That is incorrect. In many countries, such as my own (Finland) you can actually choose which power provider to use.
My bill basically consists of two parts. One comes from utility provider providing power transmission wires to my home (which I cannot choose for obvious reasons) and one comes from the provider of electrical power to the grid (which I can choose from anywhere in Finland).
I live in city of Tampere, and buy electricity from provider in Kouvola (https://www.kssenergia.fi/). The distance between our cities is several hundred kilometers, but this works because electric grid is unified, and what actually happens is that provider feeds a certain amount of energy into the grid, and whatever energy I take out is billed according to our contract. Provider is required to feed this much power (+ certain surplus for transmission) into the grid at its local exchange. This creates competition between electricity generating companies while transmission fees are monitored by government to ensure that they are in line with spending and do not abuse the monopolistic rights (since they are the only provider in the area for obvious reasons).
This system enables healthy competition for power providers without upending utilities.
In all Nordics, as far as I know, photographing your own ballot after it has been filled is illegal for very reason. It made national news when some people took selfies with their ballots and several professors of law and history did a pretty detailed explanation on why these laws are in place (history of democracy and massive levels of abuse related to voter intimidation).
You don't need to hold the person hostage. You just need to take away their electronic id card for the rest of the day.
This isn't a strawman. This is a real threat, and something that has significant history of happening in the past with democracy. Please stop pretending that "doing stuff with computers is always better" and actually study the history behind the issue.
Youtube accepts h.264, and going from 30fps to 60fps means increase in relatively small b-frames (frames which tell the difference between previous frame and current one) and likely few to no I-frames (large full picture frames).
As a result, file size likely won't go up all that much after encoding to h.264. Raw video output will double however, so if you can't encode on the fly, you will need double writing speed to long term storage.
Let me help you. Are you familiar with concept of "voter intimidation" and why it doesn't work at polling stations?
Scenario: You are a part of a company. Your boss tells you to vote a certain way or face problems at work. You have no other good places to work and you have no way of proving he said that.
In current situation, this is impossible for said boss to enforce. You can tell him you will vote the way he wants, and even if he shows up at the polling station with you, there is no way for him to check which number you actually wrote on the ballot. Result: Voter intimidation not a viable tactic. In a case of electronic voting from any PC terminal, all said boss needs to do is stand next to you as you vote. Result: Voter intimidation a viable tactic.
In a nutshell: electronic voting from uncontrolled environment has severe problems because of lack of anonymity compared to voting at polling station. If it presents no significant tangible advantages, it should absolutely be scrapped to avoid increasing democratic problems while presenting on clear democratic benefits.
There is one severe issue with online voting. It doesn't occur in a controlled environment. As a result, it's possible to check what other person actually voted for. This enables tactics like voter intimidation and bribery, something that is not viable at polling stations, because at polling station you can say you voted for one politician, and actually have voted for another.
There is no way for anyone check. Voting is anonymous. All it takes to check who you voted for electronically is to sit next to you as you vote. If you think this isn't much of a problem, consider your average family with an abusive father figure who has strong political beliefs in far right nazi party.
This is in fact one of the biggest problems of online voting. It's very difficult to force someone to vote a certain way at a polling station, as there is no way to check what the other person voted for.
It's very easy to check what the other person voted for in electronic voting process. That makes intimidation, bribing and so on viable tools for collecting votes.
That's standard in all Nordics. Additionally people staffing the stations are mostly volunteers. Here in Finland for example, you find mostly elderly (former) political/democratic activists who find its their duty to show up and ensure country is democratic with some younger people with similar goals also in the mix.
As a result, most of the cost is logistics and paper trail. Pretty much everything else, such as buildings used, equipment used and so on is reused.
Note that your argument is the same as the argument of creationists: "I cannot agree that conclusion I prepared doesn't match the facts on the ground".
Actually, solar has made them more dependent on natural gas, because solar needs base power when it's "not at peak" which is most of the time. And this needs to be hot reserve, spun and ready to pick up the slack in just a few seconds when a cloud crosses over the field of panels.
In Germany, most of that is handled through coal and gas, of which it has consumed a lot more of recently due to Energiewende policies on top of closure of nuclear power plants.
Nationalise the bank to ensure that investors who allowed such thing to happen lose everything regardless. In other words, make those guilty of taking the risk shoulder the consequences.
Then bail it out to save your taxpayers money.
The problem with current methodology is that government effectively agreed to be a free guarantor for big banks risks. Which in turn caused the crisis because banks, knowing government and its money has their back took insane risks because the profits were equally insane if successful. And for a while, they held. Until risks were realised and the entire thing came down like a house of cards.
The only way to normalise the system is to force those who take the risk shoulder the consequences. Otherwise, what we saw in 2007 was just the beginning of crises to come.
The key difference was that USSR had to directly compete with US while operating on about 2/3 of economic output and 2/3 population and having a country to defend that was double the size. Which meant that it couldn't provide the same standard of living for its people as West did. It was said that they were spending something around 40% on their defence budget, much more than US did.
Which resulted in poverty for most people just to keep the military-industrial sector running, and it still slowly cannibalized itself as we saw when perestroika started and we saw just how bad things were in many aspects.
It is plausible once you consider the extreme conditions (temperature fluctuations and humidity fluctuations) that high speed high altitude interceptor aircraft has to go through.
I recommend following my advice instead of making these guesses. They make you look rather foolish. You see, they had actual computers on board on vacuum tubes (plane was fly by wire with many automated controls due to extreme conditions it was designed to fly in - they list things like plane rolling and collapsing to the side and then into a downward dive without specific fly by wire programming when launching a missile for example) and it was designed in 1959 and flying in 1969. Not many complex microprocessors even in US back then, unless you know something I don't.
And the point is that that particular aircraft was indeed fully computerized and automated to the point where people could not believe that all that was coded to work on just vacuum tubes.
If country collapses because its currency goes down the toilet? That is one of the very likely scenarios, yes. In light of history, military is commonly one of the several major actors that tend to seize power as country collapses in massive civil unrest.
When it came to bleeding edge military technology, USSR was top notch. Don't believe the bullshit propaganda on this one. I recommend starting looking on documentaries made around 1995-2000 many of which can be found on youtube. Back then Russia was opening up to the West and a lot of massive technological marvels that they produced were first seen by the West.
To quote a Lockheed Martin head engineer of space engine program after seeing the test firing of Soviet closed circuit engine which he flat out refused to believe to be possible until that firing:
"Seeing this made us ask some very uncomfortable questions about our research and development processes".
Just like USSR was behind in some things, USA was behind in some other things. And USSR's solution to many parts where it was behind were stunningly brilliant. For example nearly fully automated long range aircraft that was MiG-25 was massively automated and computerized. On vacuum tubes. US and Japanese specialists didn't believe it when they got the thing from Belenko, and there were several documentaries covering the plane and Belenko's case which had some very interesting talking points from engineers working on it.
And after Cold War ended, when asked why, the explanation was that vacuum tubes actually survived extreme conditions of extreme altitude and extreme speed flight much better than transistors, and that it was more efficient to code around their slowness than to burden the aircraft with climate control systems for transistor based computers.
Assuming people like that won't make any breakthroughs is simply stupid.
Slashdot Mirror
Most Germans live in cities where such investment is impossible.
That is incorrect. In many countries, such as my own (Finland) you can actually choose which power provider to use.
My bill basically consists of two parts. One comes from utility provider providing power transmission wires to my home (which I cannot choose for obvious reasons) and one comes from the provider of electrical power to the grid (which I can choose from anywhere in Finland).
I live in city of Tampere, and buy electricity from provider in Kouvola (https://www.kssenergia.fi/). The distance between our cities is several hundred kilometers, but this works because electric grid is unified, and what actually happens is that provider feeds a certain amount of energy into the grid, and whatever energy I take out is billed according to our contract. Provider is required to feed this much power (+ certain surplus for transmission) into the grid at its local exchange. This creates competition between electricity generating companies while transmission fees are monitored by government to ensure that they are in line with spending and do not abuse the monopolistic rights (since they are the only provider in the area for obvious reasons).
This system enables healthy competition for power providers without upending utilities.
In all Nordics, as far as I know, photographing your own ballot after it has been filled is illegal for very reason. It made national news when some people took selfies with their ballots and several professors of law and history did a pretty detailed explanation on why these laws are in place (history of democracy and massive levels of abuse related to voter intimidation).
You don't need to hold the person hostage. You just need to take away their electronic id card for the rest of the day.
This isn't a strawman. This is a real threat, and something that has significant history of happening in the past with democracy. Please stop pretending that "doing stuff with computers is always better" and actually study the history behind the issue.
Youtube accepts h.264, and going from 30fps to 60fps means increase in relatively small b-frames (frames which tell the difference between previous frame and current one) and likely few to no I-frames (large full picture frames).
As a result, file size likely won't go up all that much after encoding to h.264. Raw video output will double however, so if you can't encode on the fly, you will need double writing speed to long term storage.
Let me help you. Are you familiar with concept of "voter intimidation" and why it doesn't work at polling stations?
Scenario: You are a part of a company. Your boss tells you to vote a certain way or face problems at work. You have no other good places to work and you have no way of proving he said that.
In current situation, this is impossible for said boss to enforce. You can tell him you will vote the way he wants, and even if he shows up at the polling station with you, there is no way for him to check which number you actually wrote on the ballot. Result: Voter intimidation not a viable tactic.
In a case of electronic voting from any PC terminal, all said boss needs to do is stand next to you as you vote. Result: Voter intimidation a viable tactic.
In a nutshell: electronic voting from uncontrolled environment has severe problems because of lack of anonymity compared to voting at polling station. If it presents no significant tangible advantages, it should absolutely be scrapped to avoid increasing democratic problems while presenting on clear democratic benefits.
There is one severe issue with online voting. It doesn't occur in a controlled environment. As a result, it's possible to check what other person actually voted for. This enables tactics like voter intimidation and bribery, something that is not viable at polling stations, because at polling station you can say you voted for one politician, and actually have voted for another.
There is no way for anyone check. Voting is anonymous. All it takes to check who you voted for electronically is to sit next to you as you vote. If you think this isn't much of a problem, consider your average family with an abusive father figure who has strong political beliefs in far right nazi party.
This is in fact one of the biggest problems of online voting. It's very difficult to force someone to vote a certain way at a polling station, as there is no way to check what the other person voted for.
It's very easy to check what the other person voted for in electronic voting process. That makes intimidation, bribing and so on viable tools for collecting votes.
That's standard in all Nordics. Additionally people staffing the stations are mostly volunteers. Here in Finland for example, you find mostly elderly (former) political/democratic activists who find its their duty to show up and ensure country is democratic with some younger people with similar goals also in the mix.
As a result, most of the cost is logistics and paper trail. Pretty much everything else, such as buildings used, equipment used and so on is reused.
Note that your argument is the same as the argument of creationists: "I cannot agree that conclusion I prepared doesn't match the facts on the ground".
Actually, solar has made them more dependent on natural gas, because solar needs base power when it's "not at peak" which is most of the time. And this needs to be hot reserve, spun and ready to pick up the slack in just a few seconds when a cloud crosses over the field of panels.
In Germany, most of that is handled through coal and gas, of which it has consumed a lot more of recently due to Energiewende policies on top of closure of nuclear power plants.
What space tech did they steal and from whom? No one else on the entire planet had this technology. They were the first in space, remember?
Read the second sentence of the post, you raging moron.
READ IT.
The come back and apologise.
You missed the entire second sentence of the post in your "righteous" stupidity.
Nationalise the bank to ensure that investors who allowed such thing to happen lose everything regardless. In other words, make those guilty of taking the risk shoulder the consequences.
Then bail it out to save your taxpayers money.
The problem with current methodology is that government effectively agreed to be a free guarantor for big banks risks. Which in turn caused the crisis because banks, knowing government and its money has their back took insane risks because the profits were equally insane if successful. And for a while, they held. Until risks were realised and the entire thing came down like a house of cards.
The only way to normalise the system is to force those who take the risk shoulder the consequences. Otherwise, what we saw in 2007 was just the beginning of crises to come.
Former of the two you list. Reading comprehension is your friend. Pay attention to the very first sentence.
The key difference was that USSR had to directly compete with US while operating on about 2/3 of economic output and 2/3 population and having a country to defend that was double the size. Which meant that it couldn't provide the same standard of living for its people as West did. It was said that they were spending something around 40% on their defence budget, much more than US did.
Which resulted in poverty for most people just to keep the military-industrial sector running, and it still slowly cannibalized itself as we saw when perestroika started and we saw just how bad things were in many aspects.
That was indeed what the first sentence of my initial post said.
Have you tried wikipedia?
It is plausible once you consider the extreme conditions (temperature fluctuations and humidity fluctuations) that high speed high altitude interceptor aircraft has to go through.
Here's one I watched recently on migs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
And here's one on rocket engines:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I recommend following my advice instead of making these guesses. They make you look rather foolish. You see, they had actual computers on board on vacuum tubes (plane was fly by wire with many automated controls due to extreme conditions it was designed to fly in - they list things like plane rolling and collapsing to the side and then into a downward dive without specific fly by wire programming when launching a missile for example) and it was designed in 1959 and flying in 1969. Not many complex microprocessors even in US back then, unless you know something I don't.
And the point is that that particular aircraft was indeed fully computerized and automated to the point where people could not believe that all that was coded to work on just vacuum tubes.
And a slow and steady reduction in both of military power/size and the superiority complex of the said military, which reduces the risk as well.
If country collapses because its currency goes down the toilet? That is one of the very likely scenarios, yes. In light of history, military is commonly one of the several major actors that tend to seize power as country collapses in massive civil unrest.
When it came to bleeding edge military technology, USSR was top notch. Don't believe the bullshit propaganda on this one. I recommend starting looking on documentaries made around 1995-2000 many of which can be found on youtube. Back then Russia was opening up to the West and a lot of massive technological marvels that they produced were first seen by the West.
To quote a Lockheed Martin head engineer of space engine program after seeing the test firing of Soviet closed circuit engine which he flat out refused to believe to be possible until that firing:
"Seeing this made us ask some very uncomfortable questions about our research and development processes".
Just like USSR was behind in some things, USA was behind in some other things. And USSR's solution to many parts where it was behind were stunningly brilliant. For example nearly fully automated long range aircraft that was MiG-25 was massively automated and computerized. On vacuum tubes. US and Japanese specialists didn't believe it when they got the thing from Belenko, and there were several documentaries covering the plane and Belenko's case which had some very interesting talking points from engineers working on it.
And after Cold War ended, when asked why, the explanation was that vacuum tubes actually survived extreme conditions of extreme altitude and extreme speed flight much better than transistors, and that it was more efficient to code around their slowness than to burden the aircraft with climate control systems for transistor based computers.
Assuming people like that won't make any breakthroughs is simply stupid.