I asked my grocer to weigh my Strombolis when it appeared they had shrunk. And I was right. Same price - less food. So then I had him weigh all of them, and purchased the two heaviest.
>>>All DSL is broadband, but ethernet and (most) cable is not even though they can offer higher speeds than ADSL.
How is cable not broadband? It uses a wide range of frequencies from 10 upto 1000 megahertz. That's pretty damn broad. Certainly broader than the telephone modems we used to operate (0.008 megahertz; aka narrowband).
>>>"Wikipedia defines broadband's speed... as 56,000 bits per second." >>>"Wouldn't that be 57,344 bits per second?" >>>"56k modems [uses multiple frequencies] so they are broadband"
Oh brother. It's like the blind leading the blind. Not that I'm any great expert, but ye slashdot engineers really should know this stuff better than that!
56 k == 56000 bit/s because "kilo" is defined using base 10 technology. And yes modems can reach those speeds outside of the U.S. zone. Inside the U.S. they are limited to 53,300 maximum because the FCC wanted to prevent crosstalk between wires. My connection routinely always gets 53.3 k and probably could get 56k if the speed limit were lifted. The lowest speed I've ever seen with my current modem is 19k while traveling in Michigan (horribly noisy hotel lines).
48k == Maximum upload speed over telephone lines.
narrowband == confined to a "narrow band" of frequencies. While the definition of "narrow" is arbitrary, traditionally it is 8 kilohertz from the over-100-year-old telephone technology. Therefore any technology wider than 8 is technically broadband, although in most cases like DSL it's 100 kilohertz or higher.
Correct. It's not reasonable to expect an ISP to guarantee a certain speed if the line is shared (as if the case with cable and DSLAMs). I have Verizon DSL and except when a truck ran into the switching station and turned it into scrap (knocking out phone service), they've provided exactly what I pay for, so no complaints here.
As for Europe versus United States, making comparisons of tiny EU states (poland, slovak) versus a continent-spanning federation makes little sense. The USA is *big*. It took me 4 days to drive from Boston to Seattle... and another 5 days to go from California back to Boston. And in-between there's a whole lot of nothing. Here are the stats when you compare large federations versus large federations:
Russian Federation 7 Megabits per secomd E.U., U.S. 6 Mbit/s Canada, Australia 5 Brazil, China 2 Mexico 1 Mbit/s
And if you prefer to look on a state-by-state basis of the EU, US, and Canada then you get: 1 Sweden 11 Mbit/s 2 Delaware 10 3 Washington 9 4 Netherlands,Rhode Island, New Jersey, Massachusetts 8 5 Virginia,New York,Colorado,Connecticut,Arizona, Germany, British Columbia 7 Mbit/s
The difference is that the experimental nuclear reactor was located next to its clients, and power was easily transferred using traditional wiring. There was no physical reason why it should not work - it did not violate the laws of the universe.
In contrast the experimental space solar array is ~22,000 miles away. That's a major obstacle to overcome, and those who understand physics know you cannot just "beam power" over 22000 miles without major, major, major losses of that power.
>>>>>The light might be better in space, but the losses incurred trying to move it from there to here eat-up any advantages. In the end you'd get more light from your rooftop. >>>>>
>>Got any math to back up that opinion?
You don't need math - you just need an understanding of how power degrades over distance. Take a 100,000 watt TV or radio station. That's a lot of power isn't it? Now move out 50 miles and test how much power is received - it's only a few microwatts (0.000001 watt). Now imagine doing the same thing over 22,000 miles from the space satellite to the ground.
>>>The entire purpose of the Fed has always been to transfer wealth to bankers by inflating the currency.
I don't understand how this is supposed to work. Inflation of currency means the bankers' savings account shrink. Right? I guess I need to go read google.
>>>when it comes to getting the job done, you have to get your hands dirty and compromise left and right to even get a faint shadow of what you promised to happen. >>>
Yes true except that Obama *explicitly promised* not to do backroom deals, and he played that promise as a national ad. So basically he's breaking a promise made to million of votes, by doing this backroom deal with healthcare CEOs. If Democrat Clinton or Republican Bush had made backroom deals, I would have expected it as normal political practice, but I'm surprised to see Obama doing it because he stated he would not.
As for the RIAA lawyers, yes I'm sure they are very competent but why does he have to hire *4* of them to top positions? There are plenty of other equally-skilled lawyers he could hire, like those working for the Electronic Freedom Foundation, but he's hired 0 of those. It smells like a definite bias in favor of protecting the media, their copy privilege, and anti-home recording.
>>>>> Increasing mortality is bad for business. Making a virus more 'deadly' is usually not very good for the virus. If it's host dies, so does it's habitat. Not to mention the host can no longer really spread it. >>>>>
>>It can be deadly and still be successful, just so long as it's not very fast (e.g. HIV).
Or they can live in a host like a flea, while still killing humans quickly. The second-most successful virus was the one that struck the Roman Empire circa 600 A.D. and wiped-out about a third of the population. The most-successful virus struck Europe in the mid-1200s, killed 40% of the people. What did these viruses have in common? They were very virulent, killing the humans quickly, but it didn't matter because their code was spread via fleas.
>>>best spot for observational astronomy has to be the far side of the Moon... What's not to love?
Funny you mention "love" because there's no women on the moon, or on that ridge in Antarctica, which is a major drawback of accepting either of those jobs. Oh wait. It's just like my current job.
Remember the Grand Theft Auto hack which allowed people to have sex with prostitutes? I bet if they tattooed "Buy Duff Beer" across her stomach, everyone would remember that ad too. Even people who never played the game!
Just as a counterpoint, I decidedly don't like the tabs-on-top design, don't use Chrome in part because of that UI, and would probably switch to Opera if Firefox didn't make tabs-on-bottom an option.;-)
QFT (quoted for truth). When I finally abandoned Netscape Navigator, it was because version 6 had a completely different appearance and button positions and made the software less usable. I don't want Firefox to change how it works now, because I'm used to it:
- row 1 is the title/drag bar - row 2 is the menu - row 3 has the tabs
That's nice and compact. Plus the tabs are directly above the userspace, so each to access with minimal mouse movement. It's just about perfect. If I wanted a Chrome-like interface than I'd be using Chrome. To make Firefox look like Chrome - well you might as well kill-off Firefox. Why have two separate browsers that look the same?
I don't see any problem with using a piechart, so long as the chart is lying flat such that the areas are relative to one another. You do have to be careful to avoid using bright colors (white, green) cause the eyes are more sensitive to these, but otherwise I think a piechart is a fine way to represent different sizes of things.
The main problem with USAspending.gov is that different people have different views on things. Ever wonder why one group will say, "Military spending is 20%" while another claims it's 60%? It's because not everyone agrees on the definition of "military" and will create varying groups.
I think for true transparency the government needs to present differing views from multiple studies. Otherwise if they only present ONE view, which happens to be favorable to the president or congress, you cannot really trust it.
>>>No need to consider that political parties as well as people can change, that politicians might just do what they say and occasionally adopt a standpoint out of principle. >>>
"Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."
I could comment further on which party did what, but I don't want to get labeled troll so I'll just stop there and leave the other readers to fill-in the blanks.
And sometimes people blame "anti-competitive practices" when there's actually a valid reason why a product might fail:
- Flying cars - Costs a lot to buy, costs a lot to fuel, requires space for takeoffs/landings. Also in today's "green" climate replacing your 35 mpg car with a 5 mpg flying car would be considered a backwards move.
- EV cars - Costs a lot to buy, is cheaper to fuel, but only goes ~100 miles so people don't want it. People want freedom to make 200-300 mile weekend trips to the beach or mountains or grandma's house.
- Tram/elevated trains - Inconvenient. A car "picks you up" right outside your house; a tram doesn't.
- Betamax - Its inventor Sony claimed it had better video quality, but its initial 1 hour/tape limit was not as good as VHS' 2 or 4 hour ability. Consumers chose VHS. We see the same with iPods where people are turning their backs on high-quality CDs or DVD-Audio, because they'd rather squeeze songs at barely-audible quality to fit inside their tiny MP3 player.
- Steam engine - Although invented by a Greek circa 100 A.D., the roman empire already had cheap slaves to do all the work, so it was viewed by citizens as a toy, not something to replace the status quo.
There are a few cases where a company uses it monopoly to squash an invention, as RCA did when they purchased the patent to FM in the 1930s and then shelved it to protect their already-existing AM monopoly, but these cases are rare. In most cases products fail because consumers *choose* to make them fail.
Why not just call it "programming"? Whether you're writing code for machine made of sand (silicon) or chemicals should not matter one bit. Ya know in Babylon 5, the Vorlons and Shadows didn't just "grow" their ships. They programmed the DNA to produce the desired result. I see no reason why we humans can't do the same.
The second-most successful virus was the one that struck the Roman Empire circa 600 A.D. and wiped-out about a third of the population. It changed the course of history, because if that virus had not struck, the Eastern Roman Emperor's army would have succeeded in his mission to reclaim Italy, Rome, and possibly France/Gaul too.
The most-successful virus struck Europe in the mid-1200s, killed 40% of the people, and created a shortage of labor that allowed the serfs to free themselves and demand pay. Thus the middle class was born.
What did these viruses have in common? They were very virulent, killing the host quickly, but it didn't matter because their RNA code was spread via fleas.
It still seems foolish. The light might be better in space, but the losses incurred trying to move it from there to here eat-up any advantages. In the end you'd get more light from your rooftop. .
>>>what exactly is the USA investing in to secure its citizens a place in the future global economy?
Too many things to list here, but what the USA should be "investing" in is paying off the national debt. Just think how much easier this recession would be able to handle if the U.S. Congress had a 1 trillion *savings* rather than the inverse. We wouldn't need to go to China or India and beg for cash - we could just tap our own reserves.
But no, "savings" is a bad word. Better to live off the credit card and spend, spend, spend! I've never seen such rampant irresponsibility as I've seen in Congress lately.
>>>Perhaps they value the look of their current roofs?
It always amuses me how people bend-over backwards to justify stupid economic decisions. Is your reason really worth the extra $60,000 (about 3 years of labor) per home? No. Besides they make solar panels that look identical to traditional shingles, so the excuse isn't even valid. LINK - http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,285652,00.html
>>>we have a new American President who is not beholden to special interests,
Except that he's already met with the insurance CEOs and promised not to negotiate pricecuts during the next 10 years. In exchange the companies are supposed to endorse his Uncle Sam healthcare. (And why wouldn't they if they are guaranteed to be paid big bucks by the government, and without hassle.)
Oh yeah - I almost forget RIAA. Last I heard Obama's assigned 4 of their lawyers to his administrative posts... lawyers who have sent-out letters to citizens which basically said: Send us $5000 or else get sued millions.
>>>Japan is a small place with a high population density
Then maybe Japan's government should stop paying young people to produce more people. (Yes they really do that - the government thinks a shrinking population is a bad thing?!?!?)
>>>What is "promising" about costing $71,428.57 per home in this technology?
I was thinking the same thing. This is why the Japanese have been stuck in a recession since 1990. They like to buy all these shiny-new gadgets, even if they make no sense economically. Rather than spend $71,000 per home to buy some spacetoy, they could just spend $10,000 per home and put the solar panels directly on the roof.
- We had a housing bubble where homes were overvalued at, say, $300,000 but their true value was only $200,000 - When the market corrected itself, and these home prices dropped to their true value, it started a chain of events - Those businesses with stocks or mutual funds in these homes lost money, bankruptcies spread, and recession happened.
The only good news is that, unlike the crash of 1929, our recession started in 2007 and was a gradual falling-off, so we didn't have a panic. Not the question becomes - what caused the housing bubble? The answer is too easily-available credit was extended to people who should have not received mortgage loans.
No that's worse. Just imagine in Fall 2001 a referendum that read, "Shall we go to war against Bin Laden?" That would have easily passed your 60% requirement..... and as history shows, been a big mistake. Fighting stupid wars is what brought-down the Athenian democracy because the common man was too ignorant/uneducated to make those kinds of decisions.
You wouldn't want a computer engineered by a democratic vote; why would you want a government to operate that way? Therefore the ideal should be leaders who are educated enough to make intelligent decisions (vote no on foolish wars), without having to fear losing their job tomorrow if his decision happens to be unpopular. That's how the original U.S. Republic was designed to operate but it's strayed from that path.
>>>1)it does not do a good job of protecting the people from force of private interests.
It doesn't? Hmmm. Isn't avoiding a private company like Microsoft or Walmart as simple as saying, "No I won't give you money." YES. If just one-third of us did that, these entities would go bankrupt. And in the case of monopolies like the Electric, phone, or natural gas company, they are all strictly regulated by the U.S. or State governments to prevent abuse of consumers.
>>>2) The voice of the individual is ignored in favor of the big monied interests
That's true. In my opinion all donations from groups should be made illegal, such that politicians can only accept money from individual voters. Put more simply: No eligibility to vote == no donations allowed.
Slashdot Mirror
I asked my grocer to weigh my Strombolis when it appeared they had shrunk. And I was right. Same price - less food. So then I had him weigh all of them, and purchased the two heaviest.
>>>All DSL is broadband, but ethernet and (most) cable is not even though they can offer higher speeds than ADSL.
How is cable not broadband? It uses a wide range of frequencies from 10 upto 1000 megahertz. That's pretty damn broad. Certainly broader than the telephone modems we used to operate (0.008 megahertz; aka narrowband).
>>>"Wikipedia defines broadband's speed... as 56,000 bits per second."
>>>"Wouldn't that be 57,344 bits per second?"
>>>"56k modems [uses multiple frequencies] so they are broadband"
Oh brother. It's like the blind leading the blind. Not that I'm any great expert, but ye slashdot engineers really should know this stuff better than that!
56 k == 56000 bit/s because "kilo" is defined using base 10 technology. And yes modems can reach those speeds outside of the U.S. zone. Inside the U.S. they are limited to 53,300 maximum because the FCC wanted to prevent crosstalk between wires. My connection routinely always gets 53.3 k and probably could get 56k if the speed limit were lifted. The lowest speed I've ever seen with my current modem is 19k while traveling in Michigan (horribly noisy hotel lines).
48k == Maximum upload speed over telephone lines.
narrowband == confined to a "narrow band" of frequencies. While the definition of "narrow" is arbitrary, traditionally it is 8 kilohertz from the over-100-year-old telephone technology. Therefore any technology wider than 8 is technically broadband, although in most cases like DSL it's 100 kilohertz or higher.
Correct. It's not reasonable to expect an ISP to guarantee a certain speed if the line is shared (as if the case with cable and DSLAMs). I have Verizon DSL and except when a truck ran into the switching station and turned it into scrap (knocking out phone service), they've provided exactly what I pay for, so no complaints here.
As for Europe versus United States, making comparisons of tiny EU states (poland, slovak) versus a continent-spanning federation makes little sense. The USA is *big*. It took me 4 days to drive from Boston to Seattle... and another 5 days to go from California back to Boston. And in-between there's a whole lot of nothing. Here are the stats when you compare large federations versus large federations:
Russian Federation 7 Megabits per secomd
E.U., U.S. 6 Mbit/s
Canada, Australia 5
Brazil, China 2
Mexico 1 Mbit/s
And if you prefer to look on a state-by-state basis of the EU, US, and Canada then you get:
1 Sweden 11 Mbit/s
2 Delaware 10
3 Washington 9
4 Netherlands,Rhode Island, New Jersey, Massachusetts 8
5 Virginia,New York,Colorado,Connecticut,Arizona, Germany, British Columbia 7 Mbit/s
The difference is that the experimental nuclear reactor was located next to its clients, and power was easily transferred using traditional wiring. There was no physical reason why it should not work - it did not violate the laws of the universe.
In contrast the experimental space solar array is ~22,000 miles away. That's a major obstacle to overcome, and those who understand physics know you cannot just "beam power" over 22000 miles without major, major, major losses of that power.
>>>>>The light might be better in space, but the losses incurred trying to move it from there to here eat-up any advantages. In the end you'd get more light from your rooftop.
>>>>>
>>Got any math to back up that opinion?
You don't need math - you just need an understanding of how power degrades over distance. Take a 100,000 watt TV or radio station. That's a lot of power isn't it? Now move out 50 miles and test how much power is received - it's only a few microwatts (0.000001 watt). Now imagine doing the same thing over 22,000 miles from the space satellite to the ground.
Get it?
>>>The entire purpose of the Fed has always been to transfer wealth to bankers by inflating the currency.
I don't understand how this is supposed to work. Inflation of currency means the bankers' savings account shrink. Right? I guess I need to go read google.
>>>when it comes to getting the job done, you have to get your hands dirty and compromise left and right to even get a faint shadow of what you promised to happen.
>>>
Yes true except that Obama *explicitly promised* not to do backroom deals, and he played that promise as a national ad. So basically he's breaking a promise made to million of votes, by doing this backroom deal with healthcare CEOs. If Democrat Clinton or Republican Bush had made backroom deals, I would have expected it as normal political practice, but I'm surprised to see Obama doing it because he stated he would not.
As for the RIAA lawyers, yes I'm sure they are very competent but why does he have to hire *4* of them to top positions? There are plenty of other equally-skilled lawyers he could hire, like those working for the Electronic Freedom Foundation, but he's hired 0 of those. It smells like a definite bias in favor of protecting the media, their copy privilege, and anti-home recording.
>>>>> Increasing mortality is bad for business. Making a virus more 'deadly' is usually not very good for the virus. If it's host dies, so does it's habitat. Not to mention the host can no longer really spread it.
>>>>>
>>It can be deadly and still be successful, just so long as it's not very fast (e.g. HIV).
Or they can live in a host like a flea, while still killing humans quickly. The second-most successful virus was the one that struck the Roman Empire circa 600 A.D. and wiped-out about a third of the population. The most-successful virus struck Europe in the mid-1200s, killed 40% of the people. What did these viruses have in common? They were very virulent, killing the humans quickly, but it didn't matter because their code was spread via fleas.
>>>best spot for observational astronomy has to be the far side of the Moon... What's not to love?
Funny you mention "love" because there's no women on the moon, or on that ridge in Antarctica, which is a major drawback of accepting either of those jobs. Oh wait. It's just like my current job.
Remember the Grand Theft Auto hack which allowed people to have sex with prostitutes? I bet if they tattooed "Buy Duff Beer" across her stomach, everyone would remember that ad too. Even people who never played the game!
Just as a counterpoint, I decidedly don't like the tabs-on-top design, don't use Chrome in part because of that UI, and would probably switch to Opera if Firefox didn't make tabs-on-bottom an option. ;-)
QFT (quoted for truth). When I finally abandoned Netscape Navigator, it was because version 6 had a completely different appearance and button positions and made the software less usable. I don't want Firefox to change how it works now, because I'm used to it:
- row 1 is the title/drag bar
- row 2 is the menu
- row 3 has the tabs
That's nice and compact. Plus the tabs are directly above the userspace, so each to access with minimal mouse movement. It's just about perfect. If I wanted a Chrome-like interface than I'd be using Chrome. To make Firefox look like Chrome - well you might as well kill-off Firefox. Why have two separate browsers that look the same?
I don't see any problem with using a piechart, so long as the chart is lying flat such that the areas are relative to one another. You do have to be careful to avoid using bright colors (white, green) cause the eyes are more sensitive to these, but otherwise I think a piechart is a fine way to represent different sizes of things.
The main problem with USAspending.gov is that different people have different views on things. Ever wonder why one group will say, "Military spending is 20%" while another claims it's 60%? It's because not everyone agrees on the definition of "military" and will create varying groups.
I think for true transparency the government needs to present differing views from multiple studies. Otherwise if they only present ONE view, which happens to be favorable to the president or congress, you cannot really trust it.
>>>No need to consider that political parties as well as people can change, that politicians might just do what they say and occasionally adopt a standpoint out of principle.
>>>
"Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."
I could comment further on which party did what, but I don't want to get labeled troll so I'll just stop there and leave the other readers to fill-in the blanks.
And sometimes people blame "anti-competitive practices" when there's actually a valid reason why a product might fail:
- Flying cars - Costs a lot to buy, costs a lot to fuel, requires space for takeoffs/landings. Also in today's "green" climate replacing your 35 mpg car with a 5 mpg flying car would be considered a backwards move.
- EV cars - Costs a lot to buy, is cheaper to fuel, but only goes ~100 miles so people don't want it. People want freedom to make 200-300 mile weekend trips to the beach or mountains or grandma's house.
- Tram/elevated trains - Inconvenient. A car "picks you up" right outside your house; a tram doesn't.
- Betamax - Its inventor Sony claimed it had better video quality, but its initial 1 hour/tape limit was not as good as VHS' 2 or 4 hour ability. Consumers chose VHS. We see the same with iPods where people are turning their backs on high-quality CDs or DVD-Audio, because they'd rather squeeze songs at barely-audible quality to fit inside their tiny MP3 player.
- Steam engine - Although invented by a Greek circa 100 A.D., the roman empire already had cheap slaves to do all the work, so it was viewed by citizens as a toy, not something to replace the status quo.
There are a few cases where a company uses it monopoly to squash an invention, as RCA did when they purchased the patent to FM in the 1930s and then shelved it to protect their already-existing AM monopoly, but these cases are rare. In most cases products fail because consumers *choose* to make them fail.
>>>"biological informatics".
Why not just call it "programming"? Whether you're writing code for machine made of sand (silicon) or chemicals should not matter one bit. Ya know in Babylon 5, the Vorlons and Shadows didn't just "grow" their ships. They programmed the DNA to produce the desired result. I see no reason why we humans can't do the same.
The second-most successful virus was the one that struck the Roman Empire circa 600 A.D. and wiped-out about a third of the population. It changed the course of history, because if that virus had not struck, the Eastern Roman Emperor's army would have succeeded in his mission to reclaim Italy, Rome, and possibly France/Gaul too.
The most-successful virus struck Europe in the mid-1200s, killed 40% of the people, and created a shortage of labor that allowed the serfs to free themselves and demand pay. Thus the middle class was born.
What did these viruses have in common? They were very virulent, killing the host quickly, but it didn't matter because their RNA code was spread via fleas.
It still seems foolish. The light might be better in space, but the losses incurred trying to move it from there to here eat-up any advantages. In the end you'd get more light from your rooftop.
.
>>>what exactly is the USA investing in to secure its citizens a place in the future global economy?
Too many things to list here, but what the USA should be "investing" in is paying off the national debt. Just think how much easier this recession would be able to handle if the U.S. Congress had a 1 trillion *savings* rather than the inverse. We wouldn't need to go to China or India and beg for cash - we could just tap our own reserves.
But no, "savings" is a bad word. Better to live off the credit card and spend, spend, spend! I've never seen such rampant irresponsibility as I've seen in Congress lately.
(Yes I'm angry. Sorry if I offended you.)
>>>Perhaps they value the look of their current roofs?
It always amuses me how people bend-over backwards to justify stupid economic decisions. Is your reason really worth the extra $60,000 (about 3 years of labor) per home? No. Besides they make solar panels that look identical to traditional shingles, so the excuse isn't even valid. LINK - http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,285652,00.html
>>>we have a new American President who is not beholden to special interests,
Except that he's already met with the insurance CEOs and promised not to negotiate pricecuts during the next 10 years. In exchange the companies are supposed to endorse his Uncle Sam healthcare. (And why wouldn't they if they are guaranteed to be paid big bucks by the government, and without hassle.)
Oh yeah - I almost forget RIAA. Last I heard Obama's assigned 4 of their lawyers to his administrative posts... lawyers who have sent-out letters to citizens which basically said: Send us $5000 or else get sued millions.
Obama's just as smarmy as our last president.
>>>Japan is a small place with a high population density
Then maybe Japan's government should stop paying young people to produce more people. (Yes they really do that - the government thinks a shrinking population is a bad thing?!?!?)
>>>What is "promising" about costing $71,428.57 per home in this technology?
I was thinking the same thing. This is why the Japanese have been stuck in a recession since 1990. They like to buy all these shiny-new gadgets, even if they make no sense economically. Rather than spend $71,000 per home to buy some spacetoy, they could just spend $10,000 per home and put the solar panels directly on the roof.
It's not that difficult:
- We had a housing bubble where homes were overvalued at, say, $300,000 but their true value was only $200,000
- When the market corrected itself, and these home prices dropped to their true value, it started a chain of events
- Those businesses with stocks or mutual funds in these homes lost money, bankruptcies spread, and recession happened.
The only good news is that, unlike the crash of 1929, our recession started in 2007 and was a gradual falling-off, so we didn't have a panic. Not the question becomes - what caused the housing bubble? The answer is too easily-available credit was extended to people who should have not received mortgage loans.
>>>Consensus Democracy is better. 60+%
No that's worse. Just imagine in Fall 2001 a referendum that read, "Shall we go to war against Bin Laden?" That would have easily passed your 60% requirement..... and as history shows, been a big mistake. Fighting stupid wars is what brought-down the Athenian democracy because the common man was too ignorant/uneducated to make those kinds of decisions.
You wouldn't want a computer engineered by a democratic vote; why would you want a government to operate that way? Therefore the ideal should be leaders who are educated enough to make intelligent decisions (vote no on foolish wars), without having to fear losing their job tomorrow if his decision happens to be unpopular. That's how the original U.S. Republic was designed to operate but it's strayed from that path.
>>>1)it does not do a good job of protecting the people from force of private interests.
It doesn't? Hmmm. Isn't avoiding a private company like Microsoft or Walmart as simple as saying, "No I won't give you money." YES. If just one-third of us did that, these entities would go bankrupt. And in the case of monopolies like the Electric, phone, or natural gas company, they are all strictly regulated by the U.S. or State governments to prevent abuse of consumers.
>>>2) The voice of the individual is ignored in favor of the big monied interests
That's true. In my opinion all donations from groups should be made illegal, such that politicians can only accept money from individual voters. Put more simply: No eligibility to vote == no donations allowed.