It's only two channel though - turn and throttle. That said the DelFly Micro is probably limited similarly.
0.5 grams is light. Just adding lubricant to your heli will probably add 0.5 grams.
Ultra light air vehicles that don't have power and maneuverability won't do well outdoors - just a light breeze will sweep them far away.
So it's not so simple to make one to use for outdoor surveillance.
For indoor surveillance you are better off making a remote controlled roach or gecko. Just make sure you include enough "decoy wet stuff" so that when someone smashes it, it's disgusting enough for most people to not bother looking too closely;). Alternatively, rig up a real life animal with a camera, battery and control system.
Having something the size of a DelFly micro flying around indoors is going to attract a lot of attention. Whereas something crawling about on the ceiling should stick out a lot less.
After looking at it in action, I still prefer the toy helis I got.
They're 50% longer and wider (so not much bigger), but they are 5 times heavier - 15g.
They look like this: http://www.airsport.com.hk/ShowProduct.asp?id=380 (I didn't buy it from there though - it's just a link I got from google).
Trouble is the quality control is not very good, so either you get it at a shop where you can test it first, or you'd have to risk getting a dud. And even if it seems to work, there's no guarantee it'll continue to work for more than a few days.
I've got three, and one is faulty (it still flies but the motor or something is not smooth- blades stop spinning nearly immediately when you cut the throttle). And some of my friends had helis that stopped working after a few days (that said, I don't know how well they treated their helis;) ).
The ones that work are pretty good fun. 3-channel = up/down, turn left/right, forwards and backwards.
Of course, they're not going to fool someone into thinking they're some insect. But the delfly micro doesn't fly like a dragonfly either. The only insects I can think of that fly like that are some moths (the larger ones).
BTW the summary appears to be wrong - the delfly does not seem to be autonomous at all - it is controlled by some human.
When I think of it, it's quite amazing how behind we are in tech- dragonflies are smaller, fly faster (50kph), fly for longer, are more manueverable, and are genuinely autonomous - they find their own "fuel" and even reproduce.
'The worst pickup line of all: "I have a PhD in computer science."'
I can think of far worse pickup lines.
No wonder I'm still single;).
No I do not have one of those terrible STDs. Me getting STDs would be like being taxed on lottery winnings without having managed to buy a lottery ticket.
Are you posting in the wrong mode? You should only use tags in HTML Formatted mode.
In Plain Old Text, they get stripped (counterintuitively). So if someone wants <br> to display as <br>, they actually want Extrans, not Plain Old Text.
Meanings of words change over time. English has changed a LOT since the days of Chaucer.
As it is I think modern translations like NIV make a good effort of translating the Hebrew etc to "Modern English", when the meaning is uncertain most NIV Bibles do note it, and often also provide possible translations/interpretations.
Furthermore, whether it's in NIV or KJV the meaning of many verses in the Bible appear to be easily translated.
NIV: 34 "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."
KJV: 34 A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. 35 By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.
I can't read Greek but as far as I can tell, looking at those verses and other verses the "popular standard" English translations do not diverge significantly in meaning. Perhaps in some translations the emphasis is different.
Of course there are some "translations" that tend to add a lot more words (and even sentences) that very likely aren't in the original - like The Message and The Amplified Bible, but I regard those as rather dubious.
Most Christians thus have no qualms about relying on the "popular standard" translations (NIV, KJV, ASV).
If you want a religion where followers are supposed to only read their holy book in the original language, check out Islam. Most muslims don't really know what the Koran/Quran says - they think it is beyond them. So they rely on some imam to tell them (who often isn't that good at Arabic or knowledgeable about the Koran and the context of various verses).
That to me is a far worse scenario.
Translations appear to be discouraged in many Islamic countries. Maybe they are afraid of muslims finding out more about their own religion?
After all, Yusman Roy, a muslim preacher in Indonesia was jailed after he led his fellow muslims in prayer/worship in both Indonesian and Arabic instead of only Arabic. Yusman Roy thought that his fellow Indonesians should understand what they were saying in their prayers/worship to God.
It's actually quite easy to detect if the card system is to only work for TFL stuff.
Every night you collect all the transactions from the various sites, run a batch job, and figure out what values all the cards should have (reconciliation).
The next day if a card is used and has a different value from expected (especially higher:) ), you don't let it work and blacklist it.
The problem is if you want to allow the card to be used everywhere (parking, buying snacks), that means that: a) either all the other places must be connected to one central system or b) you can get a free stuff/services/rides on places that aren't connected to that system.
If you don't want to do all that, I don't see the hack as being a big deal.
Storing the value on the card allows lower latency and for the system to work even if the network is temporarily down (or slow). As long as you can do the reconciliation in a timely and thorough manner, the hack doesn't really matter much. Matters even less if they have records on who bought the card - easy to notice someone regularly buying cards that "magically" get the "wrong" values and thus get cancelled the next day.
How about something more like man made "streams". You put the starter culture and feed in from one "pipe" end and collect the algae at the other end for harvesting. Maybe it's not as efficient per square metre, but it might make things easier.
Plus if something goes wrong (some rogue algae/fungus evolves or takes over), you might only affect a few streams instead of a whole lake. Also, if something goes really right, you know which stream it is:).
Then again, maybe algae containers on rails on an artificial gentle slope might be better? I guess I should leave it to the experts...
I actually tried reading the article to try to find out what it is that Vista does wrong that the other O/Ses (like Windows XP, OSX, Linux) don't.
And guess what, the article is crap. No details.
Of course Vista isn't optimized for SSDs, why should it have been? Is Windows XP optimized for SSDs? The only thing related difference I can see is Vista has a larger footprint.
To me it looks like they're casting blame (while trying to get their tech up to speed).
Vista is crap. But "Next Gen SSDs Delayed Due To Vista" sounds like bullshit to me.
I'm not a US citizen, or an economist, or some financial genius, so feel free to ignore the following:
Summary: Right now the USA is like a casino where the rest of the world uses its casino chips to buy and sell food, oil, services. Can you not see the advantage for the USA? Why should they want to switch to the gold standard, or any other standard? That would be stupid for them.
Details: The US Dollar as a global trading currency, that's _controlled_ by the USA is a good thing for the USA.
Because what that means is all the countries around the have to keep reserves of US dollars to buy and sell stuff - like _petroleum_ for instance.
So you have trillions of US dollars, outside the USA, in _foreign_ hands.
Whenever the US Gov decides to print more US Dollars, it in effect taxes ALL the other countries in the world holding billions of US dollars, and countries lending the US Gov money in _USD_. Because their USD becomes worth less, and therefore they become _poorer_.
It takes time for the countries to change their prices in USD e.g. random Chinese stuff will still cost USD19.95 for a few months or more, so in that time the USA can still buy the same amount.
It is thus easier for the US to retain its position in the rich-poor country hierachy.
In contrast if my country's gov decided to print more of its own currency - its citizens would become poorer, the rest of the world would just laugh and very quickly adjust the exchange rates, then any loans in foreign currencies will become more expensive to pay back, foreign stuff will be more expensive to import nearly overnight.
Thus as long as the USD is the defacto trading currency and the US Gov gets to control it, the USA gets a free ride and can print USD with relative freedom.
There are other ways the US prints money - The USA buys goods from Japan, China, Mexico etc, and pays them in USD. If it does not have enough USD, it issues IOUs and sells them to Japan, China et all, who buy it with USD they just got from the USA (Japan etc use the rest of the dollars to buy wheat, oil, other commodities).
It may appear a strange system, but it has worked reasonably well for quite a while.
IMO, trouble is the USA has spent a fair amount of the printed dollars in recent wars, so there is a massive "leakage" out of that system, making other countries more likely to notice the USD isn't quite worth so much, and thus forced to change their prices.
A possibly unrelated note;). Consider that Iraq started selling oil in euros, the US took it over and Iraq is back to selling oil in USD. Now Iran is selling oil in euros... Saudi Arabia the top friend of the USA has stuck to selling oil in USD.
"truly self-sustainable space station is a tougher engineering challenge then a planet based settlement where local resources can be utilized (provided the appropriate tools)"
Only if the planet is that hospitable. Mars and Venus aren't that hospitable.
You need a lot of infrastructure on Mars before you can live on it. You can't build that infra from stuff on Mars - you would be dead before you started.
So you ship it all the way from Earth, and somehow get it all the way down to the planet intact.
Everything has to come from Earth and _land_ successfully - the hospital, the living quarters, the supplies, the mining factory, last but not least - the stuff that looks for spots to mine. Otherwise you cannot live long enough to build and fix stuff. What happens if there's nothing to mine where you landed?
If you can do all that so easily, you can get the prefab mining factory in space, and build another space station by mining asteroids.
It'll be much cheaper to _practice_ building such a space station just outside the earth, then send it to the asteroid belt when it's time for the "real thing".
The main technical problem with space stations is not gravity or vacuum. The main problem is radiation shielding.
"We have figured out space colonies. It is called the International Space Station, and it has had a continuous crew for many years"
That's not a space colony anymore than a baby stuck to its mother's teat is an adult.
You've got a space colony if it can reproduce itself from raw materials it can get itself (mine asteroids or build its own mine on a planet that can send stuff back up).
(Yeah don't know why you got modded down. Some mods are crazy) To me it depends on whether the utility gets to be bailed out by the Government or not.
If it doesn't, then it should make a profit - so it has some reserves.
If it does, then it should not make a profit (or at least not a big profit - no need to hold huge reserves).
That said, if the CEO gets to pay himself and friends $UTILITY_PROFIT, "zero profit" won't make much difference;). Good regulation and oversight is important. ( Don't get me wrong, I have no problems with good CEOs being paid a lot - they're so rare after all;) ).
Many utilities end up being so critical that the Government needs to bail them out even if they screw up. So I personally think it's best to regulate them and have them make minimal profit (keep some reserves for normal operations), and do those bail outs.
I wonder if it would be a good idea for regulators to be elected by voters. The elected gov selects the companies, and the various elected regulators, regulate the companies. Separation of powers. Would voters be so stupid to elect regulators that promise free electricity?
In a democratic country, the control of a government is the same whether the government is big or small. You vote.
Honestly whether a government is big or small I don't really care.
I'd prefer if people focused on voting good (and competent) people into power, and let those people make the decisions. Then the next term voters give them their "grades".
I tell you again: there really is not that much difference between a small government working with huge companies versus a small bunch of elected people at the top, working with a huge civil service.
Go ask the people working in those huge companies how different it is - inefficiencies, incompetence, bureaucracy etc. You think most of the people in the civil service are any worse than the average employee in a large company? Typically they are all _average_. When you recruit thousands of people that's what you get.
Who controls the people at the top?
CEOs can get voted out, but only by the board or the majority of shareholders - e.g. $$$$.
Presidents can get voted out by citizen voters. But it's funny when people keep saying it's $$$$ that controls that in the US "democracy". If that really is the case, whether it's a small government or not, you effectively get the same thing right?
If a small government has made a long term contract with a large private company, that turns out to be bad for citizens, how do you change that? Depending on the laws, it might not be so easy to annull or change the contract. Your small government could be bullied by the large companies since it would be very dependent on them to keep things running (if things stop running, the voters might get upset, and they lose power the next term). Not much difference compared to being stuck with an uncooperative civil service eh?
As for small governments working with small companies - sorry but small companies can't help in a lot of things governments need to do. Governments should focus on the big stuff and stay out of the way from the small stuff - whether it means they grow big, or deal with big companies/organizations, that's up to them. But whether that Government continues to get power, that should be up to the voters.
Lastly, I personally think that Governments should try to encourage Cooperatives. There are more Companies since Companies tend to reward their founders more. Won't go more into it for now.
"Its is alot easier to mark progress by size than 'good or bad' "
Well if most voters are voting on whether the candidate is likely to create a small/big government rather than good/bad government, good luck to your country.
As for incompetence. The last I checked incompetence = bad.
Just concentrate on voting good (and competent - just to be clear) people in, and they will _tend_ to do some good (nobody's perfect). How do you know whether they are good? The more money they get from big companies, the better they are?
If the tether is longer then the Coriolis effect won't be as strong, and the Coriolis effect in the space station is unlikely to kill you (whereas hurricanes and tornados do kill people;) ).
Build a big enough space station and you can have a swimming pool. Maybe even a 0.5G swimming pool - which could be amusing (if people can avoid killing/crippling themselves), and maybe even a "flying room" - where you can strap on wings and fly about for fun.
Whatever disadvantages space stations have, talking about building planetary outposts without knowing how to build sustainable space stations, is like talking about building space stations without knowing how to get off the Earth.
After all with current tech it is still going to take months to travel to another planet, and if you go down to the planet's surface, how are you going to get back up?
It's not whether it's privatized or not. It's whether it's _corrupt_ or not.
If you have a big corrupt government, your money and freedoms go to the corrupt government. Of you have a small corrupt government, your money and freedoms go to some big corrupt company that bribes the small corrupt government.
Either way you end up being screwed.
You get all those libertarian fools thinking "Oh if the current big bad government is smaller, things would be wonderful".
Then you get the other fools thinking "Oh the current big bad government (that's already screwing me) should expand its role to take care of this".
It's not how big or small. It's how BAD or GOOD. When voters vote based on big or small, and not good or bad, what do you think they'll get?
If you have a good government, and it knows it has the ability to do "Natural Monopoly X" well (and will continue to do so for near future), nothing wrong with it doing X - after all it is supposedly answerable to the voters in a democracy. If it realizes it does not have the ability, it can get some company (or more) to do it, and if the government lacks the ability to even know whether the company is doing a good job or not it can appoint a regulator to do that.
Lastly if just because Company X gives lots of money to Candidate Y, means people vote for Candidate Y, then people sure are stupid. In the absence of Diebolded elections, you don't have to vote that way. If Coke and Pepsi are the biggest advertisers it shouldn't mean you continue drinking either Coke or Pepsi if both are bad for you.
When voters vote based on how much money Candidates get from companies, guess what they get?
So far it sure looks like voters have got what they have been voting for.
Maybe in the future companies like Diebold will save voters the trouble.
"also have the usual problems with crypto, i.e. establishing a "web of trust" (it's all very well if records under google.com are signed, but how do you know they're signed by Google?)."
Oh, I'm sure it'll require certs being signed by some CA.
Some CA that we can "trust" (to do the wrong thing). Go see what the CA companies really do. See who they are linked to, and who gets the $$$.
But why bother even to colonize Mars or Venus? That's like trying to run or jump before learning to stand.
What we should do is learn to build practical and sustainable space stations with artificial gravity (the classical spinning wheels, or the tethered ones, or whatever that _works_).
It's not as difficult as colonizing another planet since:
1) you don't have to fight yet another gravity well. 2) you can do it just "outside" your planet - much cheaper.
And you're going to have to do it anyway. If you send people to Venus/Mars - it will take months for them to get there, where will they live during those months? My answer is a space station. Not a NASA Suicide Vessel.
Once you've worked out how to build a practical and sustainable space station, you can use such space stations to go elsewhere in the Solar System - Mars, Venus, the asteroid belts and beyond. There is no _rush_ then. And it stops sounding like a "one way" trip.
To me it is a really stupid idea to try to colonize other planets before we figure out how to do space colonies.
Once people work out how to do space colonies, I bet most colonizers would rather live in a space station than live on inhospitable planets in something that is just as restrictive as a space station ( if not more so - it's trapped on the planet and can't move) - it's not like you'd be able to walk outside in Venus without a protective suit. So what's the difference?
If you want to send people on one way trips to other planets, maybe you should start with certain politicians (you could hold a reality show - Vote Them Off The Planet or something), in that case there could be a significant benefit;).
Anyway, I find it telling that the NASA and other "space" people keep talking about sending humans to Mars without seriously developing and advancing space station technology. So many stupid people making stupid decisions.
Learn to stand first, then walk, then run, then jump. Not the other way round.
"Mattel alleges that Bratz designer Carter Bryant was employed by Mattel when he thought up the idea for the Bratz line. If so, says Mattel, Bratz belongs to Mattel. "
Oooh. Someone else took the risk, and it's a success, so now Mattel wants it. Just because he might have thought of the idea while working for Mattel.
Say I come up with an "edgy burger idea" while working for McDonalds that McD management would under normal circumstances never approve, so I start my company, launch the burger, become a big success, and McD has the right to take it?
I call that bullshit. Even if there's a law saying that's the way it is, I call it bullshit.
I'd say it's fine if McD gets to launch a similar burger, and Mattel is allowed to make a similar Barbie Brat. But getting a whole profitable business for free?
Aside: I always found it funny when people said the Japanese were not innovators and not creative. Just look at the toys - who gave the world transformers, "game and watch". And who gave the world Barbie, toy soldiers and guns for 50 years.
To me you should have the option of getting keys and licenses in email, and also be able to get them resent to you if you lose them or accidentally delete them.
Slashdot Mirror
It's only two channel though - turn and throttle. That said the DelFly Micro is probably limited similarly.
;). Alternatively, rig up a real life animal with a camera, battery and control system.
0.5 grams is light. Just adding lubricant to your heli will probably add 0.5 grams.
Ultra light air vehicles that don't have power and maneuverability won't do well outdoors - just a light breeze will sweep them far away.
So it's not so simple to make one to use for outdoor surveillance.
For indoor surveillance you are better off making a remote controlled roach or gecko. Just make sure you include enough "decoy wet stuff" so that when someone smashes it, it's disgusting enough for most people to not bother looking too closely
Having something the size of a DelFly micro flying around indoors is going to attract a lot of attention. Whereas something crawling about on the ceiling should stick out a lot less.
"Hi, your place, or my mom's basement (next to my beowulf cluster)?"
You only need to say the line in the brackets if she's not already run away after you finished saying "basement".
After looking at it in action, I still prefer the toy helis I got.
;) ).
They're 50% longer and wider (so not much bigger), but they are 5 times heavier - 15g.
They look like this:
http://www.airsport.com.hk/ShowProduct.asp?id=380
(I didn't buy it from there though - it's just a link I got from google).
Trouble is the quality control is not very good, so either you get it at a shop where you can test it first, or you'd have to risk getting a dud. And even if it seems to work, there's no guarantee it'll continue to work for more than a few days.
I've got three, and one is faulty (it still flies but the motor or something is not smooth- blades stop spinning nearly immediately when you cut the throttle). And some of my friends had helis that stopped working after a few days (that said, I don't know how well they treated their helis
The ones that work are pretty good fun. 3-channel = up/down, turn left/right, forwards and backwards.
Of course, they're not going to fool someone into thinking they're some insect. But the delfly micro doesn't fly like a dragonfly either. The only insects I can think of that fly like that are some moths (the larger ones).
BTW the summary appears to be wrong - the delfly does not seem to be autonomous at all - it is controlled by some human.
When I think of it, it's quite amazing how behind we are in tech- dragonflies are smaller, fly faster (50kph), fly for longer, are more manueverable, and are genuinely autonomous - they find their own "fuel" and even reproduce.
If VLC crashes due to subtitles, it's a flaw in VLC.
VLC has a long way to go before I consider it a good player.
Ah but figuring out "make" might require too much wetware CPU time for most people ;).
"Why is it not working? Oops messed up tabs and spaces", etc.
'The worst pickup line of all: "I have a PhD in computer science."'
;).
I can think of far worse pickup lines.
No wonder I'm still single
No I do not have one of those terrible STDs. Me getting STDs would be like being taxed on lottery winnings without having managed to buy a lottery ticket.
Are you posting in the wrong mode? You should only use tags in HTML Formatted mode.
In Plain Old Text, they get stripped (counterintuitively). So if someone wants <br> to display as <br>, they actually want Extrans, not Plain Old Text.
Meanings of words change over time. English has changed a LOT since the days of Chaucer.
As it is I think modern translations like NIV make a good effort of translating the Hebrew etc to "Modern English", when the meaning is uncertain most NIV Bibles do note it, and often also provide possible translations/interpretations.
Furthermore, whether it's in NIV or KJV the meaning of many verses in the Bible appear to be easily translated.
For example: John 13:34-35
http://www.greeknewtestament.com/B43C013.htm
NIV:
34 "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.
35 By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."
KJV:
34 A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.
35 By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.
Alternative link:
NIV: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john%2013:34-35&version=31
KJV: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john%2013:34-35&version=9
I can't read Greek but as far as I can tell, looking at those verses and other verses the "popular standard" English translations do not diverge significantly in meaning. Perhaps in some translations the emphasis is different.
Of course there are some "translations" that tend to add a lot more words (and even sentences) that very likely aren't in the original - like The Message and The Amplified Bible, but I regard those as rather dubious.
Most Christians thus have no qualms about relying on the "popular standard" translations (NIV, KJV, ASV).
If you want a religion where followers are supposed to only read their holy book in the original language, check out Islam. Most muslims don't really know what the Koran/Quran says - they think it is beyond them. So they rely on some imam to tell them (who often isn't that good at Arabic or knowledgeable about the Koran and the context of various verses).
That to me is a far worse scenario.
Translations appear to be discouraged in many Islamic countries. Maybe they are afraid of muslims finding out more about their own religion?
After all, Yusman Roy, a muslim preacher in Indonesia was jailed after he led his fellow muslims in prayer/worship in both Indonesian and Arabic instead of only Arabic. Yusman Roy thought that his fellow Indonesians should understand what they were saying in their prayers/worship to God.
So I wonder if the following page is blocked in some muslim countries:
http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/001.qmt.html
Letting people read good translations of what they are supposed to believe is a good thing.
It's actually quite easy to detect if the card system is to only work for TFL stuff.
:) ), you don't let it work and blacklist it.
Every night you collect all the transactions from the various sites, run a batch job, and figure out what values all the cards should have (reconciliation).
The next day if a card is used and has a different value from expected (especially higher
The problem is if you want to allow the card to be used everywhere (parking, buying snacks), that means that:
a) either all the other places must be connected to one central system
or
b) you can get a free stuff/services/rides on places that aren't connected to that system.
If you don't want to do all that, I don't see the hack as being a big deal.
Storing the value on the card allows lower latency and for the system to work even if the network is temporarily down (or slow). As long as you can do the reconciliation in a timely and thorough manner, the hack doesn't really matter much. Matters even less if they have records on who bought the card - easy to notice someone regularly buying cards that "magically" get the "wrong" values and thus get cancelled the next day.
How about something more like man made "streams". You put the starter culture and feed in from one "pipe" end and collect the algae at the other end for harvesting. Maybe it's not as efficient per square metre, but it might make things easier.
:).
Plus if something goes wrong (some rogue algae/fungus evolves or takes over), you might only affect a few streams instead of a whole lake. Also, if something goes really right, you know which stream it is
Then again, maybe algae containers on rails on an artificial gentle slope might be better? I guess I should leave it to the experts...
I actually tried reading the article to try to find out what it is that Vista does wrong that the other O/Ses (like Windows XP, OSX, Linux) don't.
And guess what, the article is crap. No details.
Of course Vista isn't optimized for SSDs, why should it have been? Is Windows XP optimized for SSDs? The only thing related difference I can see is Vista has a larger footprint.
To me it looks like they're casting blame (while trying to get their tech up to speed).
Vista is crap. But "Next Gen SSDs Delayed Due To Vista" sounds like bullshit to me.
I'm not a US citizen, or an economist, or some financial genius, so feel free to ignore the following:
;). Consider that Iraq started selling oil in euros, the US took it over and Iraq is back to selling oil in USD. Now Iran is selling oil in euros... Saudi Arabia the top friend of the USA has stuck to selling oil in USD.
Summary:
Right now the USA is like a casino where the rest of the world uses its casino chips to buy and sell food, oil, services. Can you not see the advantage for the USA? Why should they want to switch to the gold standard, or any other standard? That would be stupid for them.
Details:
The US Dollar as a global trading currency, that's _controlled_ by the USA is a good thing for the USA.
Because what that means is all the countries around the have to keep reserves of US dollars to buy and sell stuff - like _petroleum_ for instance.
So you have trillions of US dollars, outside the USA, in _foreign_ hands.
Whenever the US Gov decides to print more US Dollars, it in effect taxes ALL the other countries in the world holding billions of US dollars, and countries lending the US Gov money in _USD_. Because their USD becomes worth less, and therefore they become _poorer_.
It takes time for the countries to change their prices in USD e.g. random Chinese stuff will still cost USD19.95 for a few months or more, so in that time the USA can still buy the same amount.
It is thus easier for the US to retain its position in the rich-poor country hierachy.
In contrast if my country's gov decided to print more of its own currency - its citizens would become poorer, the rest of the world would just laugh and very quickly adjust the exchange rates, then any loans in foreign currencies will become more expensive to pay back, foreign stuff will be more expensive to import nearly overnight.
Thus as long as the USD is the defacto trading currency and the US Gov gets to control it, the USA gets a free ride and can print USD with relative freedom.
There are other ways the US prints money - The USA buys goods from Japan, China, Mexico etc, and pays them in USD. If it does not have enough USD, it issues IOUs and sells them to Japan, China et all, who buy it with USD they just got from the USA (Japan etc use the rest of the dollars to buy wheat, oil, other commodities).
It may appear a strange system, but it has worked reasonably well for quite a while.
IMO, trouble is the USA has spent a fair amount of the printed dollars in recent wars, so there is a massive "leakage" out of that system, making other countries more likely to notice the USD isn't quite worth so much, and thus forced to change their prices.
A possibly unrelated note
"truly self-sustainable space station is a tougher engineering challenge then a planet based settlement where local resources can be utilized (provided the appropriate tools)"
Only if the planet is that hospitable. Mars and Venus aren't that hospitable.
You need a lot of infrastructure on Mars before you can live on it. You can't build that infra from stuff on Mars - you would be dead before you started.
So you ship it all the way from Earth, and somehow get it all the way down to the planet intact.
Everything has to come from Earth and _land_ successfully - the hospital, the living quarters, the supplies, the mining factory, last but not least - the stuff that looks for spots to mine. Otherwise you cannot live long enough to build and fix stuff. What happens if there's nothing to mine where you landed?
If you can do all that so easily, you can get the prefab mining factory in space, and build another space station by mining asteroids.
It'll be much cheaper to _practice_ building such a space station just outside the earth, then send it to the asteroid belt when it's time for the "real thing".
The main technical problem with space stations is not gravity or vacuum. The main problem is radiation shielding.
"We have figured out space colonies. It is called the International Space Station, and it has had a continuous crew for many years"
That's not a space colony anymore than a baby stuck to its mother's teat is an adult.
You've got a space colony if it can reproduce itself from raw materials it can get itself (mine asteroids or build its own mine on a planet that can send stuff back up).
(Yeah don't know why you got modded down. Some mods are crazy)
;). Good regulation and oversight is important. ( Don't get me wrong, I have no problems with good CEOs being paid a lot - they're so rare after all ;) ).
To me it depends on whether the utility gets to be bailed out by the Government or not.
If it doesn't, then it should make a profit - so it has some reserves.
If it does, then it should not make a profit (or at least not a big profit - no need to hold huge reserves).
That said, if the CEO gets to pay himself and friends $UTILITY_PROFIT, "zero profit" won't make much difference
Many utilities end up being so critical that the Government needs to bail them out even if they screw up. So I personally think it's best to regulate them and have them make minimal profit (keep some reserves for normal operations), and do those bail outs.
I wonder if it would be a good idea for regulators to be elected by voters. The elected gov selects the companies, and the various elected regulators, regulate the companies. Separation of powers. Would voters be so stupid to elect regulators that promise free electricity?
In a democratic country, the control of a government is the same whether the government is big or small. You vote.
Honestly whether a government is big or small I don't really care.
I'd prefer if people focused on voting good (and competent) people into power, and let those people make the decisions. Then the next term voters give them their "grades".
I tell you again: there really is not that much difference between a small government working with huge companies versus a small bunch of elected people at the top, working with a huge civil service.
Go ask the people working in those huge companies how different it is - inefficiencies, incompetence, bureaucracy etc. You think most of the people in the civil service are any worse than the average employee in a large company? Typically they are all _average_. When you recruit thousands of people that's what you get.
Who controls the people at the top?
CEOs can get voted out, but only by the board or the majority of shareholders - e.g. $$$$.
Presidents can get voted out by citizen voters. But it's funny when people keep saying it's $$$$ that controls that in the US "democracy". If that really is the case, whether it's a small government or not, you effectively get the same thing right?
If a small government has made a long term contract with a large private company, that turns out to be bad for citizens, how do you change that? Depending on the laws, it might not be so easy to annull or change the contract. Your small government could be bullied by the large companies since it would be very dependent on them to keep things running (if things stop running, the voters might get upset, and they lose power the next term). Not much difference compared to being stuck with an uncooperative civil service eh?
As for small governments working with small companies - sorry but small companies can't help in a lot of things governments need to do. Governments should focus on the big stuff and stay out of the way from the small stuff - whether it means they grow big, or deal with big companies/organizations, that's up to them. But whether that Government continues to get power, that should be up to the voters.
Lastly, I personally think that Governments should try to encourage Cooperatives. There are more Companies since Companies tend to reward their founders more. Won't go more into it for now.
"Its is alot easier to mark progress by size than 'good or bad' "
Well if most voters are voting on whether the candidate is likely to create a small/big government rather than good/bad government, good luck to your country.
As for incompetence. The last I checked incompetence = bad.
Just concentrate on voting good (and competent - just to be clear) people in, and they will _tend_ to do some good (nobody's perfect). How do you know whether they are good? The more money they get from big companies, the better they are?
If the tether is longer then the Coriolis effect won't be as strong, and the Coriolis effect in the space station is unlikely to kill you (whereas hurricanes and tornados do kill people ;) ).
Build a big enough space station and you can have a swimming pool. Maybe even a 0.5G swimming pool - which could be amusing (if people can avoid killing/crippling themselves), and maybe even a "flying room" - where you can strap on wings and fly about for fun.
Whatever disadvantages space stations have, talking about building planetary outposts without knowing how to build sustainable space stations, is like talking about building space stations without knowing how to get off the Earth.
After all with current tech it is still going to take months to travel to another planet, and if you go down to the planet's surface, how are you going to get back up?
It's not whether it's privatized or not. It's whether it's _corrupt_ or not.
If you have a big corrupt government, your money and freedoms go to the corrupt government.
Of you have a small corrupt government, your money and freedoms go to some big corrupt company that bribes the small corrupt government.
Either way you end up being screwed.
You get all those libertarian fools thinking "Oh if the current big bad government is smaller, things would be wonderful".
Then you get the other fools thinking "Oh the current big bad government (that's already screwing me) should expand its role to take care of this".
It's not how big or small. It's how BAD or GOOD. When voters vote based on big or small, and not good or bad, what do you think they'll get?
If you have a good government, and it knows it has the ability to do "Natural Monopoly X" well (and will continue to do so for near future), nothing wrong with it doing X - after all it is supposedly answerable to the voters in a democracy. If it realizes it does not have the ability, it can get some company (or more) to do it, and if the government lacks the ability to even know whether the company is doing a good job or not it can appoint a regulator to do that.
Lastly if just because Company X gives lots of money to Candidate Y, means people vote for Candidate Y, then people sure are stupid. In the absence of Diebolded elections, you don't have to vote that way. If Coke and Pepsi are the biggest advertisers it shouldn't mean you continue drinking either Coke or Pepsi if both are bad for you.
When voters vote based on how much money Candidates get from companies, guess what they get?
So far it sure looks like voters have got what they have been voting for.
Maybe in the future companies like Diebold will save voters the trouble.
DNSSEC is just a way for a CA to make lots of money.
They're already doing it for TLS/SSL/https certs.
"also have the usual problems with crypto, i.e. establishing a "web of trust" (it's all very well if records under google.com are signed, but how do you know they're signed by Google?)."
Oh, I'm sure it'll require certs being signed by some CA.
Some CA that we can "trust" (to do the wrong thing). Go see what the CA companies really do. See who they are linked to, and who gets the $$$.
This DNSSec thing is such a great solution huh?
But why bother even to colonize Mars or Venus? That's like trying to run or jump before learning to stand.
;).
What we should do is learn to build practical and sustainable space stations with artificial gravity (the classical spinning wheels, or the tethered ones, or whatever that _works_).
It's not as difficult as colonizing another planet since:
1) you don't have to fight yet another gravity well.
2) you can do it just "outside" your planet - much cheaper.
And you're going to have to do it anyway. If you send people to Venus/Mars - it will take months for them to get there, where will they live during those months? My answer is a space station. Not a NASA Suicide Vessel.
Once you've worked out how to build a practical and sustainable space station, you can use such space stations to go elsewhere in the Solar System - Mars, Venus, the asteroid belts and beyond. There is no _rush_ then. And it stops sounding like a "one way" trip.
To me it is a really stupid idea to try to colonize other planets before we figure out how to do space colonies.
Once people work out how to do space colonies, I bet most colonizers would rather live in a space station than live on inhospitable planets in something that is just as restrictive as a space station ( if not more so - it's trapped on the planet and can't move) - it's not like you'd be able to walk outside in Venus without a protective suit. So what's the difference?
If you want to send people on one way trips to other planets, maybe you should start with certain politicians (you could hold a reality show - Vote Them Off The Planet or something), in that case there could be a significant benefit
Anyway, I find it telling that the NASA and other "space" people keep talking about sending humans to Mars without seriously developing and advancing space station technology. So many stupid people making stupid decisions.
Learn to stand first, then walk, then run, then jump. Not the other way round.
"Mattel alleges that Bratz designer Carter Bryant was employed by Mattel when he thought up the idea for the Bratz line. If so, says Mattel, Bratz belongs to Mattel. "
Oooh. Someone else took the risk, and it's a success, so now Mattel wants it. Just because he might have thought of the idea while working for Mattel.
Say I come up with an "edgy burger idea" while working for McDonalds that McD management would under normal circumstances never approve, so I start my company, launch the burger, become a big success, and McD has the right to take it?
I call that bullshit. Even if there's a law saying that's the way it is, I call it bullshit.
I'd say it's fine if McD gets to launch a similar burger, and Mattel is allowed to make a similar Barbie Brat. But getting a whole profitable business for free?
Aside: I always found it funny when people said the Japanese were not innovators and not creative. Just look at the toys - who gave the world transformers, "game and watch". And who gave the world Barbie, toy soldiers and guns for 50 years.
So what if they've called it fakebook. It doesn't mean they are the same or a ripoff.
Sure they look similar, but so do most things that try to do the same thing.
Does the javascript and other code look the same?
If it does then maybe it's a ripoff. If it looks different, then it's probably different.
I haven't tried it but if it doesn't require javascript to work, then it most certainly is different from facebook.
So they don't get folded or damaged as easily?
To me you should have the option of getting keys and licenses in email, and also be able to get them resent to you if you lose them or accidentally delete them.