I yield. I was thinking of 4-5 candidates, but you couldn't guarantee that, especially if votes for minor candidates that you just happen to like or trust became a significant factor.
Still, one could do a first round of elimination, eliminating all candidates who had fewer then n/2 votes in the upper half of the preference chart, and I doubt that that would EVER change the result.
OTOH, PG&E stupidly built a few quite expensive reactors right on active earthquake faults. STUPID!! Fortunately, the things were shut down before they caused any problem buy a tremendous expense. One of those reactors was, even more stupidly, built where a severe earthquake could knock a cliff down onto it. I don't KNOW that it would have ruptured the containment dome, but I have a fairly strong belief that it would. I KNOW that it would have put the plant out of action for a very long time just when people were depending on it even more than usually.
Large centralized reactors are a very bad idea. Small ones that have been actually designed to be fail-safe? Perhaps a good idea. If they demand an exception to the laws covering damages in case of accident, then I'd say I don't one in even a nearby state. If they're willing to take the risk of selling them without a special legal exemption... Well, I wouldn't want to beta-test one, and I wouldn't buy one in the first year that they were on sale. But I'd consider whether it ought to be a future investment.
Where do you think carbon 14 comes from? It's largely produced by solar radiation interacting with nitrogen in the atmosphere. And it gets built into every large molecule in your body. If it decays, it can yield interesting changes in your proteins or DNA. This is a plausible source of malefic prions. (Most prions are used by the body to fold proteins the correct way, some fold them incorrectly. Occasionally one of those will be reproductive. This leads to, e.g., Kuru or CVJ. Or scrapie. Or...well, nobody really knows how many diseases have this kind of a source. We know many that don't.)
We evolved with a background level of radiation. This doesn't make it harmless, but it means that it's tolerable, at least for a few decades. (It's not clear that microwaves can have this kind of effect. I think they're two low energy. Still, if two microwave photons hit a nucleus at once...or possibly three... But I agree, that it's a VERY low probability occurrence.)
Condorcet is, indeed, better. But the difference between Condorcet and Instant Runoff is much less significant when there are several choices than is the difference between either and plurality.
You are correct that Plurality is just about the worst choice for honest elections. (If they're dishonest, then the method isn't that significant. Diebold just changed the name of their voting machine company.)
OTOH, Instant Runoff is simple enough that you don't need a computer to tally the votes. (Still, Condorcet can by done with a one page Python program, so it's not *that* bad.)
I'd be immensely happy with either choice, as compared to the current system, which might have been designed to be corrupted. I don't think it was, but if that had been the goal, then the vote method chosen would have been appropriate. (I suspect that it was chosen because it was the simplest to implement, and the simplest to explain. And it works as well as anything if there are just two sides, which is often true in very small groups.)
He said "eventually". That means that if at any time you have more than one complete and consistent set of physical laws...you may not be covering everything, and at a later time you will have a single complete set which cannot be duplicated in coverage by a different set. So, no, I wouldn't think that your proposal would be a disproof. Merely a proof that we haven't yet arrived at the "rainbow's end" (to use the metaphor that seems to me most apropos).
Well, it's a consistent belief, and it appears immune to disproof. And it's also not provable...but, of course, that makes it theology or metaphysics rather then physics.
There are several beliefs of that nature, where all predictions made are consistent with the laws of nature as known, but which cannot be tested. Generally these are called "interpretations" by those with a mathematical background.
Well, no. If they *do* get approved they will have corrupted the system so badly, ISO certification means nothing. If they don't get approved they will merely have jammed the channel so full of junk that nothing further can get approved. Most of those "representatives" will only show up to vote when MS tells them to. This makes it impossible to get a quorum unless MS is pushing it...and MS isn't interested in routine business.
Or at least that's how I understand the matter. I remain uncertain. I also remain committed to odt files. (That's the extension, don't recall the acronym for the format. ODF?)
One reason might be disguise. If it's disguised as something encoded with an insecure encryption, then it won't attract as much attention...but if they *do* happen to get curious about it, there's the inner layer to prevent them from actually cracking it.
You can plug lots of different "you"s and "them"s into that approach, it's not a sword with just one edge. Think of it as using steganography inside a tgz file. The tools for handling the png & tiff files need to unpack the file just to determine that it's a picture. THEN they get to check it for hidden messages. (Yeah, that's a pretty easy approach. It's common which is why I picked it.)
Did IBM sink? FWIW, I've heard that they're worth a lot more now than they were in 1980. They just don't control as large a proportion of the computing industry. But the industry's gotten a lot bigger.
My information says that IBM is a larger and more profitable company than MS. They just aren't quite a centralized, so they don't have as many superstars. (I.e., MS has two, Gates and Balmer. IBM doesn't have any.)
OTOH, what IBM *did* do during that period was reinvent itself.
Well, I seem to recall that MS has definitely said that you are right. And of course I trust whatever MS says...
If it *ISN'T* going into DRM, then they did a much worse job than I thought. (Irrespective, I'm not a customer. I had trouble with the EULA on MSWind2000...never accepted it, and haven't accepted any MS software since then. But still, I have real trouble believing that Vista is that much of a turkey *before* adding on the extra cycles required for DRM processing. Now that *LOUSY* coding!)
I thought "to rodger" aleady was a verb. Brittish dialect. Thought it meant something from the days of sailing ships, and was a sexual reference. Here we go http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/roger : Verb
Infinitive
to roger
Third person singular
rogers Simple past
rogered Past participle
rogered Present participle
rogering to roger (third-person singular simple present rogers, present participle rogering, simple past rogered, past participle rogered)
1. (transitive, coarse slang) Of a man, to have sexual intercourse with (someone), specially in a rough manner.
2. (intransitive, coarse slang) To have sexual intercourse. Synonyms
* See WikiSaurus:sexual intercourse
But the people who understand what is going on will be a minority within a small minority. And only a minority of those will care enough to act.
Therefore customer flight isn't a problem. It's at best a temporary lifeboat...but you can't live for too long in a lifeboat.
The solutions that I see are: 1) flee: Very temporary. This is only to find time to implement something else. 2) go back to mail based transactions. 3) build up an alternative internet infrastructure based on WiFi and line-of-sign laser connections. 4) some kind of mesh network that independent of ISPs 5) legal regulation of ISPs. 6) establish a new communication protocol, with a new stack of applications to handle it. (This could be based around HTML, or XML, or whatever...but it needs to be different from HTTP and probably to use a different port.) This would run over standard ISP connections, but wouldn't have the same protocol, so an ISP that modified it would need a different toolchain.) RSS is sort of this kind of thing already. Have the protocol include a license in each transmission, such that modification and transmission is allowed only if the resultant page would display the same way in all toolsets of the original tool chain, and include a text editor among the original tool chain. Have comment tags, but restrict what they can contain without violating the license. Specify a simple compression/encryption in the protocol as an "access control measure".
Note that this is a combined technical-legal approach, making use of copyright laws. Might as well get *some* use our of them. (OK, the GPL already does so. This is just a bit more use.)
A problem with this approach is that it will only work with web pages that support it. Perhaps
These all have defects, but customer flight is an extremely short-range solution. The flight of customers who care will have such a minor impact that it probably won't even be noticed.
That would require that people understand what is happening. This will be a minority even among the technically inclined, who are themselves a small minority.
In other words: That isn't going to happen. (Copyright lawsuits might. Possibly other legal claims.)
Yes, but remember that much of that was done while it was a Red Hat project.
I'm nervous about Gnome rather than convinced that they've sold out. I suspect that most to all of the Gnome project members believe that they are doing the best that they can in the situation that they exist in. Unfortunately, some of those members are sponsored as employees of corporations that don't have much interest in the goals of FOSS.
Gnome was originally created because Red Hat was nervous about the QT license. After Gnome became a decent desktop, Trolltech fixed the licensing problems. Gnome became independent of Red Hat (and acquired other corporate sponsors). At this point I have more faith in KDE than in Gnome. OTOH, I do trust in the GPL, so I'm only nervous about future directions.
The Gnome foundation hasn't given cause to doubt their comitment to FOSS...except that when Miguel speaks, they don't come out and say "That's not *our* point of view.", despite knowing that many people believe that Miguel *does* speak for them. And then there the matter of a bug that isn't being fixed. (I don't really understand that one, except that it involves Noika's sponsorship and Ogg. But it makes me nervous.)
Well, perhaps not that much. They certainly need to clearly state that he's not speaking for them...certainly if people are assuming that he *is* speaking for them. A failure to do so is a tacit agreement to allow him to represent their position, and if so, then they deserve to be tarred with the same brush.
Have you used Gnome2.x? Gnome1.x did, indeed, believe that you should control your computer. Gnome2.x has gone out of the way to make it more difficult.
KDE went the other way. I used to be a fervent Gnome supporter. Not only did I prefer the Gnome desktop, I preferred the Gnome license, and the Gnome implementation language. Now... Well, it's still easier to link other languages to C than to C++. So when I write things I use Gtk rather than Qt. (Even when I'm writing C++ I don't like the non-standard annotations of Qt.) And LGPL code can be used with GPL code, so the license isn't a problem. But as an end-user I'm nearly always KDE. (I keep Gnome on my system becaus I'm running a testing system, not a stable one, and occasionally KDE breaks...it's rare that Gnome breaks at the same time.)
That's a very bad idea. I've broken Ubuntu installs by adding Debian repositories. Ubuntu distros is based on a snapshot of Debian taken at one particular time and developed from there. The development is not guaranteed to be compatible with the development path that Debian takes. Or with Debian stable.
That said, the approach will often work. But it will break without warning, and without either distro caring to fix your problem.
"Standard"? OOXML? Which contains statements like "Format it the same way MSWord95 did on MSWind95"(paraphrase)?
MSOOXML may be anointed a standard, that won't make it one. It will, instead, render the idea of the ISO as a standards organization absurd. At best you will be able to say "Some ISO approved standards are reasonable standards.". (Well, perhaps "ISO standards before Dec. 2007 appear to be reasonable standards.".)
There's an old riddle that goes "How many legs does a horse have if you call it's tail a leg?" You're supposed to realize that calling the tail a leg doesn't make it one.
They will generally only agree to hear cases where the decision that they will make is politically acceptable
Uhh, yeah, I was with you up until this point. For better or worse SCOTUS has issued lots of highly unpopular decisions in it's history. Hell, the GP even mentioned a recent one.
That which you say is true, but so is what I said. They do make politically unpopular decisions, and they also try to avoid doing so. They're busy, and they must usually be selective about what cases to accept. The current court has been less protective of individual liberties than any court in recent memory. (I'm not sure I agree with some of the decisions of the Warren court, but they *did* at least *try* to be protective of individual liberties. Sometimes, admittedly, with less than stellar success.)
the ACLU, decides to get involved very early in the process. This rarely happens. It will essentially never happen if you represent something unpopular, because the organization depends on solicited funds
I'd disagree with this too. The ACLU has defended people accused of possession of child pornography before. Doesn't get much more unpopular then that.
(I agree with everything else you said)
Again, it's a matter of frequency. The ACLU does take on unpopular cases...but it tries hard to limit them as a percentage of what it covers.
OTOH, all of this is based on my perception of what's happening. I haven't done research on the statistics. I *do* observe many clearly vile instances of injustice that the ACLU doesn't get involved with, and it's not always because they don't think they could win. They're dealing with a kind of triage, because there are many more cases of injustice than they can possibly deal with. They are *forced* to be selective in what cases they tackle. So they tackle the ones that they think are 1) important, 2) winnable, 3) not too unpopular. Then if they've got a bit of slack, they pick up a few of the others. (Again, this is just my model of how they work. I could be wrong.)
There's a bit of a problem here. 1) Before your trial, all of your assets are seized. 2) Therefore you can't pay an attorney...so you probably lose if they try you. 3) You can't appeal the verdict without:
a) Paying a rather expensive fee for the appeal, and
b) The appeals court accepting the case 4) If you appeal, you can't appeal based on anything that wasn't raised as an issue in the original trial...where you had a lawyer who was either unpaid or chosen by the govt. (aka public defender). 5) If the appeals court decides against you, you must appeal to the District court. (I think I have this right. Possibly this step is skipped.) All of the caveats WRT the appeals court apply again (if I haven't separated into two what is really one court). 6) Now you can appeal to the Supreme Court. They refuse to hear most cases that are appealed to them. They will generally only agree to hear cases where the decision that they will make is politically acceptable. They are also quite expensive, and all of your assets were impounded before step one.
Because of this, your only hope is if some organization, e.g. the ACLU, decides to get involved very early in the process. This rarely happens. It will essentially never happen if you represent something unpopular, because the organization depends on solicited funds.
Also notice that each of these steps takes multiples of years. You're trying to swim upstream, and all levels of the government offer increased resistence when you do that. If you were trying to plead guilty the case might be decided within months, but since you are opposed to the govt., it will take years to decades even if you are *eventually* successful.
So, no, these laws haven't yet gone to the Supreme Court. I doubt that they've ever gone to an appeals court. Remember that step one is to strip the defendent of the ability to pay for lawyers.
Also, gas diffusion isn't the only technique. The US has intentionally not researched some proposed techniques because if they were developed they would make refining too inexpensive at a small level. (One of these involved tuned lasers...and that's about all I know about it.)
OTOH, if people were worried about running out of low-grade fuel, then they'd be actually building fuel reprocessing plants instead of talking about burying valuable resources where nobody can reach them.
Still, people have been shortsighted frequently enough over the past several years that perhaps I shouldn't consider a possible further example as proof of anything else.
But my favored future source of electric power is Solar Space Power Satellites. Most people seem to envision huge rafts of solar cells, but my image is lots of mirrors and Sterling engines. (The major problems are heat radiation and lubrication.) With tuned microwave transmission to antennas on the ground about 3 miles in diameter. (Larger than is needed, but with a safety allowance.) This should be on ground that people don't live on, but no known damage occurs, so it could be used for pasture. And I think it could also be done with floats and anchors on lakes and the ocean, but I'm less certain of that. You need to tune the microwaves to a wavelength that isn't absorbed by water, or anything else in the atmosphere. There are several choices, but I prefer wave lengths longer than 21 cm rather than shorter, but you need them to be short enough to be rather directional with reasonably small antennas. (I'd need to look up the details again.) I believe it's practical, and probably equivalent in cost, perhaps cheaper than a bunch of reactors. There are DIFFERENT tradeoffs. One of the costs of this would be developing heavy lifters for lofting construction materials. It would probably be necessary to create a permanent presence in space. There would also be lots of minor benefits.
I think you aare using DRM as a synonym for the term TPM, or Trusted Platform Module. This is one particular technique for imposing DRM. DRM is a more general term for a technique that is currently being implemented via TPM.
OTOH, the term probably doesn't have an actual definition. I think it was created by a marketing team to sell something to people that they wouldn't touch with a 10 foot pole if they knew what it was, and as I recall the original definitions (back when it was being defined) were double talking marketeer speak.
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I yield. I was thinking of 4-5 candidates, but you couldn't guarantee that, especially if votes for minor candidates that you just happen to like or trust became a significant factor.
Still, one could do a first round of elimination, eliminating all candidates who had fewer then n/2 votes in the upper half of the preference chart, and I doubt that that would EVER change the result.
OTOH, PG&E stupidly built a few quite expensive reactors right on active earthquake faults. STUPID!! Fortunately, the things were shut down before they caused any problem buy a tremendous expense. One of those reactors was, even more stupidly, built where a severe earthquake could knock a cliff down onto it. I don't KNOW that it would have ruptured the containment dome, but I have a fairly strong belief that it would. I KNOW that it would have put the plant out of action for a very long time just when people were depending on it even more than usually.
Large centralized reactors are a very bad idea. Small ones that have been actually designed to be fail-safe? Perhaps a good idea. If they demand an exception to the laws covering damages in case of accident, then I'd say I don't one in even a nearby state. If they're willing to take the risk of selling them without a special legal exemption... Well, I wouldn't want to beta-test one, and I wouldn't buy one in the first year that they were on sale. But I'd consider whether it ought to be a future investment.
Where do you think carbon 14 comes from? It's largely produced by solar radiation interacting with nitrogen in the atmosphere. And it gets built into every large molecule in your body. If it decays, it can yield interesting changes in your proteins or DNA. This is a plausible source of malefic prions. (Most prions are used by the body to fold proteins the correct way, some fold them incorrectly. Occasionally one of those will be reproductive. This leads to, e.g., Kuru or CVJ. Or scrapie. Or...well, nobody really knows how many diseases have this kind of a source. We know many that don't.)
We evolved with a background level of radiation. This doesn't make it harmless, but it means that it's tolerable, at least for a few decades. (It's not clear that microwaves can have this kind of effect. I think they're two low energy. Still, if two microwave photons hit a nucleus at once...or possibly three... But I agree, that it's a VERY low probability occurrence.)
Condorcet is, indeed, better. But the difference between Condorcet and Instant Runoff is much less significant when there are several choices than is the difference between either and plurality.
You are correct that Plurality is just about the worst choice for honest elections. (If they're dishonest, then the method isn't that significant. Diebold just changed the name of their voting machine company.)
OTOH, Instant Runoff is simple enough that you don't need a computer to tally the votes. (Still, Condorcet can by done with a one page Python program, so it's not *that* bad.)
I'd be immensely happy with either choice, as compared to the current system, which might have been designed to be corrupted. I don't think it was, but if that had been the goal, then the vote method chosen would have been appropriate. (I suspect that it was chosen because it was the simplest to implement, and the simplest to explain. And it works as well as anything if there are just two sides, which is often true in very small groups.)
Right. No such proof exists, or can exist. That's why I'm asserting that the claim isn't science, but rather is metaphysics (or theology).
He said "eventually". That means that if at any time you have more than one complete and consistent set of physical laws...you may not be covering everything, and at a later time you will have a single complete set which cannot be duplicated in coverage by a different set. So, no, I wouldn't think that your proposal would be a disproof. Merely a proof that we haven't yet arrived at the "rainbow's end" (to use the metaphor that seems to me most apropos).
Well, it's a consistent belief, and it appears immune to disproof. And it's also not provable...but, of course, that makes it theology or metaphysics rather then physics.
There are several beliefs of that nature, where all predictions made are consistent with the laws of nature as known, but which cannot be tested. Generally these are called "interpretations" by those with a mathematical background.
Well, no. If they *do* get approved they will have corrupted the system so badly, ISO certification means nothing. If they don't get approved they will merely have jammed the channel so full of junk that nothing further can get approved. Most of those "representatives" will only show up to vote when MS tells them to. This makes it impossible to get a quorum unless MS is pushing it...and MS isn't interested in routine business.
Or at least that's how I understand the matter. I remain uncertain. I also remain committed to odt files. (That's the extension, don't recall the acronym for the format. ODF?)
One reason might be disguise. If it's disguised as something encoded with an insecure encryption, then it won't attract as much attention...but if they *do* happen to get curious about it, there's the inner layer to prevent them from actually cracking it.
You can plug lots of different "you"s and "them"s into that approach, it's not a sword with just one edge. Think of it as using steganography inside a tgz file. The tools for handling the png & tiff files need to unpack the file just to determine that it's a picture. THEN they get to check it for hidden messages. (Yeah, that's a pretty easy approach. It's common which is why I picked it.)
Did IBM sink?
FWIW, I've heard that they're worth a lot more now than they were in 1980. They just don't control as large a proportion of the computing industry. But the industry's gotten a lot bigger.
My information says that IBM is a larger and more profitable company than MS. They just aren't quite a centralized, so they don't have as many superstars. (I.e., MS has two, Gates and Balmer. IBM doesn't have any.)
OTOH, what IBM *did* do during that period was reinvent itself.
Well, I seem to recall that MS has definitely said that you are right. And of course I trust whatever MS says...
If it *ISN'T* going into DRM, then they did a much worse job than I thought. (Irrespective, I'm not a customer. I had trouble with the EULA on MSWind2000...never accepted it, and haven't accepted any MS software since then. But still, I have real trouble believing that Vista is that much of a turkey *before* adding on the extra cycles required for DRM processing. Now that *LOUSY* coding!)
I thought "to rodger" aleady was a verb. Brittish dialect.
Thought it meant something from the days of sailing ships, and was a sexual reference.
Here we go http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/roger :
Verb
Infinitive
to roger
Third person singular
rogers
Simple past
rogered
Past participle
rogered
Present participle
rogering
to roger (third-person singular simple present rogers, present participle rogering, simple past rogered, past participle rogered)
1. (transitive, coarse slang) Of a man, to have sexual intercourse with (someone), specially in a rough manner.
2. (intransitive, coarse slang) To have sexual intercourse.
Synonyms
* See WikiSaurus:sexual intercourse
But the people who understand what is going on will be a minority within a small minority. And only a minority of those will care enough to act.
Therefore customer flight isn't a problem. It's at best a temporary lifeboat...but you can't live for too long in a lifeboat.
The solutions that I see are:
1) flee: Very temporary. This is only to find time to implement something else.
2) go back to mail based transactions.
3) build up an alternative internet infrastructure based on WiFi and line-of-sign laser connections.
4) some kind of mesh network that independent of ISPs
5) legal regulation of ISPs.
6) establish a new communication protocol, with a new stack of applications to handle it. (This could be based around HTML, or XML, or whatever...but it needs to be different from HTTP and probably to use a different port.) This would run over standard ISP connections, but wouldn't have the same protocol, so an ISP that modified it would need a different toolchain.) RSS is sort of this kind of thing already. Have the protocol include a license in each transmission, such that modification and transmission is allowed only if the resultant page would display the same way in all toolsets of the original tool chain, and include a text editor among the original tool chain. Have comment tags, but restrict what they can contain without violating the license. Specify a simple compression/encryption in the protocol as an "access control measure".
Note that this is a combined technical-legal approach, making use of copyright laws. Might as well get *some* use our of them. (OK, the GPL already does so. This is just a bit more use.)
A problem with this approach is that it will only work with web pages that support it. Perhaps
These all have defects, but customer flight is an extremely short-range solution. The flight of customers who care will have such a minor impact that it probably won't even be noticed.
That would require that people understand what is happening. This will be a minority even among the technically inclined, who are themselves a small minority.
In other words: That isn't going to happen. (Copyright lawsuits might. Possibly other legal claims.)
No goats.
Yes, but remember that much of that was done while it was a Red Hat project.
I'm nervous about Gnome rather than convinced that they've sold out. I suspect that most to all of the Gnome project members believe that they are doing the best that they can in the situation that they exist in. Unfortunately, some of those members are sponsored as employees of corporations that don't have much interest in the goals of FOSS.
Gnome was originally created because Red Hat was nervous about the QT license. After Gnome became a decent desktop, Trolltech fixed the licensing problems. Gnome became independent of Red Hat (and acquired other corporate sponsors). At this point I have more faith in KDE than in Gnome. OTOH, I do trust in the GPL, so I'm only nervous about future directions.
The Gnome foundation hasn't given cause to doubt their comitment to FOSS...except that when Miguel speaks, they don't come out and say "That's not *our* point of view.", despite knowing that many people believe that Miguel *does* speak for them. And then there the matter of a bug that isn't being fixed. (I don't really understand that one, except that it involves Noika's sponsorship and Ogg. But it makes me nervous.)
Well, perhaps not that much. They certainly need to clearly state that he's not speaking for them...certainly if people are assuming that he *is* speaking for them. A failure to do so is a tacit agreement to allow him to represent their position, and if so, then they deserve to be tarred with the same brush.
Have you used Gnome2.x? Gnome1.x did, indeed, believe that you should control your computer. Gnome2.x has gone out of the way to make it more difficult.
KDE went the other way. I used to be a fervent Gnome supporter. Not only did I prefer the Gnome desktop, I preferred the Gnome license, and the Gnome implementation language. Now... Well, it's still easier to link other languages to C than to C++. So when I write things I use Gtk rather than Qt. (Even when I'm writing C++ I don't like the non-standard annotations of Qt.) And LGPL code can be used with GPL code, so the license isn't a problem. But as an end-user I'm nearly always KDE. (I keep Gnome on my system becaus I'm running a testing system, not a stable one, and occasionally KDE breaks...it's rare that Gnome breaks at the same time.)
That's a very bad idea.
I've broken Ubuntu installs by adding Debian repositories. Ubuntu distros is based on a snapshot of Debian taken at one particular time and developed from there. The development is not guaranteed to be compatible with the development path that Debian takes. Or with Debian stable.
That said, the approach will often work. But it will break without warning, and without either distro caring to fix your problem.
"Standard"? OOXML? Which contains statements like "Format it the same way MSWord95 did on MSWind95"(paraphrase)?
MSOOXML may be anointed a standard, that won't make it one. It will, instead, render the idea of the ISO as a standards organization absurd. At best you will be able to say "Some ISO approved standards are reasonable standards.". (Well, perhaps "ISO standards before Dec. 2007 appear to be reasonable standards.".)
There's an old riddle that goes "How many legs does a horse have if you call it's tail a leg?"
You're supposed to realize that calling the tail a leg doesn't make it one.
Yes, but that Google'd definition fits with my usage.
Uhh, yeah, I was with you up until this point. For better or worse SCOTUS has issued lots of highly unpopular decisions in it's history. Hell, the GP even mentioned a recent one.
That which you say is true, but so is what I said. They do make politically unpopular decisions, and they also try to avoid doing so. They're busy, and they must usually be selective about what cases to accept. The current court has been less protective of individual liberties than any court in recent memory. (I'm not sure I agree with some of the decisions of the Warren court, but they *did* at least *try* to be protective of individual liberties. Sometimes, admittedly, with less than stellar success.) the ACLU, decides to get involved very early in the process. This rarely happens. It will essentially never happen if you represent something unpopular, because the organization depends on solicited fundsI'd disagree with this too. The ACLU has defended people accused of possession of child pornography before. Doesn't get much more unpopular then that.
(I agree with everything else you said)
Again, it's a matter of frequency. The ACLU does take on unpopular cases...but it tries hard to limit them as a percentage of what it covers.OTOH, all of this is based on my perception of what's happening. I haven't done research on the statistics. I *do* observe many clearly vile instances of injustice that the ACLU doesn't get involved with, and it's not always because they don't think they could win. They're dealing with a kind of triage, because there are many more cases of injustice than they can possibly deal with. They are *forced* to be selective in what cases they tackle. So they tackle the ones that they think are 1) important, 2) winnable, 3) not too unpopular. Then if they've got a bit of slack, they pick up a few of the others. (Again, this is just my model of how they work. I could be wrong.)
There's a bit of a problem here.
1) Before your trial, all of your assets are seized.
2) Therefore you can't pay an attorney...so you probably lose if they try you.
3) You can't appeal the verdict without:
a) Paying a rather expensive fee for the appeal, and
b) The appeals court accepting the case
4) If you appeal, you can't appeal based on anything that wasn't raised as an issue in the original trial...where you had a lawyer who was either unpaid or chosen by the govt. (aka public defender).
5) If the appeals court decides against you, you must appeal to the District court. (I think I have this right. Possibly this step is skipped.) All of the caveats WRT the appeals court apply again (if I haven't separated into two what is really one court).
6) Now you can appeal to the Supreme Court. They refuse to hear most cases that are appealed to them. They will generally only agree to hear cases where the decision that they will make is politically acceptable. They are also quite expensive, and all of your assets were impounded before step one.
Because of this, your only hope is if some organization, e.g. the ACLU, decides to get involved very early in the process. This rarely happens. It will essentially never happen if you represent something unpopular, because the organization depends on solicited funds.
Also notice that each of these steps takes multiples of years. You're trying to swim upstream, and all levels of the government offer increased resistence when you do that. If you were trying to plead guilty the case might be decided within months, but since you are opposed to the govt., it will take years to decades even if you are *eventually* successful.
So, no, these laws haven't yet gone to the Supreme Court. I doubt that they've ever gone to an appeals court. Remember that step one is to strip the defendent of the ability to pay for lawyers.
Also, gas diffusion isn't the only technique. The US has intentionally not researched some proposed techniques because if they were developed they would make refining too inexpensive at a small level. (One of these involved tuned lasers...and that's about all I know about it.)
OTOH, if people were worried about running out of low-grade fuel, then they'd be actually building fuel reprocessing plants instead of talking about burying valuable resources where nobody can reach them.
Still, people have been shortsighted frequently enough over the past several years that perhaps I shouldn't consider a possible further example as proof of anything else.
But my favored future source of electric power is Solar Space Power Satellites. Most people seem to envision huge rafts of solar cells, but my image is lots of mirrors and Sterling engines. (The major problems are heat radiation and lubrication.) With tuned microwave transmission to antennas on the ground about 3 miles in diameter. (Larger than is needed, but with a safety allowance.) This should be on ground that people don't live on, but no known damage occurs, so it could be used for pasture. And I think it could also be done with floats and anchors on lakes and the ocean, but I'm less certain of that. You need to tune the microwaves to a wavelength that isn't absorbed by water, or anything else in the atmosphere. There are several choices, but I prefer wave lengths longer than 21 cm rather than shorter, but you need them to be short enough to be rather directional with reasonably small antennas. (I'd need to look up the details again.) I believe it's practical, and probably equivalent in cost, perhaps cheaper than a bunch of reactors. There are DIFFERENT tradeoffs. One of the costs of this would be developing heavy lifters for lofting construction materials. It would probably be necessary to create a permanent presence in space. There would also be lots of minor benefits.
I think you aare using DRM as a synonym for the term TPM, or Trusted Platform Module. This is one particular technique for imposing DRM. DRM is a more general term for a technique that is currently being implemented via TPM.
OTOH, the term probably doesn't have an actual definition. I think it was created by a marketing team to sell something to people that they wouldn't touch with a 10 foot pole if they knew what it was, and as I recall the original definitions (back when it was being defined) were double talking marketeer speak.