The FISA bill is troublesome in so many ways. It gives the Congressional approval to the notion that "if the President says it's legal, then it's legal" that Nixon tried during Watergate. Now it's the law.
The old FISA law said that it was the exclusive method for international surveillance, just like the new bill. Now that Congress has condoned breaking that clause by passing retroactive immunity, any bill with such an exclusivity clause is open to doubt.
Congress has done nothing about federal prosecutions being just another form of politics. Just wait for surveillance going down the same path: first, it's used against terrorists. Then it's used against drug trafficers who aren't paying off the authorities, then domestic gangs and organized crime, then dissenters and political opponents.
There are other candidates out there, but as long as my preference of one of the major party candidates over the other is not recorded when I vote for a third party, I have to vote against the major party candidate that I think is going to bankrupt the country.
If we had Instant Runoff or Single Transferable Vote elections, then it would be much more in my self interest to rank first the candidate that is closest to my ideals.
It's the vote counting scheme that narrows choices down to the two major party candidates, not the electorate. I wonder why no major party candidate wants to change that?
I have a very hazy memory of reading Andre Norton's
The Zero Stone
out of my grade school library.
I was 6 when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, and had hi-res, 9x12 photos from Apollo 11 on my bedroom wall. I loved my books on rockets and space flight.
I found Asimov, Heinlein, and Bradbury later, and subscribed to Analog for High School and college. But The Zero Stone certainly kindled my fascination with sci-fi... I have no idea how well it holds up today.
The wikipedia list of most dangerous jobs left off "President of the United States". 9524 out of 100,000 (i.e. 4 of 42) were killed. Another 4 died; one of those was from an illness contracted performing his official duties.
That death rate is way higher than the 122 per 100,000 listed for Timber Cutters.
And apparently the author of the piece doesn't really care about 100% power availability. Because he doesn't mention the care and feeding of UPSs. Infrastructure services are there and you can use them... until they're not.
First, I plugged TiVo and the cable box into the wall outlets. At least once a week I'd come home and my wife would be fuming because there was a power glitch and the cable box shut itself off.
Now there's a UPS for the TiVo and the cable box. But it only sustains the devices for 15 minutes. Sometimes the power is out for longer than that.
Iraq's use of chemical weapons against the Kurds was done in the 1980s. With tacit approval of the United States government. After all, we got them to start their war against Iran, and (along with the British) sold them their capacity to manufacture chemical weapons.
After 1991, not so much. Weapons declared and destroyed.
I am not a guitar player. I might try my hand at making one, though.
I can imagine that the wood affects the rigidity with which the bridge and (for guitars, the fret on) the neck hold the string, and hold the pick up under the string. Some frequency components of the vibration of the string get damped because the body and the neck absorb them.
And, of course, the weight and shape and finish of the instrument change how it affects the musician. Do not underestimate this impact.
In the end, congress will pass a "windfall profits tax" on Big Zinc, which will be passed along (as all corporate taxes are) to the end consumer -- that being us.
No. Taxes on corporations affect five groups: The owners, the executives, the employees, the suppliers, and the customers. You cannot tell a priori which of the five groups will be affected by changing the taxes on the corporation.
Sometimes the corporation has enough market clout to pass on the cost of increased taxes to customers, or to force suppliers to cut prices.
Sometimes they don't, and the labor market is weak enough that management can force employees to take pay cuts.
Sometimes that doesn't work either, and the taxes get paid out of corporate profits that are paid back to the company's owners (usually shareholders).
And on the very rarest of occasions, executive bonuses have to be reduced.
Across the fortune 500, the top 5 executives capture 10% of all corporate profits; shareholders get the remaining 90%.
"Peak Oil" is when we cannot increase production of oil at all. When we drain the existing fields, and their production falls off faster than we can produce oil from Shale, Sand, Deep Sea Drilling, the Arctic, or wherever.
You are correct when you say "Peak Oil" does not mean that we're out of oil. And that the dramatic increase in price given no serious disruptions in supply and only modest and predictable increases in demand suggest that "Peak Oil" is now, or at least close. Producers may believe that a barrel of oil may fetch $200 or more shortly, so there is no great incentive for them to pour billions of $ (or Euros, or the equivalent in Yuan or Rupees) into increasing supply now and missing out on even greater profits later.
Part of what made the 9/11 attacks such a success is that the planes were fueled for a coast-to-coast flight (Mass. to California; Newark NJ to California) and hijacked relatively early in the flight.
Had the planes crashed into the towers without the fuel load, the towers would have remained standing.
So build the industrial-scale solar plants where there isn't much natural vegetation or cloud cover. The desert southwest of the USA, for example. The Sahara, Sinai, or Kalahari in Africa. Gobi in Asia. Australia has plenty of desert, too.
Speculators can only keep the price of oil up if they can buy oil that is pumped out of the ground and actually store it somewhere. If speculators had bid the price of oil for July delivery up over market values, they have to either take delivery of the oil in July and store it, or sell the contract. If they sell the contract for market value (i.e. less than they paid) they lose money, and would stop speculating.
Iran does has some oil stored in tankers floating in the Persian Gulf while a refinery that can take the oil is repaired.
The world has to face it. Demand for oil is outstripping supply. Price is adjusting to a level that reduces demand to match supply. And supply is only going to go down over time. Peak oil is here. We have to all deal with it.
I almost bought a Camry in 1987, but decided to get a Ford Taurus instead. It felt like a much more substantial car. I drove it for 10 years and 150,000 miles.
Today's Camry is smoother, quieter, faster, and safer than the 1987 version.
Bigger and heavier, but not by 500 kg!
1987: 1,240 to 1,295 kg, 4.52 meters long, 1,69 meters wide, 1.37 meters high. 96 kW or 118 kW engines (130 hp I-4 or 160 hp V-6) 2007: 1,489 kg, 4.80 meters long, 1.82 meters wide, 1.47 meters high. 118 or 200 kW engines (158 hp I-4 or 270 hp V-6)
I didn't buy a DVD player. But that didn't stop DVDs from making LaserDisc obsolete. No new material in the format => format is obsolete.
No new software for 68000 Macs => platform is obsolete. Little new software for PPC Macs => platform is becoming obsolete. No new software for Windows 98 => platform is obsolete.
What you have is obsolete when everyone else has moved on. Yes, you can nurse it along with old software doing old functions. But when you can't do new stuff, then you're obsolete.
"Are we alone in the Universe?"... there seem to be two possibilities, either humanity is the only intelligent, technological life in the universe. Which means we have a unique gift that would be lost if we doom ourselves.
Or there is other intelligent, technological life out there. Other civilizations.
Either way, it is profound.
I don't think humanity will know, one way or the other, within my lifetime. The chances of other civilizations (alive now) within the solar system are infinitesimal. Mars may have supported life for long enough to make searching there interesting.
Interstellar communication is hard and slow, and interstellar travel orders of magnitude harder and slower.
Slashdot Mirror
The FISA bill is troublesome in so many ways. It gives the Congressional approval to the notion that "if the President says it's legal, then it's legal" that Nixon tried during Watergate. Now it's the law.
The old FISA law said that it was the exclusive method for international surveillance, just like the new bill. Now that Congress has condoned breaking that clause by passing retroactive immunity, any bill with such an exclusivity clause is open to doubt.
Congress has done nothing about federal prosecutions being just another form of politics. Just wait for surveillance going down the same path: first, it's used against terrorists. Then it's used against drug trafficers who aren't paying off the authorities, then domestic gangs and organized crime, then dissenters and political opponents.
There are other candidates out there, but as long as my preference of one of the major party candidates over the other is not recorded when I vote for a third party, I have to vote against the major party candidate that I think is going to bankrupt the country.
If we had Instant Runoff or Single Transferable Vote elections, then it would be much more in my self interest to rank first the candidate that is closest to my ideals.
It's the vote counting scheme that narrows choices down to the two major party candidates, not the electorate. I wonder why no major party candidate wants to change that?
I have a very hazy memory of reading Andre Norton's
out of my grade school library.
I was 6 when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, and had hi-res, 9x12 photos from Apollo 11 on my bedroom wall. I loved my books on rockets and space flight.
I found Asimov, Heinlein, and Bradbury later, and subscribed to Analog for High School and college. But The Zero Stone certainly kindled my fascination with sci-fi... I have no idea how well it holds up today.
Is it Obama's fault that the nation has a budget deficit? Or is it the Bush Administration and the Republican-controlled congresses fault?
Politicians are politicians, and cutting taxes has consequences. Is offering to raise taxes to fund the space program a political winner?
Many of the employees of any company are crushed when management announces they're outsourcing the jobs.
The flight of Apollo 13 had become mundane. In flight press conferences were not carried live by the TV networks.
Until the accident...
The wikipedia list of most dangerous jobs left off "President of the United States". 9524 out of 100,000 (i.e. 4 of 42) were killed. Another 4 died; one of those was from an illness contracted performing his official duties.
That death rate is way higher than the 122 per 100,000 listed for Timber Cutters.
And apparently the author of the piece doesn't really care about 100% power availability. Because he doesn't mention the care and feeding of UPSs. Infrastructure services are there and you can use them... until they're not.
First, I plugged TiVo and the cable box into the wall outlets. At least once a week I'd come home and my wife would be fuming because there was a power glitch and the cable box shut itself off.
Now there's a UPS for the TiVo and the cable box. But it only sustains the devices for 15 minutes. Sometimes the power is out for longer than that.
Iraq's use of chemical weapons against the Kurds was done in the 1980s. With tacit approval of the United States government. After all, we got them to start their war against Iran, and (along with the British) sold them their capacity to manufacture chemical weapons.
After 1991, not so much. Weapons declared and destroyed.
I am not a guitar player. I might try my hand at making one, though.
I can imagine that the wood affects the rigidity with which the bridge and (for guitars, the fret on) the neck hold the string, and hold the pick up under the string. Some frequency components of the vibration of the string get damped because the body and the neck absorb them.
And, of course, the weight and shape and finish of the instrument change how it affects the musician. Do not underestimate this impact.
No. Taxes on corporations affect five groups: The owners, the executives, the employees, the suppliers, and the customers. You cannot tell a priori which of the five groups will be affected by changing the taxes on the corporation.
Across the fortune 500, the top 5 executives capture 10% of all corporate profits; shareholders get the remaining 90%.
Another example: Easter Island. After the forests were cut down, population crashed and lifestyles fell.
"Peak Oil" is when we cannot increase production of oil at all. When we drain the existing fields, and their production falls off faster than we can produce oil from Shale, Sand, Deep Sea Drilling, the Arctic, or wherever.
You are correct when you say "Peak Oil" does not mean that we're out of oil. And that the dramatic increase in price given no serious disruptions in supply and only modest and predictable increases in demand suggest that "Peak Oil" is now, or at least close. Producers may believe that a barrel of oil may fetch $200 or more shortly, so there is no great incentive for them to pour billions of $ (or Euros, or the equivalent in Yuan or Rupees) into increasing supply now and missing out on even greater profits later.
Part of what made the 9/11 attacks such a success is that the planes were fueled for a coast-to-coast flight (Mass. to California; Newark NJ to California) and hijacked relatively early in the flight.
Had the planes crashed into the towers without the fuel load, the towers would have remained standing.
So build the industrial-scale solar plants where there isn't much natural vegetation or cloud cover. The desert southwest of the USA, for example. The Sahara, Sinai, or Kalahari in Africa. Gobi in Asia. Australia has plenty of desert, too.
Nuclear's other big problem is the waste. Nobody wants to store it. Nobody wants it transported through their area.
Speculators can only keep the price of oil up if they can buy oil that is pumped out of the ground and actually store it somewhere. If speculators had bid the price of oil for July delivery up over market values, they have to either take delivery of the oil in July and store it, or sell the contract. If they sell the contract for market value (i.e. less than they paid) they lose money, and would stop speculating.
Iran does has some oil stored in tankers floating in the Persian Gulf while a refinery that can take the oil is repaired.
The world has to face it. Demand for oil is outstripping supply. Price is adjusting to a level that reduces demand to match supply. And supply is only going to go down over time. Peak oil is here. We have to all deal with it.
The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything is 42. No more searching is needed.
The (corrupted) Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything is "What do you get when you multiply six by nine?".
HTH. HAND.
There is a standard for encrypting digital cable. It's called "cable card".
I almost bought a Camry in 1987, but decided to get a Ford Taurus instead. It felt like a much more substantial car. I drove it for 10 years and 150,000 miles.
Today's Camry is smoother, quieter, faster, and safer than the 1987 version.
Bigger and heavier, but not by 500 kg!
1987: 1,240 to 1,295 kg, 4.52 meters long, 1,69 meters wide, 1.37 meters high. 96 kW or 118 kW engines (130 hp I-4 or 160 hp V-6)
2007: 1,489 kg, 4.80 meters long, 1.82 meters wide, 1.47 meters high. 118 or 200 kW engines (158 hp I-4 or 270 hp V-6)
Designers who don't do teardrops? Wunibald Kamm, in the 1930s? And the design style known as Kammback
Robots are a good start. Follow them up with automated, solar-powered, mining/manufacturing facilities.
Have the automated mining/manufacturing facilities build more automated mining/manufacturing facilities.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_machine.
Have an initial limit, so that they shut down after producing a specified amount/number of generations.
And hope the shutdown control doesn't get deactivated by a mutation.
I didn't buy a DVD player. But that didn't stop DVDs from making LaserDisc obsolete. No new material in the format => format is obsolete.
No new software for 68000 Macs => platform is obsolete.
Little new software for PPC Macs => platform is becoming obsolete.
No new software for Windows 98 => platform is obsolete.
What you have is obsolete when everyone else has moved on. Yes, you can nurse it along with old software doing old functions. But when you can't do new stuff, then you're obsolete.
Counter with well-known market failures: externalities, free riders, monopolies, and unequal information.
"Are we alone in the Universe?"... there seem to be two possibilities, either humanity is the only intelligent, technological life in the universe. Which means we have a unique gift that would be lost if we doom ourselves.
Or there is other intelligent, technological life out there. Other civilizations.
Either way, it is profound.
I don't think humanity will know, one way or the other, within my lifetime. The chances of other civilizations (alive now) within the solar system are infinitesimal. Mars may have supported life for long enough to make searching there interesting.
Interstellar communication is hard and slow, and interstellar travel orders of magnitude harder and slower.