Or bank = shoreline, as in river bank or bank = hardware bus, as in a bank of memory or banking = betting, as in I'm banking on that...:)
These statistical language solutions are interesting, in that they can analyze sentence structures and deduce the grammar of a language; however, I would think that they fail on generating the actual definitions of words. You almost need to generate a list of "concepts", then link each concept to a word, by language. Not my field, thank goodness; I wouldn't have the patience for it.
Heh. Except thats the exact opposite of how utility companies manage water reservoirs as pumped storage plants. During the day, when the price of electricity is high, you let the water flow downhill, generating electricity. At night, when demand & the price is lower, you consume electricity pumping the water back uphill.
It costs money to pump, and there is a net zero water exchange, but the company makes money because of price differential. If you did it the other way around, the company would lose lots of money.
Electricity at night is still provided by Nuclear and Fossil plants. Bulk power capacitors and batteries do not exist that can store the energy required by daytime operations. Even the best flywheels can't store more than 1 MW of power.
From what I understand, the problems with organ failures are recurring... There is something in the genetics of the host that breaks down the organs, and its not always explainable. I want to say the magic word is "auto-immune deficiency". Sometimes your body just attacks your organs; people will go deaf because their nerves break down, or heart disease damages the heart muscles. Just as the benefits of organs can be passed from one individual to another, I'm curious if anyone out there knows of any cases where hosts can acquire genetic problems from the donated organ... Like a donated pancreas might give the host an insulin problem...
Re:Being bought
on
Saving the Net
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
What? How does Flamebait like this get marked positive?
It's funny that the Democratic party is historically more pro-Slavery compared to the Republican party... but I guess that if you don't like history, you get the schools and mass media to revise it until "history" is in your party's favor...
And I agree, I'd love to ban soft money. Let's all bitch about the party of "big business"... So what if Democrats are more dependant on (unregulated) Soft Money contributions than Republicans (Democrats: 61% of their overall funds in soft money, up from 47 percent two years ago. Republicans: 43% of their funds in soft money, increase of 8%).
Since the start of our american congress in 1789, congress has always been paid for participating. You will also find that even the Ancient Democracies had salaries... the example you are thinking of is the Carthaginian model, which was an oligarchy... the rich became senators, because only they could afford to serve for no pay, which shut out the poor from serving in government. Even Aristotle recognized the flaw in this method of governing. I would say then that paying our congressment is definitely the correct method in equalizing who can participate in government.
I would argue that it is not the money that is the problem in our governments, instead the problem is with (1) the philosophies and (2) the beaurocracies of those involved. I have a problem with people who have no regard for other people's money, and do not have the personal restraint when it comes to spending it. This philosophy of socialism has morphed our government into asset reallocation, something the creators of the system never approved of. On top of that, there is so much redundancy, waste, and unaccountability... but we know that already.
In what I've read so far, the two Boston colleges refused the subpoenas based on (1) they were filed in a Washington DC court and served in Boston's district, and (2) the colleges were not given sufficient time to prepare the information before the stated due dates. Essentially, in order to comply with the suits, they would violate their own respective privacy policies. However, there was nothing stated that the respective colleges would not comply once the suits are resubmitted according to their guidelines...
I was going to make an argument about vehicle age, but I ran out of patience. Here's some facts I've been able to glean:
For each aircraft model in commercial use in the USA, the FAA reports average ages. There are 85 different models reported, with an average (design) age of 23.5 years (not weighted by count of planes). Another site on airline safety (with counts of planes, year 2002) puts a weighted (by total planes) average of the top 14 carriers at 11.7 years. A rough guess from this is that 75% of the entire fleet is less than 13 years old (1989 with respect to the survey).
In 2001, the Department of Transportation conducted a National Household Travel Survey , which has an online query engine attached to it. From that data, I was able to find that of the reported 196.5 million cars in the USA (that the owners know the date of ownership), 75% of all cars driven in 2001 were built after 1990 (the 11 years matching the planes). 50% of all cars in use were built after 1995.
This matches fairly well with the age of planes in use, therefore age alone is not a factor. But then again, we should know that, because a plane has many different design considerations than an average car.
Incidentally, a brief history of the cellphone lists that it wasn't until 1987 that the FCC opened up the 800MHz band to digital cell phone research. Standards weren't complete until 1991, and digital PCS bandwidth was officially reserved in 1994.
You could argue that planes & cars built before that date could not take cell phone use into account. However, my gut tells me that it is the chassis of each vehicle that is the restriction... because planes are designed to be airtight, they tend to also be signal-tight Farraday cages, trapping EM inside. Secondly, cars are mostly hollow frames covered with plates and have fewer distributed sensor arrays that are critical to operation.
Hmm... So you're on your hoverboard, riding on a wisp of air ionized at 40,000 Volts. Gots to suck when you go to dismount, with one leg on the board and the other on ground....
(see aforementioned comment about the value of wearing rubbers)
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
In the USA, a modern classic liberal would really follow the libertarian party, whereas the american liberal is more socialist authoritarian. Amusingly, the american conservative is more 'liberal' than the liberal, because they are the ones defining new processes of governing: promoting independance by reducing welfare, teacher and school accountability through testing, parent's school choice through vouchers, etc. One might even consider they are more 'progressive' than the party that claims that phrase as it's own.
Liberal is to Change as Conservative is to Static. Unfortunately, as words become buzzwords, words become redefined and no longer mean what they once did.
As far as Russia goes, Communism was liberal with respect to the old monarchy, yet after a few decades, it became too conservative in its inability to adapt to modern market forces, and collapsed. It's a lesson of beaurocracy that we in the USA should heed...
"Salon has a history of significant losses and expects to incur operating losses in the near future. For the year ended March 31, 2003, Salon had net losses attributable to common stockholders of $5.7 million and had an accumulated deficit of $82.3 million." -- SEC Annual Report
Soon we'll have to worry if the software does a commit between voters, or caches everyone's vote 'till the end of the night.
Which is worse: having a real-time record of votes cast so the losing politician can dredge up voters just before closing, or keeping it like it is now with all the votes uncounted (and presumably unaccountable) until the end of the vote...
For the right price, you can just buy the data from Platts - power line rights of ways, water pipes, etc. Once you have the data, you can throw it into any GIS software (purchased for the right price). Example: you need to get the natural gas pipline information to the road repair crews, so when they dig they're sure they won't hit anything... all this data used to be open, because noone thought you could do anything with it.
So what if I know where the local 500KV transformer yard is located over the 3rd hill on the left, who in their right mind would want to damage it? Then we realized how many people in the world really aren't in their right minds... I'm not complaining that this data should be bottled up again; what was really lacking was the chain of custody of who accessed the data, and for what purpose.
As we say at work, "You know you're doing something right when both sides are mad at you."
This technology has so much potential. I want to be able to remotely pay and walk right out of the store without waiting 15 minutes to check out two items; but I know that they're just going to use my purchases to send me more advertisements. RFIDs can give us information on our environment and we give it to them.
And that's the problem, exchange of information. After reading that article, these RFID manufacturers are already showing their lack of concern and ignorance how to secure their networks -- it's like a company that installs IIS and never patches, they're that clueless. And this technology needs to be secured right the first time; the last thing I need is yet another report of a bungling tech company leaking credit cards. It's not an MMORPG, where you get 8 months to fix, rollback and patch. This time it's worse, because a crack will not only expose financial data, but expose your personal location.
Now I don't do much to attract the ire of governments or corporations; I pay my bills, buy my music, and live my life in security. I don't worry about the gov collecting my info, because the government isn't coordinated enough to figure out what to do with it even if they had it. As a small potato, I worry more about the honesty of my fellow citizens. Store employees get caught scamming credit cards, and now, do we get to look forward to the future criminal "warscanning" around the neighborhood with his radio sensor, instantly detecting what valuables you have inside your house...
Somehow, we the community need to express our concern that the proper precautions are taken. This technology is coming, and the market potential is great. As end users, we need to demand an open access system, so that we might provide the checks and balances to keep the system honest. What else can I say, but whether we need to demand the government regulates an open system, or we use market forces to drive it into oblivion, the public can't let this slide.
Ok, so now out-sourcing is causing all the information leaks, as opposed to the previous administration, who outright sold our secrets to competetor nations.
As for how the money trails tie together, it's amazing what information Google will find for you.
Excellent point. The "browser" stopped innovating as soon as they turned over control of navigation and content display to plug-ins.
I mean, what is "today"'s browser, but a JavaScript parser, Flash plug-in displayer, and Java engine. Oh, and every now and then people use it to mark up text, though you wouldn't guess it by the sheer number of images being tossed around...
As for innovation, we have text, images, links, and fonts all squared away... Visual ideas are tapped at the moment, so lets work on the other senses. How about some voice-activated navigation advances? Weren't we promised browsable smells?
Refill at Starbucks? I knew their coffee tasted a little funky...
Re:Frederick Pohl's Heechee series
on
Altered Carbon
·
· Score: 1
I loved these books (starting with Gateway if anyone's interested) because of all the different sci-fi elements that were intertwined. You have split lovers, one stored in the computer and the other in the flesh. You have spacetravel using technology left behind by long vanished civilizations. You wonder where did the Heechee go, then you wonder why did they hide... rather, from whom...
They are quick reads too, not too "hard" sci-fi, more of the social effects of the technologies rather than delving too closely into the magic of what makes it work. I highly recomend the series.
A microwave oven creates an electrical field within the oven cavity. Metal in the field creates a low resistance "preferred path", which channels the current to a point. When the electron potential is high enough, it can break permitivity of air, and arc to another metal contact point. Moving electrons is current, with losses as heat, which can melt the metal & other objects in the microwave.
So yes, the RFID will spark, but not for the reason you thought it would.
As for using RFIDs to begin with, I think Albrecht is a little too luddite for my taste, and doesn't have the foresight to see the benefits. I would rather see regulations on what kind of personal information can be tracked, rather than outright banning. But then again, a collection transparency policy should apply to all companies and governments, not just those that opt to use RFIDs...
Right. VRML is a markup language, not a pseudonym for MMORPGs... And you're right, they went away -- because in my opinion, the language was a flop.
Like Java, VRML was an idea marketed before its time. When it first appeared, VRML browsers were bulky add-ins for your web browser, slow and prone to errors. The concept is that you define geometry objects in space using a scripting language much like HTML; just download a model and render locally instead of a big bitmap. However, this was software renderering -- they were competing with the first 3d accellerated video cards, and frankly, they lost.
The idea was to create 3d avatars to represent yourself in a chatroom... Interesting ideas, but people were happy with just getting a lo-res icon to represent their personalities (AIM)... and the rest of us never needed anything beyond text to represent our chat.
Why can't there be Monthly billing? You aren't billed per phone call; you make your calls and pay a lump sum at the end of the month.
The way its presented to us now is that there is a set of Artists, a set of Labels, and a set of Customers. Each Artist has a set of Songs. Customers have credit/debit with Financial institutions.
Total billable parties involved is A + L + C
Each customer listens to his/her songs, and is billed one aggregate amount at the end of the month. Total credit card / financial transactions: C
And you're right, when you do bulk transactions, you can argue your way to a lower rate. Total companies involved: F at rate R
Based on the count of C per F, you can pay transaction costs: C * R(F)
For each Artist and Label, you just issue a check to each person, with a line item report of what percents relate to each song / artist. Total checks: A + L
If the customer's payment method fails (overdrawn accounts, credit limts) then you forward the amount on to a collection agency (which comes out of your portion of the cost)
Now, if I were a musical Artist, I might use that purchase data to help determine why some songs were browsed vs purchased (more desireable than others), and my next album might reflect more of that style... it is just a business after all.
Don't you think the FBI has already proved that they are the last organization you want policing sharing? Lest we forget, it was not too long ago that they their own problems with sharing their files as it is...
"After an internal FBI probe also released today sharply criticized the manner in which the Clinton White House obtained more than 400 such files from the FBI. The internal inquiry by the FBI's general counsel found that the White House's request between December of 1993 and February of 1994 were without justification and amounted to "egregious violations of privacy." "
Imagine, there was a time in the USA before the FDA even existed (1930 to be exact). More recently, there was a time when medicine was a private industry in the USA, and people didn't give a rats ass about getting the government's approval for medical devices (1966).
Somehow, in 37 years out of the 227 years this country has existed, the nation now thinks that medical advances can only exist after a lengthy approval process, complete with beurocratic red tape, medicare approval, and gov overhead.
Yes, the government oversees the distribution and purity of drugs, the quality of foodstuffs, and qualifications of our doctors. All that is fine and good. But why have we let ourselves be roped into holding back life-altering discoveries that work just because it doesn't have some commission's stamp on it?
magnetic storm forcasting doesn't sucks
on
SOHO's Antenna Jammed
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Fortunately for us, it is nothing like earth weather forecasting.
Magnetic storms can be very damaging to AC electric systems, and power companies go into conservative operations when storms are predicted by NOAA. The change in the earth's magnetic field (as it interacts with the solar storm) induces slight currents in the metal in the earth's crust, which can have a negative impact on high voltage transformer equipment.
Slashdot Mirror
I recommend the movie Gattaca for a glimpse of the future of biometric identification...
Or bank = shoreline, as in river bank :)
or bank = hardware bus, as in a bank of memory
or banking = betting, as in I'm banking on that...
These statistical language solutions are interesting, in that they can analyze sentence structures and deduce the grammar of a language; however, I would think that they fail on generating the actual definitions of words. You almost need to generate a list of "concepts", then link each concept to a word, by language. Not my field, thank goodness; I wouldn't have the patience for it.
Heh. Except thats the exact opposite of how utility companies manage water reservoirs as pumped storage plants. During the day, when the price of electricity is high, you let the water flow downhill, generating electricity. At night, when demand & the price is lower, you consume electricity pumping the water back uphill.
It costs money to pump, and there is a net zero water exchange, but the company makes money because of price differential. If you did it the other way around, the company would lose lots of money.
Electricity at night is still provided by Nuclear and Fossil plants. Bulk power capacitors and batteries do not exist that can store the energy required by daytime operations. Even the best flywheels can't store more than 1 MW of power.
From what I understand, the problems with organ failures are recurring... There is something in the genetics of the host that breaks down the organs, and its not always explainable. I want to say the magic word is "auto-immune deficiency". Sometimes your body just attacks your organs; people will go deaf because their nerves break down, or heart disease damages the heart muscles. Just as the benefits of organs can be passed from one individual to another, I'm curious if anyone out there knows of any cases where hosts can acquire genetic problems from the donated organ... Like a donated pancreas might give the host an insulin problem...
What? How does Flamebait like this get marked positive?
... the example you are thinking of is the Carthaginian model, which was an oligarchy... the rich became senators, because only they could afford to serve for no pay, which shut out the poor from serving in government. Even Aristotle recognized the flaw in this method of governing. I would say then that paying our congressment is definitely the correct method in equalizing who can participate in government.
It's funny that the Democratic party is historically more pro-Slavery compared to the Republican party... but I guess that if you don't like history, you get the schools and mass media to revise it until "history" is in your party's favor...
And I agree, I'd love to ban soft money. Let's all bitch about the party of "big business"... So what if Democrats are more dependant on (unregulated) Soft Money contributions than Republicans (Democrats: 61% of their overall funds in soft money, up from 47 percent two years ago. Republicans: 43% of their funds in soft money, increase of 8%).
Since the start of our american congress in 1789, congress has always been paid for participating. You will also find that even the Ancient Democracies had salaries
I would argue that it is not the money that is the problem in our governments, instead the problem is with (1) the philosophies and (2) the beaurocracies of those involved. I have a problem with people who have no regard for other people's money, and do not have the personal restraint when it comes to spending it. This philosophy of socialism has morphed our government into asset reallocation, something the creators of the system never approved of. On top of that, there is so much redundancy, waste, and unaccountability... but we know that already.
In what I've read so far, the two Boston colleges refused the subpoenas based on (1) they were filed in a Washington DC court and served in Boston's district, and (2) the colleges were not given sufficient time to prepare the information before the stated due dates. Essentially, in order to comply with the suits, they would violate their own respective privacy policies. However, there was nothing stated that the respective colleges would not comply once the suits are resubmitted according to their guidelines...
Ok, I'm blowing karma on a comment made by an AC, so sue me. :)
I was going to make an argument about vehicle age, but I ran out of patience. Here's some facts I've been able to glean:
For each aircraft model in commercial use in the USA, the FAA reports average ages. There are 85 different models reported, with an average (design) age of 23.5 years (not weighted by count of planes). Another site on airline safety (with counts of planes, year 2002) puts a weighted (by total planes) average of the top 14 carriers at 11.7 years. A rough guess from this is that 75% of the entire fleet is less than 13 years old (1989 with respect to the survey).
In 2001, the Department of Transportation conducted a National Household Travel Survey , which has an online query engine attached to it. From that data, I was able to find that of the reported 196.5 million cars in the USA (that the owners know the date of ownership), 75% of all cars driven in 2001 were built after 1990 (the 11 years matching the planes). 50% of all cars in use were built after 1995.
This matches fairly well with the age of planes in use, therefore age alone is not a factor. But then again, we should know that, because a plane has many different design considerations than an average car.
Incidentally, a brief history of the cellphone lists that it wasn't until 1987 that the FCC opened up the 800MHz band to digital cell phone research. Standards weren't complete until 1991, and digital PCS bandwidth was officially reserved in 1994.
You could argue that planes & cars built before that date could not take cell phone use into account. However, my gut tells me that it is the chassis of each vehicle that is the restriction... because planes are designed to be airtight, they tend to also be signal-tight Farraday cages, trapping EM inside. Secondly, cars are mostly hollow frames covered with plates and have fewer distributed sensor arrays that are critical to operation.
Hmm... So you're on your hoverboard, riding on a wisp of air ionized at 40,000 Volts. Gots to suck when you go to dismount, with one leg on the board and the other on ground....
(see aforementioned comment about the value of wearing rubbers)
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
In the USA, a modern classic liberal would really follow the libertarian party, whereas the american liberal is more socialist authoritarian. Amusingly, the american conservative is more 'liberal' than the liberal, because they are the ones defining new processes of governing: promoting independance by reducing welfare, teacher and school accountability through testing, parent's school choice through vouchers, etc. One might even consider they are more 'progressive' than the party that claims that phrase as it's own.
Liberal is to Change as Conservative is to Static. Unfortunately, as words become buzzwords, words become redefined and no longer mean what they once did.
As far as Russia goes, Communism was liberal with respect to the old monarchy, yet after a few decades, it became too conservative in its inability to adapt to modern market forces, and collapsed. It's a lesson of beaurocracy that we in the USA should heed...
Funny, and I thought Salon was the one dying...
"Salon has a history of significant losses and expects to incur operating losses in the near future. For the year ended March 31, 2003, Salon had net losses attributable to common stockholders of $5.7 million and had an accumulated deficit of $82.3 million." -- SEC Annual Report
Suddenly hanging chads aren't so silly anymore...
Soon we'll have to worry if the software does a commit between voters, or caches everyone's vote 'till the end of the night.
Which is worse: having a real-time record of votes cast so the losing politician can dredge up voters just before closing, or keeping it like it is now with all the votes uncounted (and presumably unaccountable) until the end of the vote...
For the right price, you can just buy the data from Platts - power line rights of ways, water pipes, etc. Once you have the data, you can throw it into any GIS software (purchased for the right price). Example: you need to get the natural gas pipline information to the road repair crews, so when they dig they're sure they won't hit anything... all this data used to be open, because noone thought you could do anything with it.
So what if I know where the local 500KV transformer yard is located over the 3rd hill on the left, who in their right mind would want to damage it? Then we realized how many people in the world really aren't in their right minds... I'm not complaining that this data should be bottled up again; what was really lacking was the chain of custody of who accessed the data, and for what purpose.
As we say at work, "You know you're doing something right when both sides are mad at you."
This technology has so much potential. I want to be able to remotely pay and walk right out of the store without waiting 15 minutes to check out two items; but I know that they're just going to use my purchases to send me more advertisements. RFIDs can give us information on our environment and we give it to them.
And that's the problem, exchange of information. After reading that article, these RFID manufacturers are already showing their lack of concern and ignorance how to secure their networks -- it's like a company that installs IIS and never patches, they're that clueless. And this technology needs to be secured right the first time; the last thing I need is yet another report of a bungling tech company leaking credit cards. It's not an MMORPG, where you get 8 months to fix, rollback and patch. This time it's worse, because a crack will not only expose financial data, but expose your personal location.
Now I don't do much to attract the ire of governments or corporations; I pay my bills, buy my music, and live my life in security. I don't worry about the gov collecting my info, because the government isn't coordinated enough to figure out what to do with it even if they had it. As a small potato, I worry more about the honesty of my fellow citizens. Store employees get caught scamming credit cards, and now, do we get to look forward to the future criminal "warscanning" around the neighborhood with his radio sensor, instantly detecting what valuables you have inside your house...
Somehow, we the community need to express our concern that the proper precautions are taken. This technology is coming, and the market potential is great. As end users, we need to demand an open access system, so that we might provide the checks and balances to keep the system honest. What else can I say, but whether we need to demand the government regulates an open system, or we use market forces to drive it into oblivion, the public can't let this slide.
Ok, so now out-sourcing is causing all the information leaks, as opposed to the previous administration, who outright sold our secrets to competetor nations.
As for how the money trails tie together, it's amazing what information Google will find for you.
Wait a minute, they're getting you to pay 7 times, aren't they?
Excellent point. The "browser" stopped innovating as soon as they turned over control of navigation and content display to plug-ins.
I mean, what is "today"'s browser, but a JavaScript parser, Flash plug-in displayer, and Java engine. Oh, and every now and then people use it to mark up text, though you wouldn't guess it by the sheer number of images being tossed around...
As for innovation, we have text, images, links, and fonts all squared away... Visual ideas are tapped at the moment, so lets work on the other senses. How about some voice-activated navigation advances? Weren't we promised browsable smells?
Refill at Starbucks? I knew their coffee tasted a little funky...
I loved these books (starting with Gateway if anyone's interested) because of all the different sci-fi elements that were intertwined. You have split lovers, one stored in the computer and the other in the flesh. You have spacetravel using technology left behind by long vanished civilizations. You wonder where did the Heechee go, then you wonder why did they hide... rather, from whom...
They are quick reads too, not too "hard" sci-fi, more of the social effects of the technologies rather than delving too closely into the magic of what makes it work. I highly recomend the series.
Why does metal arc in a microwave oven?
A microwave oven creates an electrical field within the oven cavity. Metal in the field creates a low resistance "preferred path", which channels the current to a point. When the electron potential is high enough, it can break permitivity of air, and arc to another metal contact point. Moving electrons is current, with losses as heat, which can melt the metal & other objects in the microwave.
So yes, the RFID will spark, but not for the reason you thought it would.
As for using RFIDs to begin with, I think Albrecht is a little too luddite for my taste, and doesn't have the foresight to see the benefits. I would rather see regulations on what kind of personal information can be tracked, rather than outright banning. But then again, a collection transparency policy should apply to all companies and governments, not just those that opt to use RFIDs...
Right. VRML is a markup language, not a pseudonym for MMORPGs... And you're right, they went away -- because in my opinion, the language was a flop.
Like Java, VRML was an idea marketed before its time. When it first appeared, VRML browsers were bulky add-ins for your web browser, slow and prone to errors. The concept is that you define geometry objects in space using a scripting language much like HTML; just download a model and render locally instead of a big bitmap. However, this was software renderering -- they were competing with the first 3d accellerated video cards, and frankly, they lost.
The idea was to create 3d avatars to represent yourself in a chatroom... Interesting ideas, but people were happy with just getting a lo-res icon to represent their personalities (AIM)... and the rest of us never needed anything beyond text to represent our chat.
The way its presented to us now is that there is a set of Artists, a set of Labels, and a set of Customers. Each Artist has a set of Songs. Customers have credit/debit with Financial institutions.
Total billable parties involved is A + L + C
Each customer listens to his/her songs, and is billed one aggregate amount at the end of the month. Total credit card / financial transactions: C
And you're right, when you do bulk transactions, you can argue your way to a lower rate. Total companies involved: F at rate R
Based on the count of C per F, you can pay transaction costs: C * R(F)
For each Artist and Label, you just issue a check to each person, with a line item report of what percents relate to each song / artist. Total checks: A + L
If the customer's payment method fails (overdrawn accounts, credit limts) then you forward the amount on to a collection agency (which comes out of your portion of the cost)
Now, if I were a musical Artist, I might use that purchase data to help determine why some songs were browsed vs purchased (more desireable than others), and my next album might reflect more of that style... it is just a business after all.
Don't you think the FBI has already proved that they are the last organization you want policing sharing? Lest we forget, it was not too long ago that they their own problems with sharing their files as it is...
"After an internal FBI probe also released today sharply criticized the manner in which the Clinton White House obtained more than 400 such files from the FBI. The internal inquiry by the FBI's general counsel found that the White House's request between December of 1993 and February of 1994 were without justification and amounted to "egregious violations of privacy." "
Imagine, there was a time in the USA before the FDA even existed (1930 to be exact). More recently, there was a time when medicine was a private industry in the USA, and people didn't give a rats ass about getting the government's approval for medical devices (1966).
Somehow, in 37 years out of the 227 years this country has existed, the nation now thinks that medical advances can only exist after a lengthy approval process, complete with beurocratic red tape, medicare approval, and gov overhead.
Yes, the government oversees the distribution and purity of drugs, the quality of foodstuffs, and qualifications of our doctors. All that is fine and good. But why have we let ourselves be roped into holding back life-altering discoveries that work just because it doesn't have some commission's stamp on it?
Fortunately for us, it is nothing like earth weather forecasting.
Magnetic storms can be very damaging to AC electric systems, and power companies go into conservative operations when storms are predicted by NOAA. The change in the earth's magnetic field (as it interacts with the solar storm) induces slight currents in the metal in the earth's crust, which can have a negative impact on high voltage transformer equipment.