The balance of power will not be shifting significantly in the foreseeable future. Even if he had submitted it after signing, had the Senate voted no on it, it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to have it brought back to the floor for reconsideration.
People in all countries vote with their wallet. For something that costs, say, a half-hour's wages, they might be OK with skipping past a cheap import for an expensive domestic. For something that costs a month's or a year's wages, most people will at least seriously consider the less expensive option, even if it is produced in a place they're not supposed to like.
Exactly. So many other countries manufacture their own airlines, cars, and robotics that we never export anything. We also never provide launch services for any other country, nor does any hazardous chemical ever leave our shores.
The world is interlocked in trade. We consume things from you, and you consume things from us. Don't think you can just drop us off on the side of the road and think you're innocent.
A few million dollars and stock options to an outgoing executive are pennies compared to the obligations held to the pensioners. Pension plans are notoriously difficult to handle efficiently. I used to work at an oil company, and pension management was bigger than the payroll department. I think we had something like 5000 employees, and almost 20,000 pensioners. That's a huge obligation.
So: reduce the need for energy of the average household.
Sure.... I'll just go out and buy a new TV ($600), computer ($1500), monitor ($500), and refrigerator ($1000) right away. Oh, wait... I can't afford to drop $3600 on stuff immediately, and I make good money. What about the people who can barely pay their electric bill as it is?
The changeover can't happen at the consumer level as fast as many people like to think, so industry has to handle the changes. Changes need to be made in materials for energy transmission, changes in the use of fuels, adoption of nuclear energy, and research into fusion power. No form of power generation is perfectly clean because of what goes into manufacturing, but we can encourage high-efficiency, low-pollution methods. Wind, tide, and solar may work for some areas, but not for all. The only reason that people fear nuclear energy is the irrational FUD that is rampant in the general populace. As it stands, much of the material (theoretically) destined for Yucca Mountain could well be recycled, and we may find further methods of recycling until all we have is a fraction of the radiation danger and some cool sculptures in the Nevada desert.
It's been 16 years since Chernobyl. The place is a borderline paradise now, and tours bring you within 30-50 meters of the exploded reactor. That's a far cry from the wasteland most people imagine when they think of it. Nuclear energy is safe and effective, and is only expensive because every time someone proposes building one, dozens or hundreds of lawsuits are prepped to be filed to block it. Until we all go back to living in caves, we have to come up with something, and nuclear is the best way for industry to address the issue.
Clinton signed the treaty knowing full well that the Republican-controlled Senate would never ratify it. It was a publicity ploy for him, and something he could lay on the Republicans.
Turned out that most Americans didn't care much either way.
These cable providers are providing CRAPPY service at high rates, yet you all complain because the little fish might get gobbled by a big fish, a big company who DOES have the resources to provide a standard interface at low bulk prices.
Maybe you have crappy service, but I find through discussions with friends across the country that the price/performance ratio is highly dependent on local factors. I know of many who cursed Comcast@Home when it was around, and yet I dearly loved them in Orange County, California. Sure, Level I tech support sucked, but in four years I had to call them only twice. Since Adelphia has taken over, there have been some DNS issues, but these have been relatively minor issues, and I still get the same fantastic speeds I have maintained in the last three years at my current address. My supposedly DHCP address even seems to be locked to my account, as well, allowing me to set it as a static IP.
OTOH, I know Adelphia users in other states who routinely lose connections for several minutes at a time, several times a day, and those are the least of their issues. Much of the performance of a given area has to do with the local network topology and techs, the former of which can vary considerably from region to region and the latter of which can vary by work shift.
Basic/Boot is about discipline, camaraderie, and teamwork. You learn how to work as a team with the other soldiers / Marines / sailors / airmen, and then you're sent into more specific training. There's a LOT of book learning in most modern militaries; it's not all PT and shooting drills.
An undisciplined military is a useless military. A disciplined military is competent. A disciplined military with individuals who can think for themselves as well as follow orders will rule the battlefield.
That's the whole point. These are being distributed as a recruiting tool, to show something of what real Army life is like. They're skipping dreary details like KP, but the training is supposed to be pretty accurate to Army experience. The FPS is supposed to be reflective of real missions, where the goal is the point, not the body count. You won't have to wait for days in the jungle for a fight, but you will need some patience.
It's an attempt to stamp out the perception of a soldier being a mindless automaton, a concept well overdue. I know a number of military people, and aside from being generally more disciplined and more respectful, they're not all that different. Once they get into other, more elite units like the Rangers, Airborne, Special Forces, etc, they *have* to be able to think for themselves, particularly because their missions require flexibility and since command may well fall on them in an emergency.
If you can come up with a new use for those nails and hammer, you can patent it. Patents do not strictly apply to new inventions, but also apply to new uses for older inventions. If you can come up with a new way to build something with the hammers using the nails as the placement device (instead of the reverse, which has been in use for thousands of years), then you may be able to get a patent on it.
If you do the work, it would be very, very difficult for a company to justify having a former employee return the wages paid. It may violate wage laws, although the termination from fraud would be perfectly legit.
The "friends from the East" comment was sarcasm. And the United States has suggested on numerous occasions the withdrawal of significant forces from Europe, which is usually met with semi-panicked responses from the host countries.
As for why we seem to get the focus, I'd ask you to open your eyes a bit. You ignore the neo-Nazi movement in Germany, the former KLA in Kosovo, the Basque ETA in Spain, the Chechens in Russia, the Aum Shinrikyo clan in Japan, the Muslim separatists in western China, and several rebel armies in Africa. We may get the most widely-reported focus, but we're certainly not alone.
No, Egg Dye had it right. Boeing has the rights to buy the technology first for aerospace applications. If they pass, then Cool Chips can take it to whomever they wish. Nobody is in line ahead of Boeing.
I've got news for you -- this is standard fare. Check the TOS for your ISP, and I bet that if they provide web space, then they also dictate what can be stored in that space.
Well, most will say, it's their server. True. I work for a data center, and we don't allow spam generators nor pornography, even if it's accessed through your own domain. Why? Because we don't want it on our floorspace. It can always be tracked back to us courtesy of ARIN or a similar service, which can be bad for business if someone finds out.
There are responsible adult sites out there -- danni.com and playboy.com come to mind -- but by and large the sites that are out there are questionable at best. It's our equipment, our floorspace, our circuits. Therefore, we dictate what can go on them.
Incidentally, though I see the logic in the TOS we use, I don't entirely agree with it. If Playboy or Danni.com wanted to move to us, I wouldn't personally have a problem with it, since they are reputable, profitable (well, Danni.com is, anyway), and would represent a nice chunk of change, some of which would end up in my bonus check. I think it should be case-by case, with a 30-day cancellation option on our end if we deem the site objectionable from a business-practices point of view. But that's just my opinion, and I'm not the owner.:)
You are quite clearly contradicted by the information at http://www.pu.org/main/facts/pu.html, which states, "There are traces of plutonium compounds in our natural environment, but most existing plutonium was created by changing the atomic structure of naturally- occurring uranium, predominantly U238, in a nuclear reactor."
Just as the fact you can poison the world-population with less than one gram of pure plutonium, the most poisonous material on this world.
This is a tired old "fact", suggesting that the release of one gram of pure plutonium into the environment would be a catastrophe. While I don't dispute your other words (despite their lack of supporting documentation), this statement is pure fear-mongering.
You may also want to take into consideration that newer, far more efficient designs for reactors have been around for 20 years, but because of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl (the former being a contained accident and the latter a combination of an extraordinary series of blatant violations of safety codes of the people who should have know better), nobody wants to build them, at least in the United States. Even in other countries, they are shunned and life is made very difficult by people who subsist mostly on the fruits of spreading FUD rather than cooperating to find an even balance.
Most color printers and copiers are designed such that they will not properly reproduce certain colors needed on American currency. Many of them also imprint invisible watermarks unique to each printer, providing a potential method to track a counterfeiting attempt to an address, or failing that, to a suspect's printer should an investigation pin one down.
It works for other channels. Consider The History Channel, which will take a four-hour block of programming and repeat it three times (at least) during the day. Each episode gets shown 5-6 times a year at least, making up about 18 hours of content each year for a one-hour show. Put enough individual shows together, throw in some documentaries, the occasional tech- or game-based movie, and some late-night infomercials, and it will be much like the others.
Before you go thinking this is sarcasm speaking, it's not. Well, not entirely. It's actually pretty nice to know that if something is coming on THC just before I get home, that I can still catch it after dinner. I believe the various offshoots of THC and the several Discovery Channels use a similar programming method.
In 1967, Congress established and funded a National Commission on Pornography. Its report, published in 1970, found that it was not pornography, but the puritanical attitudes toward pornography that cause problems in America. The report said the problems stemmed "from the inability or reluctance of people in our society to be open and direct in dealing with sexual matters." In surveys, the commission found that only 2 percent of Americans thought sexually explicit material was a significant social problem. The report recommended that all legislation interfering with the right of adults to read, obtain, or view explicit sexual material be repealed.
-- Peter McWilliams, Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do
I looked for the original report, but could not find it online. If I do, I'll post the link here.
Slashdot Mirror
The balance of power will not be shifting significantly in the foreseeable future. Even if he had submitted it after signing, had the Senate voted no on it, it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to have it brought back to the floor for reconsideration.
Makes and consumes a quarter of the world's stuff
:-)
Might not be what you meant, but it looks like what you said.
And my wording was a little vague, I'll admit. Next time I'll through in tags.
It would be saying that he was facing reality, that it would not be passed by the then-current Senate.
I doubt it would get more than a handful of votes with this Senate, either.
People in all countries vote with their wallet. For something that costs, say, a half-hour's wages, they might be OK with skipping past a cheap import for an expensive domestic. For something that costs a month's or a year's wages, most people will at least seriously consider the less expensive option, even if it is produced in a place they're not supposed to like.
Exactly. So many other countries manufacture their own airlines, cars, and robotics that we never export anything. We also never provide launch services for any other country, nor does any hazardous chemical ever leave our shores.
The world is interlocked in trade. We consume things from you, and you consume things from us. Don't think you can just drop us off on the side of the road and think you're innocent.
A few million dollars and stock options to an outgoing executive are pennies compared to the obligations held to the pensioners. Pension plans are notoriously difficult to handle efficiently. I used to work at an oil company, and pension management was bigger than the payroll department. I think we had something like 5000 employees, and almost 20,000 pensioners. That's a huge obligation.
Sure.... I'll just go out and buy a new TV ($600), computer ($1500), monitor ($500), and refrigerator ($1000) right away. Oh, wait... I can't afford to drop $3600 on stuff immediately, and I make good money. What about the people who can barely pay their electric bill as it is?
The changeover can't happen at the consumer level as fast as many people like to think, so industry has to handle the changes. Changes need to be made in materials for energy transmission, changes in the use of fuels, adoption of nuclear energy, and research into fusion power. No form of power generation is perfectly clean because of what goes into manufacturing, but we can encourage high-efficiency, low-pollution methods. Wind, tide, and solar may work for some areas, but not for all. The only reason that people fear nuclear energy is the irrational FUD that is rampant in the general populace. As it stands, much of the material (theoretically) destined for Yucca Mountain could well be recycled, and we may find further methods of recycling until all we have is a fraction of the radiation danger and some cool sculptures in the Nevada desert.
It's been 16 years since Chernobyl. The place is a borderline paradise now, and tours bring you within 30-50 meters of the exploded reactor. That's a far cry from the wasteland most people imagine when they think of it. Nuclear energy is safe and effective, and is only expensive because every time someone proposes building one, dozens or hundreds of lawsuits are prepped to be filed to block it. Until we all go back to living in caves, we have to come up with something, and nuclear is the best way for industry to address the issue.
Clinton signed the treaty knowing full well that the Republican-controlled Senate would never ratify it. It was a publicity ploy for him, and something he could lay on the Republicans.
Turned out that most Americans didn't care much either way.
Maybe you have crappy service, but I find through discussions with friends across the country that the price/performance ratio is highly dependent on local factors. I know of many who cursed Comcast@Home when it was around, and yet I dearly loved them in Orange County, California. Sure, Level I tech support sucked, but in four years I had to call them only twice. Since Adelphia has taken over, there have been some DNS issues, but these have been relatively minor issues, and I still get the same fantastic speeds I have maintained in the last three years at my current address. My supposedly DHCP address even seems to be locked to my account, as well, allowing me to set it as a static IP.
OTOH, I know Adelphia users in other states who routinely lose connections for several minutes at a time, several times a day, and those are the least of their issues. Much of the performance of a given area has to do with the local network topology and techs, the former of which can vary considerably from region to region and the latter of which can vary by work shift.
Basic/Boot is about discipline, camaraderie, and teamwork. You learn how to work as a team with the other soldiers / Marines / sailors / airmen, and then you're sent into more specific training. There's a LOT of book learning in most modern militaries; it's not all PT and shooting drills.
An undisciplined military is a useless military. A disciplined military is competent. A disciplined military with individuals who can think for themselves as well as follow orders will rule the battlefield.
That's the whole point. These are being distributed as a recruiting tool, to show something of what real Army life is like. They're skipping dreary details like KP, but the training is supposed to be pretty accurate to Army experience. The FPS is supposed to be reflective of real missions, where the goal is the point, not the body count. You won't have to wait for days in the jungle for a fight, but you will need some patience.
It's an attempt to stamp out the perception of a soldier being a mindless automaton, a concept well overdue. I know a number of military people, and aside from being generally more disciplined and more respectful, they're not all that different. Once they get into other, more elite units like the Rangers, Airborne, Special Forces, etc, they *have* to be able to think for themselves, particularly because their missions require flexibility and since command may well fall on them in an emergency.
If you can come up with a new use for those nails and hammer, you can patent it. Patents do not strictly apply to new inventions, but also apply to new uses for older inventions. If you can come up with a new way to build something with the hammers using the nails as the placement device (instead of the reverse, which has been in use for thousands of years), then you may be able to get a patent on it.
If you do the work, it would be very, very difficult for a company to justify having a former employee return the wages paid. It may violate wage laws, although the termination from fraud would be perfectly legit.
The "friends from the East" comment was sarcasm. And the United States has suggested on numerous occasions the withdrawal of significant forces from Europe, which is usually met with semi-panicked responses from the host countries.
As for why we seem to get the focus, I'd ask you to open your eyes a bit. You ignore the neo-Nazi movement in Germany, the former KLA in Kosovo, the Basque ETA in Spain, the Chechens in Russia, the Aum Shinrikyo clan in Japan, the Muslim separatists in western China, and several rebel armies in Africa. We may get the most widely-reported focus, but we're certainly not alone.
No, Egg Dye had it right. Boeing has the rights to buy the technology first for aerospace applications. If they pass, then Cool Chips can take it to whomever they wish. Nobody is in line ahead of Boeing.
I've got news for you -- this is standard fare. Check the TOS for your ISP, and I bet that if they provide web space, then they also dictate what can be stored in that space.
:)
Well, most will say, it's their server. True. I work for a data center, and we don't allow spam generators nor pornography, even if it's accessed through your own domain. Why? Because we don't want it on our floorspace. It can always be tracked back to us courtesy of ARIN or a similar service, which can be bad for business if someone finds out.
There are responsible adult sites out there -- danni.com and playboy.com come to mind -- but by and large the sites that are out there are questionable at best. It's our equipment, our floorspace, our circuits. Therefore, we dictate what can go on them.
Incidentally, though I see the logic in the TOS we use, I don't entirely agree with it. If Playboy or Danni.com wanted to move to us, I wouldn't personally have a problem with it, since they are reputable, profitable (well, Danni.com is, anyway), and would represent a nice chunk of change, some of which would end up in my bonus check. I think it should be case-by case, with a 30-day cancellation option on our end if we deem the site objectionable from a business-practices point of view. But that's just my opinion, and I'm not the owner.
If the engineers are found to be broken on delivery, do they Fed-Ex in replacements? :)
Well, it's good that you can admit that you were wrong. That puts you above a good portion of the Slashdot community. :)
We could put Dick Clark inside the last vault with a nice sword to stab anyone who tries to get in. He doesn't age, anyway.
You are quite clearly contradicted by the information at http://www.pu.org/main/facts/pu.html, which states, "There are traces of plutonium compounds in our natural environment, but most existing plutonium was created by changing the atomic structure of naturally- occurring uranium, predominantly U238, in a nuclear reactor."
It does exist naturally.
This is a tired old "fact", suggesting that the release of one gram of pure plutonium into the environment would be a catastrophe. While I don't dispute your other words (despite their lack of supporting documentation), this statement is pure fear-mongering.
You may also want to take into consideration that newer, far more efficient designs for reactors have been around for 20 years, but because of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl (the former being a contained accident and the latter a combination of an extraordinary series of blatant violations of safety codes of the people who should have know better), nobody wants to build them, at least in the United States. Even in other countries, they are shunned and life is made very difficult by people who subsist mostly on the fruits of spreading FUD rather than cooperating to find an even balance.
Most color printers and copiers are designed such that they will not properly reproduce certain colors needed on American currency. Many of them also imprint invisible watermarks unique to each printer, providing a potential method to track a counterfeiting attempt to an address, or failing that, to a suspect's printer should an investigation pin one down.
It works for other channels. Consider The History Channel, which will take a four-hour block of programming and repeat it three times (at least) during the day. Each episode gets shown 5-6 times a year at least, making up about 18 hours of content each year for a one-hour show. Put enough individual shows together, throw in some documentaries, the occasional tech- or game-based movie, and some late-night infomercials, and it will be much like the others.
Before you go thinking this is sarcasm speaking, it's not. Well, not entirely. It's actually pretty nice to know that if something is coming on THC just before I get home, that I can still catch it after dinner. I believe the various offshoots of THC and the several Discovery Channels use a similar programming method.
-- Peter McWilliams, Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do
I looked for the original report, but could not find it online. If I do, I'll post the link here.