Benson said a vacancy for Giffords' 8th District congressional seat could be declared only by the U.S. House of Representatives and "not the state of Arizona."
Here is another article not so supportive of the idea. It states as follows;
However, no such precedent exists for a sitting Member of either House who has taken the oath of office, and a vacancy with respect to such a sitting Member would generally exist only by virtue of resignation, death, acceptance of an incompatible office, or expulsion.
Note that it does not say it can not be done but that it has not been done. In emergency conditions it may have to be done.
What mechanism prevents the majority party from simply declaring all opposing seats vacant?
1. A vote would have to be held for every removal. Unless the majority party had 2/3 majority they could not stop debate and the minority party could filibuster till the next election. 2. Any party who tried this would get zero seats in the next election. No party is going to do this to gain two years control because they would never be in power again.
It looks like my formatting failed but here is the quote;
Juliet Marine would derive its name from a U.S. Navy “war games” exercise held in 2002. At $250 million, it was the most expensive exercise in Naval history. “Fleet Battle Experiment—Juliet” involved warships parked off the coast of California and a series of simulated small-boat attacks. The results of the simulation were grim: more than 20,000 deaths and massive losses to the fleet, in a Persian Gulf scenario. Yet, Sancoff says, the Navy hasn’t done anything in the past 10 years to guard against such attacks, other than work on targeted rocket systems.
"[T]he Navy hasn’t done anything in the past 10 years to guard against such attacks"... except commission these ships. Littoral ships are designed to be used in shallow water confined spaces as fast response. That is exactly what is needed to counter small boat flotillas. Not a short range toy that will spend more time in dry dock than on the water due to cavitation damage.
One of the issues with the damage rate was that the ships did not "enter the Gulf" in a war footing. This allowed seemingly non-combat vessels, which were actually fast attach craft, to get too close to the fleet. On a full war footing any boat that got withing 100 miles of the fleet would be challenged and turned away or destroyed. This was one of the limitations on the Blue force that would not happen in a real conflict.
Each house needs half of its members to be present for a quorum to do any official business. The House of Representatives can replace deceased members only by special elections that take, on average, four months. The Senate, under the 17th Amendment, allows states (usually governors) to appoint replacements to fill vacancies, but neither house has a mechanism for replacing incapacitated members.
A quorum in the House of Representatives is when a majority of the Members are present. When there are no vacancies in the membership, a quorum is 218. When one or more seats are vacant, because of deaths or resignations, the quorum is reduced accordingly. Because of Members' other duties, a quorum often is not present on the House floor. But any Member may insist that a quorum must participate in any vote that takes place in the House. If a Member makes a point of order that a quorum is not present, and the Speaker agrees, a series of bells ring on the House side of the Capitol and in the House office buildings to alert Members to come to the Chamber and record their presence.
Here are a few points that are important; 1. Quorum is calculated relative to the number of sitting live Representatives and not the number of seats. A dead Representative is considered a vacancy and is not counted toward quorum. If all but three of the Representatives were killed than 2 would constitute a quorum. 2. Quorum does not need to be present for a vote unless at least one Representative asks for one. In an emergency I doubt and Representative would make such a request. 3. As for incapacitated members, the House can declare a seat vacant by vote (Note: Unless a member requests a quorum is not required for a vote). The same standards are present for the Senate.
A straightforward reading of the Constitution’s quorum requirement would seem to require a simple majority of Senators, or a minimum of 51 if there are no vacancies in the body, to be present on the floor whenever the Senate conducts business.
As the House and Senate would still be functioning after such a disaster, the House could elect a Speaker or the Senate elect a President pro tempore and the line of succession would be restored. The article misrepresents the quorum issue. Basically, as long as there is one member of the House or Senate alive and not incapacitated an acting President will be legally found.
The speech of humans is not completely free; liable, slander, incitement, conspriacy, etc.
It also depends on how one sees a corporation. To me, a corporation is a collection of people. Speech by a corporation is very close to speech of the people in and/or controlling the corporation. While the people in a corporation have a limited personal financial liability (limited liability corporation) they do lave personal legal liability. People in a corporation have gone to jail for actions taken on behalf of the corporation. People in corporation also need not be censored just because they speak on behalf of a corporation.
Another issue is the semantics use in 1789. The pertinent part of the amendment is "abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press". Here is where interpretation comes in. Does "the press" mean the Media (radio station,s television stations, newspaper publishers, etc) or does it men the physical, mechanical printing press that produced newspapers. fliers. etc. At that time a a physical printing ress was the only other means of speech than the human voice.The issue is that people in 1789 had no conception of the technology used today. In my mind the First amendment can be paraphrases as "The freedom to disseminate factual information by what ever means." Whether the information comes from an individual or individuals in a corporation they both need equal protection.
A private company can limit access to their servers which is what YouTube is doing. This is very different than conversion software which translates files on a person's computer to another format for use in another program. I believe that courts have already ruled that format shifting is legal and maybe even fair use.
I did a little research on some of the claims in the article; From the article;
It was there, in 2000, that he first got inspiration for Juliet Marine and the Ghost ship. Sancoff was sitting in a conference room when he heard the U.S.S. Cole had been attacked off the coast of Yemen by a small boat loaded with explosives.
The USS Cole was attacked while in port tied up along a jetty refueling. All of it's radars and weapons systems were down and the ship was defenseless. An innocent looking small boat moved up to the hull and exploded. That was a port security failure and nothing to do with the weapons capability of the Cole. Referring to that incident in the context of massed small boat attacks is bunk.
From the article;
I looked at the Fleet Battle Experiment Juliet Final Summary Report and nowhere did it mention a high number of losses due to small boat attacks. Even if the statement is true, Juliet took place 9 years ago and I bet there has been a lot of learning and experimentation since then.
Now lets look at the technology. In general it works by a propeller spinning so fast it creates enough low pressure behind the propeller to boil the water and create water vapour which reduces drag along the rest of the sponson. Here are a few issues; 1. The way a propeller works is that it pulls in water that is approaching the propeller at one velocity and ejects it at a higher velocity from the back of the propeller. This creates a low pressure area behind the propeller. If the velocity differential is enough the low pressure is enough to lower the boiling point of the water and cause it to turn to water vapour. This large velocity differential in generally obtained when a vessel is accelerating or decelerating. There is a point at which the velocity of the ship approaches the maximum velocity of the water ejected from the propeller. This will decrease the low pressure to a point at which cavitation will stop. 2. Propeller cavitation is very hard equipment. I know the chief engineer on a ferry and he cringes every time he feels cavitation. He knows that they just spent thousands of dollars on propellers, bearings and shafts just because some sod at the helm didn't slow down at the right time. Anyone who has traveled on a ferry has experienced cavitation. It usually occurs during docking and the whole ship shakes. When propellers cavitate is is not a smooth process. Bubbles of water form on the back of the propeller, detach and then water slams back in. This causes damage to the propeller. How long can the new ship go before expensive overhauls? Drag racers are rebuilt after every run, is it really feasible to use that same model on a warship? It may work on torpedoes but they are one use weapons.
The article makes several references like "to reach very high speeds at relatively low fuel cost." The question is relative to what? A conventional boat attempting 100 knots or a 30kt destroyer. If comparing with a high speed boat they may be less but pound for pound it is a lot more than a DDG. If the range of one of these vessels is only a few hundred mile it will be difficult to get in theater and spend much of it's time sitting next to a ship refueling.
I love the following statement;
Its fuel efficiency means it has greater range and can run longer missions than conventional boats and helicopters.
There is always an issue when using relative terms; in general they are meaningless.Technically speaking a 1% increase in range is longer. What is the actual difference in range and is it enough to self deploy? The military does not expect a helicopter to self deploy, hence the need for helicopter carriers but it does expect its ships to self deploy. Sure the navy could use a cargo vessel to carry the new s
One of my favorite sayings for a few years was as follows; I do live in a basement. I do own a Klingon costume, But the basement does not belong to my mom (or any relative for that matter)
I just wish the editors would do their job and change headlines to what the article actually says;
ASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft has returned data that indicate ice may make up as much as 22 percent of the surface material in a crater located on the moon's south pole.
They found the crater's floor is brighter than those of other nearby craters, which is consistent with the presence of small amounts of ice.
In addition to the possible evidence of ice,...
Nowhere did they state they found ice or in what quantity. As for quantity, it could be a small quantity spread over a wide area.
I think I've written things which might be construed as "anti-American", and they were "published" on far more visible fora (/.).
Have you written words like the following from al-Banaa?
“And although we are punishing America and its Kuffar allies with one-millionth of what they are committing against our Muslim Ummah—just as WikiLeaks website scandalized—and in spite of that we are impacting them economically, security wise, intelligence wise and we are horrifying and terrorizing them, with the grace of Allah.”
"Anti-American" statements fall on a spectrum and I doubt very much you ever want close to that far. There is a huge difference between "I don't like what America does" and "Death to America". I bet that your statements were closer to the former rather than the latter.
Perhaps, yet I've never heard of al-Banaa before this
Considering al-Banaa was the media head for al-Quada and Abdul Rahman's father was a planner for al-Quada in the same area it is probably valid to speculate that they know and met each other. Since Abduk Rahman knew what his father did it is reasonable to assume he knew al-Banaa was also al-Quada. You are not the son of a recognized al-Qaeda leader. You were not taken to militant protected safe areas in Yemen. You are completely different than Abdul Rahman. Do you really think a 17 year old who's father was killed by a drone strike is as oblivious to the situation as you; who's biggest concern was probably "Does she like me?" ? I give Abdul Rahman much more credit than that.
However, targetting seventeen year old kids for drone strikes?
They did not target Abdul Rahman. The drone targeted al-Banaa and the seventeen year old was close enough to be caught in the blast.
I'm amazed at how cheaply some of you value human life,
I value human life very highly though I value the lives of soldiers and civilians more highly than that of a known terrorist. I also believe that someone who advocates, has planned and carried out terrorist attacks which have put hundreds of lives at risk needs to answer for their crimes. Since al-Qaeda has moved to a lawless area of Yemen and militarized it I am not willing to risk the lives of hundreds of soldiers and create even more innocent deaths during a battle in an attempt to capture the al-Qaeda leadership. It may not even work as the target may fight to the death. In one scenario a drone strike kills the target and 37 other people. In the second scenario hundreds of soldiers are killed or wounded along with hundreds of civilians. Both scenarios may end up with a dead al-Quada leader.
If you want to bring up the assault that killed bin Laden that was a completely different scenario. bin Lanen was attempting to hide by keeping a low profile and residing in a civilian neighborhood where no one would look. There were no guards at all in the bin Laden compound. al-Banna lived in a militarized camp with a large number of armed guards. Any assault on the Yemen camp would have been much more bloody. There is one interesting point though; even though the US puts boots on the ground with capture orders, bin Laden, his son and and two al-Qaeda couriers were killed.
Abdul Rahman, the 17 year old who was killed, was the son of Anwar al-Awlaki who had already been killed by drone attack months before. A simple Google search would bring up articles like this or this (page 23). Do you really think that a 17 year old could not put the following information together and not come up with the possibility that al-Banna might be al-Qaeda and maybe ask? 1. al-Banna wrote anti-American articles that were published by "al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula" 2. al-Banna was friend with his father who is a known al-Qaeda leader. 3. al-Banna lived in a military style outpost in Yemen when he had enough money to live elsewhere. Comparing al-Banaa and al-Awlaki with you father is irrelevant as there in much more information available on al-Qaeda than your father.
al-Banna knew he was targeted by the US and still allowed "innocent" minors to be in his presence despite the possibility of drone attack. The death of the minor is on al-Banna head for not protecting him.
In summary, there are two ways of decreasing the possibility of collateral damage; 1. If one is not al-Qaeda then do not visit know al-Qaeda leadership or their friends. 2. If one is al-Qaeda then do not allow innocent people to visit. Innocent people should not be uses as human shields and those who do are cowards and lower than scum.
The killing of the 17 year old was unintended damage as the missile was fired at al-Qaeda leader Ibrahim al-Banna and the minor happened to be there. By the way, even in the US 17 year olds have been tried and executed as adults. To those who say innocent people are being killed as collateral damage is unacceptable I say that they or their parents/guardian chose to be close to a known target of the US government and thereby chose to put their life in danger. No one put a gun to their heads and forced them into a building with an al-Qaeda leader. It was their choice and they bore the grave consequences. Do we really want to encourage al-Qaeda leaders to use children as human shields?
The following is a quote from one of your posts a few levels up;
I always thought they put up modified DNS entries pointing to their own server instead of the correct one,
another one (starting at "and even if") saying how it could be done on the network level, without the router instepcting the HTTP request.
If you are referring to the following statement;
And even if doing it at the network level, it probably would be much easier to change the routing table to direct all port 80 traffic to that IP to your own server instead, and have that either give the error if you try to access the blocked site, or act as transparent proxy if you happen to access another site which happens to be on the same address.
It is close but not completely correct. A routing table would have routes for every possible IP address. In this case the "suspect" list contains only the IPs of the servers that have URLs that need further checking. Thise IPs are then routed to the proxy which inspects the URL to see if ir can go through.
And it generates the HTTP error message (which therefore comes from the proxy server, not from the router).
It is a server but does not actually create the content of the request. The proxy server does one of two things; is transparent for non filtered URLs or returns errors for censored URLs. A HTTP server does much more than that.
Just because theaters can show a film at 48fps does not mean they have to. There is no one holding a gun to their heads saying that that must show it at 48FPS or they can not show it at all. It is a choice by the theater as to what format they will display and a choice by the consumer as to what format they will pay for.
Cooking dinner generally isn't a big user of power compared to the normal running of the house.
According to this graph electrical cooking is a significant user of electricity. It is the 5th largest user of electricity in the average home ( ones that do not have hot tubs, pools or water beds).
put the laundry on a clothes line outside
While cloths line drying is a great idea there are a few issues with it; 1. It does not work well when raining. 2. Does not work well for apartment dwellers. I have no place at all to line dry my cloths unless I want to hang them in my small apartment which is not a viable solution. 3. Takes a lot of time especially in low temperatures. The average city dweller is not willing to wait hours for their cloths to dry. 4. Does not work well in cities where pollution levels, bird droppings, etc may make the cloths as dirty as before they went into the washer.
i don't see why they wouldn't at least for higher volume customers.
Yeah a shipping company is going to put on a shift drivers, warehouse workers, etc and pay them for eight hours for a few pickups that will happen late at night and take a few hours to service.What happens if there is a truck issue? That means maintenance needs a shift too. What happens if there is an issue with a customer's account? A warehouse company can not be blocked from shipping until accounting comes in the next day. That means the customers AP department would need a shift and the shipper's AR depart would need a shift. When things go wrong a lot more people are brought into an issue and those people need to be working to fix the issues.
Most banking is automated.. Many banks now offer 24/7 telephone banking.
That is great for consumer banking but not corporate banking. When one is talking about corporate accounts a generic customer service agent is not good enough as corporate banking is much more complex. Large corporate accounts have specific manager who have intimate knowledge of a customer's entire banking stricture; accounts, loans, lines of credit, payments, agreements, etc. What happens when one of the suppliers calls during working hours and states that there is a problem with a cheque and the items will not be shipped. Will that wait until later when finance comes in? Who will finance talk to when they come in as the supplier has now closed for the day and the bank's account manager has gone home?
A more spread out system would be far better, you could run buses 24/7 with moderate load instead of an overcrowded service for 3-4 hours of the day, and an underutilised or nonexistent service for the rest.
That would require a completely new shift to cover the hours that the buses do not operate now causing in increased cost to the transit system by up to a third. Who will pay for this increased cost (rider fares pay only a small part of transit expenses).
You could employ 15 workers at a time in shifts, instead of 50 workers during the day and 3 at night, meaning you only need sufficient office space for 15 workers now.
When a worker from one shift has to contact a worker from another shift then things slow down. To use the bank scenario above, the night finance department contacts the night bank employee who then attempts to contact the bank that rejected the cheque. But wait that second bank does not work at night. All people in a communication chain must work at the same time so information flows. It comes to a point that every company would need a night shift to deal with it. Which actually brings me to another couple of issues. Since there will be day and night shifts there will be heating and cooling now 24 hours.Also, with the use of natural light these days, electric lighting use has gone down. With night work there would be much higher lighting costs.
Problems of mismatched working hours are already a problem for any company that has international dealings.
True but those companies probably already work 24 hours a day or when meetings are needed shift for a day or two at a time. It is also generally accepted that communication with a company in another country will be slower than the a company down the street; it is a matter of expectations. The vast majority of companies do not have these issues and would not tolerate slowing down local communications to the speed of international communications.
The other popular way of blocking content is DNS manipulation. Compared to this, Cleanfeed has the following properties: Slightly harder to circumvent, although users can use open proxies, or the Tor network, and servers can use another port than 80, or HTTPS. Less collateral damage. DNS-based blocking is criticized for blocking all content on a site with the same domain name. Cleanfeed only blocks what is explicitly blacklisted. For example, it would be possible to block only one image in an article.
Considering that it compares Cleanfeed with DNS manipulation, Cleanfeed is not DNS manipulation.
The router compares the IP with a list of suspect ips. The second step is the important one where a proxy evaluates the entire URL to see if it has been blocked. The main difference is that Cleanfeed can block a specific IP while DNS manipulation blocks an entire server.
I still am not convinced that the router inspects the HTTP request.
The router inspects the IP and the proxy inspects the URL. It is not DNS manipulation in that the conversion from domain to IP has already taken place before the requests gets to the router. Also, if it was DNS manipulation it could be circumvented by entering the IP instead of the domain.
If prices go up a lot of folks may very well decide that getting hot and sweaty a bit is worth saving the money.
When people are hot and sweaty they spend more time resting, spend more time drinking water, move slower, spend more time fanning themselves, are distracted by the discomfort. Is the decrease in productivity worth the savings in electricity? Say a company has 30 employees with hourly costs of $40/hr and their productivity is decreased by an hour a day. The decrease in the electrical bull would have to be $1200/day to make up for lost productivity.
Making office workers sweat is probably not a great idea. Would you look for a new job of the temperature on your office was regularly 85 degrees?
If you're trying to prove that demand for electrical usage during peak periods is perfectly inelastic
I am trying to point out that since you can not even come up with a few examples of businesses that can time shift there may not be enough to make time shifting a significant factor. Since you brought up elasticity of demand take a look at this study. Go to page page 10 and notice the low price elasticity numbers in reference to businesses. They are not perfectly inelastic but they are very inelastic.
If you you'll notice, peak demand is at 6pm, and it drops from there
You appear to be using a sliding formula based on current demand to calculate the exact rate for electricity. That is not the way rates are handled by utilities. There are generally two methods; 1.tiered usage where certain usage thresholds cause increases in rates. eg any power usage over 100kWh in a month is charged at a higher rate. 2. Rated based on the clock where different times of the day have different rates. In this instance it is quite rare to have more than 2 rates; peak and off peak. You apprear to want to have 24 rates. Another issue is that peak usage shifts depending on tome of year. Winter heating takes place earlier in the day while summer air conditioning takes place later in the day. Will the rates change as the seasons change? twenty four rates is not a viable solution due to the regulatory complexity.
orders could be packed and shipped late at night with no problem
that would also require the following. 1. Shippers that pick up late at night.Will they time shift too. 2. Shipping departments require supplies to be ordered and delivered. Will the supply companies time shift too?
Similarly backend functions such as finance, it, taking deliveries of stock etc which are not directly customer facing could easily be performed at different times.
1. Finance would need to deal with banks which do not work at night. 2. IT deals with managers who are customer facing and work days. 3. Receivers work with shippers and suppliers who work days.
changing working hours like this also helps with another problem - transport,
Agreed, but shifting work hours by as little as 1.5 hours has a significant positive effect on transportation. Thet would still put most work time in peak usage hours.
there is a huge wasted surplus of transport resources as empty buses and trains travel around.
In my city of 300k people the bus system shuts down from midnight to 6AM. I guess night workers will have to drive.
Making peak electricity more expensive is just going to punish those who have no choice in the matter, which is the vast majority of people...
Exactly my point. The main issue is that there are very few jobs that are completely isolated from interaction with people who must work day hours. In my estimation the number of those jobs is so insignificant as to make time shifting irrelevant.
No, the sun (which is very very warm) comes out during the day.
Not everyone lives in California. In the southern interior of BC there is a place called the Okanogan. Daytime temperatures range from 0C in winter to 27C in summer. The sun is not enough to heat a house from 0C in winter and air conditioning is needed on hot days in the summer.
Probably a lot, with the right incentive.
Name a few that can work when others are not working? Saying "probably" means you really don't know and are just speculating.
Even today, people work the graveyard shift when they could do the same job during the day for less pay.
True but those jobs are for businesses that are normally open 24 hours a day such as technical support, convenience stores, McDonald's, etc. I meant businesses that do not normally work at night but would move to night if day costs went up. You also just pointed out a disincentive to move to nights. Would savings in electrical costs be offset by the necessity of paying higher wages for graveyard shifts?
Electrical demand doesn't have just one huge flat peak that ends at midnight. It looks more like a sine wave [caiso.com]. All someone needs to do is avoid the very highest peaks of the sine wave.
Thank you for showing a graph tha proves my point. If you draw a horizontal line at the median demand you will see that the higher demand is between noon and midnight. and low demand is between midnight and noon. Considering that most people do things in the evening they would have to wait till after midnight to use off peak power. The area between 6PM and 10PM is very near peak demand as that is where people who work will be cooking, washing dishes and doing laundry. Most people are not willing to get up before going to work to do these things. Considering the demand curve, when would you propose to cook dinner? When would you propose to switch between the high rate and the low rate?
If you don't have the answers and real references you are just speculating.
Over the course of a full year, the average electric bill would stay the same.
Actually there is no "reversal" the bills just won't be as high. The will still be using some high priced day electricity and some lower priced night electricity. If electrical heat is used then they will be in the same boat as the high costs will be for heating during the day rather than cooling.That also does not help if you can not afford your summer bills. Many people live from paycheck to paycheck and can not afford high bills.
If they only operate during peak price, it's because there isn't enough of an incentive to shift their operating hours. This changes that.
How many businesses do you know that can shift their hours out of the 9AM to 5PM range? Most business do business with people and other businesses between 9and5. Even if it was possible to shift the schedule, how many people would want to work nights when they could do the same job during the day? Also by shifting to nights all that would happen is that business would move to companies that were open during the day.
Time-of-use pricing gives people an additional option: shift heavy electrical usage (such as laundry and cooking and dishes) to the off-peak periods in order to save money. Giving people additional ways to save money is a good thing, right?
How many people do you think will wait till past midnight to cook dinner? How many people will do the same for laundry? Sure one could have a timer on the machine and have it run late at night but that would mean it would take 2 days to do a load (one for wash and one for dry as the laundry will not move from the washer to the dryer by itself). Most people sleep during off peak energy hours which is the main reason the demand is lower. Most people come home from work, make dinner, wash dishes, do laundry, watch some tv and go to bed. This standard is not going to change due to changing electrical bills. Realistic options are good but unrealistic options are not.
Sorry but your logic does not actually work well for hot areas. The peak need for air conditioning comes during the day which is also the peak overall electrical demand time. At night the need for cooling is less as would the electrical rates would be lower. So as the days get hotter an air conditioning user will be using much more peak priced energy than off peak priced energy and their electrical bill will go up.
What about businesses who only operate during peak price time? They will not get much discount from off-peak price because they do not use it.
There is a falsehood in tying every purchase to the supply/demand curve. Some commodities are considered discretionary purchases. In the case of orange juice one could purchase apple juice instead. The supply/demand curve works very well in such cases. In the case of electricity, the only option is to use less. Most people are already conserving as much as they can so electrical purchases are no longer discretionary. No matter how much you raise prices most people are still going to use what they use up to the point of no longer paying their electrical bill.
The full statement should really be "Redundancy costs money and lack of redundancy costs a lot more money". There is an old saying; you can pay me a little now or a lot later. By definition a critical system is one where the company will lose a lot of money if it goes down and it eventually will. The short sighted decision to not have redundancy is usually a bad one.
Slashdot Mirror
From this article:
Benson said a vacancy for Giffords' 8th District congressional seat could be declared only by the U.S. House of Representatives and "not the state of Arizona."
Here is another article not so supportive of the idea. It states as follows;
However, no such precedent exists for a sitting Member of either House who has taken the oath of office, and a vacancy with respect to such a sitting Member would generally exist only by virtue of resignation, death, acceptance of an incompatible office, or expulsion.
Note that it does not say it can not be done but that it has not been done. In emergency conditions it may have to be done.
What mechanism prevents the majority party from simply declaring all opposing seats vacant?
1. A vote would have to be held for every removal. Unless the majority party had 2/3 majority they could not stop debate and the minority party could filibuster till the next election.
2. Any party who tried this would get zero seats in the next election. No party is going to do this to gain two years control because they would never be in power again.
It looks like my formatting failed but here is the quote;
Juliet Marine would derive its name from a U.S. Navy “war games” exercise held in 2002. At $250 million, it was the most expensive exercise in Naval history. “Fleet Battle Experiment—Juliet” involved warships parked off the coast of California and a series of simulated small-boat attacks. The results of the simulation were grim: more than 20,000 deaths and massive losses to the fleet, in a Persian Gulf scenario. Yet, Sancoff says, the Navy hasn’t done anything in the past 10 years to guard against such attacks, other than work on targeted rocket systems.
"[T]he Navy hasn’t done anything in the past 10 years to guard against such attacks" ... except commission these ships. Littoral ships are designed to be used in shallow water confined spaces as fast response. That is exactly what is needed to counter small boat flotillas. Not a short range toy that will spend more time in dry dock than on the water due to cavitation damage.
One of the issues with the damage rate was that the ships did not "enter the Gulf" in a war footing. This allowed seemingly non-combat vessels, which were actually fast attach craft, to get too close to the fleet. On a full war footing any boat that got withing 100 miles of the fleet would be challenged and turned away or destroyed. This was one of the limitations on the Blue force that would not happen in a real conflict.
So I'm a bit dyslexic; seu me.
The new craft is not a troop landing craft; it is a combat vessel which has a small crew. It is much bigger than a rigid inflatable boat.
By the way, there are already ships designed to real with the same issues. They are called littorial combat ships.
From the article;
Each house needs half of its members to be present for a quorum to do any official business. The House of Representatives can replace deceased members only by special elections that take, on average, four months. The Senate, under the 17th Amendment, allows states (usually governors) to appoint replacements to fill vacancies, but neither house has a mechanism for replacing incapacitated members.
Members do not need to be replaced. Here is a quote from the Office of the Clerk of the US House of Representatives.
A quorum in the House of Representatives is when a majority of the Members are present. When there are no vacancies in the membership, a quorum is 218. When one or more seats are vacant, because of deaths or resignations, the quorum is reduced accordingly. Because of Members' other duties, a quorum often is not present on the House floor. But any Member may insist that a quorum must participate in any vote that takes place in the House. If a Member makes a point of order that a quorum is not present, and the Speaker agrees, a series of bells ring on the House side of the Capitol and in the House office buildings to alert Members to come to the Chamber and record their presence.
Here are a few points that are important;
1. Quorum is calculated relative to the number of sitting live Representatives and not the number of seats. A dead Representative is considered a vacancy and is not counted toward quorum. If all but three of the Representatives were killed than 2 would constitute a quorum.
2. Quorum does not need to be present for a vote unless at least one Representative asks for one. In an emergency I doubt and Representative would make such a request.
3. As for incapacitated members, the House can declare a seat vacant by vote (Note: Unless a member requests a quorum is not required for a vote).
The same standards are present for the Senate.
A straightforward reading of the Constitution’s quorum requirement would seem to require a simple majority of Senators, or a minimum of 51 if there are no vacancies in the body, to be present on the floor whenever the Senate conducts business.
As the House and Senate would still be functioning after such a disaster, the House could elect a Speaker or the Senate elect a President pro tempore and the line of succession would be restored.
The article misrepresents the quorum issue. Basically, as long as there is one member of the House or Senate alive and not incapacitated an acting President will be legally found.
The speech of humans is not completely free; liable, slander, incitement, conspriacy, etc.
It also depends on how one sees a corporation. To me, a corporation is a collection of people. Speech by a corporation is very close to speech of the people in and/or controlling the corporation. While the people in a corporation have a limited personal financial liability (limited liability corporation) they do lave personal legal liability. People in a corporation have gone to jail for actions taken on behalf of the corporation. People in corporation also need not be censored just because they speak on behalf of a corporation.
Another issue is the semantics use in 1789. The pertinent part of the amendment is "abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press". Here is where interpretation comes in. Does "the press" mean the Media (radio station,s television stations, newspaper publishers, etc) or does it men the physical, mechanical printing press that produced newspapers. fliers. etc. At that time a a physical printing ress was the only other means of speech than the human voice.The issue is that people in 1789 had no conception of the technology used today. In my mind the First amendment can be paraphrases as "The freedom to disseminate factual information by what ever means." Whether the information comes from an individual or individuals in a corporation they both need equal protection.
A private company can limit access to their servers which is what YouTube is doing. This is very different than conversion software which translates files on a person's computer to another format for use in another program. I believe that courts have already ruled that format shifting is legal and maybe even fair use.
I did a little research on some of the claims in the article;
From the article;
It was there, in 2000, that he first got inspiration for Juliet Marine and the Ghost ship. Sancoff was sitting in a conference room when he heard the U.S.S. Cole had been attacked off the coast of Yemen by a small boat loaded with explosives.
The USS Cole was attacked while in port tied up along a jetty refueling. All of it's radars and weapons systems were down and the ship was defenseless. An innocent looking small boat moved up to the hull and exploded. That was a port security failure and nothing to do with the weapons capability of the Cole. Referring to that incident in the context of massed small boat attacks is bunk.
From the article;
I looked at the Fleet Battle Experiment Juliet Final Summary Report and nowhere did it mention a high number of losses due to small boat attacks. Even if the statement is true, Juliet took place 9 years ago and I bet there has been a lot of learning and experimentation since then.
Now lets look at the technology. In general it works by a propeller spinning so fast it creates enough low pressure behind the propeller to boil the water and create water vapour which reduces drag along the rest of the sponson. Here are a few issues;
1. The way a propeller works is that it pulls in water that is approaching the propeller at one velocity and ejects it at a higher velocity from the back of the propeller. This creates a low pressure area behind the propeller. If the velocity differential is enough the low pressure is enough to lower the boiling point of the water and cause it to turn to water vapour. This large velocity differential in generally obtained when a vessel is accelerating or decelerating. There is a point at which the velocity of the ship approaches the maximum velocity of the water ejected from the propeller. This will decrease the low pressure to a point at which cavitation will stop.
2. Propeller cavitation is very hard equipment. I know the chief engineer on a ferry and he cringes every time he feels cavitation. He knows that they just spent thousands of dollars on propellers, bearings and shafts just because some sod at the helm didn't slow down at the right time. Anyone who has traveled on a ferry has experienced cavitation. It usually occurs during docking and the whole ship shakes. When propellers cavitate is is not a smooth process. Bubbles of water form on the back of the propeller, detach and then water slams back in. This causes damage to the propeller. How long can the new ship go before expensive overhauls? Drag racers are rebuilt after every run, is it really feasible to use that same model on a warship? It may work on torpedoes but they are one use weapons.
The article makes several references like "to reach very high speeds at relatively low fuel cost." The question is relative to what? A conventional boat attempting 100 knots or a 30kt destroyer. If comparing with a high speed boat they may be less but pound for pound it is a lot more than a DDG. If the range of one of these vessels is only a few hundred mile it will be difficult to get in theater and spend much of it's time sitting next to a ship refueling.
I love the following statement;
Its fuel efficiency means it has greater range and can run longer missions than conventional boats and helicopters.
There is always an issue when using relative terms; in general they are meaningless.Technically speaking a 1% increase in range is longer. What is the actual difference in range and is it enough to self deploy? The military does not expect a helicopter to self deploy, hence the need for helicopter carriers but it does expect its ships to self deploy. Sure the navy could use a cargo vessel to carry the new s
One of my favorite sayings for a few years was as follows;
I do live in a basement.
I do own a Klingon costume,
But the basement does not belong to my mom (or any relative for that matter)
I just wish the editors would do their job and change headlines to what the article actually says;
ASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft has returned data that indicate ice may make up as much as 22 percent of the surface material in a crater located on the moon's south pole.
They found the crater's floor is brighter than those of other nearby craters, which is consistent with the presence of small amounts of ice.
In addition to the possible evidence of ice,...
Nowhere did they state they found ice or in what quantity. As for quantity, it could be a small quantity spread over a wide area.
I think I've written things which might be construed as "anti-American", and they were "published" on far more visible fora (/.).
Have you written words like the following from al-Banaa?
“And although we are punishing America and its Kuffar allies with one-millionth of what they are committing against our Muslim Ummah—just as WikiLeaks website scandalized—and in spite of that we are impacting them economically, security wise, intelligence wise and we are horrifying and terrorizing them, with the grace of Allah.”
"Anti-American" statements fall on a spectrum and I doubt very much you ever want close to that far. There is a huge difference between "I don't like what America does" and "Death to America". I bet that your statements were closer to the former rather than the latter.
Perhaps, yet I've never heard of al-Banaa before this
Considering al-Banaa was the media head for al-Quada and Abdul Rahman's father was a planner for al-Quada in the same area it is probably valid to speculate that they know and met each other. Since Abduk Rahman knew what his father did it is reasonable to assume he knew al-Banaa was also al-Quada. You are not the son of a recognized al-Qaeda leader. You were not taken to militant protected safe areas in Yemen. You are completely different than Abdul Rahman. Do you really think a 17 year old who's father was killed by a drone strike is as oblivious to the situation as you; who's biggest concern was probably "Does she like me?" ? I give Abdul Rahman much more credit than that.
However, targetting seventeen year old kids for drone strikes?
They did not target Abdul Rahman. The drone targeted al-Banaa and the seventeen year old was close enough to be caught in the blast.
I'm amazed at how cheaply some of you value human life,
I value human life very highly though I value the lives of soldiers and civilians more highly than that of a known terrorist. I also believe that someone who advocates, has planned and carried out terrorist attacks which have put hundreds of lives at risk needs to answer for their crimes. Since al-Qaeda has moved to a lawless area of Yemen and militarized it I am not willing to risk the lives of hundreds of soldiers and create even more innocent deaths during a battle in an attempt to capture the al-Qaeda leadership. It may not even work as the target may fight to the death. In one scenario a drone strike kills the target and 37 other people. In the second scenario hundreds of soldiers are killed or wounded along with hundreds of civilians. Both scenarios may end up with a dead al-Quada leader.
If you want to bring up the assault that killed bin Laden that was a completely different scenario. bin Lanen was attempting to hide by keeping a low profile and residing in a civilian neighborhood where no one would look. There were no guards at all in the bin Laden compound. al-Banna lived in a militarized camp with a large number of armed guards. Any assault on the Yemen camp would have been much more bloody. There is one interesting point though; even though the US puts boots on the ground with capture orders, bin Laden, his son and and two al-Qaeda couriers were killed.
Abdul Rahman, the 17 year old who was killed, was the son of Anwar al-Awlaki who had already been killed by drone attack months before. A simple Google search would bring up articles like this or this (page 23). Do you really think that a 17 year old could not put the following information together and not come up with the possibility that al-Banna might be al-Qaeda and maybe ask?
1. al-Banna wrote anti-American articles that were published by "al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula"
2. al-Banna was friend with his father who is a known al-Qaeda leader.
3. al-Banna lived in a military style outpost in Yemen when he had enough money to live elsewhere.
Comparing al-Banaa and al-Awlaki with you father is irrelevant as there in much more information available on al-Qaeda than your father.
al-Banna knew he was targeted by the US and still allowed "innocent" minors to be in his presence despite the possibility of drone attack. The death of the minor is on al-Banna head for not protecting him.
In summary, there are two ways of decreasing the possibility of collateral damage;
1. If one is not al-Qaeda then do not visit know al-Qaeda leadership or their friends.
2. If one is al-Qaeda then do not allow innocent people to visit.
Innocent people should not be uses as human shields and those who do are cowards and lower than scum.
The killing of the 17 year old was unintended damage as the missile was fired at al-Qaeda leader Ibrahim al-Banna and the minor happened to be there. By the way, even in the US 17 year olds have been tried and executed as adults.
To those who say innocent people are being killed as collateral damage is unacceptable I say that they or their parents/guardian chose to be close to a known target of the US government and thereby chose to put their life in danger. No one put a gun to their heads and forced them into a building with an al-Qaeda leader. It was their choice and they bore the grave consequences. Do we really want to encourage al-Qaeda leaders to use children as human shields?
Cleanfeed is not DNS manipulation.
I didn't claim that it is.
The following is a quote from one of your posts a few levels up;
I always thought they put up modified DNS entries pointing to their own server instead of the correct one,
another one (starting at "and even if") saying how it could be done on the network level, without the router instepcting the HTTP request.
If you are referring to the following statement;
And even if doing it at the network level, it probably would be much easier to change the routing table to direct all port 80 traffic to that IP to your own server instead, and have that either give the error if you try to access the blocked site, or act as transparent proxy if you happen to access another site which happens to be on the same address.
It is close but not completely correct. A routing table would have routes for every possible IP address. In this case the "suspect" list contains only the IPs of the servers that have URLs that need further checking. Thise IPs are then routed to the proxy which inspects the URL to see if ir can go through.
And it generates the HTTP error message (which therefore comes from the proxy server, not from the router).
It is a server but does not actually create the content of the request. The proxy server does one of two things; is transparent for non filtered URLs or returns errors for censored URLs. A HTTP server does much more than that.
Just because theaters can show a film at 48fps does not mean they have to. There is no one holding a gun to their heads saying that that must show it at 48FPS or they can not show it at all. It is a choice by the theater as to what format they will display and a choice by the consumer as to what format they will pay for.
Cooking dinner generally isn't a big user of power compared to the normal running of the house.
According to this graph electrical cooking is a significant user of electricity. It is the 5th largest user of electricity in the average home ( ones that do not have hot tubs, pools or water beds).
put the laundry on a clothes line outside
While cloths line drying is a great idea there are a few issues with it;
1. It does not work well when raining.
2. Does not work well for apartment dwellers. I have no place at all to line dry my cloths unless I want to hang them in my small apartment which is not a viable solution.
3. Takes a lot of time especially in low temperatures. The average city dweller is not willing to wait hours for their cloths to dry.
4. Does not work well in cities where pollution levels, bird droppings, etc may make the cloths as dirty as before they went into the washer.
i don't see why they wouldn't at least for higher volume customers.
Yeah a shipping company is going to put on a shift drivers, warehouse workers, etc and pay them for eight hours for a few pickups that will happen late at night and take a few hours to service.What happens if there is a truck issue? That means maintenance needs a shift too. What happens if there is an issue with a customer's account? A warehouse company can not be blocked from shipping until accounting comes in the next day. That means the customers AP department would need a shift and the shipper's AR depart would need a shift. When things go wrong a lot more people are brought into an issue and those people need to be working to fix the issues.
Most banking is automated..
Many banks now offer 24/7 telephone banking.
That is great for consumer banking but not corporate banking. When one is talking about corporate accounts a generic customer service agent is not good enough as corporate banking is much more complex. Large corporate accounts have specific manager who have intimate knowledge of a customer's entire banking stricture; accounts, loans, lines of credit, payments, agreements, etc. What happens when one of the suppliers calls during working hours and states that there is a problem with a cheque and the items will not be shipped. Will that wait until later when finance comes in? Who will finance talk to when they come in as the supplier has now closed for the day and the bank's account manager has gone home?
A more spread out system would be far better, you could run buses 24/7 with moderate load instead of an overcrowded service for 3-4 hours of the day, and an underutilised or nonexistent service for the rest.
That would require a completely new shift to cover the hours that the buses do not operate now causing in increased cost to the transit system by up to a third. Who will pay for this increased cost (rider fares pay only a small part of transit expenses).
You could employ 15 workers at a time in shifts, instead of 50 workers during the day and 3 at night, meaning you only need sufficient office space for 15 workers now.
When a worker from one shift has to contact a worker from another shift then things slow down. To use the bank scenario above, the night finance department contacts the night bank employee who then attempts to contact the bank that rejected the cheque. But wait that second bank does not work at night. All people in a communication chain must work at the same time so information flows. It comes to a point that every company would need a night shift to deal with it.
Which actually brings me to another couple of issues. Since there will be day and night shifts there will be heating and cooling now 24 hours.Also, with the use of natural light these days, electric lighting use has gone down. With night work there would be much higher lighting costs.
Problems of mismatched working hours are already a problem for any company that has international dealings.
True but those companies probably already work 24 hours a day or when meetings are needed shift for a day or two at a time. It is also generally accepted that communication with a company in another country will be slower than the a company down the street; it is a matter of expectations. The vast majority of companies do not have these issues and would not tolerate slowing down local communications to the speed of international communications.
Here is a quote from the cleanfeed wiki article;
The other popular way of blocking content is DNS manipulation. Compared to this, Cleanfeed has the following properties:
Slightly harder to circumvent, although users can use open proxies, or the Tor network, and servers can use another port than 80, or HTTPS.
Less collateral damage. DNS-based blocking is criticized for blocking all content on a site with the same domain name. Cleanfeed only blocks what is explicitly blacklisted. For example, it would be possible to block only one image in an article.
Considering that it compares Cleanfeed with DNS manipulation, Cleanfeed is not DNS manipulation.
The router compares the IP with a list of suspect ips. The second step is the important one where a proxy evaluates the entire URL to see if it has been blocked. The main difference is that Cleanfeed can block a specific IP while DNS manipulation blocks an entire server.
I still am not convinced that the router inspects the HTTP request.
The router inspects the IP and the proxy inspects the URL. It is not DNS manipulation in that the conversion from domain to IP has already taken place before the requests gets to the router. Also, if it was DNS manipulation it could be circumvented by entering the IP instead of the domain.
If prices go up a lot of folks may very well decide that getting hot and sweaty a bit is worth saving the money.
When people are hot and sweaty they spend more time resting, spend more time drinking water, move slower, spend more time fanning themselves, are distracted by the discomfort. Is the decrease in productivity worth the savings in electricity? Say a company has 30 employees with hourly costs of $40/hr and their productivity is decreased by an hour a day. The decrease in the electrical bull would have to be $1200/day to make up for lost productivity.
Making office workers sweat is probably not a great idea. Would you look for a new job of the temperature on your office was regularly 85 degrees?
If you're trying to prove that demand for electrical usage during peak periods is perfectly inelastic
I am trying to point out that since you can not even come up with a few examples of businesses that can time shift there may not be enough to make time shifting a significant factor. Since you brought up elasticity of demand take a look at this study. Go to page page 10 and notice the low price elasticity numbers in reference to businesses. They are not perfectly inelastic but they are very inelastic.
If you you'll notice, peak demand is at 6pm, and it drops from there
You appear to be using a sliding formula based on current demand to calculate the exact rate for electricity. That is not the way rates are handled by utilities. There are generally two methods;
1.tiered usage where certain usage thresholds cause increases in rates. eg any power usage over 100kWh in a month is charged at a higher rate.
2. Rated based on the clock where different times of the day have different rates. In this instance it is quite rare to have more than 2 rates; peak and off peak. You apprear to want to have 24 rates. Another issue is that peak usage shifts depending on tome of year. Winter heating takes place earlier in the day while summer air conditioning takes place later in the day. Will the rates change as the seasons change? twenty four rates is not a viable solution due to the regulatory complexity.
orders could be packed and shipped late at night with no problem
that would also require the following.
1. Shippers that pick up late at night.Will they time shift too.
2. Shipping departments require supplies to be ordered and delivered. Will the supply companies time shift too?
Similarly backend functions such as finance, it, taking deliveries of stock etc which are not directly customer facing could easily be performed at different times.
1. Finance would need to deal with banks which do not work at night.
2. IT deals with managers who are customer facing and work days.
3. Receivers work with shippers and suppliers who work days.
changing working hours like this also helps with another problem - transport,
Agreed, but shifting work hours by as little as 1.5 hours has a significant positive effect on transportation. Thet would still put most work time in peak usage hours.
there is a huge wasted surplus of transport resources as empty buses and trains travel around.
In my city of 300k people the bus system shuts down from midnight to 6AM. I guess night workers will have to drive.
Making peak electricity more expensive is just going to punish those who have no choice in the matter, which is the vast majority of people...
Exactly my point. The main issue is that there are very few jobs that are completely isolated from interaction with people who must work day hours. In my estimation the number of those jobs is so insignificant as to make time shifting irrelevant.
No, the sun (which is very very warm) comes out during the day.
Not everyone lives in California. In the southern interior of BC there is a place called the Okanogan. Daytime temperatures range from 0C in winter to 27C in summer. The sun is not enough to heat a house from 0C in winter and air conditioning is needed on hot days in the summer.
Probably a lot, with the right incentive.
Name a few that can work when others are not working? Saying "probably" means you really don't know and are just speculating.
Even today, people work the graveyard shift when they could do the same job during the day for less pay.
True but those jobs are for businesses that are normally open 24 hours a day such as technical support, convenience stores, McDonald's, etc. I meant businesses that do not normally work at night but would move to night if day costs went up. You also just pointed out a disincentive to move to nights. Would savings in electrical costs be offset by the necessity of paying higher wages for graveyard shifts?
Electrical demand doesn't have just one huge flat peak that ends at midnight. It looks more like a sine wave [caiso.com]. All someone needs to do is avoid the very highest peaks of the sine wave.
Thank you for showing a graph tha proves my point. If you draw a horizontal line at the median demand you will see that the higher demand is between noon and midnight. and low demand is between midnight and noon. Considering that most people do things in the evening they would have to wait till after midnight to use off peak power. The area between 6PM and 10PM is very near peak demand as that is where people who work will be cooking, washing dishes and doing laundry. Most people are not willing to get up before going to work to do these things. Considering the demand curve, when would you propose to cook dinner? When would you propose to switch between the high rate and the low rate?
If you don't have the answers and real references you are just speculating.
Over the course of a full year, the average electric bill would stay the same.
Actually there is no "reversal" the bills just won't be as high. The will still be using some high priced day electricity and some lower priced night electricity. If electrical heat is used then they will be in the same boat as the high costs will be for heating during the day rather than cooling.That also does not help if you can not afford your summer bills. Many people live from paycheck to paycheck and can not afford high bills.
If they only operate during peak price, it's because there isn't enough of an incentive to shift their operating hours. This changes that.
How many businesses do you know that can shift their hours out of the 9AM to 5PM range? Most business do business with people and other businesses between 9and5. Even if it was possible to shift the schedule, how many people would want to work nights when they could do the same job during the day? Also by shifting to nights all that would happen is that business would move to companies that were open during the day.
Time-of-use pricing gives people an additional option: shift heavy electrical usage (such as laundry and cooking and dishes) to the off-peak periods in order to save money. Giving people additional ways to save money is a good thing, right?
How many people do you think will wait till past midnight to cook dinner? How many people will do the same for laundry? Sure one could have a timer on the machine and have it run late at night but that would mean it would take 2 days to do a load (one for wash and one for dry as the laundry will not move from the washer to the dryer by itself). Most people sleep during off peak energy hours which is the main reason the demand is lower. Most people come home from work, make dinner, wash dishes, do laundry, watch some tv and go to bed. This standard is not going to change due to changing electrical bills. Realistic options are good but unrealistic options are not.
Sorry but your logic does not actually work well for hot areas. The peak need for air conditioning comes during the day which is also the peak overall electrical demand time. At night the need for cooling is less as would the electrical rates would be lower. So as the days get hotter an air conditioning user will be using much more peak priced energy than off peak priced energy and their electrical bill will go up.
What about businesses who only operate during peak price time? They will not get much discount from off-peak price because they do not use it.
There is a falsehood in tying every purchase to the supply/demand curve. Some commodities are considered discretionary purchases. In the case of orange juice one could purchase apple juice instead. The supply/demand curve works very well in such cases. In the case of electricity, the only option is to use less. Most people are already conserving as much as they can so electrical purchases are no longer discretionary. No matter how much you raise prices most people are still going to use what they use up to the point of no longer paying their electrical bill.
The full statement should really be "Redundancy costs money and lack of redundancy costs a lot more money". There is an old saying; you can pay me a little now or a lot later. By definition a critical system is one where the company will lose a lot of money if it goes down and it eventually will. The short sighted decision to not have redundancy is usually a bad one.