what point do you own a photon, and at what point do you not?
The store owner/management can prohibit you from taking pictures on their property.
On the other hand if you are on the public street taking pictures of what you can see from there they really can't do anything to stop you as long as what you are photographing is clearly visible to passerby.
The situation can get much more complicated if you are say using a zoom lens or climb a tree in a park next door to someones property. If there is a reasonable expectation of privacy on the part of the property owner you can violate anti-voyerism laws. In the case of a business, especially a retail business open to the public, this is far less likely than if the property you are taking pictures of is someones private residence.
Another can of worms gets opened depending on how you decide to use the photographs. If you keep them for strictly personal use, publish them as "news", or use them for commercial purposes such as advertizing different standards apply. It also matters if any recognizable people in the photographs are considered public or private individuals.
News gathering has the most protection, followed closely by personal use, commercial use has the least protection and generally requires model releases for any recognizable people.
In some cases the news gathering/public figure exemptions can get around things like anti-voyerism laws. For example if you photograph a US Senator buying drugs, taking a bribe, or having sex with a prostitute even if you are using a zoom lens to "intrude" where they might have an expectation of privacy you are probably in the clear since such an event is newsworthy, in the public intrest, and elected officials give up a certain amount of privacy by being well known figures and public servants.
In any case the above only describes US law as I understand it. I am not a lawyer and your milage may vary especially outside the US. Consult appropriate legal counsel before trying this at home.
Basically the point is, anything one might do with pasta, one can do with spaghetti squash, and end up with a healthier alternative.
Spaghetti squash is good but regular old pasta isn't all that bad for you especially compared to fast food or frozen dinners.
With a bread machine, I would advise premixing the loaves and storing in plastic baggies. Substitute dehydrated milk, and it is a matter of adding water butter and yeast. If one has bread pans or a baking brick, one could just use a mixer and bake in thier oven for nearly the same effect.
Pre-mixing large batches of dry ingredients can be a bit of a time saver if you like breads based on complicated recipies. Personally most of the breads I do have nothing more than flour, salt, yeast, and water so pre-mixing won't really save any steps.
And when you are cooking, use some good teflon coated pans. You use less oil and cleanup is a snap. And when cooking, use a flavorful oil, like olive or sesame. If you like high heat cooking, grapeseed oil is your friend. Many of my friends maintain that a smoke detector works better than any timer.
I find you really don't need to use non-stick pans in order to use little oil or to have quick cleanup. Using nice heavy cookware like cast iron or pans from a restaurant supply store seems to work as well and you will never have to worry about the teflon coating wearing out. The one downside is except for the cast iron good pans tend to be more expensive than non-stick you buy at Wal-Mart. On the other hand good pans will last you the rest of your life.